 Okay, I have 530. So with that, I would like to call to order this May 19th meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District. Holly, would you take the roll please? Hail May Hood. Here. Vice President Ackerman. Here. Director Foles. Here. Director Hill. Here. Director Smalley. Here. Okay, so first order of business tonight will be that I am going to turn over the presiding duties to Jamie because I'm in a rehab center. My blue is my hospital gown, which I'm not gonna show you. And I'm recovering from hip surgery. I'm actually doing very well. I'm gonna bust out of this joint on Saturday, but between the chances of them bombing into my room to take my blood pressure, which they seem to do like every other hour, and my sort of opioid addled brain, I thought it would be better to let Jamie run both the closed and the open session tonight. And so I will be, I'm participating, but I will be off camera and Jamie, take it away. All right, thanks Gail. We all are glad to hear that you're on the mend and that you will be out of there on Saturday. So good news. With that, are there any additions or deletions to the closed session agenda? Not hearing or seeing any, let's see. I don't see any attendees. Are there any oral communications regarding any of the items in closed session? I would assume not because there's nobody here in attendance right now. So with that, I think we will adjourn to closed session. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you on the other side. Okay, that's 6.30. Shall we convene to open session? I just want to make an announcement as we return to open session that at the beginning of the meeting at 5.30 before we adjourn to closed session, Chair Mayhood gave the gavel to me for the meeting. She is here and voting, but she has asked me to run the meeting for personal reasons tonight. So that is why I am chairing. And with that, we are back from closed session. We did take an action in the closed session regarding the litigation with the County of Santa Cruz. So we voted unanimously. I'm sorry, I'm pulling up the language in the front of me, give me a moment. I'm sorry. Board voted unanimously in favor of authorizing the district manager to sign on behalf of the district a proposed settlement agreement resolving the County's dispute with the water district about the Bear Creek Road collapse which occurred in January, 2020. A copy of the settlement agreement will be made available to the public once it is signed on behalf of both parties. That was the action that was taken in closed session. So if there are any comments on that, I believe we can move on to our next item to reconvene the meeting and take roll call. Right, President Mayhood. Yeah, you're muted. Yeah, sorry, I'm here. Vice President Ackerman. I have to say that Jamie made it sound like maybe I got a facelift. I just wanna say that's not what I did. I'm not that frivolous. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry, I just, I will leave it to you to share any details of your current situation if she is absolutely not getting a facelift. She is definitely taking care of herself in very important ways. So please go ahead, Holly. Vice President Ackerman. Here. Director Fouls. Here. Director Hill. Here. Director Smalley. Here. All right. Are there any additions or deletions to tonight's agenda, Rick? Yes, Chair Ackerman. Requesting to pull item 12D, the new staff position. We did not include the salary schedule that needs to be approved by the Board by resolution per the personnel system rules and regulations who are, what we will be bringing this item back to HLIME for review and action. Thanks for that. Any other comments on additions or deletions? Not seeing any. We can move to oral communication. This is the opportunity for members of the public if they have a comment that's not on the agenda that they would like to make to please comment and Amanda, I see your hand and welcome. Amanda is an administrative committee member. It's nice to see you here tonight. Thank you. I actually don't have something to comment on that's not on the agenda. So I don't know if this is the right time to comment on the agenda. If you have a comment on a specific agenda item, if you wouldn't mind holding it until we get there. I mean, I believe that's the typical protocol, but... Not a problem. I can wait. Thank you. Amanda, I appreciate it. Things are a little bumpy tonight. I've never flown this plane before. So, okay, are there any other oral communications then related to anything not on the agenda? I'm not seeing any hands. So we can move to the president's report and Gail, we had talked before. There is no report from the president. Yeah, thank you very much. So no report from the president. We can move to unfinished business. The remote meeting authorization. We're all very familiar with this. Does anybody want to just go ahead and move our extension of the remote meeting authorization? We'll make that motion. All right. Second. Mark is motioning and Gail is seconding the recommendation as per the agenda. So... Vice President Ackman, I just wanted to provide a reminder to make sure to get public comment notwithstanding the lack of discussion. Thank you. I appreciate the reminder. So thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this agenda item? Not seeing any. I think we can move to roll call vote. President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalling. Yes. Excellent. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the filling of a couple of vacancies on the Budget and Finance Committee. So we did have a couple of applications and I believe the recommendation is to appoint both of those individuals to the Budget and Finance Committee. Do we want to start with, let's see, Director Mayhood or comment? Yeah, I think the recommendation was to discuss it but I do favor the idea of appointing both of the applicants because I think they both bring something to bear on the Budget and Finance Committee. We will welcome them and with that I'd also like to recommend that we increase the number of members on the Budget and Finance Committee to five. Thank you. And Director Falls, do you have any comments? Yes. I think it's great that we have two people that want to be in the Budget and Finance Committee. It's been our practice to try to appoint as many people from the community as possible to serve on our committees. And so this is really a great thing to do. I just want to ask Gina a question. We do have a policy about people serving on two committees at the same time so I'm assuming Monica would need to resign from the Administration Committee. Can that take place tomorrow without any problem? Sure. Yeah, I think we would just ask I guess for an email to document the resignation. Right. And then I think concurrent with that then we would have an opening on the Administration Committee so we would either need to change the membership number on that or leave it as is and recruit for them. So I'm not sure which way we would go but probably just easiest to leave it open. If that's the case then we would need to recruit for that as well. If I could just respond to that briefly. I would agree that I would be interested in leaving it open but I definitely would want to take that back to the Administrative Committee and have a conversation with the rest of the committee members about their preference but that tends to be my preference as well, Bob. Fabulous. Director Hill, do you have any comments on the two applications before us? No, they both look eminently qualified and I'm always happy to have well qualified people serving. Excellent. Director Smalley. I concur with what Jeff just said. Great. Okay, so I think at this point then before we go to the public for comment we could take a motion if it sounds like we are broadly in agreement about increasing the number of positions on the committee and appointing these two individuals who applied. Gina. Yeah, I just wanted to add we could avoid the additional administrative step of an email resignation just by putting in the motion that the individual, I think it's Mrs. Dejasus would be. No, Monica Martinez. Okay, I'm sorry. Would no longer be on the Administrative Committee and would instead serve on the budget and finance committee. Thank you for the suggestion. So before we go to public comment, stop. I moved that we, sorry, there's some background noise and hopefully it's not me. I moved that we appoint Elizabeth Paulson and Martina Monica Martinez to the budget and finance committee, increasing the number of members on the finance committee to five and accept Monica Martinez's resignation from the administration committee. I'll second that. Thank you. So we've got a motion and a second and we will go to public comment. Do any members of the public have any comments about the motion before the board or the two applicants? Not seeing any. I'm really glad that it's not Amanda because I don't want to lose her. So great. Thank you very much. So we've got a motion and a second. So Holly, I think we can go to a roll call vote. President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackerman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Motion passes. Excellent. Welcome to the budget and finance committee. So our next item of business is ordering an election and requesting the county elections to conduct the election. Do we have any discussion about this recommendation? I'll start with you. I did want to make sure that Elena Lang's questions got answered as she had sent an email to the board asking some questions about it. I think Gina is probably in the best position to answer those at an appropriate time. Otherwise, we do need to move to getting the election on the book. Bob, I did actually apply to respond to Elena's email and answered her questions and I just didn't, I can't CC it to the rest of you without creating the potential for Brown Act violations, but I did get back to her right away. Okay. These were largely, these are rules that are set at the county level that we don't control and that the ballot does indicate whether somebody's an incumbent by virtue of appointment or election. Okay, great. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure there was no confusion on her part. Thank you, Kale, for taking care of me. All right, Mark. So from a procedural aspect, if four candidates are running, none of the four of them elect to place their name for that two-year seat, we elect three individuals and that two-year seat is then open. Is that the way this process could work? Gina, I think I see your head nodding yes. Yes, that could occur. Okay. But it is three that, right? That's open. There's actually four seats open, three four-year term and one two-year term. Correct. Correct. And I think that's what I stated with, you would elect three candidates out of those four that wanted the four-year seats and the two-year seat would then be left vacant and we would end up appointing. That's correct. Okay. Okay. Or, I mean, not necessarily appointing, but that would be an option that would arise. That would be an option that would present us. Okay. All right. Okay, I saw, I think let's go to Rick first because he may have a clarifying comment and then Bob. Just real quick, usually that doesn't happen. Usually it's watched very close at closing of putting your papers in and if there was an open seat, usually someone will put their name in for that open seat. That's usually watched very close up to the end. Okay. Thank you. Bob. Yeah, specifically, Mark, what happens is if the incumbent does not file for the O or the C, then the nomination times extended, I think it's another five days. And so in that five-day period, usually somebody comes forward. I didn't want to clarify something with Gina though, just to make sure that I'm on the same page about the question around incumbency. So if, for example, I were to file for the two-year seat, would I be an incumbent at that point? Because that's not the seat that I currently hold. Conversely, if someone were to run, that held the two-year seat, I guess in this case, Bami were to run for the four-year seat, would that be an incumbent situation? Well, I don't like to deflect, but in this case, I really would have to refer you to the elections office because the code doesn't really get that specific. And I'm not sure exactly how they would make that designation. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. Mark, I see your hand. Yes, I believe that the other matter that we have in front of us regarding this is the extent of the Kennedy statements. Am I correct? Let's see here. 200 words versus 400 words is what I... It does appear that we had made a, well, perhaps it was a past selection. When I looked at the documents, it looked like we had already determined that we were selecting the 200 words or no, was I misunderstanding that? Can I help with that? Yes, please. Yes, I merely stated what we have done in the past and it can be changed at any time. These are requirements by the state that we make this choice of either 200 or 400 words. In the past, the board wanted to make it paid for by the people that are planning to run for the position and that is to save money. And then the reason that we went with the 200 words is because it is cheaper for everyone and it makes it so that everybody's on an even space so that somebody that can't afford to run with 400 words can still, we just keep it to 200 just to keep it kind of on an even playing field. And if I don't need, and if somebody doesn't need 200 words, can we buy 25 words instead? Name that tune in three words. Exactly, that's where I'm going. Gina, do we need to, because I'm looking at the recommendation, do we need to actually indicate specifically in the resolution what we would prefer in terms of the statement of qualifications? The resolution does provide for the district to submit the notice to the county clerk of elective offices to be filled and that is where the district has to select the 200 versus 400. So it is part of this decision. And it does have to be made by the district. Right. One way or the other. All right, well, I mean I, my personal bleeding liberal heart would say that $200 for the district to eat per, I mean, we're not gonna have an overwhelming wave of candidates and it makes it an actual reduction in barrier because it means anyone regardless of whether you have $200 could run for the office if the district just covered it. Now, perhaps I'm wrong and historically we have dozens and dozens of people filing to run for water district, but that would be where I would come down in terms of the cost of filing, but I do appreciate that the $200 and 200 word filing is splitting the difference in terms of the cost. I just want to clarification. I think if I remember correctly from 2020 there's a charge to file and then there's a charge that's additional to, so which one are we talking about here? I was under the impression that what we were talking about was that we were, there was an opportunity for the district to either set the number of words that we were going to require the ballot language to be set at and then determine whether we pay that cost or whether the individual filing pays that cost. So if we set it at 400 words, right? Then and then determine that the individual filing pays that cost and they would be paying the 400, whatever the cost is for that. If we set it at 200 words, then they would be paying that cost or we can make the decision to take that on as the water district and pay that for all of the candidates who file. And I think if I'm understanding it, those are the two questions that we need to answer. Rick? Just one question at the appropriate time before you vote and this question for Gina on if the district did elect to pay for the candidate statement would that include current incumbent board of directors or is there an issue there? No. I wouldn't be fine to exempt ourselves and say that we had to pay for our own filing as incumbents but that new applicants could be covered by the district. So I hear what you're saying there, Rick. I just wanna be sure that we don't get ourselves into any hot water right in the middle of the election. Right, no, we don't wanna make it appear that we're trying to pay for our own election. To be sure of that. There's really no way to make that distinction. It's either going to be for all the candidates or none. So how much does this cost? I mean, what's the difference between 200 and 400 words? Good question. I mean, are we talking about tens of dollars, hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars? A friend of mine is currently running for board of equalization and he had to pay a whole lot of money for this. It wasn't like the $1 bucks. Yeah, the cost is based on the number of, the cost for the statement is based on the number of voters in the district which I believe right now is roughly 18,500, 19,000 somewhere in there. So, and it's a per head cost. And I don't know what the cost is gonna be. It kind of depends a lot on how many people contribute to a statement because you don't have to. It's entirely voluntary. So the more people that do statements, the lower the cost overall. It's printing distribution, that's what I'm talking about. But it's hundreds. I mean, it's not thousands, right? It's not tens. And it's my understanding that this does not include the filing cost. You still have to pay for filing. This is just at an extra expense if you want to make a candidate statement. That's all that's talking about. You do have to pay for your own filing costs as a candidate. Bob? I wish state law had some flexibility in there, but if there's no way to exempt us, then I mean, in the interest of all the things around the governance, I just don't see how we can do that. And I think that's probably why it hasn't been done. Yeah, I think that's a fair comment. I certainly wouldn't want to, I would want to be exempted from that. And I just also believe that making people pay to run for office limits people who don't have the means to do that. And so I wish we could take that factor out of it for all people who wanted to run, but fair point. So then I guess I would be in support of keep limiting it to 200 words. I agree. Okay, so unless there is any further comment, I think we could take a motion and a second before we go to the public for comment on this item. Do I have a motion to recommend that we adopt a resolution ordering an election requesting Santa Cruz County elections to conduct the election and requesting consolidation of such election for San Lorenzo Valley Water District as well as the notice to County Clerk of Elected Officers to be filled indicating that candidate statements of qualification shall be limited to 200 words. I so move. Thank you, second. I'll second that. Thank you very much. Thank you for reading anything. Oh, yeah, no problem. All right, and with that we can go to the public if there are any comments on this item. Seeing no hands. Rick? With that resolution or that motion cover whether the district is offering to pay or not, I didn't hear that. I might have. Yes. Yeah, we are not going to offer to be sure of that. Okay, so I think we can take a roll call vote. Holly. President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackerman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. All right, moving right along. Okay, so the next item on the agenda is what we've pulled the construction inspector. So we are moving to public outreach. Excuse me, I'm just. Okay, I guess I would like to take a point of privilege here if that's all right to just sort of set up this discussion. As the administrative committee chair, we have been talking about the district's public outreach resources for some time and looking at the amount and complexity of the, you know, projects and information that we know we are going to be wanting to communicate to the public over the next year at least. We thought that it might be prudent to take another look at the consulting resources that we currently have available to us. So we asked staff to take a look at what was both available in terms of additional budget and also what, you know, resources. In particular, we may need as we go forward this next year that our current consulting contract with Buzz PR is not necessarily able to fulfill. So I think I've framed the conversation. Rick or Carly, do you want to jump in? Sure, thank you, Director Atman. I'd like to just touch on what the Buzz has accomplished since we've hired them in 2020. So they did complete a customer survey looking for information on how customers really wanted to receive their information and what types of information they were interested in. They've also launched us on a couple of different platforms for social media, including Twitter and Instagram. They do keep us very active on all our social media accounts. We're pretty much posting at least once a day and at the very minimum, probably three times per week. They've also done a lot of our design for some of our special projects, like the customer confidence report, the CCR, as well as the state of the district that we've done over the last few years. As Director Atman mentioned, their technical writing is not up to par with what we think we need for the district. And that's why we're looking to go out for a request for proposals from some new potential consultants. Thank you. So I think at this point, we can turn to Director Foltz as my fellow administrative committee member for comments. Would you like to say anything at this point or? Yes, just to make sure I'm clear on what we're doing here. So this is going out, so we're gonna develop an RFP or is that RFP already been developed? I believe that if we were to take this action tonight, we would be asking staff to develop an RFP. And then would that RFP come back to the board for approval or would it just go out? Even on my meeting, gentlemen and Jamie, our plan, Director Foltz, was to develop the RFP and bring it back to the admin committee. Probably wouldn't bring it back to the full board, not unless there was something that came up in admin, but we bring it back to admin, then go out, release it. And the RFP will discuss the objectives that the district slash board are trying to accomplish over the engagement with whoever would be selected by the RFP. That's correct. Great, thank you. Director Smalley, I'll start with you. Do you have any comments? Yes, I guess I read the information incorrectly. I thought we were being asked to approve an additional 15,000 on the existing contract that we have with Buzz PR, but I didn't remember reading about RFP issue and sort of. To clarify, we do not have the contract with Buzz expired and the board elected to discontinue on a month by month purchase with the Buzz, so we had the admin committee review. And so we would be putting out an RFP to enter into a contract and we're asking to, because this is a mid-year and a two-year budget, we're asking to increase from 35,000 that we have in our current budget to 50 with the technical writing and wordsmithing and so forth. We feel that for that level of communications that we would need an increase in budget. So if I could clarify, Mark, we're asking to forward or what we would be being asked to approve is an increase in the district's overall available budget for public outreach activities. And then we would be further directing them to prepare an RFP because we do not have a contract right now, we're on a month-to-month basis with Buzz PR that would outline the activities that the district needs public outreach for. And we would put that RFP out, Buzz PR could bid on or submit a proposal just as any other public outreach firm could. But that's what I think we're asking the staff to do here. Bob? Oh, I'm sorry, Mark, could you speak? Okay, so you're asking the board for two different things, I think. One, do we increase the budget from 35,000 to 50,000? Two, are we approving the district preparing this RFP and then soliciting? Correct? Okay. That's my impression, yes. I missed the part about the RFP. My review, okay, apologize for that. Okay, all right, I do have a question about that 15,000 and if we don't do that, what does the district not get? What are we missing? Do we not get information about leaks that occur? Do we, you know, I'm struggling with that, but I don't use Twitter or other social medias. I'm kind of the ill-informed dinosaur in those aspects. So Rick, could you help me here on what do you see the gain to the district is? Well, you know, there's a good question, Mark. I see a higher quality of what we're doing with the wordsmithing and polishing of communications. I see a more professional firm in reaching out to our targeted customers and helping staff make those determinations. You know, we do have some items coming up of great interest to the public. And we most likely will be doing some public workshop, such as the constructability of the pipelines, possibly a rate evaluation coming up. So there are some areas that we, that the existing staff could use some assistance that, you know, we don't believe that, you know, Buzz is doing a great job on the day to day. I don't want to take anything away from them. Yes, we did have a minor issue here, not too long ago. But I think we need to bring it up a notch or two in our professionalism. Kind of Jamie. Yeah, I see Gales had her hand up. So I'd like to go to Chair Mayhood. Yeah, I would just like to say that I'm in favor of this. And it's largely because I believe that with the, the large pipelines that we're putting in to replace after the CZU fire will be a lot of interest on this. And a lot of the communications will have to be of a more technical nature than what Buzz is used to doing. Similarly, if we're gonna have consolidations with Brackenbray Forest Springs and especially with big basin water, there's some pretty complex issues that have to be communicated. I would think that some of this money would go to things like organizing outreach events as opposed to Mark, like you. I'm somewhat of a dinosaur. I don't use social media. So I see the social media part staying about constant that Buzz would continue to do the, as Jamie calls it, the day-to-day stuff and that this is an increment to deal with what's gonna happen in the next year and a half or perhaps longer that would really help our staff and augment our staff in terms of communicating at a higher level or a more professional level than we have in the past. Thank you. Thanks. If I could, I think I'd like to check in with director Hill here. He hasn't had an opportunity to say anything and just give you an opportunity. Do you have any comments? I think my comments align very closely with President Maygood. This is an area I have quite a bit of experience in my background, but not with public relations but with business public relations. And I think when we have large projects coming up and some of which may be controversial, it's very important that we get the message right and we do it correctly and we reach out to the people proactively before opposition bubbles to the surface. Some people start getting upset because they don't know what's going on. So I'm basically in favor of this. Thank you. All right, let's see. I think I'm gonna go to Bob because Gail, I think you may still have your hand up from your previous comments. So Bob, go ahead, take it away. Well, I guess then I'm a little bit perhaps confused because I think I saw the RFP but the money is not being something that was being committed to now. So maybe just, I wasn't reading it, right? Apologies for that. But I've done a lot of marketing communications in my career as well. And typically what you start out with is sort of a notion of what the budget might be but really you're putting together your objectives, what the goals are, what the deliverables might be, what have you as part of an RFP. And then based on that, you then sort of get into negotiations with the company you wanna select and what budget you can afford. My concern is if you're going out into the RFP was saying we have basically $15,000 incremental here to spend on all of these things we're talking about, I'm not sure that's really gonna float anybody's boat. Yes. I mean, I hate to say it but I've spent 15K in a month and more on really critical communications at companies I've worked at. I think what might be beneficial would be to put out an RFP with what it is that the district believes is critical in terms of these projects that are coming up and seeing what kind of response you get back rather than setting a budget. In fact, I'm not even sure 50K would be enough if we're really talking about a very expansive and significantly a broader communication scope than what we currently have. So I'm okay with going out for an RFP and that I'm not sure that it's really the right time to be talking about money until we understand what people are gonna charge. Plus with the inflation that we're seeing right now who knows what those numbers are gonna be coming back or so maybe better once we get into a recession they're gonna be looking for business but I think it's really premature to be talking budget now. It could be much higher than 15,000. I think that that's a really fair comment and in fact, something that I know I myself had wondered because not only are these, we have pretty complex projects and issues to communicate around but they are multi-year issues. These are not projects that will be wrapped up at the end of 2023. So I tend to agree with you, Bob, that 50,000 is probably not actually enough to do the things that we'll wanna do long-term. I think that we identified this $15,000 already as being available in the mid-year review that we just took a look at last meeting or so. So I think that that's just identifying the fact that this money can be made available in the public outreach budget. We don't have to set a $50,000 contract authority on a request for proposal. In my view, we can do exactly what you're saying which is put out a request for proposal for on-call consulting services for the needs that are identified here in the staff report and for the project priorities that we have agreed upon as a board and team need to be addressed. In my experience, the way that that would then typically work if we had a certain amount of budget available to use toward that on-call contract, then it would just be a matter of giving the district contract authority for those specific projects to spend down towards that budget. I think that 15,000, I mean, no matter what we do, there's sort of a baseline in terms of communications activities that any public-facing entity today just sort of has to do. You have to be on Facebook, Twitter, and you have to have a website. You have to have those forward-facing things because that's where the public expects you to be. And for us to continue on a day-to-day basis, just running those operations, there's just sort of a minimum amount of money that costs the consultant to do that work every day. And unless we're saying that we no longer want a consultant who's doing that work, anything additional that we're seeking in terms of communications, technical writing, assistance planning, and workshop is going to be additional money, and hence the reason for the increased budget authority. So in my thinking, Director Hill. I would like to propose that we actually hold two votes here. One vote is to authorize staff to put together the RFP and go out and solicit the proposals including proposed budgets that they might suggest. And the second vote to address the $15,000 increase in budget and discuss that as you said, something that we may need for ongoing activities that we're already doing really. And I think that would make it easier for all of us to vote if we split this under two motions. Okay. Gina, do you see any issue with that or what are your thoughts on that? There's no issue with that. Any board member could make a motion within the scope of the agenda item. And splitting it into two would be. Okay. Director Smalley. Yes. Along the lines of what Jeff was suggesting within the RFP potentially suggesting a budget amount of what the district might be expecting. When I prepared RFPs for clients where we were trying to keep it within certain budgetary ranges. What I often did was in the district anticipates that we would need your services X hours a week or X hours a month, something like that to put bounds around the amount of time expected from them. In addition to what we would need for deliverables. And in that manner, a consultant can see, well, you want me to spend eight hours a month, I need 20 to do what you're saying. And it would cause some amount of, I would hope some amount of discussion between an interested consultant than us to come to some better frame of mind. And if you're getting two or three consultants to say that, then I think we need to scratch our heads. Because I'm seeking some way to keep proposal costs that we would be getting within some type of a range that's realistic rather than getting one proposal at 25,000 and another one at 72,000. So because that to me is then very hard to objectively compare that. All right, Rick? Yeah, just something to keep in mind in the regard to the budget. Staff's thinking as we put this RIP together and hopefully that we get qualified consultants to bid. And part of this is to have those consultants on contract. And then as we move into the specialized projects such as say big basin consolidation and those, we talk and get a proposal what those costs are and charge those to the project. So a lot of this budget that we're talking about right now is the day-to-day Facebook and what we put out and polishing and editing where we have that we feel that we have efficiency right now. And then when we get into like a five mile pipeline constructability in that, those will be specialized projects that we will get a cost to do the outreach and then charge that to those projects. So and I agree that that may sound that price may sound low but when you include the capital and other projects that will support that those funds to pay for those projects, I think that having this consultant firm on contract ready to rock and roll will save the district a lot of time and energy moving ahead. Right. Just a comment. All right, Bob. Yeah, thanks, Rick for bringing that to our attention. In terms of the anticipated grant money that would come to support the consolidation activities do the grant funds typically allow for that kind of spending out of the grant money? They should, yes. I'm not sure we outlined outreach in the Bracken Bray consolidation but we see very little on that consolidation but the big basin and probably the constructability when we're holding workshops big basin will be many workshops. Those consolidation grants will cover those costs and for engineering and outreach. And in terms of the, well, I sort of look at it in two different buckets. So there's a bucket of FEMA money for and then our money for the five mile pipeline or all the pipe, the raw water type project. And then there's grant funding that comes from a different bucket for the consolidation. Now that could change assuming four springs gets FEMA money. I'm assuming that since money is fungible we could always take the cost of outreach for the raw water pipeline constructability out of whatever we're contributing as a district. It's really the grant money that I'm concerned about here. I did also want to say that with respect to our current consultants I think they definitely have increased the outreach activities inside of the social media. But I don't look at plagiarism issues as being minor. At least in my background those are typically pretty major situations. So I'm in favor of finding, of sending out an RFP but given that we're currently at two thirds of our revenue number for the year, three quarters of our expenses and one half of our operating margin relative to budget. I wanna see what they come back with in terms of relative costs here prior to increasing the budget. At least that's my view. But I think an RFP is certainly in order and I would support Jeff's suggestion which I think is very good on a lot of these kinds of things to split the question to allow for those kind of votes to have. Okay, well I think that at this point we could go to public comment and then come back and entertain a motion. So I see Amanda's got her hand up. CTV, we could, Amanda, are you unmuted? Yes, I am here. Excellent, thank you. The floor is yours. Thank you. So first, hi directors. It's good to see you all. My name is Amanda Dejesus and I live here in Ben Lomond. As a admin committee member, communications and, whoa, that just covered my screen. I am a communications and community engagement professional and I work in local government. And obviously I am an SLVWD rate payer. I view high quality communications and public outreach and engagement as a crucial element to the district and government in general. I believe it is the job of the district as a government agency to provide accurate, timely and relevant information to the public in an easily consumable manner. This job, of course, is not easy. I know this firsthand. As a public agency, the district has a strong responsibility to providing consistent and excellent communications. The modest increase that is being presented to you this evening to hire a consultant and increase the communications budget really will provide us with someone, some people with a know how technical skills and abilities needed that will ensure you can stand behind any and all communications coming from the district. Having a full service communications expert is much needed. In addition to communications, engagement with the community is at a pinnacle of transformation, as we know. As we head towards this, quote unquote, new normal, having engagement professionals who think innovatively is key. Our community is unique and requires new expertise when it comes to engagement. So spending a little bit more money to hire, and so spending a little more money annually to hire a proficient expert will give the district credibility, build trust within the community and provide the information our community wants and needs to know about. And as a side note, as a comment on Best PR, I never saw a community survey in 2020. I am a government nerd. I follow local governments as a hobby on social media, through electronic newsletters, et cetera. And I sought out the district and found information without it being presented to me. That's an issue. So one thing that I wanted to bring up to you with this is that in my opinion, a budget of this sort doesn't necessarily need to be solely used on a consultant. I think expanding communications into electronic newsletters, EBLAST, is a really good way to reach people these days because you're right, not everyone is on social media. Many people are using email. So it could potentially, and maybe I'm wrong about this and my misunderstanding of how this budget would be used, but it could be used for communications platforms like different emails. I urge you to approve this $15,000 increase to hire communications and community engagement professional and keep an open mind to potentially increasing it in the future. Just to give the district services, it honestly desperately needs. Thank you. Thank you, Amanda. I appreciate the comments. Larry Ford, who's up next? Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to make a comment. I'm really impressed with the conversation about this issue. You guys are way ahead of me in being able to understand what we need to do. Anyway, I just wanna say that I think this is a really important additional service that you need to add to be able to function well. As a consultant, I would be, I'm not worried about something like on-call services and having certain fees that I could charge with approval for specific tasks. So that would work out really well. Having some kind of an estimate of what the minimum income would be for my services would help and be attractive. So I think you're going in the right direction. And I also think that as has been said that there are some really important challenges that need to be addressed, coming up in the near future. So that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, let's see here. And Cynthia Zenzel, you could get her unmuted. Great, thank you very much. Cynthia? Good evening. I just like to agree with what Larry and the previous speakers said. I appreciate the process you're going through to set this up. I just have a question. When and how and to whom will the RFP be released? How will you be recruiting and deciding who will be invited to bid on this? Thank you. Thank you. Rick, did you wanna respond to that? I'm unmuted. This will be put out. We will send out to the different communication consultants that are local and in the area. And we will also publish it on the website to get out and anybody will be able to bid on this. I'm sure Carly has a list of outreach folks that we've worked with before and we can reach out to other agencies to get a good comprehensive list. Obviously, the more people we get it out to, the better pricing and see what's available. Great, I don't see... Oh, we've got April Zilber's hand is up. Hi, thank you. I just wanna reiterate what other people have said. We do have these complicated projects and decisions coming up in front of the community. And I go to meetings by Zoom and I read agendas and stuff and I still find it hard to understand some of the details. So having a very professional firm help with that aspect of communication, I think we're getting community buy-in. So I support the idea of putting out an RFP for a little more assistance. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, are there any other comments from members of the public? I am not seeing any other hands. So thank you all for your comments. I think at this point, unless there's further discussion, we could probably go ahead and entertain a motion on this recommendation. But before we do, I just wanted to clarify one thing, which was, Rick, I know you had mentioned that we had identified that there was $15,000 available in the mid-year for the review. I do appreciate the comments that Bob is making that $15,000 is probably not enough in terms of this single contract. But if we were to go ahead and make the increase to the budget, the money is available to do so, that's correct, Rick? That's correct. But keep in mind, the board has not approved. That was just informational. And we will, I will ask if we didn't lose Kendra. Kendra's still there. Our plan to come back with that budget adjustment would be after you get back from leave. Am I correct? Yes. But that money is there. Yes, I'll answer your question. Yes. Thank you. Okay, so with that, do I have a motion? I guess I heard two approaches to this. One is that we make a motion to recommend that staff prepare an RFP for comprehensive outreach consultant and increase the budget from $35,000 to $50,000. And I heard a second suggestion that we break the motion into two pieces. So I guess the first question is, does somebody want to move the entire thing in one effort? Seeing none. All right, then let's go ahead and can I get a first motion on the preparation of the RFP for conference outreach consultant? I move that we, the board authorized district to prepare an RFP for public relations services and circulate it within the local community and the larger community in the Central California and Northern California area. Thank you. Do I have a second? I'll second. All right, so I'm calling the roll call vote. President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackman. Yes. Director Fouls. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Motion passes. All right, thank you. So now the second part of the question is whether we want to take the action tonight to direct staff to increase the overall public outreach budget from $35,000 to $50,000. I'm not seeing, I'm seeing Mark, Shakey said no. I guess I personally don't think that I have any problem with taking this step tonight because I know there will be things coming up that we may want to have a consultant working on in the short term. So I just, my preference would be to go ahead and take this action tonight. But I know that we can revisit this question once we have received proposals and we can at that point make a determination about where we want to set the budget. So I guess I would ask Gina what your recommendation would be about how we move forward. Do we just leave aside the question of the budget? It's not necessary to make that determination night. I don't, I think Luke, I think I saw you agreeing with that concept. Is that right? Yeah, and we would bring the budget back at the same time we bought the contract as a board for approval and then we would approve the budget, hopefully at the same time that they approve the contract. So, and that's somewhat standard from time to time. And we've done it that, done it both ways. Is there any further discussion about that from members of the board? Not seeing any. I think then we can move on to the next agenda item because we have taken the only action we're going to take on this agenda item tonight. All right, so let's see. We have tabled the construction inspector position. So, where does that leave us? We are on to the consent agenda. Gina. I would like to ask chair to pull the April 21st meeting minutes for a correction. Right. And the correction I'd like to offer is that, and forgive me, Holly, if I'm kind of stepping on your toes in terms of how you've done minutes but I noticed that the written communications item on the minutes says none. When in fact there was an item of written communications on the agenda. And so I want, I'm not sure how you've done that before but I wanted to suggest perhaps changing that to say no discussion as opposed to none. And Holly, does that sound consistent with your past practice? There was no discussion. I don't know what to say. Yes, that is consistent. Bob, did you have a comment? Yeah, I think past practices we've identified who the written communication was from if there was in fact written communication. It was just a line item like letter from, you know, person, so-and-so. I believe there was something, was there not? So we would normally include that as a line. And we can change practice and say, no, there was something but no discussion or just no discussion. But that would be a deviation from our practice. So are we... I just have a comment. I think it would be useful just to do what we do on the agenda, which is list the name and date of the communication. And then if you want us, no discussion, that's fine. Right. That's just consistent with what we have on the agendas, the name and the date. So that should probably appear in the minutes. Right. Gina, did you have another comment? Oh, no, I'm sorry, I'll put my... Okay, so we are pulling those minutes to make that correction and they will come back at a subsequent meeting. Are there any comments on the other meeting minutes on the agenda for approval? Or can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda meeting minutes for May 5th, 2022? Do we need a motion for consent? Oh, thank you. Yeah, if I could just clarify here, there's no need for a motion on the May 5th minutes because nobody pulled them. Got it. So as long as there's no objection, they'll be deemed approved, but the April 21st meeting minutes, because I effectively pulled it by my comments. So we need to make a motion to amend them per your comments. Right. Okay, got it, sorry about that. And there should be, sorry to complicate, there should be an opportunity for public comment on this as well. Right. So why don't we, if I have a motion and a second and then we will take public comment on this to make the recommended edit to the minutes per Gina's suggestion to indicate that there was no discussion and the individuals. Do I have a motion? Sorry, I'm confused. So are we putting just no discussion or are we going to put the date as Gail was saying the date, the person and then no discussion? I'm not wasn't clear, sorry. I'm sorry, I was saying the date, the person and no discussion was my recommended. Let me state the motion. Go ahead, Gail. I move that we modify the April 21st minutes to read under written communication, the name of the communicant, the date of their communication and in this particular case, the fact that there was no discussion and that in the future, we will list the name and date of the communication. Thank you. I'll second. Wonderful. Holly, do we need a roll call vote? I think you need to go out to the public. Oh, thank you. We need to go out to the public. Like I said, a little turbulent, a little turbulent. We're just landing this plane tonight. Okay. Do any members of the public have comments on this? Seeing none. All right, now I think we can take a vote. President Mayhood, Vice President Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. All right. Thank you very much. And we're on to district reports. Do any of the directors have any comments on district reports? Director Smalley. Yes. I'd like to note that regarding the cross-country pipelines aspect, the engineering department report indicates that we're doing this peer review for the geotechnical aspects. We talked about that at a previous meeting. I note that the environmental department report now indicates the same that they are going out of an RP to do a similar peer review on the environmental aspects, which is different than what we heard at the previous board meeting. So that has been added to the scope, which is a positive thing. I support that. Yeah, and I was going to report that on the district manager's report that I misspoke at the last board meeting stating we are doing peer review on environmental. Okay. I have a couple of other questions on the engineering report if you want me to continue, Amy. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. I note on the summary of construction items that the Felton Acres Pressure Tank, which we have seen before on these, is no longer listed. Have that been resolved? Because my recollection was that we were considering not having to do this tank if other tanks served or did it just get missed from the department report? I suspect we should say it got missed. I removed it because nothing has changed and nothing will until this summer when we are able to go out and determine exactly what those pressure tanks do so that we can then determine a path forward. I see. Okay, so you need summer weather to test. I understand. Okay, thanks. All right. And then on Altavia, have we resolved the pipe shortage aspect or the pipe non-delivery? We have not yet resolved it and I'm going to be reluctant to say that it is resolved until pipe is in hand. At this point, based on communication with Anderson Pacific, we are currently looking at four to six months. The six months is more likely and prices are changing on a daily basis. So I am working with them in order to get something nailed down so that we can get pipe and get this job done without having to deal with a huge change order. Okay, thank you. Okay, those are my questions. Thanks. Thank you. Director Foltz, I saw your hand up. Do you have some questions? I do. I was wondering if I might be able to do a hybrid that is I have a few questions here for the public meeting. And then Rick, if I send the rest of them to you, if I email, would you be able to get back to me? Well, we'll do our best to get back to you Bob. Okay, well, maybe. Well, I try not to take all the time here because I've got a bunch. I wanted to get a update on the Fulton Heights tank. Have we made any movement on getting that resolved one way or the other? We have narrowed it down now to two locations and our next step is to contact the property owner to get a final determination if he will give us an easement or not. And we have that location and we have the original location. And before a decision is made, we will come back to the port. So we have two new locations and the original or just one? We have one location that the new location where we've been looking at and working on for quite some time with the property owner. We ran into a snag with the neighborhood a couple of neighbors complained about it being in their backyard. The property owner contacted us and asked if there was another location we could pick maybe further up in elevation. We're not ready to move the tank up to a higher elevation. So either we'll go back to this property owner and ask for him to consider get a final determination or go back to the original where the tank is sitting now before any decisions are made, we will bring this back to the board. Okay. And is there a timeframe where this decision will be made by the owner? Hopefully we can have something by July. By July. We are in contact with the homeowners association up at Felton Heights. As of the beginning of this week, I spoke to the president of the homeowners association. So now it's just the property owner's tough to communicate with. He doesn't live in this area. So hopefully we can make contact with him and see if his concerns are met and come back from there. We're close to making a recommendation to the board to move forward. Okay, great. Yeah, I mean, as you know, it's been a long time. And by the way, are we going through all the reports or one at a time? So which way are we doing that, Jamie? Sorry. I guess I, since Mark sort of ran through all of his questions it makes sense for you to run through all of your questions. I just have a, I think a couple more here. I wanna make sure that I'm reading this right on the operating revenue. It looks like if we exclude the surcharge word about two thirds of budget with one quarter of the budget year to go. And we're at one half of our operating revenue with one quarter of the year to go. Am I reading that right? This would be on page 62. Page 62, thank you. Hold on one second. 662? Oh, 62, okay. But page 63 of the whole thing. Okay. I'm sorry, can you repeat your question, Bob? So just makes from reading this right. So if we exclude the surcharge our operating revenue is at two thirds of budget our operating income is at one half of budget but we only have one quarter of the year to go. So in that one quarter of the year we're gonna hold on budget. We have to significantly increase operating. That is correct. Do we think that's going to happen? We have seen an increase in usage, but it's hard to say, it's hard to predict what the usage is gonna do. But we did see a significant increase in March consumption. And so we just, we'll just have to wait to see what it does these next few months. Okay. You know, the operating margin goes directly to our ability to do capital infrastructure and pay, you know, borrow money and that sort of thing. So one of the things I'm a little concerned about here is making sure that we are still going to maintain a minimum of 1.25 debt coverage going forward for the next few years. The last five year projection we had showed it at barely 1.25 at the end of that five years at this point with this reduction that may move in a little bit. Yeah. And the debt coverage is something that I was going to include in the next budget adjustment because I know you have requested that and I didn't include it the first go around. So we will be monitoring that. Yeah. And then the other thing, I think I'm reading this right on the past due analysis. It looks like we had a slight decrease for the total of 30 plus days past due. Correct. Do we, are we expecting another slug of money from the state to help bring this down? So we have the LeeWAP program coming into play customers can apply for that starting in June. So obviously that won't hit until the next fiscal year. And then we also will have the second go around of the pass due balances to be sent to the property tax roll. So that will also decrease that as well. And that will happen. That'll occur in July. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I just wanna say on page 72 where there's the operating analysis year to date for July to March, the bottom line total numbers there are still including the fire recovery surcharge. I understand from a financial reporting point of view why that's there. But the fire recovery surcharge really is not regular operating revenue. Since it's dedicated, it's actually restricted to other activities. So it tends to skew the numbers a little bit when you're calculating them by including that in there. So on page 73, the operating analysis year to date trend I did add a line in there for operating income loss excluding fire recovery surcharge. So I did include it on that one. Are you wanting to see it on the ones with the graphs? Maybe a note that says just below the table there that says for the description rather than redo the table just point people to the other page because it is important that people understand that that money is not and be used for operating expenses and the like. Great, thank you. And oh, on the, and by the way on this reports that you're doing now on the fire recovery surcharge and the COP I think this is an outstanding report and also that you started it for the 15 million. I did have a question on the 2019 COP they're still showing expenses applied to the Lompeco tanks. And I'm not familiar with what those are. I thought we were done with that project. It could have just been in voices that hadn't been billed by contractors yet but I can check into that. Yeah, because it extends into the Q3, it looks like. Yeah, it looks like you're still getting numbers in Q3 of the 2022, excuse me 2021, 2022 fiscal year. Yeah, it could have been retention amounts. So I can look into that and see what those before. And then on the 2021 report I didn't see a column for the initial estimate like you had up in the 2019. Do we have numbers for those or do we not? For like what we think the contract amount's gonna be. Well, no, so in the 2019 COP, your first column with numbers is original project cost per loan agreement. Oh yeah, okay, I can add that. Yeah, I think these two reports are just absolutely outstanding and give a really good picture of how we're spending that money and where the money is going. My only other suggestion on the 2019 is that we might wanna add a line for the fish ladder. I didn't, I don't think I saw that in there. I did not include that on this one. That was my mistake. These are just great reports. I mean, at a high level for board consumption, really that's a great place to start and then you go from there if you need additional detail. So thank you for doing those. I think that is it. The rest will come in email, Rick, thank you. Right, I guess I kind of jumped into the district reports a little backwards. So Rick, I don't think you had a district managers report tonight, but remind me, did you have anything there that you needed to share? No, you know, Director Smalley brought it up. I wanted to make the clarification regarding environmental review, peer review on the constructability study. I misspoke the last board meeting and that's been clarified by both Mark and myself. Thank you. All right, and are there any other director reports on the department status reports? Are there any comments on the committee reports? It's okay. We do not have any written communications and our next meeting is scheduled for June 2nd, 2022. And until then, I believe we are adjourned. So thank you very much, everybody. Have a great night. Time is 7.54 p.m. for our adjournment.