 It looks like we have everybody here. So I will go ahead and be in the open session of this April 7 meeting of the San Lorenzo Valley Quarter District Board of Directors. There are no actions to report from closed session. Would you like to take the roll, Molly, for open session? President Mayford. Here. Vice President Ackerman. Here. Director Falls. Here. Director Smalley. Here. Okay. Anybody's here? Are there any additions and deletions to the agenda? Yeah, there's none. Okay. This is the time then for all communications from members of the public on items within the purview of the district that are not on the agenda tonight. We've got quite a number of attendees and Lawrence Ford has his hand up. So go ahead, Larry. Hi, this is Larry Ford, Belton. I just want to remind the board that it looks like fire season has begun and the Cal Fire is worried about it. And so I'm hoping that the water district and others in our valley are getting ready by clearing combustible fuels around their homes and around all the water district facilities and that the district staff is going to be able to track and also be able to do things like run out to turn off valves and threaten pipelines and all that. Anyway, that's one of my main subjects around here. I'm starting to get nervous. Thank you. Okay. Rick, did you have a quick response on what the district is doing to get ready for fire season? Am I muted? Yeah, we're definitely aware of the Cal Fire. Notices that they put out for the last couple days. You know, we're pretty much ready going into all seasons and including fire season. We definitely are aware of the heightened alert, but we're not moving into any special direction right now. We're pretty much geared up for all seasons and all disasters. Amy, I see your hand is up. I just wanted to acknowledge Larry's concern. I happened to be in Southern California this week and it's 100 degrees and the Santa Annas are blowing with a fierceness. So I hear you and I think that we all share your concerns and anything that we can do to further harden and protect ourselves we should be doing. Pop? If I'm not mistaken, aren't we executing on grants that we receive to clear vegetation from around higher priority district facilities? I know that Hank across from my house got quite a clearing. It's pretty open now. Isn't that correct, Rick? Aren't we in the middle of that? Yeah, we started that some time ago and we are continuing and we've applied for additional grants and we do have some additional grants. That's just ongoing preparedness. I was kind of thinking more of Larry's question of what we're doing just recently for this recent because there have been several warnings issued at the beginning of the week. In particular this week, the San Lorenzo Valley has canceled all outside burning and there is a level of heighteness out there for this week especially. Yeah, I understand that but I think it's important for people to know particularly since Larry asked about clearing around our facilities that in fact that is underway and I don't know how many we've done in total but it's more than a handful. Right, and it will be an ongoing commitment of mine anyway and hopefully the boards as well, I believe it will be to make sure that we keep applying for grants and finding money to do that kind of thing. So thank you for bringing that up. Okay, next is the president's report which there's a hap, go ahead Mark I'm sorry I didn't see your hand up. I see somebody else in the attendees who has their hand up right now. Nicole. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, okay. I don't know if this is the right time. This is Nicole Launderbarage from Brackenbray. I just wanted to give the board an update on our FEMA efforts. We did have two of our projects. Nicole, can we do this later when we talk about, that's on our agenda. Okay, this is just about our FEMA update. So nevermind. It's part of our agenda. And so what I'm planning to do is immediately after Rick and Gina talking about the letters of intent, I will call on you. Okay, and I will also call on Sean. And so both of you can say something before we open up the discussion for the board. Is that all right? Sounds good. Okay, good. Anybody else among the participants from the public? Okay, then I'll just go to the president's report which is since our last meeting, it has been announced that FEMA for certain catastrophes including the one that we experienced with CZU will be increasing the reimbursement rate from 75% to 90%. And of course, this is a huge thing for us. It's great news. And it's especially great news given the sort of shock that we've had on the increase in estimates of cost of what it will cost to replace the seven miles pipeline that was burned. And so this is really important and we're very happy about it. Okay, so let's go to unfinished business. The first item is consolidation of Brackenbray and Bob. I just had a quick question on that. In addition to increasing it to 90%, did they give any indication about whether that would cover upgrades to current best practices or whether it's just a like for like replacement? Rick, do you know the answer to that? They, going back to the original applications of Bob, there has been discussion and we do believe on the distribution system that answer is yes, we haven't got a determination of where we're at on like the five mile pipeline and so forth. This increase from 75 to 90% was a CZU, actually several disaster wide. We haven't had any real sit-down and discussion on that with them. Yeah, but that's a key one to find out. I agree. Okay, so next up is unfinished business. The first item is consolidation of Brackenbray and Forest Springs, district manager, Rick Rogers first. Thank you. Yeah, this item in front of the board tonight is the binding letter of intent to consolidate or Brackenbray for your review. No action is being requested tonight on this item. We will be returning with a similar agreement for Forest Springs. We are in the process of working with the representatives of Forest Springs and Brackenbray are in the audience tonight. And with that, I'll ask district council to present this item to the board. Hi, Gina. Okay, thank you, Gil. Thank you, Rick. What I want to explain to everybody who's here is what it is that you're seeing in the board packet and what was sent out via email to the board members and posted to the district's website this morning. So in the board packet, there is a letter of intent agreement with Brackenbray Homeowners Association. The version that's in the board packet is what was created after one round of comments with Brackenbray between Brackenbray and the district. Since then, I think that was generated around the middle to the end of last week. Since then, we've been continuing to go back and forth with the HOA regarding comments on the LOI. We had another round of comments early this week and then we got some more comments last night. So the board members all received this morning via email and members of the public have the ability to access it from the district's website. There is a red line that shows the changes, all the changes that had been made to the version of the LOI that's in the packet. And it's got in particular some information bracketed and highlighted that came from the comments that we got last night that I think raises some issues related to how the district is gonna assist with FEMA projects for Brackenbray that warrants a little more discussion before we can get final on that language. So if you see the brackets and the highlighting in the latest red line, that that's the reason for it. And I guess I just wanna note a couple of things as well. We sent a very similar initial draft of the LOI to Forest Springs and as district manager Roger said, we're looking forward to working through whatever comments Forest Springs may have on that draft. And of course, these LOIs, while they are intended to be binding agreements, they are essentially preliminary agreements. They're almost like a binding term sheet that will help create the framework for a more complete consolidation agreement that will be coming in about six months. That'll have a lot more details about projects and connections and elements of the water system that would be transferred to the district in connection with the consolidation and those kinds of things. So there will be a more detailed agreement to come. These LOIs, they are a binding agreement, but they are intended to establish a framework. And like all agreements of this nature that the district enters into, it is conditional upon the results of environmental review of necessity because the district can't commit to any particular course of action until an environmental review of the proposed consolidation is completed. Thank you. That was a good explanation. I'll call on Nicole now from Brackenbray and go ahead and if you'd like to address this group. Okay, am I unmuted? Yes, you are unmuted. Okay, first off, our board of directors have met twice over this letter of intent and most recently last night to approve the amended LOI with the red lines. And it was approved unanimously by our board. We have been actively working on this since we received it just under two weeks ago. We met with legal counsel, I believe it was in December. So we have tried really hard to get to an agreement to this working term agreement to get us starting to move forward. We are quite anxious to do so since we, what I wanted to share during the public comments is that Brackenbray has made great progress with our FEMA. We were able to combine two of our permanent work projects together and to get them obligated because they were over a million dollars. They had to go to Congress for approval. We were able to secure before the 90, 10, just over a million dollars with the 90, 10 cost adjustment. We're at 1.265 million. And that money is based off of rebuilding our current water system. What we did was we opted into the 428 alternative procedures and we had to accept a fixed cost offer by February 22nd, which was 18 months from the declared decoration of the disaster. So we did that. So we're quite happy with that. That's our system-wide recovery plan. And then the third project is dealing with Mainline. So for us, what was important in this LOI was that the board of directors, along with San Lorenzo staff, have an understanding of the importance for us to meet our obligations for that funding. With the way that FEMA works, you have a maximum of 40 months with time, that's the time extended because all permanent work had a period, a performance by February 22nd, 2022. That has since passed and we have not obviously started permanent work. You guys have not started permanent work, but from that date, you have to ask time extensions. So you have 40 months from the declaration of the disaster. So that language was really important. And in that, yesterday, after a series of going back and forth with the legal counsel, we got that term in there. And so we were requesting the best efforts of San Lorenzo to work with us to make our, comply to our obligations for that grant. This money is going towards the infrastructure to fix damage infrastructure from the fire that will be turned over to SLV. So when you look at that bracketed language, please note that that is also benefiting SLV by inheriting our infrastructure, which will hopefully all be new by the time we get to this consolidation. So today I just wanted to let you all know that we do appreciate what Rick and Gina have done over the last week and a half and going back and forth with our red lines. We take this very seriously. We have been in the water business since the early 1900s. This is a huge step for us to move forward in consolidation and we wanna be proactive partners into it. And we feel comfortable with that letter of intent as it is written. So if there's any questions regarding the bracketed language or any of the red lines that you received, I'm sorry that it was at such a late date, but we have been actively being responsive to the red lines that we have received from SLV. And so we didn't get that. We got the most recent red lines from SLV yesterday morning. We met during the day and then met with SLV at the end of the day. So in any case, we've had members who are present on this meeting to show that we are wanting to move forward with SLV. So if there's any questions about the language in there that's redlined, I would be happy to answer it. Okay. Before we open up discussion with the board, let's, I think Sean is here from Boris Springston. Would you like to say anything? Sean, yeah. Yeah, can you guys hear me? We can. Okay. Thanks for having me. We here at Forest Springs, we're really excited to receive the letter of intent. We currently have it being reviewed by an attorney and we also will be putting it in front of our association for review and approval. At the moment, we have not sent back a red line draft to SLV. We don't feel like we will have a lot of changes and we should be able to get that back over to you guys relatively soon. What's most important to us is we have 128 connections in Forest Springs, so we have a lot of association members and we want everyone to be able to review this document, understand it, answer any questions that come up before moving forward with it. And that's basically where we're at at the moment. I think we're going to be able to get that back and that's basically where we're at at the moment. We just want to make sure we have our association absolutely behind this and understanding how we're moving forward. Thank you, Sean. Yeah. Okay, so we'll open this up to the board to discuss it and what I would just like to suggest for this discussion among the board and also among the members of the public afterwards is that we really in this particular item should be focusing on that this is a legal document that allows us to move forward and not get too mixed up in the issues of where all of the ultimate funding is going to come, which we can take up with item B under unfinished business. And from my own standpoint, I view the LOI I've read the most recent draft and I find it entirely acceptable. I recognize that some of the language might change slightly having to do with the mounts, but that's fine because this is not the final agreement. The final agreement is the consolidation agreement. And by the time we get around to those, we'll have a lot more information about the dollar amounts for both costs and grants. But the important thing now is that we move forward expeditiously, both as Nicole argued strongly and also to allow us to start doing some engineering studies and other things to move the process forward. So I'll start with Jamie. Did you have any comments or questions, Jamie? Yeah, thanks, sorry. So I will admit I'm traveling right now so I haven't had an opportunity to read through all the red lines, but one concern that I have and it's less about the agreement itself and more about just the logistics of meeting the 40 month FEMA timeline that's outlined in terms of expenditures, we have a lot of work that we are already engaging. We are spread pretty thin, I want us to meet these timelines but I'd love to hear from Rick whether he thinks that with everything else going on that would be reasonable, right? We are planning to work with Brack and Bray to meet those deadlines. As we sit down and start working on the consolidation agreement, we will outline what those FEMA projects are, have a little better understanding exactly what the FEMA projects are and be able to assign timelines and hopefully be able to work those in with our current projects schedule on the consolidation. Okay, thanks, Rick. All right, Bob? Yes, following up on that Rick, is there the, let's say things go completely sideways in 40 months comes along and we're not quite done yet. Is there extensions possible if we have made substantial progress and are really, let's say we had another disaster next year and we just got sideways? How does that work? That's a great question and it came up in our discussions over the red line. We believe so but we don't have that in writing so we must consider the 40 month deadline as timeframe. SOB has been successful in extensions before. The key to FEMA is that you keep them in the loop but right now and given that Brackenbury is the lead agency, we're gonna do everything we can to make that 40 month deadline. It's important. Yeah, okay. I just know stuff happens sometimes so I just hope it doesn't all get yanked. I did, I very much want to see this proceed. I think it'd be a good thing for the community. I had a few questions on the agreement and not too many because I actually think this looks really, I did have a chance to go through the red lines and I thought it looked really good. There was one phrase in here that I wasn't sure I was clear about and it was bolded and it says that if the total cost exceed the amount of grant funding, the resonance within the HOA will be expected to fund the difference. Is that a commitment that they will fund the difference? Gina, you wanna parse that language? Because I would, you know, at some level that be expected to is kind of introduces maybe some ambiguity and one of the things that's been a consistent policy here for me at least is that the community, the SOV community today does not incur additional costs as a result of this consolidation. Right, and thank you for that comment, Director Fultz. The bold language as written in a way is more of a disclaimer than an enforceable revision. It's letting the members of these two communities know that the district does expect that the difference is gonna be funded from the local areas and it provides the mechanism with which that will be done. It isn't, I think it's fair to say that the way it's written isn't really a contractual, a binding contractual provision, but I think it sets forth the intent that we may try to effectuate through, you know, some more binding terms in the consolidation agreement. And it certainly is a roadmap to how the district will approach the accounting for the cost of the project and any need to proceed with a surcharge or assessments post-consolidation. And so those assessments post-consolidation would be focused specifically on these communities. It wouldn't affect the broader community and that is something that they would agree to? Well, I can't speak for them, but I think we've been very clear in the discussions about the LOI as to what the district's position is, that these consolidations are, that the district expects that these consolidations will be funded predominantly via grant funding to the extent possible. And then the difference will be the responsibility of the local communities that are being consolidated. Right, and the Prop 218 gives us the flexibility to focus on a particular neighborhood as opposed to. Let Nicole's got her hand up, so I think she wants to respond to Bob and Gina's comments. Go ahead, Nicole. Yeah, I think Gina did a really good job to represent the board's concern about that and that boldness there. We did have a discussion about how that was written. We had proposed different language and then Gina presented the constitutional change that happened in Prop 218 and 26. We, Brackenbury, do not, we will manage our costs, but we do not want to be responsible for any other costs. And that includes SLV customers that will benefit from this. So that you have customers who currently have undersized pipes that are like two diameter and four. And so there is a sense of level of nervousness about this next topic on the next item on the agenda, about the two million overage that Sandus has estimated. But so in the sense of the way that Gina presented it, we don't find this to be binding that we will be obligated to that. That will be worked out through consolidation, but that's why it's very important for the FEMA money that we have received because it would be a part of this consolidation improving the infrastructure that we don't lose that money. And so for us, it is important that the LOI move forward in order for the board to move forward with the other contracts so that the money can be released for Sandus to go ahead and begin that engineering study and begin to get a true understanding of what those costs look like. So we all understand what that looks like and then what, how do we attain that? You know, we're committed to repairing the damage the CZU Lightning Fire were committed to doing the technical spec upgrades that you guys want to do, but we are a small community and a third of our community has lost their homes. Four springs is of a similar situation when third of their houses have lost. So there's not an endless amount of money to squeeze out of it. We're reasonable people and that's why we put in language in there that we wanna be a part check-in with the process about how we get to the final number and then we figure it out. So we understood Gina's intent by the boldness that SLV, the board will not stand for any money being leveraged off of the existing customers but we also want this to be a reasonable project. So we wanna work within that framework and then decide whether we can do this and how we get it done. So we are also very nervous about moving forward when we start seeing $5 million how this grant for the DWR has increased. So we want to get, it's important for Brackenbray to get this LOI approved so we can move forward with Sandus to get the engineering study done. We have to move forward to better understand what this project cost is gonna look like and what's required. So that's all I wanted to say. Thank you for that, Nicole. I think that was very well stated and I think you make some good points about relative cost benefit to everybody. At some point, I'm gonna wanna see sort of a summary document that has the numbers, the gazintas, gazaltas so that we can get a better handle on things including what the risks might be should the project not go forward if any of the grant funds have been expended. There's also that part as well. I had a couple other questions. Oh, on the insurance. Did we have any minimums that we were saying that were required or is it just whatever they have basically? Yeah, this, in my view, Director Fultz, we'll think about whether we need specific minimums in connection with the consolidation agreement and this provision is just kind of a basic statement of intent that each party should keep sort of standard and reasonable insurance policies in effect during the term of the LOI but we haven't gotten into exact amounts or being designated as an insignee on each other's insurance policies and that kind of thing but we may need to get into that for purposes of the consolidation agreement before construction starts to occur. Yeah, at some point, I would think. And then the last question I had had to do with sort of operational expenses, it wasn't clear to me in the LOI and maybe I just missed it, whether or not, for example, payments to Big Basin Water would be covered by the HOA versus the Sand Runs by Water District as part of this consolidation. I think it was implied that it was for the HOA but I wasn't clear about it. This LOI isn't providing for the district to take on any obligations with respect to meeting the HOA's obligations to Big Basin or any other contractual obligations. At this time, until any contracts may get assigned to the district at the closing of the consolidation agreement but certainly not in the NRM, the district wouldn't be assuming any responsibility for the HOA's obligations to Big Basin. And my question I think had to do around the assumption of liabilities by SLVWD and the indemnity section, I think it's the new section eight. And so by closing, we're talking about the final consolidation agreement. At that point, does the district take on all of the liabilities, including any Big Basin Water? Well, that is an area, the liabilities that are disclosed to the district, the LOI provides for the district to take on the liabilities that are disclosed to it and determined to be part of the water system that's transferring to the district. Those will have to be itemized in the schedules to the consolidation agreement. I think that the HOA has told us that they don't have any contracts that would come over that would bring liabilities with it to Big Basin. So I don't. And so the final consolidation agreement would disclaim anything that wasn't disclosed. That is, that's great. Okay, that's the main point that I wanted to make sure I was clear on. Okay, I really think now we're not talking about taking action tonight, is that correct? We're not voting on it tonight? That's correct. When would we vote? When would we vote on this? Would it be when Forest Springs is complete as well? Well, we're hoping to get a red line from Forest Springs in the next week. And given that it doesn't appear that there will be a great amount of changes tonight to the LOI. So I will discuss with the board chair about possibly coming back with a requesting a special meeting and possibly maybe and address more of this in the next item about grant funding. Yeah, I definitely wanted, I mean, if a special meeting is needed to move this along faster, I would be open to it myself. One of the key things I wanna learn about, Rick, is what happens if it, what's the downside risk if we start spending grant money and the project for whatever reason doesn't happen for circumstances outside anybody's control, what happens then and how is that funded? I have some answers in the next item. Sounds good, thank you. Mark? Yes, for those that have not reviewed both the red line in the original letter of intent, I do wanna express, I reviewed both in detail and I feel that the amount of red lines that we received from Brackenbrae are very limited and I think reasonable. And I do wanna note that the consolidation agreement that we're talking about, the LOI was setting out a target completion of February or September 30th, 2022. I would expect that a lot of the questions that we're asking in particular about funding amounts and as to how much we anticipate Sandus is going to be, that we'll have a lot more of that information and we'll have more definitive information at that point from the Department of Water Resources. So I'm viewing this letter of intent as we agree to work together for now. We agree that we're going to develop this consolidation agreement. And a lot of the details are gonna be defined in that consolidation agreement. So am I correct in that, Gina? I think that's well said, Mark. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's all the, I don't have any further questions on that item. I think to me it's a little bit more than just we agree to work together. To me, this is really, it's like a commitment here. We're getting engaged and getting married here. I mean, this is a little bit more than just a regular LOI. And so I'm taking this in that vein that it is that serious and that we are that close to actually doing something to consolidate our Springs and Brackenburg. Okay. Nicole? I'll just save my comments for this next item. I think everything's fine. Are there a cycle back, Jamie? Is there anything else you'd like to comment on this particular one before I go out to the public? No, thank you. Okay. So let me go out to members of the public to see if there's any questions or comments. Larry, go ahead, Larry. Sorry. My number one comment is to say welcome to Brackenburg and Forest Hills as a water rate payer from Felton. I can tell you that this process is very difficult and stressful, but we made it through. It took us about five years and the end result was very gratifying in many ways. We now get to participate in the politics and the discussion of running the entire water board, which was way better than what we had before and we're really happy with it. We're participating. We did have to take on a very significant bond. It was for $10 million. And that meant that all of the property owners in Felton had to be prepared to pay at the time $500 a year to pay off that bond. Luckily rates went down and the county manager was able to get it down to about 450 a year. Anyway, we're paying for it. It's part of the property tax bill. It's not so bad. So I hope you guys can work all that out. And I also want to just invite you at this point to get involved in the board and the committees and to participate. That's it, thank you. Thank you, Larry. Any other comments from members of the public? Any hearing none, seeing none. We don't have any action on this. Bob, did you want to make one final comment on this before we go on the next one? Yeah, Larry's comments were prompting me to ask something. Rick, when the construction is done in these areas, is this being done under prevailing wage provisions? Definitely. Thank you. Okay. All right, so next we have an item that Mark Smalley brought to the agenda, which is California Department of Water Resources grant for the consolidation of forest springs and bracket break. Mark, take it away. Okay, thanks, Gil. I've been the board representative involved in discussions that the district has had with Department of Water Resources. Rick has kept me copied on email exchanges and other information that we've had at this point. I put this together because I wanted the board and the public to see the draft agreement that we have from Department of Water Resources, but also the differences that I'm seeing in funding that we have in the grant versus what I'm seeing as the chair of the engineering committee, the Sandwich proposal that was referenced earlier in our discussion as being well above what the grant amount is. The grant amount that we have from Department of Water Resources for 3.2 million, the district requested 4.3 million, but the information that we see in a recent proposal from Sandwich engineers is indicating to me that the amount could be more on the order of 5.5, 5.6 million. And I think it would be, the differences in this would be clear if we can pull up one page that's part of the agenda packet and it's page 68. Rick, I don't know if... Josh is going to pull that up. You can do that. Josh, I made a presenter. Josh, are you going to pull that up? I am. Let's see. I don't see him as a presenter yet though. There we go. Page 68. And let me maximize that. Okay. With this, we can see the difference in design. We had requested 200,000. Sandwich came back with a cost of 343. The district had solicited bids from engineering firms. We received five bids. Sandwich was the apparent low bidder for that. 143,000 more. In addition to that, we want to look at task 4B, the construction. As part of Sandwich's proposal, they provided an engineer's estimate of the construction costs. It's a one-page document that they included in their proposal. It's a very detailed list of what they anticipate would be needed from a construction standpoint. And as you can see, it's significantly more than the 2.7 million that was granted by DWER, hence the difference between these two costs. The other difference that I wanted to highlight for discussion was the schedule that we submitted versus what we're going to be able to do. And that's on page 50. If we could pull that up. On your screen now. Oh, I'm sorry. Page 50 is the schedule. I think you've got 68 right now. You'd be showing 50, let me see here. That's the only thing I've got up. Interesting. Let me stop sharing and start again and see what happens. The schedule shows that construction was going to start as early as May. Thank you. That's the schedule exhibit. Design being completed by May 15th. Light item for A, ask for A. Construction starting immediately the hour after. We have not awarded a contract for the design yet. So it's not going to be completed by May 15th. Between these two differences for what I was seeing in the grant amount versus what we're anticipating construction-wise and the schedule aspects. It was my recommendation that we request the district manager, Rick Rogers, to go back to deep left and discuss these in the expectation that we would be able to expand the grant amount and better clarify schedule aspects. So with that, I think we could open it up to questions. Excuse me, Rick, why don't you go ahead and respond? Yeah, you know, and I wanted to appreciate, I'd appreciate Director Smalley supporting, moving this forward in anticipation of the 9 to 10 item. I did write the state water board or the DWR Department of Water Resources earlier in the week, pretty much outlining Director Smalley's concerns. I put in a request for additional funds and request for an extended deadlines. The funding agreement has not been approved, so we still have a considerable amount of discussion time with the state. The state turned around and called me. We had an hour discussion this morning on that memo to them and we discussed the project in depth. I don't want to get into great detail of our discussions and our results of the discussions. I'll just say that we most likely can get additional funds, extending the deadline will not be a problem. We talked about if for reasons we didn't finish the project, very the same type of questions that Director Falls has. I'm not in a position until I confirm those in writing with the state and get an answer back that they agree to our discussion to bring that forward to the board. I will be able to bring this to the board when we bring back the final agreements on the final red line agreements. I would ask if Director Smalley doesn't have any objections that no action be taken by the board tonight as I already have written and made a request and we are in the process of putting that now in writing and we'll submit that to the board at the same time we bring back the agreements to the board. Okay, well, since you're already acting on what I was going to ask you to do, I'll withdraw the motion. Okay, are there any questions, comments from members of the board, Bob? I do want to, I'm glad to see that the DWR might be willing to reconsider some of what I viewed as a very low ball estimate on construction in the original grant that was given. It's not that I want to be ungrateful about getting grant money because it is money that sort of everybody contributes to, which is a great thing, it's like self-insuring. But those construction costs they came back with originally look like they came from the Modoc Plateau where things cost a lot less than they do here in the sort of greater Bay Area. So I'm hopeful that they'll give this serious consideration. I might also encourage us, given that construction may not start immediately, that maybe we ask for even a little bit more because construction costs seem to go up with that one exception on Quail Hollow is maybe a unicorn, but construction costs seem to be going up at a phenomenal rate, even month to month. So 5.6 may not be enough if that was their estimate they gave a month or two ago by the time we get started a few months from now we could be looking at even more. So yeah, this is a real problem. And DWR wants to see this project go through. This project is important to them as well as it is important to us. They realize the condition, the drought condition and the CZU fire condition that these two small districts have gone through and I get the impression that they will work with the district and responding very quickly as quickly as possible for them. And hopefully I will have most of your answers and Nicole's answers within the next week when we come back to you. Oh, that's great. I know they don't want to write a blank check and I'm not asking for that. That's been made clear. And I wouldn't expect them to do that nor do I ask them to do that. But reasonableness has got to prevail here if we're going to get this done. Mark? Yes, to clarify one point that Bob was making, cost escalations. Sandus' engineering and cost estimate does include an escalation factor which accounts for the fact that you're, they're estimating it now but you're not doing the work now. You're doing the work as much as a year later based on their escalation factor. So it can be, well, it can be debated if it's enough. We don't know that, but at least they've accounted for an escalation factor. I understand that. We had the same escalation with Long Pico. And what, anyway. Right, okay. Jamie, did you have anything you wanted to add? No, I think I'm willing to hold off on any comments until we are ready to bring this back for our motion after, you know, fuller discussion. Yeah. Okay. Any other comments by members of the board or Rick before I go out to the public? Just one quick comment, you know, Dr. Ford made a comment that it took five years for Felton to consolidate a whole different animal. This will go much quicker. I don't want to give Nicole heart failure. We will do whatever we can to make our deadline and be done with our instruction projects as stated in the LOI. Yes, please. Mark. Yes, I do have two questions related to the DWR funding agreement. On page 20, where they address invoices, they make references to time sheets as though they expect us to allocate time to specific projects. Is district staff able to prepare to do that, Rick? Right now, you know, I haven't been able to discuss this with Josh. I spent an hour on the phone with DWR and that is one of the ways too that we talked about potentially lowering some of these costs was if the district could, if we get an in-house inspector. Yes, I would say we could, but otherwise we really don't have to deal with it. I'm not expecting that. What I'm asking for the time that any of the staff spend on the project, do we have the ability to essentially job cost or allocate 10 hours this week to a specific project? Yes. Okay, good time sheets. By the 15 minute increment. Right, okay, good, glad to hear that. The other specific is on page 32, do we have a written policy for competitive bidding? Yes. Okay, a written policy. Okay, then we can provide. Okay, good. And most likely, I'll double check, but as Council points out, DWR may have their own requirements as well, and I'll double check with that. They'll have one that they'll give us if we don't have. We do have a- I'd rather have ours and be able to write it to them. Okay, good. Okay, those are the only questions that I have on the DWR agreement for them. Good. We did a purchasing policy upgrade, I think a year ago or so, a year and a half ago, long-awaited and it addressed all of that, which was really good work on the part of that. I'll go out to the public now, Nicole. Yeah, so two comments. One, Rick, as you're working with DWR and you're trying to get them to do that increase, that term five on their funding agreement about grantee-required cost share, that directly relates to Four Springs and Brackenbray. So if they're unable to increase that funding significantly, hopefully you can amend that language. Previously, you had indicated that there was a verbal given by the DWR that they would cover over-cost runs, and that's not how the contract reads now. So if we can seek written language into the agreement to support somebody telling you that verbally, that will help us significantly when we get to the consolidation agreement. I understand. Yeah. It would be difficult with them because they made it clear. I don't want to take a lot of time. We'll talk when we talk again on the LOI. Yeah, no problem. The second is from you and from emails that I've read, they've encouraged you to move forward in the process for this project, basically encouraging you guys the way I read it and at least how I understood your comments to go ahead and do engineering. And I understand the board's reluctant to do that without an agreement in place that during these discussions with them, if the board is not comfortable with agreement that comes back, maybe there could be some type of agreement, at least for the engineering part to go forward so we can begin this process to have a better understanding of the dollars to get some agreement that if the board took on the financial risk for the engineering services that they would in fact be in re-inverse for that portion. And I feel after when we bring back your LOI that that will be covered and I believe I would have enough information for the board to feel comfortable that the grant will cover engineering moving forward. And then the last comment which I've shared with you and I've actually told Sean this as well from Four Springs but for Brackenbray, it would be nice if for some reason if something gets held up in this process that the agreement would allow for some type of phasing if for some reason I look at it as three legs but if we could get the two legs, your extension out to us and Brackenbray in place to work along what we have to do with FEMA would be beneficial for all in regards to not losing the money that we have to do the infrastructure and construction. If for some reason the four spring process because of the number of people in their community required to participate in that vote slows down the process. Because we've been seven months since we started this discussion and it concerns us at Brackenbray. All of our members have seen, every single member has seen this letter of intent both in its initial red line and then what was presented to the board yesterday. We work very hard to keep our board informed but it's a lot easier for us because we're much smaller and we can move quicker. That's all, thank you. Yeah, Rick and while you're working with the DWR they can maybe modify their clawback provisions a little bit to say not include engineering costs expended or what have you, I think that would also be helpful. I just don't want them to be coming back and grabbing money that it's hard dollar would be hard dollar out of anybody's pocket be it SLVWD or Brackenbray as long as we're operating in good faith trying to get this done. Agreed. Any other comments by members of the public? Nicole, do you want to say something else? Oh, no, sorry. Any other members of the public want to add anything? Okay, so there is no action item then basically Rick will report back on his discussions with DWR hopefully and also we'll have the Forrest Springs redline version certainly by the next board meeting but potentially even if we have it all together we would have a special meeting even sooner. But quickly with that let's go on to our item of new business which is a long service line agreement for the Clark property at APM 077-032-25. Thank you, Chair, Mayor, Chair Mayhood. I will ask the district engineer to present this item. Thank you, Rick. This is a fairly straightforward item. We are asking that the board review the memo and approve the attached resolution authorizing the district manager to execute a long service line agreement with Ian Clark at APM 077-032-25. The applicant Ian Clark has applied for water service there within our jurisdictional boundaries. We have no problem providing service to them. The only issue is that their property is not contiguous with any of our mains, meaning that a long service line agreement is required. With that, I will take questions. Any questions from members of the board? Jamie, did you have, or you could raise your hand. Okay, Bob. You know, we really like doing, well, I like doing these long service line agreements because it gets additional customers into the district that maybe otherwise would not be able to. So I very much like to see these come through. I will say though that I am uncomfortable myself moving forward with this particular item even though I would like to because the contract was not attached to the agenda. And we have had in the past issues with the long service line agreement, the original one when I first came on the board restricted the rights of our customer to participate in design discussions going forward. There was also some ambiguity about the termination date and the like. And because of that, I'm not sure which agreement we have in front of us. So just as a matter of personal policy, I need to see contracts if we're voting on them. So I'm personally reluctant to move forward. The rest of the board obviously can do so, but I find my oversight responsibilities not being able to be fulfilled when I can't see the agreement. And I don't think the board should be put in that kind of position, at least might give my personal opinions. I don't think that the board should be put in that position. Any other comments by members of the board? Yes, Rick, who pays for this 750 feet of line? The customer. Okay. And to Bob's earlier point, do we have the contract that we would, or the draft contract that we would be issuing to this property owner available? Normally, we would have it with the agenda item. We just didn't, if it's not there, it's not there. Okay. Normally, we would have that accompany the memo. Okay. No, it's not there. What repercussions are there if you bring this back to us two weeks from now? I'd have to refer to Josh is if this customer may be running out of water or it may not be. Josh, do you have a little update? I don't believe the customer is running out of water. No. Amy? Then we can bring it back. Yeah, I was just gonna say that I would think that maybe this is something we could table to bring back when the contract is available because I do tend to agree. Because of my work with San Jose Water, I did get certified as a rate adjuster. And this issue of contracts for long service made agreements, we should be looking at that as a board before we sign off on it. I tend to agree with Bob. Okay. And it sounds like we wanna table this issue until the next board meeting when it will have the contract with it, which brings us to the next item of new business, which is the California Low Income Household Water Assistance Program. And District's Finance Manager will present this item to the board. Okay. Good evening, everyone. It is recommended the board of directors review the information on the Low Income Household Water Assistance Program, which I will refer to as LIWAP and approve the district to enter into the direct payment agreement. So the California Department of Community Services in Development has announced the guidelines for the federal LIWAP program. There is $116 million of funding available for qualified low-income households on a first come, first serve basis. They are offering a $2,000 max one-time payment applied to water or wastewater service costs. So this program is slightly different than the State Water Resources Control Board Water Arranges Program that we applied for and already received funding for. A few of the differences are that with the LIWAP, the low-income customer applies. The arrearage period is for any time period and not just for a specific timeframe. The arrearages is for past due bills or property tax rolls. The late fees are covered by the payment. The customers that can apply are low-income residential customers and we are encouraged to offer payment plans to the customers that are receiving it, which we already do anyways, and the administrative costs are not covered. And so basically the implementation, how it would work is the district would enroll in the direct payment program. The draft agreement has been attached to the agenda item. This is a required step to receive funding and to allow our customers the opportunity to participate. Once we are enrolled and signed the agreement, the customer can begin applying in May or June of 2022. The local service providers will qualify the applicant and submit the application to CSCA. The LSPs, the local service providers are comprised of a network of 41 nonprofit and local government agencies and they basically handle all of the outreach to the customers they assist in helping the customers apply for the program and verifying eligibility and identifying the benefit payment amount to CSCA. After the customer is qualified, the CSCA will process payment and the customer records and send those records to Horne. And Horne is the third party payment processor that is handling the direct pay to the district. So once those records are sent to Horne, they will send us the payment and customer records and we will apply those payments to the customer's accounts and then we report back to Horne and Horne reports back to the CSD. So within the agenda item, I attached the PDF presentation on the program, the draft direct pay agreement and the LIWAP program guidelines. And I am open to taking questions. Okay. Jamie, we can start with you. I think that this is a really important step. I don't have any questions about it. I support it. I work for a nonprofit that continues to try to backfill and support resources for people who are still economically impacted as a result of the pandemic. And so finding ways to support people who need additional assistance right now is still, you know, really critical as other opportunities to do that, dry up. So I'm very much in support of this. Okay. Mom? Yes, I mean, I think this would be a really great thing and I think we should do that. I did have some questions about a couple of items, Kendra, that were in your presentation. How do the agencies identify who the customers might be that could benefit from this? Do we provide them with that information? No, so they reach out to all the low income members and I believe, let me check the guidelines. The low income households are considered 60% state medium income based on the gross income or current recipient of CalFresh, CalWorks, or the LAHEAP program. So they will reach out to the customer based on that. They will also provide us with like advertising information that we can post, you know, on our website and stuff like that. So we get the message out to, you know, customers that do qualify for that. And on our social media. Yeah. Okay, so the main thing is we're not providing any information to those agencies or self about who the customers are, okay, good. How much administrative time per customer do we think this is going to take because regrettably those don't sound like they're being covered. So what is our cost going to be on a per customer basis to process this? Yeah, so the one difference between this program and the water arrearages program that we already received funding for is this is a lot less administrative time because the customer is the one applying for, you know, the program and once they're deemed eligible and we just receive the payment and apply it to the account. With the arrearages program, we had to, you know, figure out which customers were in arrearages. We had to send all of the information over to the state. We had to waive all of the late fees on accounts. We had to return any payments. So it was a lot more cumbersome for that program. This one is basically just we received the payment, we apply it to the account and then we just report back to the, to CSD the accounts that were credited. I don't have a cost per customer. I could try to figure that out for you, but we also don't really... It sounds like it's the minimus time. A few minutes per customer. That's basically all that we need to know. Yeah, exactly. If it was, you know, a few hours or something that might be different, but it sounds like it's minutes. So no big deal. Is this considered taxable income to the recipient? That I don't know. I can figure that out. I do know with the water arrearages, it was not, but I will double check for it. Yeah, but the water arrearages was a state program, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is federal. Yeah, and hopefully it'll be the same thing, but I just want to make sure that if it is taxable, the customers are aware of that. If it's not, then that's great. Hopefully it's not. It would be more logical that it was not. Yeah. If it may have some insight into that. I will find out. Yeah, and I just... I don't want to get in the way of that question being answered. I just want to provide a public service disclaimer that we can't give anybody taxable. No, right, of course. Of course we can, but somebody that's involved in helping customers need to make sure that, you know, that people aren't surprised when they receive a 1099 for, you know, at the end of the year. Okay, no, let's do it. Okay. Mark, did you have any comments? What do we estimate the number of great payers within the district's curfew might qualify for this? Yeah, so this came up at the Budget and Finance Committee. We don't really know the number, just because we don't know, you know, all of our customers' income information. Is it 10 or is it 500? Can I offer some help in that? Sure. So on the LARA program, when it went through, the estimates that were made by the people that were advocating for the LARA program based on the PG&E qualification was about 1500, right? I thought that might be a little bit high, given the changing demographics in our community, but we are still not a wealthy area by any means. So that was approximately what, 15%, something like that. Yeah, I wanna say one of the committee members, look, I don't remember which one exactly, but looked up the percentage and I think it was about 20% of our district was, so that's around 1,600 customers, so kind of in line with the PG&E, yeah. All right, that answered my question, that's all I need. Okay, well, my other questions have been answered already from other board members asking, thanks. All right, Mark. That's okay, Bob. You went first this time and you asked them, thank you. I'll defer to you next time. So can I propose a motion here that we move that the district participate in the low-income household water assistance program and authorize the district to enter into a direct pay program agreement? Can I modify the district manager to enter into that? Or is... That's why I just said the district, because I think... I think the district does imply the district manager. Well, at the risk of getting too technical here, it is important to delegate signature authority to someone and it could be staff, district staff, but if you just say the district, then the president is the signatory, right? The board president is the signatory. So what do you want it to say, Gina? Authorize and direct district staff to enter into the low-income household water assistance program agreement. I will second that. Okay. Any questions or comments from members of the public? Larry. Yeah, Larry Ford Felton. I just want to add my endorsement of this action. Thank you. All right. Go ahead, Rick. Just one, I think it's important if Kendra didn't say that this does not take the place of the Lyra program. This is just another tool in our toolbox. All right. I think that's important. All right. One is for people who pay their bills. One is for the group that doesn't. You can't. Yeah. All right. Any other comments by members of the public? Then can we take a roll call to Holly? President Mayhood. Hi. Vice President Ackerman. Yes, and I will be dropping off the call after this. Thank you everybody and good night. Good night. Director Falls. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Passes unanimously. Next we have the consent agenda. Does anybody want to pull anything off the consent agenda? No. Then we will go to district reports. Are there any questions from the board on district reports? Mark was first. I'm referring to him. Go ahead. I saw your hand. We'll get everybody. Okay. On the operations department report, it references the badger meters and the replacement of those, specifically on page 118 of the agenda. I see that 24, 54 meters have been replaced in 66 months. I calculate leaving another, almost a little more than 5,000 to replace at that rate. It's going to take us another 10 to 12 years to replace all of these. Well, that's the thing with the meter replacement program is that it is a continuous state. Once you get to the end of the system, you'll be getting in. And how long are these meters? I don't know if after. Life expectancy? Yeah, what's our life expectancy? So the meters that we took out of our system for the California drive and the Fern and Reynolds mainline replacements, those meters all came back 100% accurate. Well, 99% accurate. There was only one that failed out of all of them and we did an age test, too, that we were directed to do. We went and pulled some of the oldest meters in the system at one time. And that was presented to the board at one time, too. And those meters also came back 99% accurate. And some of those meters were correct me from wrong, Rick, 20 years old? At least. Yeah. Okay. All right. So doing this across that time period is reasonable then from a. I do believe they're guaranteed accurate for 15 years, the new right. And one of the differences is between our systems and other systems is our surface water. Our surface water is not corrosive. It doesn't beat up the meters. Okay. And the systems I have just well water. Yeah, their meters are gonna go out way sooner. Okay. All right. That's all the questions I have on it. And I'm sorry that that was a brief. It seemed very brief, but that's all I can really come up with to do is give you the numbers. That's what I was looking for. Perfect. I mean, if we were doing a level amount of meters every year with a 15 year lifespan, we'd be doing about 550 more or less meters a year. And again, you know, my thing is you don't wanna be doing spikes in your capital expenditures because that just makes things really hard. A service business needs to operate level as much as possible. I did have a question, James periodically I like to ask this because sometimes we have new people watching but on your well drawdown reports, could you sort of briefly explain what folks should be looking at relative to a pump set, adapt screen area, et cetera, and how these are all consistent? Let me get to that page real quick. What page is that, Bob? That starts on page 127. All right, I'm gonna do my screen right now. 127 you said? Yeah, that's the start of your drawdown report. Okay. One second. 126 I got. So the pump set level is at 237 feet on Pharma Quilfewel 4A, which is the pump set is at 237 feet. And everything above, all those marks above it means the water level is above that 237 feet. So the 175, we have 62 feet, we have 62 feet of water above the pump set. Oh, let me sort of help here. As long as the water level stays above the pump set, we're good. Does it matter about the screen area? No, because the screen area, what that does it just cascades water down to the pump. So the screen area is the casing, not the pipe that pumps the water out. The pipe that pumps the water out is inside the casing. The screen area is the casing. So it cascades water down to the pump and then it pumps it up the actual pipe that goes up the middle of the case. So basically on all these items, since we are above the pump set level, we're all safe at this point, relative to a good operation of the pump. Yeah, we're doing pretty well in our well fields. And that's another thing, surface water saves us on that. We get to replenish our aquifer. And some of these readings that are on here, we have to mark them like on farewell 4A, that reading that's down at the pump set level is more than likely not a true reading because you can see where we're at everywhere. We never get down that low. So something was arrayed there, I would imagine, but we can't say that it wasn't the reading. Are there any kind of new electronic features available to give you more accurate readings that we could be taking advantage of? Well, and we have advanced to those. I mean, those readings are back in 2012, 2013. We were always advanced. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. I wanted to get back to the badger meter thing, Bob, on your 550 a year. And so we're planning to meet that again this year. So we should be at about 3,200 meters by the end of the year. We're making a big push this summertime and that's the time when we want to change meters. Yeah, I know at one point in time, we did a, we looked at sort of age of meters, quantity, that sort of thing, and sort of I think this about three years ago or so where we were looking at, well, what would it take to catch up? And then once you catch up, just doing, you know, 500 a year boom, boom, boom, every year forever, basically, or if they last longer than 15 years, whatever that new periodicity is. And I guess we'll find out in under 15 years how good the badger meters are with respect to their life. Sometimes the newer stuff, you know, appliances don't last as long as they used to and you never know about the new stuff, right? Well, the mechanics of the badger meter, I can say is advanced and it's much better than the census and the census lasted as long as they have. Well, that's good. Hopefully the last 20 or 25 years and we can reduce the number of meters we replace every year after we understand that. Staff look at that. No, I hear you on that. Big worry is going to be battery life and that's what we hope that we get the long battery life because these are all the smart readout meters. And it seems that with census and especially the pelton meters Neptune, battery life was half of what it was rated at. Right. And our battery life on the badgers right now is 10 years. So we will have to change end points before we have to change meters. Okay. I want a question from the public, Cynthia. Can we, thank you. Go ahead, Cynthia. Thank you. I just wanted to point out that the badger meters make it possible for the customers to use the ion water feature. Isn't that true? So there is an incentive to speed up the installation of the badger meters so that customers have more control over their own water usage. Cynthia, that is true, but in our mountainous terrain, it's not all customers. There is a few pocket spots that people don't get their actual usage for the month until their read comes in that is manually taken. Thank you. I also had a comment on that. I mean, I think within the context of how our community is doing on water usage, we are head and shoulders above, you know, national average, state average is that sort of thing. When you look at the water use in the wintertime, for example, indoor water use divided by our population, we're somewhere in the 35 to 42 gallons per day, per person. That is significantly below the state, the state goal of 50. And I think we sort of need to recognize that the bigger issue is how to deal with leaks. And I think our leak adjustment program is very robust in that regard. Kendra, do you have your hand up? Yeah, I just wanted to add on to James' comment about the meters that only read, we still can only read every 30 days. When we do import them back in from the website, it will show on those meters, if a leak is detected, and what we're able to do is go back out and extract the 90-day usage history. And so we'll be able to pin, we can pinpoint where a leak would start or whatnot, but we are able to have that feature. So that is sometimes helpful in showing a leak that came through. I just wanted to add that. Thank you. Okay. Good to add. Yes, I'm talking. I think that we are to the end of our agenda. And if there are no objections, I will adjourn. Hearing none, seeing none, we are off. Thank you. Is that a great goodnight, I hope? No, no, no, sorry, just one question. Did we get in touch with Christina? Yes. I think Christina Wise wanted to talk with Rick. We're good there. I emailed her, but we haven't met up. So I don't think we're good there yet. I responded to her. I emailed her as well, but I haven't touched bases with her on the phone yet. Okay, great. I emailed her and she gave her some thoughts, but she never got back to me. Okay. I will now declare this meeting adjourned. Good night, everyone. Good, everyone. Cedric, that is a...