 Good afternoon, I'll call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. If we may have a roll call, please. Chair Galvin, I'm going to do the roll call for our clerk because she's lost her voice. So, Chair Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Ononi. Here. Board Member Badenfort. Board Member Bannister. Here. Board Member Doud. Here. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Mullen. Here. Any statements of abstention by Board Members? Under current policy, I don't think I need to abstain unless there's some corrections made to the minutes, but I wasn't in attendance at that particular meeting. Thank you. Item 4 is the approval of the minutes. So the minutes from September 20th will be approved and ordered. We have a couple of staff briefing to 5.1. The first one is on the public contract bidding environment update. Dr. Hornstein. This item is a follow-up from the discussion that the Board had with staff at the last meeting to provide some additional information regarding the bid environment. Deputy Director Urbanoch is going to be presenting. Thank you, Dr. Hornstein and Board Members. Chair Galvin, Board Members, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and it's always good to see all of you. I do want to thank you, Board Member Matt Mullen, for the very good questions that you asked of us at the last meeting, and that was sort of echoed by the rest of the board. It did give us an opportunity to take a pause and to really look at the information and the data to try to answer some of your questions. So we're here this afternoon to present the information that we found and subsequently to the last board meeting. So I'll get started. We'll start with a very brief overview of our bidding platform, which is currently Planet Bids. We'll talk a little bit about and show the results from other communities that we interviewed and gained information from. And then we'll look at specifically the bidding climate here in Santa Rosa. So Planet Bids is our electronic platform. We started using this system in 2016. It's used by a significant number of agencies here in California. And it displays all forms of public bidding opportunities for goods and services, for professional services, and for public works contracts. This is just a quick snapshot of what a viewer would look, would see when they open Planet Bids. And anyone can access this information and view this list. You'd have to be registered with Planet Bids as a vendor to then select a product and identify what projects you may be interested in and then to actually see the specifications or the proposals as they may exist. So when a vendor does login and select a particular project that they're interested and they view the plans and specifications if it happens to be a construction contract. Their information is placed on what we used to call the plan holders list. And they're identified as a perspective bidder. And you may recall that term being used in previous meetings. So I just wanted to give you a really high level overview of what that electronic format looks like and have an understanding of if we use language that we haven't defined before. So it's pretty new for us. But before we use this electronic platform, we were advertising in the press, Democrat, and on the builders exchange. And that'll be interesting as we look at some data that I'll present further in the presentation. So to try to identify what's going on in our current climate, there were some questions. And in fact, maybe some assumptions on our part on how the climate was being affected, the bidding climate was being affected by the fires and whether or not it is. So to try to identify that, a number of questions came up. How many bidders are we getting versus what the engineer's estimate is? Have we reached out to other communities to find out what's going on in their climate? And then we'll talk a little bit specifically about our history. And then we'll take a deeper dive into sub-regional projects, primarily because that was the topic of the item that sort of initiated this analysis. So this chart here represents all the bids that we have received from January of 2015 through this month, October of 2018. And it compares the engineer's estimate dollar value with the number of bids received. And it's kind of interesting if you look towards your upper right-hand corner, you'll see that we had one project where the engineer's estimate was exceeded $12 million. And we received seven bids. I think we would all pretty much expect something like that, a large project. People are interested in it and subsequently we received seven bids. Conversely, if you look in the lower right-hand corner, we had a very low dollar value project and received eight bids. So that was about a $300,000 engineers estimate and we received eight bids. So if you just look at that, maybe those two items cancel each other out and you have to look at the bulk of the information. And the takeaway here is fundamentally we're receiving between three and four bids on almost all the majority of the other projects. So I thought that was rather interesting. When we reached out to several other of our local communities, Contra Costa Sanitation District, Fairfield, Vacaville, Runapark, and Petaluma, we also reached out to Sacramento. And that's a lot of agencies and you'll recognize that there's not a lot of data points on this graph. But what we're comparing here is the engineer's estimate and the difference between the engineer's estimate and the low bid that was received. The zero line obviously represents the engineer's estimate and above or below that represents the bid result. Again, I would caution from making too many conclusions about this, just because it's not a complete data record. And if you are going to take anything away from this, you could just probably look and see that the majority of these bids were below the engineer's estimate. And here's the same graphic with respect to all the bidding activity that has occurred in the same timeframe that I mentioned earlier from January 2015 through October of 2018. And I must say that this particular chart, the colors don't represent anything except the different years. It shows the engineer's estimate as the zero line. And then if the low bid received was under or over that engineer's estimate by what percent? I think that I expected and our group expected that we would see sort of an increase in the 2018 sort of an upward trend. But that didn't show up. And the majority of each year from 2015 pretty much has the same pattern as it did the year before, which we can start to make some conclusions about that. And it shows that our bidding methodology is consistent. It does show that the majority of our bid results are higher than the engineer's estimate. And again, here we have a couple of outliers that are up around 140% over the engineer's estimate. If you look at the top of the graph, and that range, I would call the outliers probably from 80 to 140 excessive. But what it doesn't show is that there's any indication that there's a difference in the activity or the way that the engineers, the way we have been estimating our projects and the influence in the industry due to the fires. With this representation, it's not showing that that has changed. So we're going to take a little bit of a drill down here. And I think this information will help provide some clarity on what the bidding activity is out at the treatment plant specifically. This is the same information that was provided on the previous graph. We're looking again at the percent over or under run of the engineer's estimate. And we've put information, the specific project information, so we could see if there were any distinctions that we could make. And what you'll notice about this graph is there are three projects up there that are significantly higher, excuse me, two projects up there that are significantly higher than the engineer's estimate. One being nearly 120% over the engineer's estimate, and the other at 80%. So we asked ourselves, what's going on with those two projects? One of them was a very low bid, a very low bid of estimate of $105,000. And it was pretty unique. It had to do with an expansion of the maintenance building out at the treatment plant. Staff received that bid and made the recommendation to the board to reject all bids. The same story was true on another project. If you look to the left, that was 80% over. And that project was to do a biosolids repair. And that repair had to do with the roof at the biosolids facility. And the bid that came in was considerably higher than the engineer's estimate. In fact, it got so close to what it would cost us to replace the entire structure that staff made the recommendation to reject all bids to the board. And the board agreed and rejected all bids. And staff subsequently did minor repairs to that structure. Again, there's another bid that was rejected. So if you take out sort of the top three high bids in this analysis over the past three years of all the bids that have been presented to the board regarding subregional projects, we start to get a more normalized look at what's going on. We also start to have a better graphic display of the variability of the type of project that occurs out at the treatment plant, which may explain some of the variability. But also what it really shows is that staff takes a look at each project on an individual basis and tries to provide the board with enough information to make good decisions about whether to move forward with a bid or not. And in many cases, when the bids don't make sense, staff will make a recommendation to the board. So to reject all bids. The bid that was in question at the last meeting has to do with the digester gas improvements. And so staff went through a thorough evaluation on the merits of the project, much like we did on other projects. And in this case, made a recommendation for the board to approve the project. But if we sort of take those aside, the majority of the bids that are coming in are within plus or minus 20% of the engineer's estimate. So that's sort of the end of my presentation. And I do appreciate the questions that were asked. And I think what we have learned, what I have learned specifically, is that we want to reach out to those other communities and get a more complete understanding of how they're processing their bids and what information they use before we make sort of any changes to how we analyze bids. We did have conversations with many of our consultant engineers who have prepared the bids in the past. And in particular, this last one, and they stand by their estimate. So if there's a takeaway for me, I think we're seeing some market pricing that goes on. And when we ask questions of our engineering staff and ask them to review and analyze their engineer's estimate, that they are using current pricing from similar projects. So we feel like our estimates are valid. And what we're seeing is the market when we see these variabilities enter in with high bids. And I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you, Mr. Bannick. Board Member Delvin. Chairman Galvin indicates questions, but I think my questions really would now go into items 6.2, which is on the consent calendar. So I will reserve that. But please keep in mind that I wish to remove 6.2 from the consent calendar so we can ask further questions. Board Member Grable. Yeah, thank you for the presentation, especially just showing us where engineers' estimates lie in the recent past history of RFPs and bidding. I did want to clarify that one of my sort of requests and questions at the last meeting was to see how we were. I wanted to see a comparative analysis of our bidding RFP response rate to other communities in California, other cities like size, other water departments. So I can see, is this a condition in the industry right now? Is it across all cities in this sector? Or are we somehow unattractive to responses from contractors that are specifically operating in this sector? It's a good question, and it's somewhat complicated. As I mentioned, we did reach out to other communities to try to understand sort of what's going on, and we will check back in. If we're talking about a, and if I misunderstand your question, please feel free to correct me and get me back to the point. If we want to do an analysis on a specific sector of the industry on why our bidding climate is the same or different from other communities that would require a considerable amount of work and analysis, what I tried to present was that our bidding climate hasn't changed in the recent four years, three to four years. It's pretty consistent. Is that an indication of our geographic location to major metropolitan areas? Is that because we don't have the workforce here? I mean, so it gets complicated, and I'm happy to dive in and try to get that information to you. No, I definitely understand the complexity in the criteria and figuring out why that might be the case. But I was just wondering if it was the case that response rates in RFPs and by sector I just mean in water departments in other cities. In terms of us being obviously somewhat fiscally conservative with our rate of money, we do have a responsibility to be hawkish about that. For me, being able to have a sense of where we sit just in terms of are we attracted to contractors to even bid on these? Because when we get one bid on a project, obviously that's where the concern came from at the last meeting. So our other cities are the same size experiencing something like that. I don't know, I understand it's an undertaking. But even just having a sort of accrued insinuation based on some anecdotal data or communication with other departments, which I know we have some in the AACWA and other sort of associations, it would be nice for me to know where we sit. If we're an outlier, well, that's a concern. If it's, if it's, I do have an anecdote, oh, sorry. I just wanted to offer, I didn't mean to. We are, we have a lot on our plate, staff does. So I'm cautious of biting off too much. Of course, I'll accept a direction from the board. One thing we could think about is quarterly or semi-annually taking a deeper dive into this and bringing it to the board. Just on the timeframe of next meeting or something like that would be a little rough. But maybe we'll think of like the next quarter thinking about it. And when there's available time reaching out to some folks and trying to develop a data set that could be maintained over time, something like that, if that would work for you. Yeah, there's not, there's not incredible urgency to it, except for the fact that I feel like I don't have the information to really assess whether we're doing the right thing with RFPs, the way that they're designed. Our engineers' estimates are obviously diligent. I just want to see, in terms of the response to our RFPs, that's my concern in comparison to other jurisdictions. I would offer an anecdotal from one of our senior design engineers who's in East Bay, he said when we start getting projects in that are over $10 million, you'll see an increase in activity on treatment plant projects. Board Member Mullen. Thank you. I appreciate the staff coming back with an update in the time you spent to review this. I do appreciate a couple of questions regarding your presentation. The little dots that you showed about the bid range. I understand the cyclical nature of bids. You're probably rarely hear from us when we're under the engineer's estimate when we're making money, but you always hear from us when they're over. As I said at our last meeting, 70% over is hard to swallow. And when we get to that item, I'll have some specific questions about our process there. But what would have been interesting to see in your comparison of over and under over the last three or four years is how many of those were what I would describe as standard bids for standard equipment that everybody has access to and proprietary bids. Where it's specific, it requires specific parts that are only available from one vendor and how those bids or negotiated prices come in versus a general bid. Here's the equipment. You can get it out of any catalog or any supplier. So it would have been interesting to see that comparison between proprietary projects where they came in in our range versus general bid projects. It's just a question. Because proprietary systems by their nature limits your bid opportunities and it limits your supply and I believe it also limits your ability to control costs as a general bid does. Just a comment. I'm not looking for a response. When you do your outreach to other communities about similar projects, do you, does that include who have you been using for your UV work or for your screen work or replacement of ponds or things? Does it go into that kind of depth when you do outreach with other similar agencies that have similar plans like we do? What I can tell you based on discussions with our engineer on this particular project and question is that they check in with vendors on pricing on specialized equipment and that goes that information is included in their engineer's estimate. And we typically, it's not been my experience and maybe it's a question that I need to find out if our consultant engineering staff are reaching out to other agencies on specialty equipment for pricing. And again, it's not just specialty, it's who's doing your treatment plant work on whatever and can we get your list of who you've used in the last five years compared to who we've been using or reaching out to just to try to increase the players in the pool if you will is what the reason I asked that is whether how wide a net are we casting to try to get interest in coming up here and doing work for us. Thank you. Board Member Bannister. So the concern was about the project where we only had one bid and your data indicates on average we usually get three or four sometimes more in this case it was less I think there's been a couple of others though we saw that only had one bid and you indicated that this system that you're currently using planted bids was implemented in 2015. I'm just wondering if anecdotally you notice any either increase or decrease in the number of bidders upon the implementation of that system. Actually I would have expected that we would see an increase in the number of bidders but again this chart here where it shows the number of bidders based on the cost of the engineer's estimate all the data is from 15 to 2018 it represents the same projects that you see in the other one and there really is not a significant change going out on an electronic platform versus when we just advertise locally. But this data doesn't show that because you implemented planted bids in 2015 we'd have to have data from 13 or 14 to make that comparison. We could certainly go back but it doesn't appear on this limited data set that the reaching out on planted bids has increased our bidding pool. And you're saying that just from experience because the data actually since we we're not making an apples to apples comparison right we're not we're only comparing planted bids data here. We do have 2015 data here so we have a year's worth of information from when we were advertising on through the press democrat and at the builders exchange so that's a fair question it's not an even distribution of information. I see I thought that the planted bids was implemented in 2015 you're saying. 2016. 16. I forgive me if I misstated the date. Thank you I'm misunderstood that. Any other board member questions or comments? Thank you for the clarification and the staff briefing and we will move forward thanks. We have two items on the consent calendar I know board member Dowd wanted to remove 6.2 and I believe board member Mullin. Yes Mr. Chair I also request that we remove item 6.1 from the consent calendar move it to the regular calendar so we can discuss it. Very good so we'll take both of those off the consent calendar and we'll now call item 6.1 which is calling for a resolution of the waiver of competitive bidding and sole source award for purchase of the aqua screen parts. This is a Nino. Director Hornson do you want to pass 6.1 for a moment? Sure why don't we call item 6.2 then please which is continued from our October 18th meeting contract award for the Laguna treatment plant digester gas conditioning improvements. I have some questions on that one okay. Chairman Galvin members of the board my name is Tracy Dwayne a supervising engineer with the capital projects engineering division I'm here to answer your question. Basically I appreciate the presentation that you just gave us on the trends and with the data that you presented I don't see trends changing greatly which does surprise me somewhat. I also looked at your chart that showed that three different projects if memory serves me correctly were rejected because staff or the board didn't feel comfortable with wording a contract under those terms. So my two questions really are this has has anybody during this time since our last meeting looked to see through conversations with other engineers cities whatever to make you consider that our in-house engineers estimate might have been too low that's question number one and question number two is is there anything at this point with this project that's driving us to do this because there's an emergency need to get this project done. Those are great questions and to answer your first question whether or not we've done and spoke to other agencies and tried to determine whether our engineers estimates are too low we haven't done that part of it and I would like I mentioned during the presentation that was a we did our best to try to reach out and get information that we could to bring back to the board this week that would require a little more work on our part which I want to take on and sort of understand what the variabilities that they're putting into their engineers estimate what methodology are they using versus what the city of Santa Rosa does I would refrain from changing artificially increasing our estimates without some way to determine a better method to do that and again we did reach out to our engineer who prepared this estimate we asked for a detailed analysis and comparison versus the contractors bid on this particular item and our engineer is very comfortable and supports his estimate as um the right amount for the estimate and what we're seeing is the market guiding the price of the project to answer your second question I believe that staff as I mentioned does a lot of homework to make sure that we're informed and bring educated decision with the forward to the board for your consideration there was conversations with staff from the treatment plant and as we mentioned during the presentation last time that this is a vital small part of a process that will ultimately the microgrid process that will ultimately return money to the city in a cost savings form if if there's a desire to not award the contract now and a recommendation is we would review our estimate and put it out as subsequent date we would recognize that we would have additional cost administrative costs to repackage that and we would potentially you know let me withdraw that we would delay the larger project so in staff's opinion we stand by our recommendation to ask the board and our recommendation is that you approve the contract thank you any other board board member mullen thank you um just following up to a board member doubts a question um if if the board were to decide today to reject the bid and go back to the drawing board and come back go out to bid again and see if we can do better is there a danger and during that time and and I would I would look at coming back for start perhaps in the spring um is there a danger that the plant would be in non-compliance um I don't specifically know that I could um ask Emma miss walton to come down she was the project manager on it and very familiar with the details good afternoon i'm walton deputy director of engineering resources this delaying the project would not put the the the plant in non-compliance it would put the the equipment that we're installing on our engines the selective catalytic reduction units that are that are the exhaust treatment units that are going to go on the back end of our engines it would put them in jeopardy so this gas conditioning project is really to protect those very expensive units that will allow us to operate our engines more freely and um actually you know save money on the magnitude of about a million dollars a year in electrical costs so it wouldn't put us in non-compliance but it would put very expensive equipment in jeopardy so let me let me try it a different way is so the jeopardy you're talking about is that does that mean we would put those pumps or that equipment that you're describing in jeopardy of failure having to be replaced of having to the media in them to be replaced they're very sensitive units and they're sensitive to any kind of contaminants in digester gas so the digester gas conditioning improvements will improve the the conditioning of our gas make it make it cleaner gas so then when we burn it in our engines it won't impact those exhaust treatment units they're basically filters and if we put a bunch of gunk in there it's going to mess up mess up the filters and then they're very expensive to replace okay thank you so relative to the to to rebidding if we were to direct you to go rebid it over the winter work tends to slow down in the winter time on many projects and there could be an opportunity to to attract more bidders for doing the work in whenever we can turn this around in doing that would it also be valuable to review the bid document as a part of that to see if the scope of work is something that we have that we could massage somehow and bring it into a more cost effective or get it closer to the target date or is that a futile exercise so two questions i guess you had one is if we pushed out the bid later in the season our data regarding the bidding climate does not show that when we push projects to bid later in the season that we end up getting better bid results the data just doesn't suggest that so i don't know that that would be of benefit the second question regarding scope we would not recommend moving forward with a variation on the proposed scope of the project all the equipment that's included in this project is necessary to operate the microgrid and the scr units in the future okay thank you board more gravel yeah thank you thank you for clarifying i know from our tour of those big was it four Cummins units that very very expensive and i know that the as part of the microgrid project um basically scrubbers right um on the uh on the on the back end um are also incredibly expensive and delicate um on this and and pretty much everything i trust the staffs uh do diligence and in knowing that the scope is necessary and technically accurate and all that um my concern was more in the again the comparative analysis of our bidding climate versus others but if this is going to save us money it's going to benefit our repairs in the long run and we're putting other assets at risk if we don't do it i i definitely support moving forward despite the fact that we have uh one bid that's that's 70 percent over um it seems a cost benefit and and just trusting staff to diligence there um behooves us the second thing i would say is um a question we're getting grant funding based on the microgrid demonstration project is there a contingency there that we're jeopardizing i i remember talking about that at a previous meeting i just want to make sure that i'm i have i'm taking that into account is there a state or federal grant involved in that that we're basically waiting on until we have completion of the demonstration project so we have there's two grants at play one train is receiving a grant for the project to implement the project as a whole that this would not put that in jeopardy the project can still move forward the second is the grant for our continued use of the battery it it's a it's a bit nuanced but um and and that that grant would also not be in jeopardy with not installing or not doing the gas conditioning upgrades that has to do with use of our of our of the battery okay so yeah and i remember those factors from that those were really cool the uh so the primary concern then from a technical uh perspective is jeopardizing the equipment on the other end if we don't follow through with the requisite um scrubbing on the front end basically correct okay any other board member questions or comments all right i would agree with board member graveled i'm concerned about the cost obviously but if we're jeopardizing those pieces of equipment and if we're delaying the implementation of a process that's going to save us a million dollars a year the sooner we get it done the sooner we start saving that money so i'm fully supportive of going forward with this board member down i i have been very concerned about this project and i am glad that staff has come back and made this presentation i concur with uh board member grabel and uh chairman galvin that there are some extenuating circumstances that would allow me to vote for moving this project forward with the recommendation that when staff ends up with something that doesn't fit their considered engineer's estimate before the bids are received that you do some research with other entities to back up so the board has confidence that our engineer's estimates are accurate and responsive to whatever's going on in the market but given that because of the things that you have just answered for me i can support awarding this contract board member banister i agree with that and what i guess i was wondering about going back to the bid process is it seems like um we could be more or i guess the question is could we be more proactive when we get a bid that's over 50 percent over the engineer's estimate and we only have one bid is there a way to reach out to other qualified contractors and ask them if they would be interested in bidding on the project or do we have to be this passive about it i guess um i i don't know that i would use the word passive after we receive the bids we have an obligation to review them for responsive and responsible bids unless there's a significant reason why we would or would not and i'll ask assistant city attorney miss mclean to elaborate on some of the the legal ramifications about sort of we're not we can't go out and then kind of fact verify and negotiate when we have a bid on the table um there is a process to follow and some government code sections that um frown on what could be considered shopping by a public agency so um this still yes thank you um i did some further research um from our last meeting on what the options are available when we are in um this situation um both our charter and the public contracts code as well as our city code they're not in perfect alignment but i will say um it is clear that the the board has two options um initially to award the lowest bidder or to reject all bids and then the question is what happens after you reject all bids um i caveat that by saying that if we do not receive any bids on a project um uh invitation then we do have the ability to negotiate a contract for a project however if we receive even one bid we must um either accept the bid and award the contract or reject the bid if we reject the bid then there is some there are some provisions some language um that says we can we can abandon project or we can re-advertise for additional bids or go through an additional bidding process there may also be an option though it would have to be i think carefully considered in research by staff ahead of time the um charter and the public contracts code do allow um by a five seventh vote of the board to um reject the bids but then also consider um other alternatives to um accomplish the work either by its own city forces or um through another means and it's again need would need to be elaborated by staff but um to to accomplish the work so it's it's not something that i've seen the city do historically um so quite frankly is something that would be a new new um method for us forward but it is really clear that we have to either reject or accept initially and then we have some limited options after the fact if we reject board member molland i appreciate the staff um clarifying the the the questions that we've all raised regarding this item um and and uh also the candor about the impacts if we postpone it or reject it um that it might have on the system it i'm really wrestling with this as i think you could tell over the fact that i understand the savings we're going to generate from this project it's very clear what those savings are those savings are going to be whenever we do this project um but i'm we're also paying a premium we're paying 70 over the estimate and you just said again today you stand by your original engineers estimate so you're basically asking us to pay 70 more than what you feel this project is worth um and so um i'm really wrestling with that um in the overall scheme of things and and i'm not a big fan of rolling the dice and hoping that our equipment will survive a three month delay while we go rebid this thing um it's it's we're we're kind of boxed in here in that uh this came forward you went through your normal process and we come back and we have one bidder and you're asking us to approve one bidder and we're kind of up against the clock here and so we don't have a lot of wiggle room and it's just i'm still having a hard time swallowing this vice chair arnone i'm i'm in line with what the comments made by uh board member gravel and i'm prepared to make a motion if that's appropriate at this time before we make that motion we do have just received a speaker card mr duit did you want to speak to this item a concern that i have is that when you say you're caught between a rock and a hard place it would help the ratepayers if the packet explained why that hard place exists the information that was just brought forward today wasn't available to read here to see why it's felt by staff it's an emergency and you have to do it and i believe that the staff is honest people but by the same time i don't necessarily believe without some facts that you can't wait three months and i believe that any bid that's seventy percent more than the engineer has said may not be the best way to go for the ratepayers so you're basically taking one thing and balancing it and saying okay well our equipment break and that'll cost us more or can we go back out and get a more fair bid that will cost us less in the future i would err on the side of costing the ratepayers less and waiting those extra months i don't believe your equipment's going to break i believe it's been maintained probably very well by the staff and there's no emergency here in this fact this fact sheet this is all i have to go by this is 6.2 up here there's no emergency listed in here in any way shape or form so to have somebody come down here today and say well we have to do this because it's the only way we'll keep the equipment together doesn't ring true to me and i appreciate that i'm not a fully trained engineer but i'm a mechanic that understands machines and how to do best by them so please don't accept this bid rejected and go back out in the future that would be better for the ratepayers i believe thank you thank you mr. Dewitt just for the record the staff report does indicate the critical critical nature of this particular project as it relates to the completion of the micro grid demonstration project which is scheduled to be completed this fall so thank you board member sure yeah my other comment would be from your presentation it's also clear to me that three months is not going to change a bidding climate i would definitely love a more big picture understanding of of that and how we measure up to other communities and what's going on maybe statewide but to to think that after three months were some and putting a lot more staff time and resources in putting more money into the actual rfp and achieving the same result that to me it would be you know you know even more wasteful uh use of public funds so i i definitely trust your recommendation there and the data that we've been shown on the bidding that we're not magically going to fix that overnight i think as as board member down mone said working on that in the in the near and long term to make sure we just kind of wrap our heads around that and figure out where we sit is is would be totally worthwhile as we have staff time to do so but it is clear to me as well that we don't want to be putting more resources and money in staff time that frankly we don't have into achieving the exact same result you know more more likely than not when we also have the the impending burden of the the damage to equipment or any of those things so thank you for being so thorough um in your in your response analysis and presentation there thank you uh vice chair anoni did you want to make a motion yes i'd like to make a motion that the board of public utilities by motion approve the project to award construction contract number c 0 2 1 0 1 laguna treatment plan digester gas conditioning improvements in the amount of nine hundred sixty eight thousand dollars to the lowest responsible bidder responsive bidder uh pacific infrastructure corporation of pleasant and and authorize the total contract amount of one million one hundred thirteen thousand two hundred dollars second motion motion by vice chair anoni seconded by board member dowd to prove item six point two all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions passes unanimously are we ready to go back to six point one director hornstein item six point one is looking for a resolution for a waiver of competitive bidding and sole source award for the purchase of our aqua screen parts deputy director prince will start with a purchasing agent tremble next so there's a little ambiguity at times about who is lead on purchasing items and i think there's an interest in um shorting the list of uh people who staff reports are from in the future so forgive the little bit of a hiccup there on the front end um this is a procurement of some parts i'm happy to discuss any questions related to operations at the laguna treatment plant with respect to this equipment and brandon tremble is from purchasing divisions he can answer questions related to procurement of the parts um with that i'd be happy to entertain questions about the staff report and operational aspects of the project thank you board member questions or comments board member mollin thank you i think i'm the one that raised this issue before so i'll start off because again we're dealing with proprietary equipment um it doesn't seem to be a standard bid process it seems to be a negotiation now we can call it a lot of different things but it seems to me that staff and the supplier sit down in a room and talk about what we need and then they go back and they give a surprise list and i hope i hope you can clarify that for me but so with respect to sole source products which is what we're talking about here there's only one supplier and it's it's not one size fits all it's one supplier and um do we as a part of that do we sit down and say show us your books and show us your you know like when you go buy a car you can go in and they say here's our invoice and we get this this amount of money over the invoice and you can drive out with that car do do we do a similar thing with proprietary uh products like this do we say they pull out and say here's our government price list normally if this was a an investor owned treatment plant or a private treatment plant they would pay this for this product and you only pay this um and we get an understanding that we're getting something because we're investing in their proprietary technology um and so let me just start with that um great question thank you so much so i would start by saying that in 2007 the city actually underwent a request for proposal for these particular products and went out and did a thorough analysis and investigation and made a determination to purchase these particular units um based on that the ongoing um infrastructure is then proprietary it would have been proprietary regardless of who you chose they're very intricate specialized pieces of equipment so we did a thorough analysis and made a decision um they're really at the end of what they consider to be useful life and so they had engineers come to water that are specific to andrets and really help the staff who are the subject matter experts and provide the ongoing maintenance of the equipment on the day-to-day basis to really understand and digest exactly what you just asked um i have spoken to staff and andrets and confirmed that this pricing paradigm went through at least four different versions to really understand what the best outcome was and to really fine-line detail of the four units which units needed a deeper dive as far as components and the other ones to ensure that we end up with a useful life that continues between 12 and 18 years was the estimate okay thank you um um so we when we do the the price review with them we we walk out of there feeling that this is a fair price for the products that we're purchasing correct um it's sometimes difficult so there isn't a standard government pricing to really address your question um we will do an ancillary search on the internet possibly look out for other people that have similar products to ours look for publicly available contracts um you see a lot more for larger more utilized systems like our Trojan UV system where i can find other cities that may have smaller systems than ours but i can see what how many units they purchased and what the costs were associated with their own council documentation i also wanted to speak about something that you had said earlier around the actual language in the award which is which begins with this waiver of competitive bid i want to be clear to the board that when we are certain that there is a sole source and in this case indeed it's proprietary we have documentation to that sole source and so there is no bid this is a nuance in language that i don't necessarily recommend as your purchasing agent um because i think to the general public it's somewhat misleading we did not waste any staff time actually proposing a bid process we actually went directly to a negotiations process um to really evaluate and understand not only the project approach but what um ancillary spares um specifically in this project we have a lead time issue so we wanted to make sure we have an understanding of what we need that we can get it ordered and then move forward uh thank you uh my last question is just more of a general question about proprietary products and again uh from afar i've watched the the treatment plan expand over the last 20 years and it's it's fantastic it's an award winning plant uh recognized uh on many different levels across the country and and through the industry is um but when you when you invest in proprietary product products as i said last time you're married but you can never get divorced because it becomes almost cost prohibitive so in our as we move forward do we ever as a part of our long planning for repair or replacement of products ever look at trying to migrate away from proprietary products and look at the latest technology that somebody else may have invented um that perhaps is either more standardized or more available from other uses knowing full well what the cost would be to take out the proprietary stuff and bring in a different type of technology um if i may answer that question um generally yes however there are certain treatment processes at the plant that will most likely always require some sort of proprietary equipment now proprietary equipment does eventually wear out these components that are in this particular uh item are components of a larger system that is going to last uh much longer uh with these replacement parts in it they're essentially consumables if you will um but they many projects in the sub regional system and not just at the plant um require equipment to fit in a certain area and do a specific thing and um there are competitors who can meet certain constraints but once you do select a competitor through a competitive process which these screens the the overall screens were selected from um you are as you clearly well understand married to that vendor and um wherever it's possible to open up the the options we do but i can guarantee that there will always be situations where you will eventually go through a competitive process and identify a vendor but the consumable components of whatever system or equipment that you buy will require um purchasing from that original vendor so we would have a chance to revisit this when the screens themselves as complete units reach a point where they're at the end of the year's full life and would go through another competitive process to identify full screen replacements and that's really the opportunity to have uh more competition and not have a sole source situation but it is a fact that once you re-enter into a relationship with a vendor for a specific thing like these screens you're you're remarried to whoever the newly selected vendor would be and honestly it's just an unfortunate reality of uh some of the equipment that uh we purchased um for example the Cummins engines that were just referenced in the last item uh we can't put GE genbacher parts on a Cummins engines for obvious reasons when those engines are worn out we'll have an opportunity to change vendors but at that point we would be with a new vendor and need to uh bring items similar to this with sole source justifications and uh quite honestly it's it's it's not really embarrassing but it's awkward that so much of the uh sole source procurements uh the city happened in my division this is a regional division for reasons related to these these complex vendor specific systems that we operate i would also like to add that um agreed the systems themselves are very unique we have a very large facility as well i'm globally large um one thing that would be able to address the the count or the board's concerns would be as we evaluate new opportunities when units that are sole source actually reach their useful life end that we push a paradigm to make sure that we have ongoing maintenance and articulate spares within at least a two to five year agreement plan so after you've actually installed your product and and proceeded past and it's actually in working order you have an understanding of articulate spares how many you would need and be able to hopefully push some fixed pricing in advance um that varies based on industry we're seeing a huge variability in steel right now so we see a lot of pricing that's changing quite rapidly and we force the vendors to support those things i would like to point out that for this specific request there isn't an ongoing maintenance contract in order since the origination of the products placed in service because our staff actually are the subject matter experts and provide the ongoing maintenance so this is a more of a useful life issue within its end these screens if i may add um are a significant departure from the prior um headworks equipment that we had at the plant and it has taken time to get to know the equipment and determine rates of consumption of the consumable components of the equipment and i think going forward this process that you're being presented with today this this item will inform when we would need to be bringing additional equipment procurement items to you in the future so they they've been installed for quite some time i think it's over 10 years or they're about and we're still actually getting to know the equipment and the the where rates of certain components that haven't yet had to be replaced Mr. Mr. Chair that concludes my questions thank you thank you board member doubt i don't mean to put you on the spot but just to put this in order when you made the original selection to go with andretz separation ink for the whole system what was the cost of that system um the original cost was so we actually did the rfp back in 2007 and the request for proposals was specific to product only i want to point that out installation occurred through a separate major public works agreement so the original award was for one million sixty thousand four hundred and seventeen dollars and sixty cents and i would also like to add for the pleasure of the board that i did some research in and prior to this meeting to understand that the current costs in 2018 for the same equipment if we were to just buy the units not install them is 1.57 million so they've they've actually maintained a very useful life cycle cost and ideally i mean this is a quite small repair if you look at the total global cost for ongoing yeah that that was a purpose of my question and we all face that whether you're buying a car or a refrigerator you've got things that belong to it that are made to fit in as replacement parts but they're a small part of what the whole purchase was when you bought the car absolutely i i certainly can support this and there's no no further board member questions or comments we have a resolution oh is it a resolution in this case okay i make a resolution of the board of public utilities waiving competitive bidding and approving an award of a sole source purchase order for aqua screen parts to android separation ink of dallas texas and waive the reading of the remainder of the text second motion by board member dowd seconded by board member mullen to approve item 6.1 and the resolution all in favor say aye aye any opposed that says unanimously thank you very much item 7.1 is a report item on our northern sonoma county water conservation funding agreement good afternoon chair galvin members of the bpu i'm shawn mcneill with the water use sufficiency team in the water department and i'm here to talk to you about a funding agreement that we have looked into or or have done great work to put ourselves in position for being able to take advantage of so we're just booting up i think you can take all the credit you want i don't think this was luck okay so this today i'll talk to you about this funding agreement with sonoma water formerly known as sonoma county water agency and i'll be using their newly adopted name throughout this presentation before i get into the agreement i just give a little background on the city's green exchange program we started in 2007 it's to help us with our peak demand reduction really take a look at our water use in the city and look at the peak time is there way to shave some of that water off so that we wouldn't have to upgrade our pipes and systems to maintain our system and the peak demand programs are really addressing that and so in our service area the peak demand is in summer so programs that address that water that's used in summer have that benefit of reducing overall peak demand and we started this program has two components the irrigation efficiency upgrades in our very popular cash for grass program the cash for grass program provides rebates of 50 cents per square foot for turf removed and replaced with low water use plantings and the city has removed since the beginning of this program 3.5 million square feet of turf and i also just want to point out since uh 2014 we removed 1.4 million square feet and that number is important when i get into the contract details so we'll talk about that in a minute and so the estimated saving since 2014 is about 25 million gallons per year and for the whole program we're gaining about 60 million gallons of water saved per year so the opportunity just kind of dig into this opportunity the state awarded Sonoma water with funds to help water efficiency in northern Sonoma county we weren't a part of that grant and the original agreement was set up just for these northern communities they were unable to spend all those funds in those northern communities so they went back to the granting agency and were approved to open that funding up to other entities in the watershed including the city of Santa Rosa and that these funds would go retroactive back to any rebates back to 2014 and this was emergency drought funding and so you'll recall those of you who are on the board then and we were doing lots of activities throughout the drought and got a lot of people involved in our programs and so this funding could help offset some of those costs that we incurred in that time but the city would need to enter into this funding agreement with Sonoma water for us to access those funds this funding agreement provides funding about 37 and a half cents per square foot of turf removed and up to 116,250 of funding would be made available to the city and that our current already provided for rebates would more than exceed the amount needed to fully recoup this full $116,000 so our staff recommendation is to approve the funding agreement to be a part of the northern Sonoma county water conservation grant program with that any questions thank you mr. McNeil any board member questions or comments we have one speaker card mr. DeWitt thank you my name is Dwayne DeWitt I'm from Roseland and I'm very glad you folks have been working diligently to reduce landscape water needs I'm supportive of this and hope that you will go forward with this one of the things that I'm hoping is that you'll also talk with other departments within the city to get them to look at how to reduce landscape water needs specifically for a number of years I've been advocating for the conservation of natural land in Roseland there's an area along Roseland Creek where we believe there could actually be stormwater retention basins and a way of doing water efficiency with nature so I bring this up right now because the recreation and parks department has just made a proposal which they actually publicized on krcb radio stating that they were going to put in irrigated multi-use turf at a site that we've said should just be natural in our community and it's located next to endangered purple needlegrass something that's the state of california's grass officially and it's known to be endangered and they have this idea that like they're going to put in some new turf out there that's going to be an expensive project putting in the irrigation piping for it as a matter of fact the property that they just got with the help of the agricultural preservation and open space district of 2.5 acres at 1370 and 1372 burbank avenue they allowed the irrigation piping to be torn out after it was purchased by the taxpayers that's kind of a shady deal in its own self but that property at 1400 burbank avenue it's been in city ownership since the year 2010 paid for with taxpayers money and we really believe that this would be an excellent project this type of activity that you're undertaking here to implement at 1400 burbank avenue as soon as possible until that recreation and parks department people that were about pulling turf out and not spending for more turf to go in especially because outside right now it's about seems like it's about 80 degrees out there on the first day of November we may be entering another one of those periods that some people call a drought so i do hope it'll keep all this in mind and let it reflect positively on the good work that the Santa Rosa water is doing to induce landscape water reduce their needs and induce the retention of natural spaces thank you kindly for your time thank you for your comments mr. DeWitt any further board member questions or comments if not i'll entertain a motion i'll make a motion to approve the agreement for northern Sonoma county water conservation program between Sonoma county water agency and the city of Santa Rosa and authorize the chair to sign the agreement second motion by vice chair Arnone seconded by board member grable to approve item 7.1 all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions passes unanimously thank you very much mr. Neal item 7.2 is a report item on the adoption of a mitigated negative declaration regarding an approval of the acquisition of 1225 Fulton road you can need to turn your microphone on thank you thank you chairman galvin and board members my name is julian tollas and i'm an associate civil engineer with transportation and public works this is jill scott she's a right away agent with the water department we also have our ghd consultant christine gas bar in the audience to help answer questions if you need today we're here today we're here to talk about the Fulton road lift station project um we're going to give you an overview of the project description we're going to discuss the initial study and mitigated negative declaration and provide bpu recommendations the west college lift station was constructed in 1965 and is known to have existing operational challenges the valuation of the list a lift station was completed in march 2015 by brown and caldwell which recommended long-term recommend which recommended long-term replacement options three locations three locations were looked at as part of the evaluation the church site was more feasible than the other sites with more flexibility to connect to the existing system and a larger footprint for vehicle vehicular access the news lift station will be installed at the proposed site at one two two five Fulton road the existing gravities that remain will be extended from Fulton road to the site from this location the city will construct a new force main to the intersection of Fulton road and west third street slip lining the existing force main on west college to the north trunk line um as an option is another option that can be looked at during the design phase and has been concluded included in the secret document this is a lack of the conceptual site plan for Fulton for the Fulton road lift station this this does not show the final layout it was an initial the initial study and the mitigated negative negative declaration was prepared by ghd no significant impacts were found these mitigations are typically included in new construction projects such as air noise and storm water management pre-construction biological and cultural studies per-secret requirements the ism and d was circulated for a 30-day review period comments from the public have been addressed and are included in the the attached document no substantial revisions to the ism and d have been identified for the acquisition of the property staff met with the board of public utilities in closed session in january and august um of this and last year um the board gave direction to staff on price in terms for um the purchase of the property staff has successfully negotiated a purchase agreement in line with those terms and parameters which are given by bpu in closed session and staff is now seeking final approval to complete the purchase for the future lift station we are recommending that you adopt the mitigated negative declaration and the mitigation monitoring plan approve the project and approve the acquisition of the 1 1 1 2 2 5 folton road property we're happy to answer any questions that you may have thank you thank you very much any board member questions or comments reviewing the um environmental document specifically the the comments there were some comments from the uh some of the residents in the mobile home park adjacent to the proposed location for the pump station and if you look at one of your maps in your your presentation it's literally a stone's throw from some of the existing homes there was there any as a part of the the preparation of this document was there any uh presentation or outreach specifically to the mobile home population at this location to try to educate them about what's going to happen and what the impacts would be both during construction and then once the site was up and running we did the typical outreach that we do for for cip projects the notice of intent was mailed to all of the residents within 300 feet of the project we have as i've spoken to people who have called to me i have um reminded them that this is not um the the design has not begun and more outreach to the neighbors will be made during the design process to help uh refine the help refine um there can bring their concerns and their uh recommendations into our project um i let them know that that we plan to be reaching out to them in the future uh thank you for that and um then secondly is the existing site that that we're proposing to build on it is currently occupied by the the church and uh there's some other uses there and so if we move forward with this today and and certify the the document and move forward um there is a um is the the city uh in the department going to um work with the residents there on the the church site uh and the uses there to make sure they understand our schedule and what our plan is so that they can um so that nobody's surprised by the fact that when we start rolling in there to do work because once we take title to this property and move forward we have a timeline and um so we need to have a site that we can come in and do our work and secure and everything else that we do when we we do major projects like this but all the players and the people involved with the existing site now the church and the community garden and those others that everybody understands what our end goal is and um they understand what our timeline is and there isn't that any last minute surprises about i didn't know you were starting on Monday the city will be working with the church as well as noticing and letting anyone know that has access currently um of what the timeline is for the city to take possession of the property um so hopefully there will not be any surprises okay thank you any other board member questions or comments if not we have a resolution i'll move i'll move the resolution of the board of public utilities adopting a mitigated negative declaration and mitigation monitoring program and approving the acquisition of 1552 Fulton Road Santa Rosa for the Fulton Road sewer lift station and waive the reading of the text i think it's 125 Fulton Road i spoke dyslexically excuse me 125 i second edmore thank you motion by vice chair anoni seconded by board member dowd to approve item 7.2 all in favor say aye aye any opposed any extensions that's unanimously thank you item number eight is public comments on non-agenda matters mr duit thank you sir my name is duane duit i'm from roseland and i've come today because i wanted to see if the city would reach out and help to get even more funding from the united states environmental protection agency brownfields revitalization in the roseland area three years ago at this time of the year i was helping the sonoma county community development commission to write a grant to the us epa it ultimately was successful and 392 thousand dollars was given to the county which is currently in use with a firm called stan tech consulting to look into 15 parcels along roberts avenue which is right adjacent to the smart rail line and right near highway 12s overpass going to the west it is close to the highway 101 intersection and the reason i come here is because there's opportunities for the city now that it's been annexed and that area is in the city for you folks to ask for up to millions of dollars in grant funding and what's called area wide community planning grants to help brownfields revitalization this is the real tip of a positive spear into activities that are inter jurisdictional the thing of it is is you need to have a lead agency the city manager's office is very busy planning and economic development they're already stretched thin but this is about water essentially because how those areas became brownfields was because a leaking sanitary sewage system contaminated the underground aquifer all the way from it's called boyd street next to the rail line that's where the old point st george's fishery was it goes underneath timothy street goodman avenue avalon west avenue mc minne avenue is the street i grew up on and it was actually considered the site of a state super fund back in 1984 so that's been cleared but the opportunities are still there because not much has really been done in that area to revitalize it and repair it so i'll just leave you with this note tonight at six o'clock at family center the city subcommittee on the open government task force is meeting and when i came earlier today i didn't know the specifics about the one o'clock special session there are no no agendas were up here for it so i had to go ask for one i arrived a little bit late and specifically was about negotiating for the properties of the lutheran church which you're now just been talking about on folton road also i'm hoping that in the future you folks will adopt the city's idea that they're going to go with a more open government and they're going to share information with people in a forthright manner early on in processes it can be a positive thing city staff are typically risk averse they don't want to have anything get in the way and they don't want to be considered at fault for something such as that equipment you just talked about over at the digester gas implementation so i'm just basically a person who comes here and can occasionally make time to get this information because i work evenings and weekends the average joe or jane can't get down here during the work day and yet you folks spend millions upon millions of dollars of ratepayers money and that would interest a lot of people in a positive way many people in this community are conservationists and environmentalists and they want to see some of the good things that come forward you actually have heaven on earth in the department here and i like hearing the good things that come forward when we're doing water conservation nature conservation and things of that uh that ilk so i'll leave you with this i have a copy of santa rosa sustainable education garden pamphlet for out front when they took out that water wasting lawn and also you guys had the uh 50th anniversary celebration out at the plant and you gave away water bottles to people and i'm like yeah that's a good thing we could be doing that so i'm hoping that you folks will take this adherence to nature conservation types approaches and go forward out there in roseland where there's some nature could still be saved and redevelop those areas that are brownfields utilizing some federal funding and that has shown in emoryville to have brought in 10 to 12 times the amount of the initial funding emoryville went from being just a little hack kind of truck stop along the bay bridge to now one of the most prosperous communities per capita of any in northern california that could happen right here in roseland just less than a half a mile away from here if you folks have that foresight please do have the foresight thank you thank you mr do it we have no referrals we have one written communication any subcommittee reports any board member reports board member grable yeah i had a board member comment as well but um we had a meeting of the ag water ad hoc uh subcommittee and uh we reviewed further the criteria for setting ag water rates um and it was it was productive and and nothing has has materialized uh that is set in stone out of that committee uh as of yet but it is moving forward and the um many of the ag water rate payers slash customers were uh in attendance at the meeting and that was that was very helpful um to make sure we were sort of entering this process and good faith and really taking into account uh all the concerns the criteria the contingencies that we uh that we need to have available um and all the different factors at play and to the next five or ten years that we can that we can see or foresee so and if uh we don't know you had anything to add that i missed i would just like to hear your comments uh board member battencourt board member grable and i were both uh all three in attendance at this meeting with the ag community we had uh users of the recycled water voicing their concerns and we had a productive presentation from mr reed uh concerning different approaches to um handling the uh trying to get some uniformity and the pricing of of recycled water uh so it was all in all a helpful exchange of information and i think uh we're trying to hear all voices that have an interest in this and i thought it was a productive meeting and i i believe there are more on the on the books so we keep moving forward and trying to achieve that that uniformity of rate structure and fairness to all the parties concerned great thank you for your participation all three of you and the ad hoc committee any other board member reports directors report chair galvin i do have a few items to provide update on this past saturday october 27th santa rosa water participated in the science discovery day held at santa rosa fairgrounds science discovery days held annually around the bay area to engage with students about everything stem related santa rosa water water facilitated an interactive hands-on exhibit featuring ph testing thousands attended the event in over 500 young students and their families participated in the santa rosa water exhibit it was a wonderful event and many of our staff participated the the second item i had was is in 2017 the governor of california signed into the law assembly bill 746 requiring water systems in california to test the water for lead at all k through 12 public schools that the public water system serves although lead is rarely found in california drinking water sources including ours water passing through older plumbing fixtures and old pipes can be exposed to lead with potentially some leaching out over time the city is required to comply with the lead and copper rule which has been in place for quite some time which requires a success for lead in the drinking water system but it does not apply to schools so schools have not been tested in this broad manner that this new bill requires this week the water department sent letters to all 50 schools that are required to be tested as well as the school districts informing them of the requirements we'll be working with the schools to develop a sampling plan we'll sample water from certain fixtures and have the samples analyzed at no cost to the schools this testing is required to be completed before july 1st 2019 and the results will be provided to the school and to the state division of drinking water the final item i have to share today um it's a little difficult but um it's it's also a bit celebratory um mike prince has um announced his departure from the uh city of santa rosa he has been with us since march 25th 2002 and he's focused specifically on water projects and operations since that day he was hired on as an associate engineer as part of the original utility cip team that was formed just prior to his hire and is still in existence today mike took the helm of the cip team when he promoted up to supervising engineer in 2006 and he took a deep interest in sub regional capital projects which eventually led him to promote into the deputy director position which he is now in 2012 during his tenure mike personally managed nearly 50 water and wastewater projects and championed a whole number of programs and i did roam the halls a little bit this morning asking folks kind of highlights of projects that mike was involved in i finally had to just shut it off because i ran out of space but um so some of the highlights the proctor tanks water storage the proctor heights water storage tanks as well as a whole number of other water storage tank construction projects including a phase of the seismic upgrades the summer field road water transmission main the north trunk sewer through the sonoma county ag and it was a complex project the combined heat and power project that we were touching on earlier today a whole number of initiatives the emergency groundwater program and test borings throughout the city aqua zone water storage tanks siting study of course the ltp disinfection upgrade alternative analysis that's still just about over the finish line the high strength program that he championed that the city is going to benefit for years to come and in fact the microgrid project that we were talking about today is also leading the effort for the co-location of the organics processing facility that we've been talking about and will continue to work on and he was also an incident commander during the fire and so much value over the years to the city mike would you care to come up and share any thoughts you may have mike there's one less thing between us if i stand here as opposed to sit down um this is probably the last time i'll speak in front of the board as an employee of san rosa water um my last day actually is the 15th of november which is another bpu meeting and i'll attend that i may not make it all the way to the end though because i need to get to another board meeting and that is a board meeting of the organization that i'm going to be working for which is the los galinas valley sanitary district uh in northern san rafael i've accepted a position there as a general manager and i'm extremely excited about that it's a little bittersweet though because after having worked at san rosa um for as long as i have um i've got a lot of memories and uh i developed a lot of relationships i am who i am today as far as a water industry professional and i've accomplished what i've accomplished while working for san rosa um because of a long list of people and uh i need a couple of minutes and i need to list the names of some people uh many of you may know a lot of these people but these are important people to me i've had a lot of experiences with them we've worked through some tough issues and i've had some great experiences and accomplished a lot because of these people and i want to i want to name them here like me i'm imperfect i'm sure this list is imperfect i'm sure i'm going to catch some names later that i will deeply regret having missed um so i'm just going to apologize up front by saying that but um there's a long list of staff members who i want to mention some of them are working for san rosa today some have retired Dave Keck, Dan Carlson, Linda Reed, Glenn Wright, Bob Harder, Miles Ferris, Greg Skoles, Terry Shimmel, Joe Schwall, Jason Bishop, Mike Sherman, Zach Kaye, David Guyon, Jennifer Piccinini, Russ Harlan, Tracy Dwaynis, Tanya Mokvits, Anna McAuliffe, Peter Doddsworth, Dennis Mays, Walt Olowski, Rob Sprinkle, Jennifer Burke, Rita Miller, Norman Amidon, Roberta Atha, Annette Townley, Amy Brennan, Lauren Curiel, Karen Weeks, Ron Morincek, Rick Santorini, Gina Perez, Jill Scott, Mike Casey, John Fritch, Rob Jackson, Molly McClain, and Suzanne Rawlings. There are some public officials that i've got uh experience with and i want to acknowledge here as well. John Sawyer, Dick Dowd, TJ Lowe, Dan Galvin, and Robin Swinth. Being an engineer i deal with a lot of consultants and without consultants san rosa water and other san rosa departments wouldn't wouldn't accomplish what we do accomplish so there's some consultants i want to list and i'm not going to list the companies they work for maybe that would be an endorsement that Molly would have a word with me later about so i'm not going to mention their companies but there are some individuals and really when it comes down to one of the things i've learned is that it's about the individuals that we work with not the companies that they work for many of these individuals if they work for a different company would be just as useful and valuable to the city so i think their names matter more than anything. Rich Ingram, David Long, Tom Yokoi, Mike Janet, Liz Ellis, Mike West, Jane Rosga, Andy Salveson, Mark Solomon, Adam Ross, Kenny Klittich, Denny Parker, Linda Sawyer, Ted Witton, Pat Collins, Andy Rogers, Don Taffler, John Cronin, Tom Gorman, Dave Smith, and Scott Reynolds who has now passed. Being an engineer designing things and seeing them constructed means contractors also play a role and i've worked with a number of contractors and some i i think it's fitting to mention here as well and i'm going to do that. Mark Bushnell, Rob Lee, Tom Woosley, Bob Stiles, James Piazza, and Lee Smith who has also now passed. Maybe more importantly than all those names which in themselves are very important to me is ratepayers paid me for the work that i did for Santa Rosa and to each and every rate payer who has paid a water and sewer bill and in one way or another contributed to my salary and helped me fund all my life's expenses and my mortgage in the whole nine yards. I thank all the ratepayers who paid their their fees so that's really all i have to say. Well, Mike, I think it goes without saying that we're going to sorely miss you and your presentations here at the board meetings. Board meetings might be a little shorter now so we'll see. We wish you all the best in your new position. The new district is obviously getting a quality general manager and i'm sure you'll do an excellent job there and hopefully you won't be a stranger for us so much good luck to you. Any other board member comments or questions? I would like to chairman Galvin. I did a what you just said in your comments but i also want you to know Mr. Prince that you are not only a very valuable employee of the water department and an associate during my term as a member of this board but i also consider you a friend and i wish you the best of good luck. But we were gravely? Yeah i would echo those comments in my in my short time on the board. I value your expertise but also your sense of humor and whether it's here at the dais or at the toe in the hole you know but i can't express enough the gratitude i think that that we all share and that was going to actually be part of my broader comment was that you know some of these meetings can be so exhausting and we dig into the weeds and we and we get into the minutiae and and what i was going to say on that is i mean it's our duty to serve the public and the planet and and really and take care of the department and as part of doing that i think it's it requires that we are extremely thoughtful critical crossing our teeth going back over the things it and that can be so exhausting it can feel like we're being critical of each other like we're not respecting the time and the work and the expertise i got has gone into that but i think at the end of the day it's our responsibility to do that but i also think it's our responsibility to protect our repairs by expressing gratitude and respect to our staff to retain or you know respect those that that obviously are very skilled and and and do move on that's just the nature of of any agency but i think the the value of gratitude and cultivating that that sense of trust and in each other's expertise and mission is just so important to the longevity of our mission to the public and the planet so and and you've shown more than you know more than a lot of folks how uh how difficult and uh you know how much i wish expertise and diligence is required to to achieve that so just thank you so much vice chair anoni okay i gotta see a couple words first of all one of the first things i remember about being on this board was having a tour of the treatment plant and that was right after mike had assumed leadership role and and the two things that remember that i that stick out in my memory about that opportunity to visit the treatment plan were number one your enthusiasm about how this was your dream job and how now i'm a little disappointed to hear you're moving on since it was your dream job but but you did express that and then you proceeded to demonstrate that by taking me on a tour where we virtually ran around the entire treatment plan so that by the time of the i was at the end of the tour i was completely out of breath but i knew a lot more about the treatment plan so thank you very much and best wishes in the future remember mullin thank you i've only been on the board a short period of time and and i also got the the tour from from mike and i've never seen anyone so excited about talking about the wastewater treatment process step by step um and uh so and i appreciate his sense of humor as well one of the few engineers i've dealt with in in my career that speaks common english to a non-engineer which is not always easy for them to do um but i always appreciate the fact that he spoke with such confidence in in the stuff that he was responsible for and makes it really easy as a decision maker which we are to have faith and confidence in the projects and the work that you would bring forward to get behind it because uh you could tell that you had done all your due diligence and your commitment and your staff reflects all that listening to your list of people that have impacted you in your career it's really easy to see how you've reached the heights that you have because that's quite a list of people um and you should be proud of that and proud of your your fingerprints on there so many things here that will live on for quite sometimes so i wish you all the best or minister well mike uh being the newest board member i haven't had the opportunities that the others have to work with you and to have this tour now maybe i'll have it within the next two weeks before you leave i don't know uh can we reschedule if i don't um i know i'll have missed something and i'll miss working with you um but i've known you from before i was on this board and and can certainly uh agree with all of them about your expertise and and easygoing nature so good luck in your new position assistant city attorney mclean thank you chair for the indulgence since i'm one of the few employees that gets to have a microphone up here i i just want to say congratulations i have had the distinct pleasure of working with with my friends for just about my entire time here at the city um i've never found someone especially an engineer who so appreciates my my letter writing as mike thank you um and it's been a very enjoyable working with you i have learned a lot from you and i wish you all the best thank you very good well much good luck to you um i will be missing at the next meeting on the 15th so vice chair arnone will be running the meeting and because of that i wish you all a very wet november and happy thanksgiving to you and your families we're adjourned thank you