 Jamie, slides right into second base. You're right, it is now. She might be tagged out. There she is. There she is seeing. She just did it alone. Sliding into second just before we were about to start. Okay, Holly, we'll go ahead and start now. Are we recording? Yes. I'd like to convene this meeting of the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for March 17th, 2022. Holly, would you read the roll call, please? President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Ackman. Here. Director Falls. Here. And Director Smalley. Here. Okay. All in place and accounted for. Are there any additions or deletions to the agenda? The staff has mentioned. Okay, we come to oral communications, which is the part of the meeting in which members of the public may address the board on any topic within the purview of the district on items that are not on the agenda tonight. Are there any comments or communications from the public? If there are, please raise your hand. I don't see any. So with that, we'll go on. There is no president's report tonight. Our first item of new business is a resolution of appreciation for Lois Henry. And I will ask our district secretary, Holly Hossack, to read that resolution. The Reservalewater District resolution of appreciation for Lois Henry, whereas Lois Henry was elected to the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District on November 6th, 2018, and whereas Director Henry served as president of the board December 13th, 2018 through December 5th, 2019, and whereas Director Henry was appointed to the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency Board on December 13th, 2018 as a representative from SLVWD, and whereas Lois Henry played a vital role in the consolidation of SLVWD and Lompeco County Water District, saving Lompeco from bankruptcy, and whereas Director Henry assisted SLVWD in moving capital improvement projects forward, including the probation tank, Lompeco tanks, the mainland line replacements. She was deeply involved in the SLVWD issues and projects, including CZU recovery projects, the completion of the water master plan and the urban water management master plan, and she was instrumental in executing the low income rate assistance program. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District that Lois Henry is truly deserving of the highest commendations for her service to the water district and her long time dedication to water issues in the San Lorenzo Valley water. I mean, San Lorenzo Valley, excuse me. At this time, we have this resolution in front of the board, and I would like to move that it be adopted. I'll second that. Okay, and let's take a roll call vote on that. And if members of the board want to talk about it after we've adopted it, we can. I'm sorry, Chair Mayhooth. I think public comment should go first before the board vote. Oh, all right. Okay. Are there any members of the public that would like to speak? I have been told that Lois Henry is in the audience and I told her that we would give her an opportunity to address the board in the public as soon as the resolution was adopted. I see Larry Ford has his hand up. Thank you for the opportunity to join with you in celebrating Lois Henry. She's been an inspiration and a teacher about how to be a good member of a public body like this, like the water district for the, for the SOV water district. And Lois, if you're in the audience, I really appreciate you and thank you so much for everything that you've done. And I know that the water district and the constituents of the water district will really miss you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Larry. Are there any other comments from the public? Cynthia. I just want to say thank you, Lois. We really appreciate you and all your years of service. So I hope you go on to something much better and happier and less stressful. So thanks again. Before we, maybe we should, since I should do this the correct way, which is that the board members have a chance to discuss the resolution before we actually vote on it. So let me go ahead and ask if any board members would like to discuss this before we take a formal vote. Let's start with Mark. Yes. Instead of discussing, I just wanted to offer comments. Lois, I've appreciated the 15 months that I've been on the board and interactions with you. In particular, the historical perspective that you brought to a lot of our discussions and the insightful comments and questions to them. And at times you've kept us laughing. So thank you. All right, Jamie. I say I just wanted to offer comments and, and to thank Lois for her service and for being the like most straightforward and honest broker in, in joining the water district board. She, you know, really got together with me and we got coffee and she was just like, here are the honest issues. There was no beating around the bush. And I really appreciated that about you, Lois, because I will say that the number one thing that, that you bring to the table aside from your, your incredible wit is, you know, that you are, are who you are and you are, are come by that honestly. And I really appreciate that about you. Thank you. Any other comments? Go ahead, Bob. Yes. Public service is a very hard job. And Lois has chosen to take it on for many, many years. In fact, I think this was probably a good portion of her retirement plan that she put in place many years ago. And that is to be celebrated in which we are doing tonight. And I wish you the best. Real retirement now Lois going forward and enjoy your days. Thank you. And I would just like to sort of second everything that everyone else said, and also to say that although there were times when your feistiness exasperated me, I have to say that I'm going to sort of miss it now that you're no longer on, on the board. So with that, can we go ahead and take a vote? President Mayhood. Hi. Yes. President Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. The resolution passes unanimously. And Lois, you don't have to raise your hand. All you have to do is you are next to speak. So you are permitted to speak now. All right. Thank you. You can hear me. Okay. I can see you. Thank you. I want to say thank you to a lot of people. I might tell a couple of little stories, but I'll keep them short. I was going to write out what I wanted to say, but I'm not really good at reading from whatever I write, because I tend to lose my place. And that makes me think of. When I was able to christen the probation tank. And Rick Rogers gave me something to read. And I said to him. Can I add live? And he said, okay, but don't get crazy. He knew me very well. And I was pretty good, but I did go on about how beautiful the probation tank was. I was so impressed with that tank. And I like men, but men are handsome. They're not beautiful. And I said the probation tank was a female and I went on. And I got quoted in the Sentinel the next day. But Rick didn't seem to get upset with me and I appreciate that. So. And what Bob said. I never had any retirement. I jumped right into. Being on a water board. 2008, I ran for the Long Pico. And I had to go to the water district. Because I thought I could help because I had a financial background. And I'd heard that Long Pico. Was having financial problems. But it turned out it was a lot worse. Then just financial problems. And Mark Stone was so good to me. He suggested. And another board member went with me to see Mark Stone. And he suggested that we go to Mark's to Jim Mueller. And see what he had to say. So we went to Jim Mueller. And I remember we asked him. If. We could run Long Pico until we got things under control. Which actually was never going to happen. He informed us that. He didn't. That the district didn't do things like that. And of course, Long Pico was never going to get in good shape. And. So he suggested. That. We talk merger. And so I want to thank Jim Mueller for bringing that up. Because it hadn't been in my mind. Or anybody's mind. But after that, that is what we did. And. Finally. Finally. In 2016. The. Consolidation with SLV was finally passed. And there were so many people in Long Pico. Trying to bring that about. They worked so hard to make this happen. And. Once the merger was passed. Then there were some complaints about. The way some things were being done. And. Bruce McPherson stepped in. And he's another person I need to thank. Because he's been there for me. Ever since then. Always talks to me. In fact, he's the one who told me I'd made the sentinel. I didn't know that. Anyway, he. He arranged something to get. The people in Long Pico. Happy and it finally happened. And that was to get rid of the surcharge. So thanks to Bruce McPherson. And. In 2018. I then was elected to SLV. And it was a whole different story. I'm trying to wave my hands around. You can't see me. And. I really want to thank. Our staff. SLV staff. That worked so hard. Through the pandemic. Through the fire. And we're there for us. And the board. The board that was so helpful. And we did the best we could. And then I also want to thank. The friends of SLV. I don't think any of those people voted for me in 2018. But they've just been really good to me. And I appreciate that and accepted me in. With all my faults. And I want to thank James. Art. For Tato. He. Came out to Long Pico. We only had one employee that had a. T2 and a D2. And he was on call 24 seven. And I was afraid we were going to lose him. But James would come out on the weekend sometimes. And let him have some time off. Or sometimes he would take the on call. At night. And. I really want to thank you for that James and. I tripped over a cord at a board meeting. And James was faster than the speed of light. He caught me. And I'm my knee must have been. An inch a half inch from hitting the floor. I think I would have done some serious damage if he hadn't caught me. So thank you for that James. And last but not least. Is Rick Rogers. I can't even. Begin to tell you how much in his dad. I am. How many times he. Helped us in Long Pico. He. He was. He. He. Did the. We the state. Sorry. The state. Gave us 100% grant. For an inner tie with SLV. We didn't have. A single person. In Long Pico who could. Work on that. And Rick Rogers did everything. He was in charge of getting that inner tie done. He got all the bills paid. And. When everything was done. He. Took the state around. To. See what was done. He took. National geographic. Out. To see that they came out to visit Long Pico. And. All I had to do was sign my name. I can't tell you how many times. And the money came from the state. And I turned it over to SLV. And. Then. When. Long Pico. Voted. To. Consolidate. With. SLV. Rick Rogers was standing right next to me. That night. And I really appreciated that. And. He. He's just he put up with a lot. With me. As. I can be kind of cantankerous I guess. And I. I can't thank him enough. He was. Very special. To me. And. I do appreciate the board. I think there's a great board. And. I know you're going to fill the vacancy and part of me would like to see it be. A woman. As just for a short time there. It was three women. And two men. And. The first two years on SLV. And my years on Long Pico. It was me and men. And. I would like to see girl power. And thank you. Every one of you. Bob. Mark. Jamie. And I I didn't thank Gail. Gail took me in. And she was so good to me. Then. She's a great cook by the way. I was pretty lucky. And. She also took me around. To see. What. Areas look like they could have debris flow. And. And what an alluvial fan look like. She taught me a lot of things. So I annoy. I know I annoyed her sometimes. I annoy everybody sometimes. But I really appreciate every single. One of you. Thank you. Thank you, Lois. Rick, I see you have your hand up. Yeah, I just kind of wanted to quick jump in here. I don't want to run out of time, but. You know, one of the perks of. Being district manager is over the years you get to work with. You know, You know, You know, I'll be the best people of the San Lorenzo Valley. In a very. Wide range of issues. And Lois is kind of understating. Her responsibilities with the lumpico merger. I don't believe that merger would have went through. It wasn't. Or. Or. Strong will to see that merger go through. There was a lot of setbacks. But there was some substantial setbacks and she was. Getting beat up pretty bad from some of the folks in lumpico, but she still pushed along. And make sure that merger went through. And then I also had the pleasure to work with her as a board member. Who has been overwhelmingly supportive. I was moving forward on rebuilding and so forth. And I definitely do appreciate the time that. We spent with lumpico and on the SLB board. Thank you, Rick. Miss free heartwarming. I think, you know, as Bob said, it's really important to sort of recognize these moments. And so I'm glad that we got to hear from all of us and from Lois and have it finished up with Rick's words. All right, let's go on to our next item of new business, which is the fall Creek fish ladder. We're going to talk about this. We're going to talk about this. Board of contract for construction. Right. You want to start this off or Josh? I guess I'll take that. Yeah. This is a project that we bid out last year and received no bids. And we rebid this spring. And I'm pleased to report. We received four bids. And it was fairly competitive. And I'm pleased to report all of you. We have several new industries. We have not previously worked with, but I'm highly recommended from the city of Santa Cruz, the county of Santa Cruz. State parks and a couple of other agencies that I've reached out to. They have projects with. So with that in mind. RW Industries Inc. I will happily take questions. Okay, let's go ahead and start with Mark as the chair of the engineering and environmental committee. Yes, the engineering and environmental committee on Monday discussed this bid. And after some discussion of it, we agreed that to forward this onto the board with recommendation that we do or the contract to CRW Industries. We did ask a question though, that I did wanna follow up on here before we go any further with this as the board. And that was the funding of this. We do have a revised budget in the COP loan amount that comes up further during this discussion. But since we're approving this contract now, I did wanna delve into that just briefly. Rick, you recognized for the committee on Monday that this is over budget and that money would be allocated from some other projects that came in under budget, particularly the Quail Hollow Pipeline Project. But I see that on the COP revision that there's 1.3 million allocated for this project. Can you explain where the other funds are coming from? Yes, Dr. Smalley, the original budget was coming out of our capital. I do believe it was 1.3 million. And what we did, and we'll go over this further in the board meeting, we re-evaluated the certificates of participation and we were going to ask the board to reallocate and approve a resolution. But this will be funded from both the district's capital reserves and from the loan. Okay. All right. One more technical point on CRW that I wanted to clear up. On page 15, where they submitted their bid in numbers and in writing, the writing isn't correct from what I read. And I just wanted to confirm that doesn't matter since we're the ones that issue the contract in the amount. And I know that in contract language, the words supersede the numbers if that occurs. But I just wanted to make sure that because they wrote out that their bid is for 1,982,580,000 dollars. Which didn't make sense. I will defer to Gina on this one. Okay. And that's what I want. But I will note that in past experience with something that is clearly a typo, 500, 580. Right. One should apply the reasonable man standard. But again, I will defer to you. I don't debate on that reasonable man standard, but Gina? Have there been any conversations with the contractor about the difference between to confirm that this is in fact a typo and the intention is for their bid to conform with what's stated in the memo? There has not. The contractor did, however, in conversation agree with the bid as stated in numbers when I had called them, I verified that their bid was 1,982,580 dollars. I hadn't actually seen him embarrassed to admit the typo but happened to have covered that because I just wanted to be sure. Yeah, Director Small, you're correct. The contract language should supersede this. If you'll indulge me when it's time to make a motion, I would just like to propose the language of the motion to make sure that it's clear what the board is, is authorizing and directing, so there's no confusion. Certainly. Yeah, I was actually gonna say just eventually that, that the motion actually includes the correct amount. So I think that sort of takes care of the problem. Josh can go back and tell them, this is what we approved and clean things up. So I think that we're okay. I believe so. It's simply they didn't hand write out their amount correctly. Everything else in the bid looks okay, but since it was on their bid form, that's why I was questioning. Okay. I don't have any further questions on this or things to present. I'll turn to Bob, who's also on the engineering and environmental committee. Yeah, thanks, Gail. I believe, if I recall correctly, the original estimate for this was like $1 million, 1.1 million, something like that. Was that, was that? Pretty close, I don't have the exact number, but it's somewhere in that name. It was almost approximately 1.3. 1.3. So just for the community and anybody that's watching this later, we are well over the original estimate. But I think the consensus that we reached in the engineering committee is, you know, we won big on the quail hollow pipe. And as long as they continue to hold that number in light of what's happening at the macroeconomic level, that is a huge benefit for our district. In this case, we're not gonna win. And unfortunately, why I would like to win them all, sometimes we can't win them all. And this is something that has been outstanding for how many years, Rick? A long time. Yeah, about five to seven years. And that could be part of the problem with price increases too. Exactly. You know, when projects go from year to year, prices have inflated over the last couple of years and we've seen this with other projects, such as the Lompeco projects that all intentions were to do these many years ago, but we ran into so many permitting problems with the fish ladder moving ahead with like there's five to seven agencies that we're working on permits that we just couldn't get the approval and permits over the finish line. And it took a couple of years. Another example of us regulating our way to the point where you can't get something done that is critical to get done without costing the community enormous amount of money due to delay. It's regrettable. We certainly wanna do things right, but there's a point at which you try to engineer for the last 1% and it really doesn't benefit you a heck of a lot. And I fear that's what we got into here. Anyway, having said that, I think the engineering committee recommended this because we need to move ahead. We only have a narrow window with which to construct. What is it mid June to mid October or something like that? So I mean, we, and if you miss that, then you have to wait an entire another year. And we can only imagine what expenses are gonna be like next year in the wake of what is 10% inflation and could go even higher. So I think we just need to move on this. I did have two questions though specifically and I apologize for asking this first question, but I will feel more comfortable with this vote with that answer. And that is we are legally able to change the list of projects for our COP. I know there was some discussion about the project list and the commitments and that sort of thing that we made when we passed this originally, I just wanted to make sure that we're not violating anything, any covenants or any part of the agreement by changing this list and adding something to it. We believe not and we've discussed with legal counsel. Did we get bond counsel opinion on it? Kendra, did you contact bond counsel or not? I did not. And I would say that I am comfortable with, these were bond documents that Nausman prepared even though the attorney who did it is no longer at Nausman but I am comfortable interpreting the portion of the installment purchase agreement that's an issue for this purpose. If that, but at that said, you shouldn't hesitate to reach out to bond counsel too if you think that's important. I think Gina, your opinion is certainly very valuable. I just would be comfortable with a second opinion if the board was interested in that because this is one of those things where you just, you do not want to in any way, shape or form be outside the bounds of the agreement that we signed. Second question had to do with grants. So given that we would agree to basically fund this ourselves, does that put any sort of grant application we might do for this to offset some of that money spent in any kind of jeopardy? That is, would they say, hey, they spent the money anyway so we'll move on to other projects? I'll let Carly, I'll ask Carly answer that question because we did discuss that when we applied, we have applied for a grant as part of this project. Carly, can you answer Director Paul's question? Sure, so during the application process, we did phase the project. So we explained that the demolition portion of the project would occur outside of the grant award window and the actual physical construction would be within the award window. Most likely the award would be granted in August. So we've split it up between the two and that is a question that the grantee or CDFW may ask is how are you moving this project forward if you're starting the work before getting the grant award and I think the conversation to be had is that we are going to have to push other projects that are important to the district and probably also to those resource or regulatory agencies. We have some really big projects coming up such as our conjunctive use planning. We can explain that moving money around might limit some of our other projects and I think that's a really important thing to make clear to the CDFW, the grantors. We haven't received those questions yet. Yeah, I'm anticipating you'll get them. But it sounds like we have a very good story to sell and please sell hard. We need to get some of that money back if we possibly can. And Mark, on your question about the text, I would agree that we can go with a reasonable person standard and... Yes. Just, yeah, so I think we're good to go. Thank you very much. I would just like to thank Carly for that response to Bob's question. I thought that was really good. Like Bob said, you sold me on it. Sell away, but I'm easy. Keep it up. I would also like to agree with Bob and Mark that although the price is higher, it is likely to only get worse. And I think part of what's controlling this is the constraints that we're imposing on the contractors that have to do with environmental things about when they can do the work. And so it's just not gonna magically get cheaper. So I think that we need to push this forward and make it happen. Jamie, did you have anything you want to add? Just one thing and Mark, I really appreciate you bringing up the issue around the cop loan because I, as I was going through the board packet, I noticed that later in the agenda. I just wanna make a general appeal and request around a particularly capital budget related agenda items. If we could try to include just a couple of additional pieces of information in the actual agenda, like narrative, it would be helpful. So one, the source of funding in the language on the agenda item, right? So that it should reference if the funding was going to come from, I understand that we're moving this around in this meeting. So this is a little unusual, but it'd be great if in the future, when we identify the amount of funding that we are allocating to a project, we can also remind the board in that narrative. And it's coming from the cop loan or capital reserves or whatever the process is. I'd just like to make an appeal to that. And then also any institutional history around it, right? So just a reminder, like when we originally sourced this estimate, we projected that the cost would be $1.3 million, so that there's some context for those board members who weren't at the committee meeting and so didn't have the benefit of the conversations earlier this week. Just an appeal, that would be helpful, but otherwise, I agree that we need to move the project forward and nothing's getting cheaper. That's a good point, Jamie. I think also because these documents are out there for both the public, the public also needs to know some of this context, right? And as well as board members who either aren't on the committee or are new. So I think that makes a lot of sense. Any more comments by members of the board before I go out to the public? Let me go to the public and see if there are any questions or comments on this item. I don't see any. So basically we have a suggestion for a motion from Josh, which is that Moe's right here. Yeah. I think Gina said she wanted to provide the language. Yes. Sorry. I think she just wanted to make sure that the amount was in there. Is there something else you want to change? I would like to have a slight modification. It's not a big deal to authorize and direct rather than direct. And I would like to add a finding to the effect that the handwritten statement of the amount in the bid sheet is an error. Okay. The correct amount is one, nine, eight, two, five. That's pretty complicated. So you just volunteered yourself to stake the motion. Mark, what? Before Gina's states or restates the motion, I would like to go back and address Bob's comment on the checking with bond counsel. Go ahead. Since you brought it up, Bob and Gina is saying, well, we could. I think we're all saying that, yes, it's very likely that bond counsel is going to say, yes, this is okay. But if for some odd reason they came back and said, no, we're then on the hook to go find 1.3 million somewhere else. I would like to have that added to this resolution, something to the effect and make a friendly amendment to it. Approving that amount, comma, pending concurrence from bond counsel that is acceptable to reallocate funds from this COP loan. Well, excuse me for jumping in, Director Smalley. I'm actually getting, and I appreciate Director Fultz's perspective on this. And I want to jump in a little bit here because I am concerned that going to bond counsel is actually going to complicate this unnecessarily. And I can say why if you'll entertain me for this case. Yes. Okay, so I did review the applicable where I went through the loan documents that Nausman prepared, the COP loan documents. And I identified the applicable provision, which is section 2.01 of the installment purchase agreement. And without boring you with all the specifics in a gist, there's various levels of changes or in short, there's various levels of changes that can be done to the project list that's approved under the loan documents. And what's required is a little bit different depending on what the level is. Here I think there is a very good interpretation that the change that's being proposed is not, and I'm just going to use a little bit of technical jargon. It does not substantially alter the nature of the project, which means no approval is required, the district can just do it. However, if it rose to the level of an alternate project, and it materially increased various, I don't want to bore you with all the details, but then there are certifications that are required and so forth. There's ambiguity between the two. Bond Council is going to tell you the same thing. There's some ambiguity and they may have an opinion about whether it's one or the other, but I think the simplest thing to do is to just send the resolution approved by the board to the other parties to the agreement and say that the district believes that this is a change in specifications that doesn't substantially alter the nature of the project and give them an opportunity to object. And I don't think that Bond Council is going to be able to tell you more with a greater certainty one way or the other. Thanks, Mazery. Some old Bob, did you want to comment on that? Well, it's just a bit of a follow-up in that, and thank you, Gina, for doing that research for us. It's very helpful. The only reason you might, this process, I suggested the process, is that Bond Council, which does this for a living, may have experience in how this is handled, but I'll ask you this question since it sounds like you've been researching it. In situations where, for whatever reason, the projects came in under budget, but we have a 14.5 million COP, let's say the projects came in at 13.5, we have a million dollars left in the COP that was left over from the original projects we said we were going to do. What is the normal thing that would happen in that situation? Would those funds be returned to the Bond Holder earlier? Would you spend them normally on something else? Well, I don't think any lawyer would advise spending them on something else without updating the list of projects that you have on file with the parties to the agreements. And so what happens, sorry, what happens if one of this, so we send them out then, what happens if somebody object? Let me just say, I think that's very unlikely that they would, but what they would have to say is that I think this is an alternate project and not an insubstantial change to the specifications of the project, and then there would be a process of providing certain certifications and so forth, but it's ambiguous regardless of who you ask. And so the only way to get a definitive answer is to put the other parties to the agreement on record as to their position and the way you do that is to send them a notice saying that this is our view, let us know in 30 days if you think differently. Okay, so we've got a window here where we are exposed financially, potentially. Very low risk, but there is a potential exposure if somebody came back and said, hey, we've already signed the contract, we got to move, they got to get staged, they got to get materials, all that stuff. And then somebody comes back and injects and now we're on the hook for 1.9. Okay, I mean, I get that. Mark. Yes, Jeanne, when you mentioned the 30 day clock, I'm happy to hear that, that there's a timeframe on this. In the first 30 days, the contractor is not going to expend significant amounts of money in that period. A lot of their work is going to be doing pre-construction because the work in the field cannot start until, is it May 15th? I think it's June, isn't it? It is June 15th. June 15th, so I think we're okay then with that 30 day aspect. So good. Well, what we're saying is the way I read it is that the risk is very low. And then Mark is saying that even that very low risk is the amount is not very large because the major part of construction won't have started. So I guess my feeling is like, let's move ahead with this and not get overly hung up with. But we are still going to execute on that plan, right? So we're sending this notice to the other parties to the agreement and get their feedback, correct? Is that part of the motion? I would 99.9%. There won't be any feedback. It'll just send it off to the void. Yeah, okay. That's fine. But I mean, that is part of the process. Does that need to be part of the motion? Or is that just we're going to do it? No big deal. Well, I think that's addressed in a later board item. I think the only reason you would need to bake something into this item is if the board's desire here is that the approval of this contract is conditional upon no objection from. Okay. Thank you. Yes. So Gina, would you. Are you prepared to offer a alternative motion? Yes, I'll do that. Thank you. Chair Mayho. I'd like to suggest that the motion be to authorize and direct the district manager to enter into a contract with CRW Industries Inc. for construction of the Fall Creek Fish Ladder Rehabilitation Project in the amount of $1,982,580. And to find that the handwritten total bid in words on the bid on the section 301 bid schedule of values as a typo and that the correct amount of the bid as the district understands it is $1,982,580. I'm glad you did that. Same here. Right. Why are we having her here? Is there a, okay, is, would anybody like to move that? I'll make that motion. Second. Okay. So we have moved in second motion. Is there any more discussion among the board? And I'm, I'm just going to go out to the public again because it's taken so long. I can't remember if I asked them. You did. You did. Let them have another chance. After all that discussion, anybody want to speak? Seeing no hands raised. Okay. Let's go ahead and call the question. Holly. President Mayhood. Hi. Vice president Ackman. Yes. Director falls. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Next order of new business is the district manager annual contract review and compensation adjustment. Okay. And we're going to bring that agenda for council. Hey, thank you, chair Mayhood. This comes up every year. So it won't be any surprise to the board and hopefully to the public. Each year the district conducts an annual review performance review of the district manager as provided for the district managers employment contract with the district, a copy of which can be found on the district's website. And in the memo we've excerpted the relevant portion of the contract related to compensation. And I'm just going to read the key language here. It says that the manager, i.e. the district manager shall be entitled to an annual cost of living adjustment or to equivalent given to district employees at the discretion of the board based upon a satisfactory performance rating from the board. And the district manager did receive a satisfactory performance rating from the board for last year. That determination was made in closed session on December 2, 2021 and announced out of the closed session following that meeting. So that automatically entitles the district manager to the same column that the management staff is entitled to under the management MOU, which was 2.5% for last year. So that will be effective as of the date. Of the district manager's contract for October 19. But in addition, the district manager is entitled under the contract for, well, is eligible for an additional merit increase of up to 5% of last year's salary amount. And that's at the discretion of the board. And because of these are, it's a salary determination, it does need to be discussed in a public meeting. It's not part of the closed session discussion, which is why it's coming back tonight as part of an open session agenda item. And we have just for information for background on the last page of the memo information about what the district manager's salary is and what the increased percentages were for last year. Thank you. So, Holly, did you want to say something? Just because of the last one. I think that under compensation, the amount that is written out is not correct. It should say $180,000, $980, $98,000. The thousand is in the wrong spot. Okay. On the memo, on the memo, page 36, where it says compensation under background. Should say $180,998. Yeah, that's correct. That is a typo that I think was embedded in the agreement and got copied over here. But I don't think it affects the board's decision tonight, which is really an adjustment to what the district manager's salary was last year. So down at the bottom of the memo. So in other words, what we're really talking about is, is the adjustment that we would make to the number that's listed at the end of the memo, which is to 211,068. That's correct. So this other number, if it's, it kind of doesn't matter if it's not exactly right. Okay. Right. So as I understand with them, the cost of living increase is automatic at 2.5% based on the agreement that we have with management staff. So the question is what to do regarding a merit increase. And so I guess I would like to go to the board and ask them their thoughts on that. Amy, I'll start with you. Sure. So I'm curious. And when you're looking at the merit increases as a water district, I know in the, in the contract language for employees that it's a, it's a range, right? That you can increase somebody's pay between one and 5% based on their performance. Is that accurate? It's not, it's, it's 5% usually between the ranges. It's not a variable rate on the classified or management employees. Oh, okay. So I'm misunderstanding the salary schedule adjustment that says there shall be a minimum 1% increase in a maximum 5% increase. That's on cost of living. Okay. Got it. Got it. Cause what I was going to ask was, is there a typical average that the water district sees in terms of that, you know, is increased between steps or is it always 5% boom, boom, boom? And it sounds like you've kind of answered that question, but. In between the merit increases in between steps is 5% and cost of living has a maximum and a minimum in their agreement. I asked, because as a, as a public employee at other agencies, we had sort of the reverse where we had a fixed cost of living. And then you got a range of a meritorious increase based on your performance for the year. And it could be, you know, as low as 1% or as high as whatever the maximum cap was on the increase. So I was just trying to clarify that, but thank you. You've answered my question. Well, now you've confused me because I thought that the cost of living automatically because of the negotiation was 2.5%. And what is variable is the merit increase, which could be anywhere from zero to five. That's correct. All right. The reason the cost of living in variables is because when the agreements are put into place, we don't know what the cost of living for that year is for that period. It's set by a consumer price index. Okay. So it's, in this case, it's kind of irrelevant what the difference between the steps are and merit increases and things. This is basically because you're, you're in a management position. So the decision here is basically on merit between zero and five. Am I stating this correctly, Gina? At least that's my understanding. I haven't looked at the compensation provisions of the management MOU recently. Frankly, it's probably better position to comment, unless you want me to look it up. Did I miss that? Well, I do believe because this has to come to the board that the board is voting on proving both where the classified in the management group or agreements state on the first of a certain timeframe they receive, it's set and approved by the board. I believe I bring this to the board and the board has to approve it as well of the cost of living. They don't set the cost of living, but they have to approve whether I get cost of living or not. Well, the cost of living is essentially automatic, you know, mandatory via the contract. But we've always sort of by convention brought the compensation to the board and open session prior to applying it retroactively back to the contract date. Right. I could just add something because it might help you to understand where my question was coming from. What I was looking for was a rubric. Okay, so typically, you know, when I have done employee performance appraisals, right? There's sort of a rubric around if you think that this person's really an outstanding employee, then, you know, the range of increase can be in this range. If you think they're doing all the things they should be, but, you know, maybe not as outstanding as you'd like them to be the ranges in this range and so on and so forth. So what I was looking for was when your employees are reviewed by water district staff, if they are receiving merit increases, and it sounds like what you're saying is there's no merit increase. It's all just based on the contract language. And maybe I'm wrong about that. But if that's what I was trying to look for when your organization, when the water district gives out increases, sort of how do they typically assign that amount based on performance? And that is for those employees under the Memorandum of Understanding, which are different. I'm under contract. There is 5% merit increase in between steps. Got it. And it's based on a satisfactory performance you found. So if you are performing in a satisfactory way, then you will get your 5% increase. Got it. That's what I was looking for. My apologies for the confusion. Anything else, Jamie? Okay. Bob. I'm sorry. I'm just going through the members of the board to see if you want to comment on this. Sorry. No, I'm sorry. No, I have no comments at this time. Okay. Mark. I've heard enough in the questions and answers. I agree with Bob. I don't have any questions at this time. So basically, as I see it, the decision is what we make about the, the 2.5 is kind of baked in. And the question is the merit increase. And I will go ahead and broach that and simply say that. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. From my perspective as watching what, what's happened since. 2020. And the fire and all the things that Rick has had to do. To keep us, us moving forward that he deserves the 5% merit increase. And in part, this is because, you know, as given that he's in the managerial position, he works a whole heck of a lot more than 40 hours a week. And so that's partly my, that's part of my rationale. But, but the other is, is that I think he's done a pretty darn good job of getting us through the fire issue. And he's especially extraordinarily good at talking to the public about it. I've really appreciated how when he talks to the press, he talks to the public. This is a skill that not very many people in a sort of operational or technical job have. And I think he's, he's represented us well in that regard. So my, my own thought is that we should. Recommend the 5% merit increase in addition to the 2.5% cost of living increase. I would support that motion if you were making a motion. And I would say that, you know, I was not questioning Rick, your compensation. I think that you're appropriately compensated for the work that you do. And I know how hard you work. I only wanted to make sure, and I asked if this is my like little Achilles heel as a former public agency staffer myself. I just want to make sure that the percentage wise increase that we're offering to our general manager is similar to the percentage increases that our best performing employees are getting, because sometimes in some agencies that's not the case. And as hard as I know, Rick has been working. I also know that the rest of the water district staff this last year, two years has been working just as hard. And so I would, I want to make sure that everybody is sort of. That we're not, you know, uniquely compensating the, the general manager and the rest of staff maybe doesn't have as big an opportunity, but it sounds like we are in line with the way that the water district treats all of staff. And I very much think that Rick is, is deserving of the, the COLA and the merit increase. That was very well said, Jamie. Thanks for clarifying that. Any other comments from members of the board. Okay. So I guess if there's no more comments, I'll just make my statement a motion that we go ahead and move to establish the district manager's annual compensation to be effective as of October 19th, 2021, applying the cost of living increase of 2.5% and a merit increase of 5% on a base salary of 2011 and 68, resulting in an annual salary. And you'll have to check my math here, Holly, of 226, 898 per 2021, 2022. So that's a motion. Is there a second that discussion of the motion Bob. Yeah, this is going to be a very brief repeat of last year. I believe that Rick does a very good job as our staff does in general. I believe that our community, likewise, is in a very difficult situation right now. And it's only going to get worse as this year continues. I believe that we are fairly compensating Rick at this point. And so I, I do not support the increase or operating costs or skyrocketing at a very fast pace. And we are running into almost the four horsemen pandemic route, fire recovery and imminent recession, or at least certainly pretty serious inflation and the capacity of our community to continue down the path we've been on where two thirds of our rate increases go towards operating expenses rather than infrastructure is not sustainable. I am fully in favor of everybody negotiating to get as much as they can. I do it myself. Most years I'm not that successful. And, you know, we, we have to figure out a way where we're going to enable our community to be able to focus on infrastructure and not operating expenses. And this does not help us reset the model that we need to achieve that. I recognize I'm the only one probably that's going to have that view. I appreciate that. But that is my view. I guess I would say I, I don't agree with you, Bob, but I understand your view and, and I respect it. Mark, did you want to have anything to say? No, thank you. So we have a motion on the table and I'd like to go out to the public now and see if there's any comments from the public. Seeing none. Larry. Thank you. I would like to offer my support for the recommendation from district. Recording stopped. What was that about? I don't know. Recording in progress. Okay. Go ahead, Larry. Okay. I just going to say I support the recommendation to go ahead with the increase in compensation as stated. Thank you for that comment. Any other comments from members of the public? Seeing none. We'll go ahead and Holly. Can I call a roll call? Please. President Mayhood. Vice president Ackman. Yes. Director Foles. No. Director Smalley. Yes. The motion passes on a divided vote. All right. Next we have. Our unfinished business, which is the cross country pipeline constructability study. I'll start this off with a couple of statements and then look for Josh to jump in. Maybe I'll let Josh give the background first, then I'll jump in and explain some of my thinking. So I think with that, I'll ask Josh to do the report to the board. Thank you, Rick. I will cheerfully take that. This item is for. A recommendation from staff that. The board review and accept the constructability report for the five mile and p-line pipelines. And. To move forward in that process. There's a motion in the memo. Which has been discussed in the engineering and environmental committee. We had originally wanted to move faster, but. Cooler heads prevailed. So we are. Asking for some. Pretty specific things in that. The board. Accepted this report as being complete. And. That we. Move ahead on the environmental side. The. I'll start that sentence over and make it complete. For those who are unfamiliar with this report. This is a study that was commissioned from Fray or Loretta. For the purpose of exploring various ways to restore the lost raw water pipelines. On the five mile and p-line pipelines. It explored different materials. Different methodologies. And. Some of the permitting requirements. All of them. In the framework of. What can we do to make sure this never happens again? Or get as close as we can. We engineers don't like to talk about things never happening again. But. We engineers don't like to talk about things never happening again. And at this point. The study is sufficiently developed that we are. Ready to. Bring it to the board. And with that, I will. Carefully take questions. Rick, did you want to. Talk to us first before I did that. I just, you know, we went through, as Joss said, a process. To look at. Hardening. The five mile and p-line approximately seven miles. Of above ground. Pipeline, which crossing the empire grade. Mountain. Through a heavily forested area that was a hundred percent. Not just, you know. But we were able to do it. Because it was. It was. A small percentage. It was a hundred percent impacted. By the CVU quarter. We received an excellent study. Excellent engineering report on many different methods. To. To harden that. And I, we centered on. What can we do to replace that fight, as Josh said, and protect from fire. I'm hoping with this recommendation tonight. Part of the recommendation is to continue studying. We picked a, or recommending one of the options to bury the pipeline. Now I'd like to see us continue, start the environmental process, but also start a process of reaching out to the community and to the board of explaining what this process of burying the pipeline looks like. We have an engineer's estimate of roughly $60 million, which is a big price tag. And that means it's a big project. And I'm not sure our community understands the project. What is this project here? How many trees are we going to take down? What is the excavation gonna look like? What are the environmental impacts? And I really think that now we have to explain the project construction in depth of what this looks like. And I think we have staff has concerns about after the project is completed, what will ongoing maintenance look like? You know, we've had what a fire 1,700 years, fire can come in every year. We don't know that is hard to predict, but we do know we get a heavy rainfall event just about every winter. And I don't think we've jumped into that level of engineering of what is it gonna look like on a 10-inch rain event? What is the operations? What is the maintenance? I want us to see us move forward, but I also want to see jump into another mode of public outreach, an in-depth look of what construction of a $60 million project. You know, basically we're looking at cutting a single lane road across the Empire grade mountain, seven miles and laying a pipe, you know? It won't be a vehicle roadway, but it'll be, you know, eight to 10 foot wide in places. It'll have retaining walls. It'll remove roughly whatever seven acres of trees are. I don't think our community understands the magnitude of the project. And I think we need more discussion of what hardening of that pipeline looks like. Because I think that, you know, our customers have no idea, the community residents have no idea what that project looks like. And then I think we should make the decision after we have done our due diligence with outreach and additional engineering, the final decision on moving ahead on this project or not. I think that's really prudent that we go through that process. And I don't want to jump the gun here because there's probably more, probably has quite a bit to say. And Josh may want to end the board. But I just, I think we need to keep moving. We still don't have determination from FEMA on what they'll cover on costs, which are a big part of this. I don't want to get too far into a project and find out that they'll only cover 50% of it. We don't know. We just submitted the final report to FEMA. So there's still questions to be answered, but we don't want to just stop the project. We want to keep continuing to move forward. And I think there's plenty to do because moving forward, why we hold some additional outreach meetings with the community and board and get additional information on what a Barry's pipeline project looks like. And then I'll turn it over maybe to Mark. He may want to comment more on this and Bob of the engineering committee. Okay, Mark. The engineering committee discussed this study in detail at our meeting earlier this week. We agreed based on request from Rick to table recommending one of the alternatives, which was the alternative 3B in the study, which is to direct Barry of HDPE identity polyethylene piping for the entire approximately seven miles of pipe that this will route through. Instead, we're being asked to review and approve or accept this study and then begin to develop an RFQ or EI for the environmental impact report. So staff is asking us for two different aspects of this. As we did during the engineering and environmental committee, I'd like to break these up into two separate discussions because one significantly informs the other on how we move forward. First, I think the easier one is the review and acceptance of the study. I agree with what Rick had said earlier, the very thorough and conclusive or in definitive report on various options. However, I did have questions on some either inconsistencies or discrepancies that I saw in the report and would like to delve into those briefly so that the rest of the board and public if interested are aware of that before we move ahead with approving the report. Josh, if you could show us page 30 and then 31 in the PDF portion of the report as it's presented on the district's website. The issue that I have is differences or inconsistencies between some of the information in the narrative report and what Fran Loretta's cost concerns and consultant prepared throughout the report we see as currently shown on the page that we have in front of us right now, total pipe length of approximately 40,000 linear feet. That is for one of the several art alternatives. That is for I believe it's alternative two. Correct, that is showing for alternative two. And for the rest of the board, the public, that's for what? That is for a welded steel pipe aggregate. Okay, welded steel pipe. Alternative 3A is similarly 40,000 linear feet which is crossing under the creeks with welded steel pipe and using HDPE for the rest of it. Or I'm sorry, above grade creak crossings with welded steel pipe, HDPE for the rest of it. Continue to page down and go to the next option. This one shows 36,100 but I thought these were all, all three of these alternatives following a similar alignment. That is correct, all three of the alternatives follow exactly the same alignment. The 36,100 linear feet number is much closer to precise. It is, there I go, speaking in engineer instead of in human, let me try that again. The 36,100 linear feet number is most correct. The 40,000 linear feet number as identified in alternative 3A and in alternative two was a previously used approximation which frankly should have fallen out of the report by this point. Oh, okay. Well, similarly on page 79, which is figure seven, there are some pretty definitive numbers on that. Near the bottom of that which shows the footages which total 40,440 feet. So that's incorrect also. I have to say that that would appear to be. Okay. The, here is my, this is gonna sound like a defense and to a degree it is. We have multiple data sources and depending on which data source was in front of a given person when they were working on a particular aspect of the report, these numbers are varying. And for that I apologize, I should have done a better job of making sure that we had a consistent data set. And it will be corrected. It's actually part of a long-term project of mine to get our data set more consistent. Okay. What I learned in reviewing the questions that you emailed me yesterday was that the 36,100 linear feet number comes from the data set that I consider the most reliable which is the as-built drawing that we have from the original construction of the pipe. Okay. And that 36,100 for the rest of the board and the public is what shows up in the cost estimate which I believe is attachment F. It's page 211. Correct. In the PDF. Currently on your screen. Okay. So if we accept then that the 36,100 is correct and that that's the number that we should be targeting. I do have a couple of other questions about this. The cost estimator assumed that, let's see further on down here that approximately half of the creek crossings were buried and the other half were above grade welded steel. Correct. That's not what alternative 3B is for. That is correct. The intention and the thought process behind this is that alternative 3B provides for below grade crossing using HTTP pipe, which is the preferred from the engineering perspective methodology. But we have to acknowledge that there are going to be some creek crossings that as we get to them are simply not going to be feasible to cross below grade based on terrain. And he's got this point in the process with none of us having walked the, walked the pipeline during construction because there's no construction yet. We can't see which of those crossings are going to be feasible in which are not. So the conservative approach is to assume that half of them are going to go the way we want them to and half of them will require that we make adjustments. Okay. All right. Then that's the questions that I have on the study. I'd like to recommend that we first delve in any further with questions from the board and the public on the study itself. Since this is a two part staff recommendation to the board, one is review and accept the study. The other one is on the request for qualifications on the EIR. Chair Mayhood, if you can agree with that approach. Yeah. Essentially what you're asking is perhaps that we divide the question. And I think that might make sense. Okay. By the discussion. So if there's no objection, I will do that. I will divide the current recommendation to be two separate motions. One, which would be that we would accept the report. And the second one would be that we would develop and publish a request for qualifications for preparation of the necessary environmental impact reports. It's actually reports S different from what's in the agenda packet, because essentially we're talking about two separate lines. And I think the backup material said that it would be sensible to put those out at the same time and more cost effective to have them done at the same time. But they're actually two separate reports, as I understand it. Is that correct? That is something we will discuss when we discuss that. All right. Okay. All right, okay. All right. Well, let's go ahead and if nobody objects, we'll go ahead and divide the question. So let's talk right now about the question of accepting the report. Bob, did you, why don't you jump in now? Okay. I have a few comments. I think overall, I think Brian Loretta did a very good job in the report. I like Mark and I think others express at the engineering committee meeting. I was a little troubled by the fact that we, the report did not appear to look at total cost of ownership. That is not just instruction costs, but also ongoing operational costs for each of the alternatives. And Mark, I thought we had talked about the notion of FNL maybe going back and taking a look at that. I think that is different from an environmental impact report, right? And so I don't know, it may be we don't cover it tonight, but I think that would be helpful. And Josh, I saw you raise your hand there. And sorry, Gail, if Josh wanted to break in and correct me. No, I think he should break in because he has an idea about this. Yeah, I think that would be helpful. Happy to do so. I just didn't want to interrupt. No, it's fine. The discussion that we had in the committee meeting and then my subsequent discussion with Jeff Tarantino of Frerian Loretta is that Frerian Loretta will be preparing what amounts to an additional appendix in the form of a memo to the engineering committee, which, while it doesn't go into total cost of ownership because there are simply too many variables at this point for us to really talk about with any kind of accuracy, the costs of maintenance, it will discuss the ways in which we will be building low maintenance methodologies into the construction of the pipeline. And it will also discuss the methodologies or the strategies that we are using in terms of which pieces of the construction would become sacrificial and which would not, thus further limiting our need to maintain particular structures that were really only in place for the construction of the pipe that are not needed for operation or maintenance ongoing. No, Josh, what I love about you is you can read my mind because those are exactly the things that I was concerned about and wanted to make sure we were going to address. Okay, so that's clear. And I think for the public, that's also something I think we need to make sure everybody understands because it was something that Rick raised as a very valid and serious concern about which option we might go with. I think there's also another, sorry, Rick, if you wanted to break in as well. Well, I was gonna let you finish, Bob, but I just kinda wanna add to that statement, Josh. Then the other thing that I think is important is that in the communications that we do to the community, and I was reading through some of the Sentinel articles recently, we make sure we provide a good context of what the various options are. So when we talk about $60 million to bury the pipe, I think maybe a lot of people had the same reaction I did initially or would have the same reaction, which is, well, how much does it cost not to bury the pipe or vice versa? And if the cost difference is only three or four million, that is incredibly important context for the community to understand for the construction part of it. Now, if it's not three or four million, then we should get out there, but we shouldn't say one number bury without making sure we provide the other context. I think that's just absolutely critical because it tends to make it look like maybe we're not interested in protecting the pipe against at least the fire risk. Now, I think Rick has raised other issues about risk, which are, again, extremely valuable and need to be considered as part of looking at that total cost of ownership. But I wanna make sure that we are providing really good transparent context for the community when we have these conversations. I'm also still would like to see the water or the average water generation from each one of our sources relative to an overall ROI. So let's say we are talking $60 million, over a hundred, and I'm gonna be generous. I think Josh, you said 75, but I'm gonna say a hundred just to make the numbers easier. That's basically $600,000 a year gets applied to our capital investment obligations over a period of time. And 15% or so of our overall capital infrastructure of roughly 400 to 450 million. So this is a really big number. So I think it's really important for us to make sure that we're looking at because surface water, I mean, the water itself is pretty cheap, but getting it out of the mountains, it's not necessarily really cheap. And so I think we wanna make sure we're looking at this and perhaps making some appeals to other agencies that might be interested in ensuring that we can continue to balance our use of surface and groundwater, which historically has been about 50%, and also with sort of Santa Margarita in mind in terms of perhaps the funding sources that might be there to help pay for this upfront. Now that doesn't relieve us of the obligation of what we have to do 100 years from now, of course it's three generations later, but at least it might help us right now when we're in this particular situation of pandemic drought, potential recession, and I forget what the other one was. Anyway, we need to get money I think for more than just hopefully our community because this is an enormous lift. If you take that $60 million and let's say we do get 75%, let's hope for that. We're still left with having to pay $15 million divided by 8,000 customers. That's almost $2,000 per customer over some period of time. That's 15 million if we borrow it because we don't have all of that in our current loan. I mean, even my conservative, let's go for 15 million obviously was not enough. We're looking at probably with interest rates potentially going up, looking at that 15 million over 25 or 30 years being more like 25 million. So this is a huge deal and I wanna make sure that the water that we're getting out of this is really worth it and that there are other agencies that can help with that, that believe that it's worth it as well. Thank you. I just want to jump in, FNL are going to do additional work on maintenance erosion control but I also would recommend to the board that we take that step further. There are a lot of geologists erosion control landslide experts in Santa Cruz County that I would want to review that work that particularly understand the weather patterns the microclimates of the San Lorenzo Valley which I think that's really, really important to understand our winners, understand that watershed. That watershed just burned. It doesn't have the ground cover that it had in the past and there's a lot of people in this area that understand this area but I would want to review and help make the decision of if this is the project for the district looking in environmental concerns, operational concerns, ongoing maintenance which we all know look at highway nine which is the state highway quite well maintained that we lose the lane and it closes every year and to the extent this project. I mean, we're basically putting a lane of a cut into that embankment that does not exist and it is straight up and down in places. You know, and there's no doubt in my mind that this project can be constructed but I don't believe that we understand I don't believe our community understands what that construction will look like. And I think that's a really important moving forward to have a series of community meetings explaining the potential that we're moving forward on bearing the pipeline. And I keep, I want to keep moving forward but I have to agree with Bob and others that this project really needs to be explained to the community before we get too far down the road. Jamie. So I agree with that but I want to make sure that when we are framing the conversation that we want to have with the community it is also including understanding the risks of not making this water source more available, right? So I think that we need to think long-term about the longer we delay in moving forward with this project, right? The longer we are continuing on groundwater and limiting our ability to treat surface water. And so when we have that conversation with the community we really need to understand like, is it pennywise and pound foolish? In terms of how we look at the various trade-offs that we have. So I agree that we should have more conversation with the community so that we really understand what we're signing up for in terms of the overall scope of the project, the cost of the project and the environmental impacts of, as Rick says putting the lane in basically. But I also think that when we have that conversation we need to talk about like what does this do to our water source? What does this do to the aquifer? What does this do? Should we have another major disaster, fire or some other disaster that further reduces our ability to move or treat water? So I just want to make sure that we have a full subconversation when we go to the community. And I think that statement you made supports my thinking just as much as I support your thinking on that, that it is important that we move forward. And that's kind of the difficulty on getting some of the information that Director Bolz wants about the cost of this water because it's not just how many gallons we get off that mountain. It also has to do with how much extra groundwater we use the cost of the Santa Maria Groundwater Agency. Groundwater is very expensive. So there's a lot of numbers that go into that equation and that's kind of why I don't have that. It's very easy to get how much water we take out of each individual stream but to get the type of information that Bob's looking. He wants to know what that water is worth and what are the costs. And there are a lot that would go into that but we'll come up with something. I would like to say what I really mean myself, Rick, if I may. Well, okay. Okay. Well, I always know that you want to consult him for a report. That is not actually true. Okay. Okay, Josh, did you have something you wanted to say briefly and then I'd like to make a comment or two and then we can kind of go back to the question at hand. Josh? Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to mention the point that we seem to be ignoring which is that if we were to lose our or be limited in our surface water resources, we would be falling back as has been discussed on well water on Santa Marta Rita essentially. The thing that no one seems to want to talk about is how much are PG&E rates going to go up in the next 100 years? I would argue that if we look at the last 10 years and extrapolate that pays for the 60 million without ever touching anything else. That's all I had. Yeah, I guess I would just follow up on saying that knowing what I know about Santa Marta Rita and the constraints that we have on taking water out of the groundwater basin, we need every single scrap of surface water that we can get. First, it's cheaper because virtually most of our system is gravity fed. It's better water. It doesn't require as much treatment. It's cheaper to produce because we don't have to pump it out of the ground. We don't have to put chemicals in. And ultimately, we can go through these numbers, Bob, but I think that what we're going to end up with is that the surface water is a lot cheaper. And even if it weren't, down the road, the constraints that we're going to have on being able to take water out of the Santa Marta Rita basin are going to constrain us so that we were lucky compared to Scott's Valley that we have access to that surface water. And I would be very much opposed to doing anything that lessened our use of surface water for those reasons. The other comment I'd like to make is that I'm actually very glad that the engineering committee sort of pulled back from the idea of recommending that we go ahead with the alternative 3B. And the reason was is that when I read that engineering report, my response was is that when I saw the matrix that they had of assigning costs and other things is that it made a few things seem that you probably obviously didn't want to do them. But the other ones, 3B was only very marginally better than a couple of the other alternatives. And the other is, is that they didn't really factor in some of the larger questions having to do with costs and environmental impact. It was harder, you know, how do you actually quantify that? And so I guess what I felt was that this was a, it's what engineers do. They pick the best solution, but it's not their job to make the decision. The decision is a policy decision that balances risks and costs. And that is something that needs to be made by the board with input from the community. And I'll just give kind of an analogy that I'm very familiar with as volcanologists. We would go out and we'd do studies of volcanic hazards from volcanoes and we could go into the local community and tell them this is the absolutely safest thing that you could do, which would usually involve evacuating a lot of people and putting up barriers to prevent debris flows from coming down or whatever. But it was not our job to make those decisions because the local governments had to make the decision about balancing the disruption of the community and the costs with the risks. And so as a scientist, my job is to say, here are the risks, it's your job to do the balancing. And so I felt that the engineering report was good and that it presented all these things, but I felt that we needed to reexamine some of these things. For example, the idea that maybe a potential thing that we need to look at again is placing these things above ground. That the cost may be so much different from the idea of burying it, especially when we're putting it in a place that has already been burned, so that the risks from a major wildfire or less, that this is just, you know, I'm not saying that this is where I wanna do, but I'm just saying that this is something that needs to be reassessed. So I'm, and also it needs to be reassessed from the standpoint of, you know, what the community feels is an acceptable environmental impact. And it may be that when we talk to the community, they're feeling about, well, there's a risk from a fire, but to me, destroying all those trees are creating the potential for landslides when we put a big cut across Ben Laman Mountain is another risk. So it's all balancing these things. So I'm really glad that we're not going ahead with this recommendation for 3B, but I'm also really glad that we're going ahead with the recommendation of beginning the environmental impact statements because presumably these will also weigh some of the different alternatives. And that means we're moving the process forward, which I think Jamie, you pointed out is really important and I totally agree. We need to move forward. And this is one way to do it while we simultaneously consider some of these other issues. Mark? Yes, I wanted to defer by following comments until we got through this first review and accept the study, but since Bob and Jamie to some degree have already alluded to this and you also Gail, it's the alternative one. Put the pipe back on the ground, HDPE, stringing it out similarly to what was burned. I would like to have our engineering consultants move back and do a cost estimate on that for us. Director Foltz alluded to that at the engineering environmental committee meeting on Monday and we were initially rolling that out. And it's my understanding, Josh, it was, well, the American Water Association's standards doesn't recommend doing that. And I understand that, but it's my understanding that they're not the regulatory agency. We as the owner can make that decision if we want to put it back on the ground. We're dealing here with costs that are well in excess of what we were anticipating last summer when we were projecting costs that FEMA was gonna fund for this. And I'm guessing that that was probably on the order of 10 million that Wreck and Staff had allocated for this. We're now in the 52 to 60 million dollar range instead. So what does it cost to replace that pipe in kind? Is one thing that I would request that we have our engineering consultants do. Jamie had alluded to the, what if we don't do this? And we need to present that to the public. And Bob is asking for costs on, what is this raw water? What do we produce out of here? What's the, I think what he's asking in my layman's terms is, what's the return on investment of doing this work? I think his questions on the cost of that are not only appropriate, it's necessary. One of the aspects that any environmental impact report requires you to do is assess the do nothing alternative. And that's the standard language in EIR, do nothing. What if we do nothing to replace this? Is what the EIR is required to evaluate? So we're gonna have to do that. We're gonna have to come up with this information at some point for the environmental consultant. So we need to start down that process to get that information. But I think the first question tonight that's in front of us, and I wanna keep us focused on that is based on what I discussed with Josh, are we ready to review and accept the study? Given, I'm not asking the engineer to change their recommendations. I don't expect them to do that. I expect that their recommendations are gonna stay at very the pipe. As an engineer, they're on the conservative side. That's what I expect them to do. As the owner though, we don't have to accept that recommendation. If we find that the costs are too excessive for that, we don't have to go that route. So. Can I just ask a clarifying question of Josh regarding that? I agree that we need to have an assessment of the cost of alternative one, of putting it back in kind. Is that within the scope of the current grant that we have with them so that we can ask them to do that? Or is this something that we would have to authorize an additional study? Thank you, Chair. That is actually the thing I had my hand up to address. Good, thanks. I have been texting with Jeff Tarantino, who is Frere Loretta's principal for this project. And he informed me that they can have the incremental cost for not burying the pipe, be developed as part of the short memo that they are putting together for the engineering committee. In addition, while I've got the mic, I would like to address Director Smalley's comment about AWWA. You are entirely correct that AWWA provides standards, not regulations. However, the State Water Board has determined that that standard is what they will enforce as a regulation. And they are the people we answer to. So they have the ability to regulate us in that way. Okay. Thank you for that clarification on who regulates our pipe installation. Okay. You've had your hand up for a while. Yeah, there's a number of things that came out. I, you know, as with many things, you know, my request for information are not down to the pennies. You know, we can always do back of the envelope, my estimates, which I do all the time myself, and that usually gets you 80% of the way. So let's not over engineer that aspect of it. I think there's a couple of points I wanna make sure that is clear. I'm not advocating the use of more groundwork because I understand the issues we have around that. What I'm advocating for is to find out how much it's worth to other agencies that share that groundwater with us to make sure that we have surface water available to us so that the broader social, so that the broader social costs are not borne by a small number of people, 8,000 customer. Those broader social costs affect many more agencies, many more people than just our little district. And so I think that is something that needs to go into this as well. We are also not the wealthiest part of this county. And I think that also needs to be understood as well. And with what's coming up in the economy here, I expect that's gonna be even more challenging. If we believe the forecasts that have been made about climate change, and of course, the climate changes a lot, the potential of these wildfire situations may occur at a different frequency than what they have in the past. And even though the ground has been burned once, it's my understanding that there's nothing stopping it from burning again. And certainly within the next couple, three years as the vegetation grows back and it continues to recover, we're gonna have more and more potential. And certainly over the course of a decade or two, if you think it happens once every 100 years, but it's gonna move to 25 years, that's something else that has to be factored here. If we put it on the ground, are we just replacing it every 25 years or 30 years? What have you? I think the other thing, Josh, I don't know if this is possible to do, but I think I heard that there's a set of AWA recommendations around how to protect pipe that's laid on top of the ground, that at least the back of the envelope estimate was the difference between doing that and burying it is like three or four million. And then there's the, we don't follow AWA recommendations. And we just do it the way that it was done. You know, what would that cost? And that may be so different that you would go back to the state regulator and say, hey, just laying it on top of the ground is $10 million. Doing it to AWA standards is 55 million and burying it is 60 million. Really? We're gonna ask 8,000 customers to spend 50 million more. And that's a different conversation than, hey, it's a difference between 55 million and 60 million. I think that's something to take a look at as well. So is that possible to do? Josh, go ahead. Thank you, Chair. I'm a little confused, Director Foltz, because we hadn't talked about, or at least to my knowledge hadn't talked about a methodology for protecting the pipe at grade in compliance with AWA standard. The only way I can think of to do that would be to basically encase it in several feet of concrete, which doesn't, is clearly nonsensical. Right, exactly. To my view, and based on the work that Farrer Moreta has done, in order to comply with the AWA standard, setting aside whether or not it can be regulated, the act of complying with it requires us to bury the pipe. Whether we choose to comply or not is the board's decision. All I can do from where I stand is say, where FNL is working on the incremental cost and will include it in the upcoming memo to the Engineering and Environmental Committee, regarding the difference between protecting the pipe and not protecting the pipe. I think that's the probably the most accurate way to think about it, as opposed to very not buried, what kind of stream crossings, et cetera. So that will become available within the next month. And Josh, I may have misunderstood at the last meeting where we discussed this, where I asked what the difference was between burying it and having it on top of the ground. I think you had mentioned that the difference was three or four million because of the requirements that AWA-WA had. And so I may have misunderstood what you were communicating at that time. And if I did, my apologies for that. No, I think I was imprecise. What I was attempting to say at that point is that, the difference between protecting the pipe and not protecting the pipe is likely to be somewhere in that three to four million. And I mean, I wanna emphasize that's a, pull it out of my ear and wash it off kind of number. Okay. But it's still something reasonable. We will know more when FNL provides their incremental cost. But really the difference was between buried and not buried or protected and unprotected as I think is probably the clearer way to talk about it. Okay. No, and that's fair. Thank you for clarifying that. I think that makes it better. So yeah, I do think that getting that number as quickly as we possibly can so that that can become part of the overall context is very, very important. Very good. Yeah. With respect to the water sources, I mean, it's not like we're not pulling surface water out or we haven't been able to pull surface water out. Anyway, I mean, Foreman Creek historically provides about 40% Rick of the surface water that we take out which is roughly a thousand acre feet a year. So, and then when we add, when we add pvine that gets us up to something like 50% or 55%. I don't have this off top of my head but I can get them for you. Yeah. Over the last five years, it's about 50%. Yeah. So Clear Creek adds another, I think it was 35 or 40% and then Sweetwater was another 10, somewhere in that range. Okay, great. Thank you. Rick, did you have something you wanted to add? Well, I just don't wanna get too far into what we can and what we can't do with A-W-W-A and the state. We have not applied or even had discussion with states. You keep in mind there's different requirements with the state for treated water and raw water, we're talking about raw water. There's a strong possibility we could get variances to put that back just as it was. I think we're trying to think way too far ahead without contacting the regulatory agencies and trying to base decisions on information that we really don't have. Right. I think we need to get back and we've got a lot of great questions from the different directors tonight and put together a list and do some more work, obviously at the engineering committee and discuss production, discuss cost and discuss these construction methods and get this ready for presentation through the community and board and keep moving this ahead. Okay, well, I think I feel like we need to kind of move forward on this as you're saying. And so it seems to me that we just learned through Josh chatting an email with Jeffrey Tarantino who's in the public listening to this, that they can come up with an estimate of the cost of basically putting the line back the way it was on the surface. And I think that my own take on that is that if they do that, then the report is largely acceptable to everyone. And unless there's somebody that disagrees with that, I would like to move ahead with a motion that we accept the report with the proviso that they will provide a memorandum with additional cost information. And well, that's the motion. And that we divide this as we just discussed into accepting the report and then going on to discuss about the environmental impact statements. So moved. So moved. Is there a second? I'll second. All right, so any other discussions by the board? Larry, go ahead. Thank you. I'm not a board member of the public. First of all, I wanted to say that I'm very impressed with this discussion. All the skill, the administrative, the technical and the financial skills that are represented in this discussion. And so of course I wanna add my own technical expertise about fire management. The issue has come up about the risk of the next wildfire coming in and destroying the pipeline which was replaced exactly as it is. It's as was suggested, there are a number of different elements of such a prediction with climate change we can expect to have an increased number of lightning ignitions, which would probably come to the same ridges that burned last time. There's a difference of opinion among fire ecologists and managers like myself about whether the fire hazard posed by a post-fire condition is better or worse than before the previous fire. And I can tell you that it probably is at least as bad. And that's because there's all this new dead fuel that's been created. And then the green fuel also burns because of the nature of these kinds of fires. And so anyway, I think the risk of this pipeline that is not protected being burned again and destroyed is very likely much higher than the risk before the last fire. And then in addition to that, I just really liked the ideas that I've heard about looking for other funding from non-SOV water district beneficiaries. And I also wanna suggest that if the option is chosen to not follow state or other standards for rebuilding an important pipeline like this, couldn't that lead to some kind of liability that we weren't following the standards? We deliberately didn't go along with that. So I'd like to know, how are other agencies in the state dealing with this? I'm sure they have the same problem. Thank you, over. Thanks, Larry. Well, I think you've raised a whole lot of questions that we probably can't answer tonight, but they're exactly the kinds of questions that we need to discuss more in the context of weighing risks and costs. So thank you for raising them. And I hope that you're involved going forward and you bring your expertise in those discussions in the future. Cynthia. Good evening. I'm interested that I haven't heard anything about really new methods. The idea of having to dig, you know, trench and put in the steel pipe and weld it, it seems like a very ancient process. If you know what I mean. I'm wondering if there isn't something like heat shield. I'm not just worried about the vulnerability to fires in the future, but the need to replace that pipe to dig it back out of the ground if there is fire damage at different places, you know, because it seems like you think that you're protecting it by burying it, but every place that pipe comes to the surface or if there's a slide or an earthquake, you know, there are other vulnerabilities where you may need to replace that pipe. How hard are we making it to dig that back up and replace it? So I would like to hear whether the engineers know of anything, any new methods for protecting that pipe, either above ground or slightly beneath the surface without, you know, all of that potential difficulty of replacing it in the future. Thank you. Well, I think we can say that the engineers explored all the practical solutions that we have right now. And in terms of having to dig something up after the fire, if you bury it at 12 to 18 inches, that shouldn't be an issue because it's not gonna burn. And so one of the options that we were presented with was what to do about the parts that were above ground. And those were two of the different options that were considered, but unfortunately, there's no magical new technology that's out there that other than I think that the things that they've already suggested to us. Bob, did you have a quick response to that? Yeah, I think, maybe I'm wrong, but I think Cynthia may have been referring to something like boring technology, which is greatly advanced from where it was, you know, even 20, 25 years ago. So that may also be another way of trying to maybe work around some of these more challenging areas. If I'm putting words in your mouth, Cynthia, my apologies, but I thought that that's what I first thought of as well, something like that. One of the things we're really facing here is really steep ground excavating into bedrock, as opposed to, you know, doing something in the central valley where you're excavating an alluvium and where the rocks are igneous and metamorphic rocks as opposed to, you know, simple soil and the dang Ben Loewen mountain is just full of landslides. So we're facing challenges that, you know, that almost nobody else has to face in doing these kinds of things. Okay, so we have a motion in front of the board and Holly, can you take a roll call, Bob? President Mayhood. Aye. Mr. President Ackerman. Yes. Director Fouls. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Okay. All right, so it passes and that we come to the sort of second half of the question, which was basically to authorize the, what is it? To develop and publish a request for qualifications for preparation of the necessary environmental impact reports. And so that's what we'll go ahead and discuss now. I think as I mentioned earlier, I think that my own opinion is that it's really important to start and move ahead on this, both to gather the information, but as part of the process we'll be doing what Rick and Jamie have advocated, which is starting to educate the public and get their input on how they feel about the different alternatives. So, any comments by members of the board? Mark. Yes. The engineering and environmental committee discussed this aspect at our meeting on Monday. And I wanted to bring some of that discussion to this meeting tonight. We talked about one EIR for both the peevine and the five mile portions of the pipeline or two separate EIRs. My recommendation to staff, and I believe that they were concurring, was put that out in front of consultants eventually once we select the consultant to do this work. As to if it takes just as almost as long to do one, as to do two separate ones, I'm betting that the cost of one single EIR is cheaper. So, I don't think we need to make a decision tonight on the one EIR versus two EIRs aspect. Let's ask consultants for schedule and costs to do those. What we're proposing tonight is to authorize the staff, instruct the staff to move ahead, to develop the request for qualifications. That means going out to various environmental firms to say, tell us your qualifications in order to do evaluation of a pipeline through redwood forest areas in this kind of an environment. Tell us where you've done this before. We're not authorizing any cost expenditures yet. I anticipate we would be at the process two months from now of having in front of us. We have submittals from five different consulting firms. Here are the three that we recommend moving ahead. Okay. Is my estimate on that. That makes a lot of sense. That's where we're... That's what I read into this is what we're instructing the staff to do. Good. Thank you for that clarification. Jamie. So, I agree with this process. I agree with the timeline that I think Mark is laying out in terms of how we would go forward with it. But the one question that our previous discussion brought up for me and that I would like to see answered, and I don't know that it can be answered in the context of whomever we select in the environmental process they conduct. But I think it's an important consideration, right? Because there's really two questions around the selection process when we look at the cost. And it's not just, you know, whether we can, you know, compel other agencies that may have a beneficial, you know, see a beneficial good from this to participate in the funding of it. But also that if we select certain options, we may be precluded from grant funding, right? I mean, if we're not selecting the A-W-W-A, you know, recommended process, you know, best process, then we may have to fund more of it directly because we may be foreclosed from certain grant programs because we're not following those, you know, best of practice guidelines, right? I don't know that that's true. I'm asking that question and wondering how we could also get that answer so that we can consider it in the context of all of the options, right? If we are, you know, were we to say, okay, we think we need to just go with above ground and you know, what would that mean in terms of, you know, the available funding sources versus going with something that may have substantially more cost, but may be eligible for more grant funding in return. I'm putting the comment out there for like consideration, I guess, as we go forward in this process because I know that we don't have an answer for it tonight. We'll have those discussions internally and we don't have those answers tonight. Bob, did you have any comment? Go ahead. Yeah, and building on Jamie's comment, which is right in line with my other concerns is, I think we talked about this briefly, but would FEMA change their attitude towards a project based on whether or not we did X versus Y? So it's grants, FEMA, and it may even be other agencies that have a interest in this might also have a different attitude towards it. Cal Fire, you know, Santa Margarita, et cetera. So I think that's a great question to ask. I guess on the RFQ, let's not narrow it too much so that we don't get as many responses in terms of what we're looking for. We're a fairly unique area. In fact, I think we're sort of almost completely unique given the terrain we're in and the population density up and down the California coast. We're sort of, as I understand from some of the fishery folks, we're kind of unique. So if we make it too narrow to just our situation, there might not be a lot of folks that have done that work. I'll definitely leave that to the staff to come up with the right language for the qualifications we're looking for. Any comments by members of the public? I'm afraid I don't know how to say your name, so you'll have to identify yourself and re-erase your hand. Go ahead. Hi, my name is Timothy Carboni. What I was wondering, I'm very uneducated on this whole thing, but what I was wondering is if you were to work in cooperation with another water agency on the coast side, what I'm thinking is there might be an easier way to get the water to these people than just going up all this rough terrain and everything. And have you looked into delivering it from the coast side? Would that be cheaper to put something in? That's my question. I think the simple answer is that we don't have water rights there. Those are water rights. Most of the creeks on coast side are Santa Cruz water district. And so that would involve some major new infrastructure and major agreements with Santa Cruz water. I don't know, Rick, if you want to add to that. I think that's a good question. These are sources are on this side of the Ben Lohman mountain. And, you know, about, we're collecting those about three quarters up the mountain and elevation. It's a good concept, but, you know, there's no infrastructure and it would be, it's just not the right way to go to keep costs down. And the impacts would be probably more environmentally on the other side. I mean, it's definitely thinking outside the box. Yeah, I'd have to go back and look at this city of Santa Cruz water department, but I believe the bulk of their water comes from the Loch Lomond area. In terms of percentages, I think the creeks up on the north side are 20, 25%, something like that. But I don't think it was a majority of the water. So the question is whether or not, you know, we would be able to, I think the question he's asking is, could we just do a deal with Santa Cruz and get water cheaper, put an interconnect in between the districts and go with it? You know, that, that I think was a question that he was asking. Whether it be cheaper or not, I couldn't say. Mark, would you like to restate the motion the way you would like it stated? Certainly. Propose that we instruct the staff to develop an issue and issue a request for qualifications for development of an environmental impact report or reports for these pipelines. Okay. I'll second that. Any further discussion? Okay. Holly, would you take a roll call about, please? President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Director Falls. Sorry about that. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Okay. All right. Motion passes unanimously on to our next item of unfinished business, which is the revised project list for certificate of participation, which we sort of address part of it. So sure. Yes. This is a recommendation that the board of directors replace the existing project listing exhibit A and adopt a new resolution provided in this item at the August 28, 2019 board meeting. The board of directors adopted resolution 61920 in regard to the $14,500 certificate of participation series, 2019 alone. In the memo exhibit A resolution is provided. It shows a listing of projects and their project estimates. Now that five of the nine projects are completed and we awarded the construction and construction management contracts for the quail hollow pipeline project that came in significantly below the estimated cost. There was money left over that the district would like to allocate to another project. And that's where the Paul Creek fish ladder comes in exhibit A. A revision shows the proposed updated project listing for the original estimates, revised estimates, the actual cost for the completed projects. This shows that there's an additional $2.2 million of funding available. The district would like to allocate $1.3 million to the Paul Creek fish ladder project and move the remaining available funds to the lion zone pipeline project. And so with that, you should have all the attachments in your packet and the new resolution. And it would be happy to answer any questions that the board or public may have. Are there any questions from board members? I think the good news is we covered them all already. So we are. Yeah, I think so. Members of the public. Okay. Go ahead and state that the motion that was provided to us by the staff, which is that we've moved to replace project listing exhibit A of. Adopted resolution number six. 1920 with the provided exhibit one and the resolution that is given the 21 22. Is there a second. Okay. Yes, go ahead, Mark. Do now that I think about it. Does this need to get sent to the. Bonding agent. As we were discussing earlier. Gina. I take that. Yes. And that's how the resolution is teed up. Okay. It's in the resolution. Thank you. That's right. And if I, if I may just suggest that. I think the cleanest language. For this purpose is just to adopt. The proposed resolution because. It contains all the language about what it's, if the effect of that adoption is. More precisely than the memo does. So you're looking to change the motion language. Like to change the motion. Yes, please. I'm requesting that the motion be to adopt. The proposed resolution. It's in the packet. Okay. So that I will take that as a friendly amendment. And with that. Any further discussion. Hey, Holly, would you take a roll call. Please. President may hood. Hi. Is president Ackman. Yes. Yes. Yes, please. I'm requesting that the motion be to adopt. President Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Smalling. Yes. Okay. Which leaves us the last item of unfinished business are. Ever present and favorite remote meeting authorization under a B. Three, six, one. So that we have a motion in front of us to ratify and re-adopt the attached resolution. Number four. 2021 22. So that it continues in effect for another 30 days from today's. Eight. We'll move that. Is there a second? I will. Sorry. Jamie, you've got it. All right. Are there any comments from the board? Go ahead, Bob. So I'm looking ahead at the April meeting schedule. Which won't occur till the 21st. Are we still okay. With 30 days. Is that still covers. Well, there's, there's a short answer and a long answer to this. The short answer is that I think the first April meeting is. The seventh. So we could just put it in. I'll just do it again then. Of course. Yes. As long as we do it at each meeting, I think we're okay. So yeah, thank you. Good point, Bob. Any comments from the public? None. Any more from the board? Okay. We have a motion on the table. Go ahead, Holly. Take a roll call vote. President May hood. Hi. Vice president Ackman. Yes. Director falls. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Resolution passes unanimously. Okay. Now we have the consent agenda. Which is the solely has the minutes for the board of director meeting on to 17. Is there anybody that would like to pull. Anything from the consent agenda. Anybody from the members of the public. Okay. Do we have to vote on the consent agenda? I get confused between. Yeah. The consent agenda. You don't have to vote on it, but okay. Next, this brings us to district reports. And so this is, if anybody wants to ask a question on the district reports or the committee reports by members, anybody on the board. Chair to like to point out that the director of operations, operations status report did not make it to the agenda. We'll be in next agenda. Okay. Any questions or comments from members of the public. Jamie. Go ahead. Sorry, I was trying to find it in my notes. I did have one question and we had discussed briefly at the last board meeting. Or maybe not the last one, but the one before that about the. Utility relief that we had received some grant funding and that we had then distributed out to. Customers who were in arrears and were eligible for utility relief. And so I was just, you know, looking at the, the increasing numbers of, of, you know, Customers who are in arrears and, and wondering, you know, is that. Is that because the utility relief program has now ended. And so those people who maybe got some relief, but are still unable to pay or going back on to the, you know, going back into arrears or do we have any idea. Yeah. I'm assuming it has a little bit to do with that where they've received the relief and now they're just. Still figuring out ways to pay and it also is, you know, normal fluctuations and people just maybe being passed to that. All right. Just the timing of payments and when the due dates are and all that. So I'm assuming it should go down. Again, next month for those people that are just, it's the timing issue where, you know, they didn't meet the due date deadline. But I am assuming it's still effective. Some of those people that are. You know, being affected negatively by COVID and all that kind of stuff. Any other comments or questions? Well, if not, we are to that blessed hour and item. Oh, wait, Mark, you're not going to let me adjourn. All right, go ahead. No, go ahead. I do want to recognize the exceptional customer service. We believe it was by Taylor. But Robin Kay wasn't certain. Given the fact that it's one thing to thank an employee when they're out in the field. For what they've done for you. It's a completely different level to go to the trouble of writing an email to compliment them. So kudos to. Taylor. Okay. What's his last name? Okay. So it's in the record correctly. Okay. Good. Good. It's our policy that these go in his personnel file or go into a good. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, Mark beat me on family feud, you know, where you're hitting the button first. So I was going to say exactly the same thing I did. I did not want to go. I didn't want to not want to end the meeting without making sure we recognize that particular letter. So thank you. All right. Good. I'm glad you were thinking like, all right. Adjourned adjourned the meeting. No, I'm just kidding. Good night. Thank you. Melissa, that's eight 59 is the ending time.