 So, I'd like to convene this meeting for the San Lorenzo Valley. Oh, hang on just a minute. Did you get the other one? Everybody have their. I'm not online. It's on me. That's why I didn't bring one because I can't. Let's try it out. Okay. I'm not getting a reverb now. Okay, good. Okay. All right. I'd like to convene this meeting for the San Lorenzo Valley for the San Lorenzo Valley Board of Directors for July 20, 2023. All of you, would you take roll? President Smalley. Here. Vice President Hill. Here. Director Ackman is going to be late. She sent an email to both the president and myself. I'll make a note when she does arrive. Okay. Director Falls. Here. Director Mayhood. Here. Okay. Thank you. Any additions or deletions to the closed session agenda? Staff is not sure. Okay. Oral communications. Regarding any of the items that are in closed session. We've no members of the public in attendance. Here in person. I see. One. Tandy as a Samsung. But I don't know if that's a member of the public or not. But anybody like to address anything in the closed session. Not seeing any. I propose that we then adjourn to the closed session. We're unmuted. It's time. Kendrick, can you hear me? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. It takes a while to get used to the lighting. The camera. Okay. Tandy, you can join without audio. That's what I'm doing. Yeah. But Chad joined with audio. But he's just turned it off. There are ways to do it. It's all pilot error. Oh, yeah. And that's why I like to. I see that it's 6.30. So I'd like to reconvene this meeting for the board of directors and Lorenzo Valley Water District for July 20th, 2023. Holly, would you take roll again for us? President Smalley. Here. Vice President Hill. Here. Director Ackman. Here. Director Pulse. Here. Director Mayhood. Here. Okay. The board has, we have nothing to report as far as any actions taken in close session. Additions and deletions. Rick, do you have any? Add to this agenda. Okay. Oral communications. This portion is for oral communications by members of the public on any subject that is not on the agenda this evening. And I'd like to remind the public at this point that presentations are limited to three minutes in length. Please state your name and town or city of residence for the record. Begin in the statement. Does anybody in the public want to speak on something that's not on the agenda? Please step up to the. I'm John Jameson from Felt. I don't know that this needs to go. And that's what I simply want to express my sorrow that Josh. Yeah. That he died. On June 8th. I thought he was a great asset. Water. Board. He's gone. Josh. Wolf. Wolf. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate your coming here and saying that. Okay. Moving on. I don't see anybody else online from the public or anybody else in the audience. Okay. I'm finished business. We have none. New business. Item 10a is the delinquent water charges. Rick. Yes. And we have the finance manager on video here to address the board on the side. Kendrick. Okay. Good evening, everyone. This item pertains to placing customers delinquent and unpaid water and other service chargers on the county tax roll in accordance with water code section three one seven zero one. This means of collection is a result of the utility billing policy adopted via resolution number 25 and fiscal year 20. 2021. On June 17th, 2021. The attached listing encompasses customer accounts with the past two balance as of December 31st, 2022 with a total past two balance greater than $500. Two rounds of letters were sent out one on April 18th and then a final notice on May 23rd. The district will be placing 128 customer accounts on the tax roll for a total of $176,335.97. This is the third year the district has used this means of collection. Staff are currently analyzing the data and internal procedures for possible revisions to our internal procedures in order to capture more accounts. Staff is recommending that the board by motion adopt the attached resolution approving the delinquent water charges that shall be submitted to the county of Santa Cruz for collection on the property tax roll and authorizes the district to enter into an indemnity agreement and to provide additional information required by the county. Does anyone have questions? Okay. Yes, Kendra, we will have questions. Okay. So, I'd like to start with the board. Bob, do you want to start this one for us? Sure. Kendra, what percentage of the outstanding invoices does this represent? Let me pull up my spreadsheet here. The past two as of 1231, 2022, including all any amount that's less than 500 as well or. Yeah, I'm trying to get an idea of how much we're cat. What percentage of what we have outstanding as of whatever date this represents. And this would be of invoices that are more than 30 days. I mean, it has to be legitimately. Correct. You know, yeah. Yeah, okay. Let me bring up that. Sorry, I didn't have that open. Hold on one second. I mean, is it roughly 60%, 50? No, it's not. I mean, I don't need it down to the point. I don't know off the top of my head. So I just need to open this one. Okay. So are. From our left from the status report included in this agenda for May, the past news. The total is. Over 30 is 434,000. And then this actually encompasses. So since it's as of 1231, 2022, this would be considered a balance over 120 days. So the total balance over 120 days is 277,000 as of May. So that's about 176. That's about. Yeah. Okay. Next question is what is the issues associated with not being able to capture more? What, what kind of revisions are you talking about? So a lot of it is timing and. With sending out letters. So per the code, we're actually able to collect. All the letters that are more than 60 days past two as of July 1st. But doing this would only allow us to send out one letter. Because I believe per the code in the letter, you have to include the past two amount on the statement. So it would give a really short timeframe for the customers. To, you know, make a payment or give us a call. To set up some sort of arrangement or whatnot. So that's what we're going to be doing. So we're going to be doing that. And then in the past, the district has decided to, you know, As a courtesy give two notices rather than one. So it's more so just a timing issue. And we've been keeping it consistent as of the 1231, 2028. In the past, just to keep it consistent year over a year. But now that, you know, we've done this for a few years and I've really had a chance to analyze it. I would be comfortable, you know, choosing a past due date as of March 31st. Because that would still allow us to send out, you know, a notice to all the customers. The required notice for the code. And I ran the numbers for as of a March 31st due date. And that would be encompassing 245,000. If we were to do it that way. So I think that's probably going to be the route we go in in the future. It's just for this one, we stuck with the 1231 due date. I would definitely encourage you to do that. Yeah, for sure. Honestly, this is really the first year I've really had a chance to analyze it. Obviously last year I was on maternity leave and the year before that it was handled by the prior finance manager. So now that I've been able to kind of analyze it more, I think we need to update our internal procedures. And then the last question was, you'd mentioned that you do send out notices. Did anybody respond to those notices? Yeah. So if you look, you'll see that in, I believe in the April and May. Status report. You'll notice there was a decrease in the past two accounts. So that I believe is a result of, you know, the customers receiving the letters and saying, oh, you know, I need to make my payment. I need to put on my property tax scroll. So yeah, we do see it, you know, a little bit of a pickup in people paying their past two bills once they receive that letter. Great. Well, since I was in favor of this from the time I joined the board, it's really great to see it come to fruition. And I think it sounds like with the refinement next year, we'll be able to capture the vast majority of the, of the back due that is eligible. Yes, for sure. Great. Thank you. Okay. No questions. So Kendra, how successful is the county at collecting this? I mean, I know if you don't pay your property taxes, you get, you know, eventually they'll take your, your property. But what percentage of success are we seeing if we send them to the county's property tax scroll? I mean, I know that the county is paying for this. I know that the property tax scroll is worth of billing. What are we getting back? Say within six months. Right. So I don't have that number with me right now. That's something I can get for you. And maybe send out an update to everyone. But. That, you know, that's something I can do in the analysis. I just don't have that for right now. That's fine. Yeah. They teeter. Yeah. They teeter. They pay us before they get paid. Yeah. Yeah. Because they have an interest rate that's shall we say a little bit larger. Yeah. You know that you're probably more they get paid teeter. Yeah. Remember the word. Yeah. I do know that they pass, you know, they pass in April, June or April. Excuse me. In December, April and June. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's like a 50%, 45% and 5%. But that's, you know, for what they've collected on, and then they charge penalties on the uncollected balances as well. Thank you. Jim. These accounts that we're placing onto the roles, are they all accounts? Just clarify my understanding that have gone. To the past year or are some of these, you know, things that were rolling over from year to year. So, so these are. People that have a pass suit balance as of December 31st, 2022. So whatever bill went out. Whatever any billings. Through December 31st, 2022 have not been paid yet. So once we. So let's just say someone was on the property that got sent to the property tax roll last year. We would have wrote their balance off of the accounts and placed it into like a receivable account. So that balance is no longer on the customer's account. So we're not double, you know, putting amounts onto the tax roll. It's just anything that's been unpaid. As of December 31st, 2022. So we're not double, you know, putting amounts onto the tax roll. I see. And do we have any visibility into. Whether any of these properties could be properties that are like still, you know, Resolving damage related to the CZU fires. I mean, I have heard some horror stories about people being, having not with us, big basin customers who had lost their homes in the fire and, you know, they were in the fire. They were in the fire. They were in the fire as a result. And so I just want to make sure that we don't have anyone caught in our, we're not supposed to, we're not supposed to. No, because so all of the CZU homes. That were damaged are in our basic waiver program. So they're currently not being billed. They should not have a balance. Thank you for the reminder. Appreciate that. That should be extended if necessary to allow them to get through the county torture chamber. Absolutely. But that aspect isn't part of this motion. No. This evening. Okay. Kendra. Budget and finance has discussed that. It will come. Okay. Subsequent meeting. Okay. Kendra, I agree with Jeff's question of, so what percent of recovery have we seen, if you were able to take a past year, maybe the first year that we did this, and just give us an assessment of that, and what the county's able to get back to us on. And I understand that at least from Rick, just wanted you to confirm that this does simplify things for staff prior to what we were doing. Correct. To putting these on tax rules. Yeah. You know, the shutoffs were really kind of drove a wedge between us and the customer. And because it's not like we want to be shutting off people's water. So this is, this is definitely a more. Not humane way, but, you know, not as brutal way of, you know, letting the customers know, hey, you need to pay your bill, but while still providing them access to water. So, you know, it's definitely more courteous and. I think we, I think it the collection rate on this, rather than, you know, shutting off water every single month. And, you know, people, we would find that, you know, people get their water shut off and they would only be paying the minimum amount required to get them turned back on. And it was just something that was happening every month. And it was just, you know, this kind of game. So this is definitely more, more collect, we've collected more doing this route rather than shutoffs. And it sounds like it reduces staff involvement, particularly field staff. They're turning off meters, turning on meters. Definitely. Historically, there was about 200 customers that were routinely in arrears that were always the, that our guy was always going out and hanging the, the door tag and then shutting off and then returning and all that. It was a very complicated process. Yeah. I'm, I'm into a question that Jamie was alluding to. I see one of the customers on here has a outstanding balance of $5,000. Yeah. And a number of others are in the $2,500 to $4,000 range. They've accrued that in, in a year. Well, so I believe last year. Didn't have as many. There was a, there, yeah, there wasn't as many and that's unfortunately the year I was on maternity leave. So it's probably a carryover from the people that should have been on last year. Yeah. Okay. So this is more than a year's worth of service for those. Exactly. Okay. Or they're, or they're, you know, in turn, there could be a few that are just using a lot of water and they just haven't paid. So I think that would be a little, you know, within that year. Okay. All right. Well, um, sounds good to me. Do we go out and I mean, like, if somebody's used $5,000 worth of water that they haven't paid for in a year, do we ever like go out to the property and just like, what's going on here? Is there something. I think that would be a little creepy. I mean, we have like an internal process. I mean, I think that would be a little creepy. I mean, I think that would be obviously a high read come through. We'll go out and check that, but not necessarily for someone that just hasn't, isn't paying. Yeah. If it's a leak or something. Yeah. Um, well, given, uh, I've heard from the board, I'll make the motion and then go out to the public. I'd like to move that the board adopt the attached resolution. Approving the link with water charges. Okay. Okay. Um, would anybody like from the public like to comment on this? Seeing none. Here. I see none. Online either. Uh, Holly. President Smalley. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. Charlie. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Faus. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Motion passes. Okay. Um, Moving on to item 10 b. Breakfast and brain for springs. Just thinking in May 2021. Brackenbury and Forest Springs Mutuals into the San Lorenzo Valley Water District. The district received funding from the Department of Water Resources, small community drop relief program for consolidation as a grant with Brackenbury and Forest Springs in the amount $3.2 million back in May 2022. Again, in May of 2022 the board authorized a design and engineering contract with Sandus Engineering to design consolidation, piping, water storage and pumping station. The transfer water into the two mutuals pumping station is required. Sandus Engineering and staff located three parcels that would be a suitable location for the pump station. The criteria for the pump station would be hopefully in a public right-of-way, constructable terrain being flat, three-phase PG&E power available and the proper elevation to move water and then probably most importantly would be a willing property owner that would allow the pump station to be constructed on their property. Out of the three parcels only one location meant the criteria and had a willing property owner to work with the district in selling an easement to locate the pump station. That is HeartMath LLC. For those of you who've been around a long time it's the Old Forest Pool parking lot off of West Park Avenue. The district contracted Nicholson and company appraisers for an evaluation. The market value of the easement or take area stated in that as of the effective date of evaluation and subject to the assumptions and limiting conditions of the assignment is concluded to be $4 a square foot or $6,563 in discussion with the property owner of HeartMath. HeartMath has set price for the easement at $10,000. Staff is asking the board to authorize the district manager to purchase a $1,265 square foot easement from HeartMath LLC for $10,000 for the purposes of the two construct a pump station as part of the consolidation project. With that I'll try to answer your question. Okay, thanks Rick. Okay, I have a question. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Two questions. One, when I looked at the appraisers drawing of the property I saw roughly rectangular piece of property with a smaller rectangle inside of it which we would be getting the easement for and a fairly narrow access strike out to the public road. I did not see how wide that access road was. I assumed it was an access road for piping. Do we have guaranteed vehicle access? Yes, we do. I think that access road is both piping and the vehicle. Obviously the piping is underground and that is like a dry area. I'm not worried about piping but I want to make sure we didn't have an easement three feet wide for piping. Other question. At a recent board meeting we had a member of the public concerned about possible pump noise at one of the locations we were looking at and I don't know which location that was or if it's this location. It is this location. Okay. Were you able to you offered to escort him to another pump station somewhere and take sound readings? Were you able to? I did reach out to that individual. I have not heard back. Sanis Engineering which is the Prime Engineering consultant has hired an acoustic engineer to review the design and to make recommendations with additional engineering together and we told that customer that we would make that report available to them. I imagine he just entered into a contract. I imagine that's probably about three weeks out before we get that report back. Okay. I just want to make sure you were going to do diligence on that particular issue. Thank you. The parcel is constructable and flat but the access road is that also flat? It's flat too. Okay. It's almost flat. This is slight. I'm going to be sliding out on us. Okay. This is a parking lot that used to be that game. Okay. I haven't been around that long but I know what you're talking about. You've been around that long. You probably swam there and just got this. Heart math on the parcels next to it on there as well? Yes. Okay. I was trying to figure out why the number per square foot was so much higher than the comparables when you come down to it. I figured it was a combination of they must have been the parcels next door plus they're the only guys. We're stuck with a monopoly situation because their price per square foot is about 165% over the average of the comparables which is okay. So we're stuck. Okay. Yeah. I definitely would like to see the report as well and make sure that the customer gets that because I know where this is and people have a reasonable concern. We need to address that. Great. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I would also like to address by that report, I assume you mean the report from the acoustical engineer. Okay. I request that that would come back to the engineering environmental committee first so that we could look at that. I'm willing to bet that it has some mitigation measures in it being you could add the following additional equipment or you can do the following additional construction. Before we offer a report like that out to to a homeowner, I'd like to know what are those other items cost on a rough basis. So we're not advertising something that is then going to cost double what it might to build the station. So simply that. Yeah, Mark, I understand, but I mean it isn't a residential area. I think we have to do what's necessary to get the noise down to where it is even if it costs twice as much. Right. I understand that. I'd just like to know what that is before we send that out. So I mean rough estimate. Yeah, just that's all. That's all the same similar process. I love people who are here. And it may be something like a fairly minimal some sound insulation. I don't, but yeah, but I'd like to see that first. And we've talked about typical noise and the transformer step down transformers can put out a large loud buzz and they're looking and all that. Okay. Good. So it's not just the pump. No, there's other components that make noise. Right. Okay. Good. Okay. And the different frequencies too, I'm sure. Then I'd like to make the motion that the board authorized the district manager to purchase a 1265 square foot easement from Hart math LLC in the amount of 10,000 on APN 082-031-18 for the purpose of construction of a pump house to supply water to Breckenbrain for Springs Mutual Water Company. Second. Okay. Would any member of the public like to comment on this? Seeing none in the audience and none online that want to comment. Holly, did you take roll? President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Motion passes. Okay. Onto item 10C, the district manager evaluation. Rick. Yes. The district manager's contract protected October 19, 2019. And each October 19th thereafter, the manager shall be entitled to an annual cost of living adjustment or it's equivalent given to district employees at discretion of the board based upon a satisfactory performance rating from the board. The manager shall receive a written evaluation which relates to achievements, usually to find goals and objectives at least once a year from the board. At the discretion of the board, manager will also be eligible for up to a yearly 5% merit increase based on performance. At the rate of board meeting conducted November 17, 2022, the board reported out of closed session that it voted 4-0 to approve a satisfactory performance evaluation of the district manager for the past year, 2021-2022, which entitles him to a cost of living full of adjustment as of October 19, 2022. Out of the district memorandum, understanding with the management employees, the full of percentage increase was 5%. At discretion of the board, the district manager may be eligible for additional merit increase up to 5%. Okay. Thank you. Questions from board? Jamie. Okay. We have a lot of questions about this. I think it's good for you. Okay. No questions. Okay. Bob. Sorry. Just to make sure I'm getting the color right. That's a 5% color that's already been awarded. Yes. Yeah. Based on the contract and the changes in the MOU. That's correct. Okay. So what we're talking about here is taking it from 5% to up to 10% if the full 5% merit was granted. Do I get that? Do I understand that right? That's a consideration. Yeah. I understand that. But I mean, taking the total amount of from 5% up to as much as 10%. My own opinion is that we should give Rick the 5% merit increase in life of all the catastrophes that we've had to work through this last year and the time that he spent, given that he's in management, he doesn't get time and a half the way the other staff did. I think this is kind of a very minimal way of compensating him for that. And the fact that I don't know about you, but the fact that I just trust Rick to show up when it needs to be is something that makes me feel much more secure about the district. And I really appreciate that we're in the position to have somebody like that who really cares about making things right. You know what? Could I add something? Sure. Let me go first and then I'll come back to you, Jamie. Rick notified the board in January of his plans to retire. And I fully appreciate his desire to do that. At the same time, he could have told us and given us a 60-day notice at that point, and given where we were in January with pulling hair out from Rick and staff in order to try to keep the system running during the floods, I was concerned about a short notice. Instead, Rick has agreed to stay on until we have a replacement identified and in-house. So I greatly appreciate that. I am also the opinion that a 5% compensation merit increase is appropriate for Rick, given that and given the fact that the water continued to flow on a regular basis throughout the disasters that we had earlier this year. So, Jamie? I just wanted to add, I mean, I thought it seemed like very straightforward that he had earned that given all of the contract negotiations and where we landed with the rest of staff. So I felt really good about giving that to him. But I also want to say I'm not saying that as we go through the recruitment process, we're going to bring in the next GM at the top of the pay scale, but they're going to look at the top of the pay scale. And they're going to look at what the current GM is making. And this will make the position more attractive to some people. So, you know, I think in it, not just because you have been a wonderful GM, but also because we want to get a replacement wonderful GM. I support this. Okay. Then I'd like to move at the board of directors. Could I make a quick note? As written here, it says zero to five percent. Do we want to amend that before we vote and say five percent? That's what I was going to read. So, make sure because it says zero to five. Right. I move that the board of directors establish a district manager's annual compensation merit increase to be five percent, to be effective retroactively to October 19, 2022. Second. Okay. Would any member of the public like... Excuse me. I think you just sit by me. I have a few things I want to ask. Oh, I thought I... I'm sorry, Bob. I understand. You may not want to. Bob. Right. But that's okay. I was going this way. I want to make sure I understood your comment about the 60-day notice. I thought in the last update of the contract, we specifically requested a nine-month notice to retire specifically because of the fact that we would take time to replace Rick. So, how would he be able to do the 60-day notice? I'm not certain on that, but I know that there was a 60-day in there also. But... Well, I understand that. But the nine-month... Yeah, no. But I mean, I don't want that to be a... The nine-month was negotiated in good faith specifically to make sure that we weren't sort of left with no district manager once that notification was made. So, the 60-day to me is not really on the table relative to retirement. Now, he could quit maybe if he wanted to, but not necessarily for retirement. Yeah, I mean, I... I wish our community was looking at these kinds of pay raises. Right now, I think we're looking somewhere around two and a half percent of the average bill going to one person. I think a five percent increase is sufficient given everything that we're facing here as a district. Things are... Things are really tough for the people that actually have to pay the bills. And that's who I'm focused on right now. So, in the past, what we've done, or at least the policy that we had in formal one, is that we'd actually have the number available and announce that as what the compensation would be once these pay raises took effect. So, I think we need to do that here as well. We did it last year. We did it the year before. We've done it every year that I've been on board. 11,926. That's at five percent. Yes. But we also have the... What we came back with is what his total compensation would be after COLA, after merit raise. And we stated what that number was. 200 and whatever it is. That's what this is. Because what we're saying is he already got the five percent COLA. That's already factored in. So, the additional five percent would bring him to the 11,926 monthly or 250. I wasn't reading this correctly then. So, it may be that other people would have difficulties with it as well. So, right now what you're saying is that Rick's salary after the five percent COLA is 238.524. No. Oh, after, yes. After the COLA. After the COLA, 238. And after the five percent merit, it's 250. 450. Okay. Yeah. I didn't get the numbers. Okay. Let's make sure we're announcing it. But I didn't get that through reading it. Okay. So, we're at 250, 450. Yeah. So, we're at about 2.5 percent of the average bill for this compensation. Then I made a motion. I abruptly apologize for skipping over you, Bob. But I made a motion. I seconded it. Okay. All right. Anybody from the public? Let me go back to that. I would like to speak. I don't see anybody here and I don't see anybody online either. So, Holly? President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. No. Director Mayhood. Yes. Motion passes. I can just say thanks for the floor. And I would like to thank the employees. We've done a great job. And as long as we do, it's not just one person. I mean, as I'm the general manager, we have a great staff and we can do it without the staff. Agreed. But it takes somebody to lead that staff. You're in for now. So, thank you. Okay. Moving on then to item 10D, District Manager of Transition. Rick. Working with the ad hoc committee, we thought it would be a good time to bring this discussion to the board to discuss the transition. As has been said tonight, that I am not planning just to walk out the door without a general manager here in the seat at the office. In planning my retirement, I have to make some decision with CalPERS and so forth and notify them. I just can't walk out the doors and speak. We talked with our recruiter and we established a rough timeframe of what it's going to take to bring a new general manager to the district. For me to give retirement and talking with CalPERS, it's about a three-month process, anywhere up to a three-month process to process my retirement. Not asking the board to take any action tonight, but just trying to get the feel of the board for my retirement planning that I would like to put into PERS to retire after that new general manager either signs or takes the seat. And that process could take up to three months. So, there would be a carryover. We've talked about carryover. We discussed what would be needed. And I don't want to leave the district in the state of confusion. For the new GM, I want that person to be able to get up to speed. I'm looking for a very smooth transition. I think all of you are. So, I'm trying to just get a feel of if that type of carryover would be acceptable. Because I don't want to put in now and then have to go out the door and the new GM, we're unsuccessful in six months. We're looking at eight months. So, I thought, you know, the adult committee, we discussed it. We thought it would be a good time to bring it to the board as we're in this process. Okay. All right. Well then, Jamie, Jeff, the adult committee, what's been your take? Let me start with Jamie. I'm really torn, I have to tell you, because I want you to stay on and I want there to be a great transition period. But the one thing that the recruiter said that did, I was like, well, that rings true a little bit, is you may find a candidate who's like, I don't want that. I do not want the old general manager hanging around for three months when I'm trying to, you know, sort of create my own, you know, process for leadership. We may not, maybe we'll find a general manager who's like, yeah, I definitely want that. But I wonder if there's some kind of a contingency plan that we as a board could have, so that if we did have a candidate say, I really, you know, I'm happy to come on, but I'm uncomfortable with this three month transition. Is there anything that you could do to short matter? Does the, you know, general manager, I don't want to come on and be an apprentice to a general manager for three months. What would our options as a board be to say like, you move into a interim role of some kind or I don't know what the options are? To me, this scene is fairly simple. And it's a tapering off and the new person comes in and gets the badge. They are the new person, they're the person from that point on. The outgoing person is available as a consultant, as an advisor to the new person, not to the staff, except as invited by the new person. And over time, the amount of time he, you know, as time wears that runs down here on this three months, the amount of time he spends in the office, as opposed to being available to meet with a new general manager over coffee at a restaurant somewhere, you taper this down so that by the time the end of the three months is there, you don't notice that he's gone. That's this, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Rick is looking at that no gap between salary and retirement. I'm not talking about, I mean, he's still an employee. He's still an employee, but his role is not come into the office, necessarily come into the office and make decisions and tell the employees what to do. His role is to act as the mentor, advisor, right resource person for the new general manager. And at what, at what conference? I suggest she has a solution. So the reason I'm talking is because when Rick announced that he was thinking of retiring, I did a fair amount of reading about the rules with CalPERS in terms of bringing people back and under what circumstances they could stay on. And it became clear to me that one of the options would be, and it could be in cases that you just sort of said, is if you had somebody really didn't want somebody kind of peering over their shoulder, is there's plenty of opportunities for putting somebody in charge of special projects and things that the district needs done, whether it's remodeling a space or taking charge of a particular engineering project or doing, you know, being the, you know, reaching out to certain groups of people or whatever. So I think that this is something that would be negotiated at the time when we had a new person in place and make them feel very comfortable about, you know, what they wanted and the role that Jeff just described would be a tapering down, but that doesn't mean that Rick wouldn't be coming in or working less. He'd be working for his money, but we'd do it on some kind of projects that we mutually agreed upon between Rick, the board, and the new district manager. And the intent would be at the same compensation. Yeah. So effectively, it's sort of a, almost like a severance package, but not called that because I don't think it's, no, it's not a severance package. I mean, it was at least the way CalPERS, they actually had a number of ways you could do this. And, but I wouldn't think of it as a severance. It's just, it's allowed to have this kind of overlap kinds of situations. And that's up to, we just had another individual retire on, or came into my office Monday and said he's retiring and he got through PERS in three weeks. So this could, you know, there's conflicting information. You get conflicting information first, you know, but it could take up to three months. And, you know, I could easily, as soon as we get a person that signs, they can start that process. And it could be, you know, it could be up to three months, but it could be sooner. I'm pretty easy. And again, like you say, Jamie, I agree with you, probably depending on the manager may not want a past district manager there. I strongly agree with that. So I want to exit, but I want to exit in a way that I don't leave the district without a channel. I mean, I don't think you would have wanted the prior guy hanging around. Oh, right. Just kidding. So, but the idea is it's the same compensation as long as your retirement doesn't kick in. So you would leave after, well, slightly different work, but maybe different compensation. It could be work on the consultant, you know, it could be, you know, but the intent is to retire. I understand, but I want to make sure I'm really clear here. Are you signing up for a fixed three months, or is it variable up to three months? It's up to the board. Are you all serious? I'm trying to understand what your expectations are. My only expectations are to give coverage, like a smooth transition, Bob, okay, and be able to retire, leave the district and then start receiving, you know, I don't want to wait three months for my first check first. So you understand. So if you got through it in three weeks, and the new general manager said, hey, we got it covered, then you're fine. That does bring up another question, though. What if you got through it in three weeks, and the new general manager's like, I could really use you around for another month or so. That's a more decision than that. Well, not 100%, because you'd have to be willing to do that. Well, yeah. Yeah, because it impacts you. Yeah. I don't want to impact my purses. Once you start taking purses, you know, it's right, there's ways. There are ways to do it. Multiple ways. I'm anticipating a pretty quick smooth transition. You've got a new district engineer now. So that person will be up to speed. Legal counsel is getting up to speed very quickly. I feel much more comfortable. Okay. And Rick, I think you expressed concern to me with the day we hire a new district manager, the board's saying, okay, Rick, plan on your retirement party for tomorrow. Bye. That is a concern. Okay. And it was, in this discussion, was to get a feel from the board as to whether we were going to say move it sooner. I don't think that's intent, but I mean, it's a two-way street. And we have to have clarity on the two-way street. Right. Right. And I think I do now. Okay. Okay. Good. This discussion was simply for discussion. Right. And there's no action to be taken on this. Does anybody from the public want to comment on this item? Go ahead, Mr. Hallowich. I'm Bruce Hallowich from Boulder Creek. When I saw this item on the agenda, I thought the district manager would be transitioning to a new role, kind of the way Director Hill said consultants or advisor. I've been noticing the date below the logo on the sign there. 1941. And I know that the current district manager has been working through the district room most of that time. Thanks, Bruce. There's tremendous amount of institutional knowledge here. About Calcurs, I think after someone retires, they can still go to work for some agency for up to 960 hours a year, which is pretty close to six months. And the part about this that... So I think it might be good to have such a knowledgeable consultant available even for as much as three years, not just three months. But on the other hand, I feel kind of bad that it sounds like Calcurs is driving this process. It's all about Calcurs. The county has 2,000 employees and it must be somebody retiring down there every week. And I don't think they're all getting an extra three months just because we don't know how fast Calcurs operates. So that wrinkle just seems sort of irrelevant to me. The other thing is about the special projects. I'm afraid that there would need to be another discussion item just like this one to talk about special projects. Then the new district manager would have to be involved in picking special projects. And that sounds like a whole big topic that maybe isn't really necessary to get into. So I have mixed feelings about it. I don't know. I don't really know what to say. Thank you. Thank you. I do see one of the members of the public online. Nicole Lauder of Breckenridge. I'm from Barrage. Barrage. Thank you. Nicole? Nicole, would you like to speak? We have a room to speak. That's what it looks like right now. I don't see her moving in. Is she even in the speaking area? I'm texting the facilitator right now. Normally we see them popped up in our area. Can you hear me now? I didn't get the button to unmute until just now. I just want to express from a Brackenbrace perspective that Rick has been with us. For those of you who don't know in the audience that we're going through this consolidation process as a result of the CZU fire. But we have a meeting with Rick since March of 2021. And it's really critical to us to know that the things that we've been working on are not lost to somebody new in their haste to take over. So we would support Rick if the new person coming on does not want him to be in a in-office situation that Rick work on special projects. I also from going through the FEMA process for Brackenbrace. I think that with the two most recent disasters and the CZU fire not getting along as far as it should have by this time that Rick could probably be beneficial to that process. I know there's a consultant being hired but I just think that if Rick wants, I'm not trying to push Rick because I'm sure he's ready for retirement. But there's definitely that tie over that's important with his knowledge. That's all I'm going to say is that I support him staying on a reasonable amount of time. Thank you. Thanks, Nicole. Thank you. Okay, without but just to follow up next, I think Nicole makes a really good point. One of the special projects could be documentation associated with the things that are in Rick's head that maybe are not in the systems yet at the level that maybe we want them to be at. You've been here a long time. I mean, not quite 50 years, 47 something. There may be things that you do know that aren't captured yet inside of our systems. And as we as we move into an area where there is transition in staff, it's really important to capture as much of that knowledge as possible so that the people that come after you have the ability to take advantage of what you know. Moving on then to the consent agenda. There are two items on the consent agenda. Does anybody want to comment on either of those items? Not seeing anybody. District reports. Department status reports, we've got four starting with environmental. So let's go through any comments on environmental. Jeff, Jamie, Bob. No, just that I'm happy we got our grant looking forward to taking full advantage of that. Yes. I might do have one comment or question on it. It's addressing described as a Loch Lomond feasibility study that is supposed to be out in July. What is that going to cover? Right. So right now, Mark, we're working with the city of Santa Cruz. We just received back their comments in the last week. We supplied them with the draft RFP. So the feasibility right now, it's just going out for a request for proposals. And that from there, we'll enter going into the full feasibility study. Okay. So we don't have a feasibility study for issuing an RFP to get one? Exactly. Okay. All right. I think the last one is 10 or 12 years old. Right. Yeah. So things are different. Still. Yeah. There's that up for me. Okay. Moving on then. Finance, Bob. No questions on that, Gail. Jeff? Only one comment. It looks like with water deliveries continuing to drop, we may be getting very close to needing to, you know, to triggering our revenue drought rates, special rates. It'll go up with the change of weather. I'm not sure. I'm sorry. It'll go up with the change of weather now. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. Because we were at 10% below at the last bit right there. You know, that's interesting in that I know one of the messages that tends to go out around drought conservation is save money. Yeah. And so, you know, it's sort of a mixed message, you know. I understand. So, you know, save water, save money, no, just kidding, raise rates. So, and I've seen on Facebook a number of people that talk about that when these sorts of things happen. I think if we really need to work on our messaging around that. Yes. I fully agree. I'm just saying it looks like we're very close to being triggered by our policy. We may need to address that issue. Well, we could have addressed it beforehand, but we chose not to. But any further questions on the finance? No. Okay. Jamie. My only comment was just that we're down year over year because we had an unusually cool long spring. And yes, I think that's sort of inclined. Yeah. It'll start going up. I'm not sure if it's going to go. No, I haven't. Ken and I really haven't talked about. I mean, the history has been once it goes down, it doesn't come back. Boom. Once you ask people to conserve and they conserve 11%, they change habits that might come up three points or four points, but it's probably not going back to where it was. Historically speaking. So I've noticed also looking at the month by month projections and then deliveries that take out of the last 12 months, we overestimated eight of them. So we need probably to take a better look at our estimated estimating procedure there because it doesn't do us any good to overestimate on deliveries. I think we did make some changes in the upcoming budget that did lower some of those estimates in the whole place. That's partially correct. Something we need to keep an eye on because we can't continuously be overestimating and then catching up. Yeah. I mean, it's not, I don't know that it's all necessarily conservation. We had, I just looked up the weather from last spring and we had some periods of real heat waves last spring, which would drive people to use more water. That's just, you know, so if we didn't have those heat waves, we're just not going to get that consumption. Moving on then, any questions on legal aspects? I have one. Rick, in your report, staff has not had the bandwidth to keep up with the amount of either feedback or information that we're now getting from our new district council. Well, I wouldn't make sure that you didn't give the appearance that, you know, we should have got more done and that's not council's fault. It's just that I've been working taking, doing picking up a lot of Josh's duties and so forth. And we're starting to, we're getting more and more done. We've got, you know, the consolidation agreements are out. The Law Stakers tank entry agreement is out to the property owner and that's been completed. Although we still got a lot to do, it's not council has been very attentive. But I take it that Barbara and her team are getting stuff done now. Yes, they're there. Okay. Yes. Good. Good. Glad to hear that. Any questions on operations? Yeah, I just had one on the surface water, sort of a preview on July. Are we still pretty robust on surface water? It says right now. We're starting to drop down with, you know, the change of weather. It drops down just as quick sometimes as it goes up. Because we're at 80% or as of the end of June. Obviously, Paul Creek maintains a strong producer, even with the work going on in the bypass. And the former creek is starting to drop down and our consumption is as noted, you know, and so. Well, maybe it was below forecast. We're still moving fall creek water into the north system. I'm not moving. I don't believe any, any surface water over to Scotts Valley at this time. Okay. So they're all on well. Right. We're back. I'm pretty sure about that. Well, you know, I'm here. James, the voice, the voice. Yeah, Bennett, raw water pipeline came back on the service during the month. And that's why raw water, surface water, I'm sorry, what again came back online. And it springs out of water pipeline. Okay. And that's the increase in surface water. Excellent. Okay. Use as much as we can. Yeah. Any, any other questions on operations? Okay. I don't have any at this point. Okay. Midi reports. By the way, questions. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So I think I just heard that ball creek water is being sent to the north system. Is that okay? So it's been a long time. I used to be pretty aware of the water rights down in Fulton. Santa Cruz has one and we inherited one from Cal Am. So I've lost track of of the status of the water rights. But the, for one thing, the ball creek water right said that the water, the place of use could only be Fulton. So has that changed? Carly, you want to answer that? I can answer that. Thanks for deferring though. Okay. So we're actually, we're operating currently under an emergency because of our intakes being offline in the north part of the system. As part of our conjunctive use, we are evaluating the place of use change through the environmental impact report we're completing. So we are in the process and we have alerted the state of our transfers in that place of use. So basically part of the Santa Marta Rita groundwater plan is being implemented by proxy because of this emergency use. We're able to share water amongst our entire system. I understand that, but we haven't been sending surface water regularly from Fall Creek out or surface water to Scotts Valley. We have been doing that since the, because of the emergency circumstances, following the season fire and the loss of our pipeline. So we're effectively acting as if we had new water rights. I think that's great. At bottom of pitch 127, there was an item on the legal report. I guess there's dueling water rights down there in Felden and I guess that's in front of the state water board. And I've kind of lost track of where this all is. And so I'm wondering, are there, are the applications from the two agencies on file in a way that a member of the public can see them? Is it really the state water board or the regional water board? I don't really understand the process. Is there a hearing date set with some time in the future? Just a little bit of information about that. Thank you. I don't believe so. Carla, do you have any response to that? Right. So we did about two years ago, right after, I guess pretty quickly after the fires, we did submit letters to the state water resource control board telling them about our situation and asking which process they wanted us to go through, explaining that we were going through the EIR process and planning to do the place of use change. But we had not heard back. I think we've sent a few follow-ups but the state, it sounds like they're pretty under water. But we have been coordinating with them and that's something we've got to keep pushing. The place of use, we did actually complete the petition and that's in draft form and it's waiting for legal review and that's something that our new legal counsel is going to have to catch up on. But we are meeting all bypass requirements in Felden. Am I correct, Carla? That's correct. Yes, we are meeting all our bypass requirements and we have our 1600 permit through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as well for the diversion. Historically, we haven't been out of compliance at this time anyway. It's normally once in a while but mostly later in the fall. I have a question about the item on page 128 in reference to the Pelton Heights tank. I understand that the legal process is afoot. I'm a bit curious to know about the three options that are currently being presented and how they might back us up. As you know, my wife and I have been and others have been concerned about the location of the tank. We would like some clarity as to what we have. Do you want to address that previously? Yeah, we're centering on that second alternative site which is further away on the other side of the access road from your property and we just currently corresponded back and forth with the property owner on a temporary access agreement so we can perform geotechnical appraisal and environmental review and he is reviewing that and we'll be signing it shortly and that'll be the next phase that will move on that project. Thank you. We concluded the items on our agenda for this evening. Given that, I'd like to adjourn the meeting. The next board meeting is scheduled for August 3rd. Okay. Okay. So that is adjourning at 7.39 p.m. Thank you, Eric.