 Well then, let's go ahead and start. I'd like to convene this special meeting of the board of directors of San Lorenzo Valley Water District of March 10th, 2022. Holly, would you call the roll please? President Mayhood. Here. Director Ackman. Director Falls. Here. Director Smalley. Your muted mark. Here. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. We now have a section of the meeting called oral communications. If there are any communications from the public on topics within the purview of the district, but not on the agenda tonight, now is your chance. If you have a comment you'd like to make, please raise your hand. And seeing none, hearing none, we'll go on to the next item. Which is the president's report, which I'll just say as way of introduction at the end of February, Director Henry sent an email resigning effective March 1st, stating her desire to make room for someone younger with time and energy to do the job and vote. I've appreciated the extensive coverage that our local newspapers have given to Lois and her activities and within the long involvement with water in San Lorenzo Valley. And so that brings us to our first item of new business, which is border director vacancy and what to do about it. Gina, would you like to give a thumbnail sketch on what the process is? I think most of us are pretty familiar with it given that we've had what now five of these in the last three years. And Rick, did you want to say anything before I dive into the report? I appreciate if you give the staff report. Thank you. Okay, thanks. All right, so as the chair may have pointed out, the district has been through a number of these processes of filling vacancies that have occurred for one reason or another on the board. And so I think most of you and as well as the attendees are pretty familiar with the process. Typically there's three options for filling a vacant board seat. One is for the board to make an appointment of a new board member to fill the seat for the balance of the unexpired term after advertising in the community for individuals who may want to apply for the seat. Another is to send the seat to election. This has to occur on one of the established election dates for the code, which there's only certain dates that can be used for this purpose. It's not every date that you may see for a primary and so forth. Unfortunately here, because of the timing, if the district were to call for an election, the election would be November 8th, 2022, which is the same date that the seat will be up for election regardless of an appointment. And then the third option is that the board can use neither appointment nor an election and then allow the County Board of Supervisors to make the decision instead how to fill the seat. So those are essentially the three options. But as I mentioned, because of the timing of this particular vacancy, if the district doesn't appoint somebody to fill the seat, it'll just remain vacant until the election when it's gonna be filled one way or the other regardless of what the board does. And staff's recommendation is that the board fill the seat by appointment until whoever, whatever candidate is elected in the November 2022 general election is qualified and takes office for the next four-year term. And the reason for that recommendation is that, at least from my perspective, it can be challenging to have a four-member board with the possibility of split votes and also the fewer board members you have, the more difficult it can be to get a quorum, which sometimes isn't an issue, but sometimes if there's urgent business, it could be a problem for the district's functioning. Okay. Rick, did you have anything you wanted to add to that? No, I heard with the report and I would also recommend that we move ahead and appoint for reasons that council outline. Okay. So in the staff recommendation, there is a motion and that motion also includes in addition to filling the seat by appointment, it provides a schedule by which we would do this so that the applicant will be, applicants will be interviewed at the first regular board meeting in April, which is scheduled for April 7th. And in attachment, what was it? I guess B, there's the schedule of when things will happen. In other words, it will be posted tomorrow and closing date for receipt of applications would be the 31st of March. And then we'd interview the applicants on April 7th with the idea that hopefully we could make a decision that evening. If not, we still have time given the state laws about timeframes to make it at a subsequent meeting. So let's go ahead and just start with you, Jamie. Did you have any comment on this? Well, thank you. I just first wanted to start by, I know that director Henry couldn't be here with us tonight, but I wanted to say for the sake of the record, how valuable her service was and what a warmth and real humanity she brought to all of our meetings and her focus always on trying to make the customer experience the best it could possibly be was really appreciated in values. So I will miss her contributions to the board, although I didn't get a chance to know her well personally. So I just wanted to say that for the record, but I would agree that there's just too many important decisions that we have to make to allow the seat to stay vacant, especially God forbid something happens to one of us. There is still COVID out there. And if somebody's not able to make a meeting for some reason, that makes it even more challenging. So I would support the motion to move forward with the appointment process. And just let me comment that we will have a formal resolution of recognition of Lois at the next regular meeting, okay? And she'll, you know, she can attend that if she'd like. Bob. I'm glad you brought that up, Gail, because I was gonna ask about exactly that. I think that it's important that we as an organization make sure that everybody's service to our community is honored and they receive a lot of thanks for doing so. It's a time-consuming position. Lois has certainly been doing it for a really long time, except for like a two-year break from 2016 to 2018. So, you know, that's definitely something that needs to be recognized in the community. You know, there was, I think, over the course of the last few years, a similar situation at the school board, where there were a very large number of resignations that happened outside of the election cycle. And I think this is one of the reasons why I really would like us to escalate our lobbying. I don't know if it'll do any good or not, particularly in today's day and age, and provide us with more flexibility around conducting elections for this sort of thing. I think when you start having a large number of people appointed to a board, it starts looking for better or worse, and whether it's reality or not, but perception being what it is, it starts looking a little clubby. And I think even the school district said when they reached the fourth resignation and were about to appoint a fourth board member, said enough, we can't do this anymore. And they actually waited several months in order to go to an election, as it turns out, only one person applied, so they didn't have to have an election. But still, the concept of actually filling these seats with an election is really, really important to make sure that the issues that are facing the board and the community, particularly critical issues around finance and infrastructure are fully vetted and discussed in public forums so that the people that are voting on their representatives can understand the policies and positions that people want to have. So I'm really disappointed that we're facing this again. I was sad to see the comment that Lois made in the press banner where I believe it was applied for the position and potentially run for the board in November. I really wish that Lois could have stayed with us all the way through to November, even if she wasn't going to run because I think that would have been the best way to honor the community, the commitment she made to the community and for us to honor her service as well. So given where we are, where we don't have that election flexibility, I guess my only ask is, 20 days seems a bit short. With Jamie, I think we did 26 and I forget what it was with Mark, but I think it was longer than less than three weeks. I would ideally like to see this run 30 days. I think a month is the bare minimum to allow people to decide whether or not they want to do this. 20 days makes it kind of seem like, well, maybe there's already been things set up. I don't, it just is too short. We still have time to be able to appoint somebody with both a regular meeting and if necessary, a special meeting before the deadline if we were to allow for 30 days, at least I'm assuming my counting was correct. Even if it's 29 days, it's close enough for 30. Had we had this meeting on the third, which we could have done, that would have given us a lot of opportunity to give people a 30 day window. I think given that we delayed a week to have this meeting, we shouldn't shrink the application time down to 20 days. That's just too short. I'm pleased to hear that we will get a chance to say to Lois, or form of advice during a meeting thank her for her service. I agree with the staff's recommendation to proceed with the appointment process. I also had a concern with the short timeframe that we're providing for applicants in order to be able to get the word out. I count 20 days from the day the ad runs to when applications are due. So I want to echo what Bob said about the timeframe on this. I think waiting two weeks in April from the seventh to the, what is that, the 21st is appropriate to give applicants and to give the district a bit more time to advertise a second time and get the word out, not through only the formal channels, but the informal laws to folks out there. So that's my thoughts. Two members of the public or comments. Let's see, is anybody like to speak? Ah, there we go. I'm just worried whether, okay, Jim Mosher, I just want to make sure sometimes I'm not sure when I don't see a hand or whether nobody wants to speak or whether that function isn't working, but go ahead, Jim. Jim Mosher from Felton. And I just want to support the staff recommendation and also to say that I appreciate Lois' service and I'm glad that the board is going to recognize her at the next meeting. I don't really have a position on whether 20 days is enough or 30 days. I think that it's the counter-failing issue is just to get somebody on board as soon as possible. And so whatever the board decides on that is I think would be fine. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Jim. Any other comments? Larry, board. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I also support the staff recommendations and would echo what Jim Mosher just said. Thank you very much. Okay, any other comments or questions? I'll just go ahead and just make a comment. I think that the timeline that we came up with this was in part driven by wanting to get somebody on board sooner rather than later just because as processes go on the later somebody gets added it just isn't as helpful. And also if we're thinking about assigning somebody to a committee it's just well they're potentially depending on who we choose might involve some changing around of committee memberships. But I don't have a particularly strong feeling about that just to comment to Bob's question of why we didn't do this on the third. We could have but I actually was concerned that there would be people saying that we by doing it on the third the public wouldn't have much chance to know about the meeting and that we could be accused of rushing the decision about whether to a point or leave it open. And I was actually part of the reason we have this special meeting pop was I was afraid you were gonna object to the timeframe of the third. So, but like I said, I don't have strong feelings about this if we wanna put off the choosing the person till it would be the 21st of April and adjusting the other deadlines kind of accordingly that would be fine with me. I don't really care. Jamie, you have any thoughts about that? No, I agree with you. And I had not occurred to me how tight the timeframe was until Bob and Mark so rightly brought it up. But yeah, I can be persuaded that that makes sense. Okay. So then how about if I just change the motion that is Gina, did you? Sure, may I suggest April 13th that the second sentence say applicants will be interviewed at the second regular board meeting in April. Oh, I'm sorry. Let me take a step back here. I think what we would do, and this isn't in the motion is that I would suggest we change the timeline so that applications are due by 3 p.m. on April 13th which is the Wednesday before the board packet goes out for the meeting on the 22nd and it provides 30 days for applicants. First, right? 14 plus seven is 21, April 21. Yeah, and so then the second sentence of the motion would read applicants will be interviewed at the second regular board meeting in April which is scheduled for April 21st. Right. Okay. All right, so I'll just read the motion as revised just now. This is we are moving to proceed with filling the vacancy on the board by appointment. Applicants will be interviewed at the second regular board meeting in April which is scheduled for April 21st. The appointee would serve until the seat is filled in connection with the November 2022 general election. So I'm moving that. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any further comment among members of the board? And let me just go out. We've got a couple of people that have joined us. So let me just go out and make sure that there isn't any more comments from members of the public. Seeing none, hearing none. Holly, would you take a roll call vote please? President Mayford. Aye. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Fals. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Okay. And passes unanimously. All right. So this will be posted tomorrow with a change in the deadline to be the Wednesday before the meeting on the 21st. Okay. Now that brings us to the next item of business which is Lois was our vice president. So on her resignation, that position is open. So we need to vote in a new vice president. And I hope that you will indulge me in as president and allow me to nominate Jamie Ackman as vice president. Thank you very much, Gail. I appreciate the confidence. Okay. I accept the nomination. All right. I'll second that. Okay. Any discussion? Not among the board. Then how about among the members of the public? No discussion there. I don't see any. Okay. So Holly, could you go ahead and take the roll call vote please? President Mayford. Aye. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. All right. So Jamie, you just have to hope that I don't get hit by a beer truck in the near future of them. Gonna need you to stay very, very careful and wrap yourself in bubble wrap. All right, okay. All right. So finally we get to our one piece of unfinished business. California governor's office of emergency services, designation of applicants agent. Rick. Thank you. This item is directly related to our FEMA and Cal OES grant applications from the CZU fire requiring the district adopting and approving a designation of applicants agent resolution for non-state agencies. Basically housekeeping for us to move ahead with receiving grants from the two agencies, a requirement of designation of applicants agent resolution. The district needs to adopt the attached resolution. Basically housekeeping, moving forward. This means that the state and feds are getting closer to start reimbursing the district. And so this process is needed for that reimbursement. You'll see their standard resolution and the district's resolution to be adopted. Okay, so basically we just have a motion to adopt the attached resolution thereby adopting and approving and designating our agents for these non-state agencies. Any, so moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay, second. Any discussion? I feel sorry for Mark. There's only three lines for Boardman. There's only three lines for Boardman. Well, we could add him. I mean, let's add him. Okay. No, no, no, no, Mark, no, Mark. We're adding, we're adding you. If there was five people, we'd have five. Come on. Do not amend. Wait, we wondered about that this afternoon when we were getting ready for the meeting. How we ended up with those, but we decided yes, we needed one. Alpha order, I'm assuming, but yes. Yes. Board chair first and we went by alphabetical order. Yeah. Sorry Mark. I do have a question though. Rick mentioned getting ready to issue reimbursements. Reimbursements for. We have several of our category work obligated in the category B projects. And once obligation comes, that's mean they've been approved and move ahead and start the reimbursement process. So they're not the, this is work that's already been completed that the district expense funds that's been reviewed and FEMA now will now as obligated to make reimbursements. But we're getting through the process, but we still have a long ways to go because they haven't even started the permanent repairs, which is called category F, which, you know, a five mile pipe, one of the bigger projects. And they're still getting through one of the bigger claims that category A are emergency response, which is a little over an eight, three million plus dollars. So reimbursements for seizing your related damages. Exactly. Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's good news though. It is. Money money. Yeah. Closer anyway. So any other comments or questions? Okay. So I guess we need to vote on this, Holly. I think the public, the public. Well, I would, okay. That I was looking at, let me formally ask, are there any members of the public that would like to comment on this? Seeing none, hearing none. Holly, would you take the roll call though, please? If may have. Aye. Vice President Ackman. Yes. Director Fultz. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Okay. Passes unanimously. With that, we come to the end of the meeting. And if there's no objection, I will go ahead and adjourn us and leave you the rest of the evening to do something else fun. This was fun. Thank you all for attending this special meeting. Good night. Okay. Good night everyone. Thanks.