 to 5.30 so I will go ahead and convene this closed session of the Board of Directors of San Lorenzo Valley Water District for June 3rd 2021. Molly would you please call the roll. President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Henry. Here. Director Ackman. Here. Director Falls. Here. Director Molly. Here. Are there any additions and relations to the closed system agenda? That brings us to the time for communications regarding things on the closed agenda. I don't see any outside attendees so unless seeing none hearing none I guess I will adjourn us to close session. Okay so we'll see in a few minutes back on the other channel. Thank you guys. Let's see I don't see Jamie do I? Is she back? I don't see her either. It is 6.30 so we should probably. I don't see Mark Smalley either. Oh there you are never mind. Jamie's coming on. Amy she's coming on right now. I would like to convene the open session of the June 3rd 2021 meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District. Holly can you let's see actually we report actions taken in closed session first and Gina would you like to read the statement that the board asked you to prepare? Yes I'll do that Chair Mayhood. The board voted unanimously to make an announcement out of closed session for the information of the public that the district has been informed that the county intends to file an amended complaint in its lawsuit against the district which the district has not seen yet. I get Holly to call the roll call. President Mayhood Vice President Henry. Here. Director Ackman. Here. Director Fultz. Here. Director Smalley. Here. Thank you. Are there any additions and deletions to the agenda? That has none. Okay with that then we pass to the section on oral communications and this is the part of the agenda where we have communications from the public on any subject that lies within the purview of the district but is not on tonight's agenda and let's see do we have I see we have three attendees do any of them what any of them like to make a comment at this point seeing none hearing none we'll go ahead and go on to new business and the first item of new bit new business is the vegetation fire management plan district manager Rick Rogers. Thank you Chair Mayhood yes the environmental planner will present this agenda item to the board and public. Great thank you just to begin this item I'd like to make a clarification on the recommendation we want to split that recommendation up into two so the first recommendation will be for the board of directors to review and accept panorama's presentation on the fire and vegetation management plan and then followed by the board of directors to adopt the fire and vegetation management plan itself. I'm just as a brief background for both recommendations as many of us are aware the fires of 2020 burned approximately 1600 acres of the district's watershed land and damaged and or destroyed infrastructure prior to the fires the district began work on a fire and vegetation management plan to expand mapping create and prioritize fuel reduction projects improve communications with fire prevention agencies and identify funding sources. In April the environmental committee reviewed the plan and recommended board adoption the environmental committee's feedback and recommendations have been incorporated into the final version of the plan. And then prior to adoption we have panorama environmental Inc. who created the plan for the district ready to present the final version its overview its updates since last review and fuel reduction projects the district is currently pursuing. So please welcome Tonya Trace and Katelyn Guilleron and then if CTV could maybe add Tonya Trace as a presenter I think she did not receive her invite. I think I'm on now Carly and should I share the presentation sorry or was that on your end. Yeah if you can you can share it there should be the share screen. Yep thank you. Hello everybody my name is Katelyn Guilleron and as Katelyn mentioned I'm with panorama environmental and we also have Tonya Trace principal with panorama here with us. Jason Mogada is also part of our team and was not able to attend but we as a team prepared this plan that we're presenting to you tonight. Through an overview of the plan and I'm going to be focusing mostly on what's different since the February board meeting and the April environmental committee meeting and then I'm also going to get into the grant applications that we've done with San Juan's Valley Water District which are primarily focused on project implementation for the projects that are in the plan. So that's sort of an overview of quite a few of the factors that are present in the general area of district lands that resulted in the increase of risk of wildfires including the high fuel loads outside the CCU complex perimeter as there has not been a burn there as well as close wildfire mortality within the CCU complex perimeter compounded of course by the longer and more frequent droughts and hotter weather. The plan purpose is to lessen the presence to present projects and recommendations to lessen the presence of the naturally high fuel loads on district owned lands and around district owned assets primarily of course a critical water infrastructure to reduce the intensity and harmful impacts of wildfires. This slide the next slide presents the general plan content and I just want to highlight a few of the key sections the executive summary expanded prioritization process and additional costing breakdowns are in direct response to board and environmental committee comments. I'm going to dig really into the prioritization process later in the presentation. Generally the recommended treatments identify this plan fall into two main categories the near-term close fire recovery treatments and defensible space fuel reduction and material upgrades. The plan also dealt with some potential options that the district consider for long-term larger-scale management of district lands. The plan provides an overview of some of the key tendencies that I just want to highlight. Particularly of note I would recommend taking a look at the higher priority project appendix. This also addresses the environmental committee comments and I'll be getting into what those projects consist of later on. It's a high-level overview the near-term close fire recovery treatments are really focused on hazard tree identification and removal as well as reforestation in the burn areas. The prioritization process will go into greater depth of how and where those treating areas are. So when we met with the environmental committee we were in progress meeting with the fire agency and conducting site visits in March which we incorporated the applicable recommendations and it helped us kind of lay out some other recommendations for the fuel reduction in defensible space and actually a lot of the recommendations from fire agency staff fully jive with the treatments that were already proposed including establishing defensible space around water tanks and other critical water infrastructure as well as maintenance and vegetation clearance around roads. The recommendations also touch on infrastructure upgrade options. So this section are the three kind of large scale maybe longer term options. That would be kind of like continued maintenance for water infrastructure clearance of fallen trees. The voluntary carbon market as well as potentially commercial timber harvesting. There are pros and cons for all of those options. So this is we're gonna this line the next line touch on the sort of a high level of the prioritization process that is laid out in the plan. The priority areas for hazard trees are the inspections adjacent to public roadways and occupied structures adjacent to San Lorenzo Valley water district lands. So that will become annual inspections and removal as needed based on those inspections. The prioritization for reforestation are those areas of moderate high and very high severe burn areas. And the focus would really be in areas that were previously conifer for it. It slopes below 50 percent and that's because it's anticipated based on studies that live with forests watching re-sprout even after a severe fire like CCU complex. This slide outlines the seven general categories for prior prioritization of defensible space fuel reduction and material upgrades. The priorities really are focused at least initially on the areas outside the CCU complex. The very highest priority types of projects are defensible space treatments within 100 to up to 300 feet as it is possible around water infrastructure. Then we go down into upgraded water infrastructure fire resistant materials and specific recommendations for the infrastructure upgrades are laid out in Appendix B which also outlines actually what the district has already planned for those upgrades. The remaining prioritizations are fuel reduction projects around district own roads other adjacent public and private roads as well as adjacent properties especially occupied properties. Appendix B provides confidential maps of all the defensible space and fuel reduction areas based on the prioritization listed here. Appendix B provides a breakdown of acres by areas tied to get an idea of scale. This slide gets into the seven recommended higher priority projects that were identified and these projects were developed according to the prioritization process on the previous slide. Recommendations from fire agency staff and fire professionals. Districts that input as well as ease of access and implementation since we want to help make sure that the district can get going as soon as possible. Prioritization was based on conditions at the time the plan was prepared and these priorities can change depending on funding availability partnerships and other considerations so the district doesn't stop only you know going linearly down the list for example they can you can mix and match. And I also just do want to make a note that there are some estimated costs for each of these recommended higher priority projects that's provided in Appendix B. The plan also has a section that describes potentially appropriate permitting and environmental review that really varies depending on the scope and scale of the projects that are to be implemented. The general approaches are project level where you would just do for example one of those projects the recommended higher priority project or programmatic where you do all the environmental permitting for all those projects. The options for project level could be SQL exemptions or Cal Fire Kimber exemptions one depending on the project and the resources present. You can also look at using coverage under existing environmental documents such as Cal VTP or Cal Fire BMP DIR. So although it is not specifically applied on it because it's just numbers and I didn't want to overwhelm anybody the plan does also outline estimated costs for treatment and permitting activities as well as some infrastructure upgrades. And based on those costs and discussions with the districts we are aware that funding is a key issue for implementation as such. We've been working with the district to conduct facilitate outreach and effort to find team partners that can include the resource conservation district fire council and many others. We have also found and documented in the plan the wide variety of grants and funding opportunities and thankfully there have been quite a few lately and I outlined some of the most relevant ones especially for really getting on the ground as soon as possible that California Forest Improvement Grant Program, Fire Prevention Grant Program, California Coastal Conservancy Program and I'm actually going to go into those a little bit more in just the next one. So I'm going to again just I'm going to touch on the three grants that we helped the district apply for and the status and kind of what those projects are. So the first one is the Forest Management Plan funding through the CPIC program and this funding has been approved and we can start in on the Forest Management Plan after approval of this plan as we'll be able to use quite a few of the components and just drop it right in there. Following approval of that Forest Management Plan the district can then apply for CPIC actual implementation on the ground project. CPIC covered some fuel management projects such as wide area birdside clearing. Next one is the Forest Health Grant and we worked with Carly when the Resource Conservation District came to the district and said that they had a very large Forest Health Grant and wanted to see if the district had any project and we did. So we provided a description mapping and cost that's meant for up to 182 acres of reforestation and these projects are primarily in higher severity burn areas as well as some of the eucalyptus and CalPERS provided preliminary approval of that for summary project description and it's going through the approval process now and we should know more. Then the last one very exciting we assisted San Lorenzo in proposing for the funding through that California Coastal Conservancy Forest Health and Wildfire Resilience Program and that was a very quick turnaround I think it was just a couple weeks but thankfully because the plan was pretty much fully formulated at that time we were able to propose up to 85 acres of potential space around water infrastructure as well as the roadside fuel reduction and it's pending approval and it's anticipated hopefully on June 7th. We will get the final word on that. So there are a lot of opportunities a lot of grants coming up hopefully you get September 2022 cycle and now with the plan and all the data and the projects in there it's relatively easy to pull out projects and propose for those fairly quickly so you know we will continue to assist San Lorenzo to fund the recommended projects in the plan stay connected and apply once they open. And that concludes my presentation and we are happy to take questions. Okay let's start with Jamie do you have any questions or comments you want to make? First of all when these projects the grants that that would potentially fund these projects that we've applied for or that we're considering do these also require matching funds from the district and are those considered as part of our CZU fire recovery costs or would these be separate to that? I can answer that and Carly can jump in if she has anything else she'd like to add. For the Resource Conservation Forest Health and the California Coastal Conservancy no matching is required. They did recommend that if there was any matching or already planned funds to mention it but no matching was required for either of those. The Forest Management Plan grant also has no matching required but rather it has a cash so only a maximum amount can be charged. Then my only other concern and maybe this is a longer term issue that I'm not even sure you can speak to but it seems like we're likely to be getting a glut of funding you know across the United States particularly if the stimulus bill goes through and there will be lots of infrastructure projects that are potentially recipients of that funding. That means that there'll be lots of demand for the labor resources to carry out those tasks and I'm just wondering you know as we're thinking about all of these projects that we want to do if we are successful in getting these grants are we are we being realistic about being able to contract in the resources to actually carry out the tasks in a timely fashion to meet the the grant application requirements? Again I can answer some of that and Carly can feel free to augment. So based on preliminary discussions at least for these specific grants you can't speak for future grants but it actually sounds like the RCD would like to take on managing the contracting working with the district rather than having the district manage the reforestation contractors and then for the fourth to the other one the California Coastal Conservancy grant. Carly and our team is actually underway working on getting those contracts together to get the vegetation management contractors on and part of that would involve one of the contracts would actually be either an RPS or some other sort of project manager to manage the vegetation contractors. Yeah Carly would you like to kind of add to that and clarify whether I imagine that a lot of these will require consultants to kind of manage some of the projects and would that be something that we would pay or would it potentially be part of the grants? Yeah it depends it depends on the grant itself right what the grant this these two grants that we're pursuing now I believe those costs will be covered by the grant funding so you know depending on what we we go after in the future that might be a difference scenario but right now we're trying to get the request for qualifications out so we do have a list of contractors to contact once we do receive the funding and then also have that registered professional forester on board to manage all those vegetation and contractors as well. Okay Jamie does that more or less answer your question? Yes thank you. Okay Bob? Yeah thanks just a few comments and a couple of questions I think this is a really comprehensive report I there's a lot to absorb so I don't know that I could pass a test on it tomorrow but it looks very good and I'm really happy that we've gotten it to this point I I sincerely wish of course that we had it done sooner but things are what it are what they are and I you know I I always like to thank our previous board member Lou Ferriss and Larry Ford for their work on this early on getting this going and really jump-starting our ability to get here. On the on any of the costs associated with doing these priority projects and this might be a question for Rick Caitlin I don't I don't know but are any of them or could any of them be covered partially by FEMA as part of our recovery? Carly you want to answer that or Carly? It looks like Rick's muted I'm you know I'm not I'm not sure with the FEMA funding that's probably more of a question for Rick. Okay Rick? Yeah we we discussed this with FEMA FEMA will not work on the watershed properties not unless there's a facility directly reflected and we're we've had discussion if they will approve some hardening that wasn't impacted by the fire and we still haven't got answers were the FEMA process is still very much in its beginning stages we're just starting to get geared up with an actual team of FEMA inspectors this week and we were we were bounced around so much in the beginning that we're really starting to get into the nuts and bolts so we'll have better answers to those questions in in particular I'm curious about you know the lion treatment plant which we've already taken out a large number of trees and I believe that is probably going to be covered but in terms of any additional hardening of that area since that was directly impacted by the fire and and you know the lion treatment plant is a good example if any of these trees are hazards or in reach of any of our facilities that's straightforward FEMA will cover but out of the watershed they've been very clear that they will not go out of the watershed and then the the second question is we did approve a grant writer and you know one of my assumptions is that this particular topic would be a real priority for that person do we do we think that is the case going forward yes I believe that will be the case Bob right now we are finalizing the contract with Susan our grant writer and in the meantime we've been working with Panorama before we started working with the grant writer himself so I believe they'll we'll probably have some coordination between Panorama environmental and our grant writer to begin and then kind of let the the projects take off from there okay sorry well we also you know with that grant writer it's a it's a heavy lift but we also you know as Jamie stated and others infrastructure money will be coming available and there may be some potentials for some large funds so you know the grant writer will be busy well that's good news I hope very busy we want it we want a 10x ROI and then the last question is in terms of some of the costs on here that may not be covered by grants or FEMA how much is in next year's budget again for for these activities we have $50,000 in next fiscal year's budget okay and there's also funds for hardening a few facilities as well and make sure it's budget and by hardening we're talking about concrete blocks and that sort of laying around our pump stations and the like right exactly okay great thank you and great great report Caitlin thank you very much Lois I do have a question I've been having a very difficult time under this isn't my question but understanding the presenter she's it's very broken I don't have that problem with anybody else that's been talking so I don't know what's going on so my question is about the exit where we have to get permits and there are permits that are needed and not needed and one of the things I read in the plan in section 1.3 was it said where existing environmental review does not cover the proposed activity or it's something off the wall kind of thing then we have to get my understanding is we have to get separate permits or we have to get our own CEQA plan or whatever I just wonder if I'm reading that right can you hear me Lois I knew you said I was breaking up so I just wanted to make sure yeah I really can't understand you for some reason I think the rest of us can so go ahead Caitlin and I'm okay I'll just answer and then maybe Tanya can also reiterate if Lois still can hear me I can't hear it all now okay so yeah I can I can jump in so I believe that's referring to some of the Cal Fire Exemption so the they really have gone through an EIR process that can cover some of these projects depending on what project we're going after and then we can also go after exemptions for a lot of these projects for CEQA so there are different avenues to complete these environmental permitting requirements and then maybe if Tanya does want to jump in I think she's still on she's more than welcome to add some detail to that yeah that's exactly right Carly that you know I think a lot of this work will fall under CEQA exemptions and those are documents you have to produce yourself but they're very they're very light in terms of what you have to do noticing and and filing them and you know for the types of projects that are in this plan especially the work coming out in the short term most of them probably would fall under an exemption the existing plan that we're talking that Caitlin was talking about was the vegetation treatment plan EIR with Cal Fire and that also is a little more work than an exemption but all of the district's areas fall under it in terms of coverage area so most of the activities do now something like hardening wouldn't but that would likely be an exemption under CEQA so I think in most scenarios the environmental and the permitting side is fairly straightforward and streamlined it's similar you know we've been working with other agencies up in Marin and it's they're all they're all going through the same sort of process of similar types of projects and how do you streamline and get it done under CEQA so we're very familiar with you know what the options are and it worked with attorneys on you know what's the legally defensible way to do it um you know where it talked about potential for a bigger document or a CEQA IR which sounds concerning I think that that's probably less likely for what we're looking at you know in the short term if there were longer term objectives for larger areas that might be the case but I think for what we're looking at in front of us and for the projects and the high priority projects most of that's going to be a little more streamlined anything else Lois uh no I think I heard most of that so no thank you all right Mark yes again a good report we asked one of the previous board meetings for a list of priorities and I see that that has now been incorporated into the report with a list of high priority mitigation projects good that's what we asked for and that's what you're coming back with um Carly who's the lead person at the district managing these various activities the strategy kind of um how we're pursuing these because what I heard from Caitlyn was well we're not necessarily working on these on a on a one through five basis but it's kind of fluid as to which one of these we might be working on at any one time right right that that's mostly that's correct so right now it is kind of a group effort between rick james myself um and then as far as working with panorama you know they're giving their um two cents as well and then we've also received feedback from the local fire agencies and Cal fire so what we kind of were referring to as far as rearranging the priorities you know we might get an opportunity to get some grant funding for one of those priorities which would maybe move it up the list right because then we could we could complete that project or there might be a project to do a tank replacement where we're going to upgrade the pump house as well so that hardening might jump up the list because it could be part of an infrastructure projects we're going after as well but right now um i'm pretty much the lead staff with the district and then we will be hopefully bringing on a registered professional forester to really manage all the projects once they start getting on the ground i see and is that registered forester then a contractor or contract position okay um and we've heard the question uh from least uh one of the other board members about costs um for any of these grants that we're considering um will the board know ahead of time any district costs either staffing time or other money outlays that we're going to need to do if we get the grant before either you or our grant writer contract grant writer put much time into it yeah for these two grants we did try to estimate our staff time um include that as either a match or as part of the grant funding so we have taken that into consideration um you know any of the work for the registered professional forester i can't imagine that wouldn't be covered as part of the grant since it's actually a part of the implementation right um but we are trying to make sure we cover all those those costs as well for staff hours and okay so the the grant uh those costs you're including that in the grant request that we're putting together good okay well thank you those are my questions okay question well first let me say that i i appreciate the report it's very comprehensive and it was um like bob said i i might not pass a test but it's there is a reference that i can go back to i have a question that really is just kind of scientific curiosity and that is um when we're considering going in and reforesting areas and we're talking about doing it in the areas that are uh low gradient where it's it's done for um why do we do that rather than just letting nature take its course in terms of in other words is we're prioritizing projects um and and the reason i ask that is that uh you know for other things the rcd tells the local folks to just let nature take its course maybe they were referring to redwood forests but the other is is it strikes me that from the standpoint of a district that's worried about water and a drought having increased runoff and less evaporative transpiration might actually increase the volume of the creeks in our watershed and that that is not necessarily a bad thing um so can you just kind of address that question and unfortunately we don't have jason our registered professional forester on the project but tanya or katelyn might be able to jump in here yeah i think this is definitely jason's wheelhouse over minor katelyn's in terms of you know the choice of of tree i mean as katelyn mentioned obviously the redwood is over-generated and you know maybe it's that the the other types don't as right as um readily i think also there's you know well um runoff can be a problem too so i think there's some science behind sort of giving it a little jump start to get these the vegetation the trees going so that you don't have as much sediment loss and erosion happening in these areas um but you know beyond if jason was on he could probably wax on and off for 10 minutes about this before you before you so i think it probably gets you in more of a detailed answer offline but um you just have maybe you could ask him just just to indulge to send me an email and answer that and really motivates that was we saw some information from the santa margarita groundwater basin that um evapotranspiration just dwarfs the amount of water that we're pumping out of the ground and so what you realize is that the trees in the forest have a huge effect on the the water cycle and so uh you know that made me also think that there's a good reason to start managing the undergrowth just to have less less things evapotranspiring but anyway that that's where that question comes from if i can add a couple quick things on that i've been talking to jason and others if some of these areas that we don't revegetate you will have the evasive move in such as berm yeah um and which is very problematic for the district uh to to manage and then uh in some of the steep areas erosion um and i would hope we would use redwood instead of dug for um there's there's two concerns about you know letting the sun in and not revegetating and having broom take over on the watershed that that makes a lot of sense and and it did say only the low slope areas because the residents would do the job on their own um let's go out and um if the if the board doesn't mind we can come back for another round of questions but i'd like to go to the attendees um for their comments and i'd like to start with uh larry ford um in part to acknowledge the large role that he and former director of the ferris had in getting us started um thinking about these problems so larry go ahead thank you this is larry ford from felton um i i appreciate your compliments about that i'm really pleased with the process pleased with carly's job really pleased with with the panorama team's job um i reviewed the fire management plan again um i hope you can hear me yes uh okay good thought i heard something in the background anyway um i reviewed the fire management plan and i think it's it's really an excellent excellent plan really well done well presented um i found only one typo um which i'll send carly an email about but i think the plan reflects an up-to-date and very thorough uh professional job and it as several people have mentioned it does provide the several things that were asked for by the environmental committee as well as the board of directors and public commentary including from me um it responded well to those things and uh i really appreciate them taking the extra time to do that i i know how hard it is to stay within a budget anyway i think there are three parts of the plan that possibly could be improved and these are things that probably should be deferred until a later opportunity by somebody like carly to research it and prepare another uh addendum to the to the plan but those three things are there really ought to be more detailed goals of what the the whole landscape should look like um as a result of the vegetation management that's proposed this is something that's coming up among a lot professional fire managers and firing colleges lately since we've had these several years of catastrophic fires and we we're just trying to figure out what are we looking for and one of the um i mean this should be both broadly across the landscape across the whole watershed but also these things could apply very specifically to so the water district lands as well but one of the best models that i can think of and that i'm trying to study myself is what did the indigenous people produce after 10 to 12 thousand years of fire management and vegetation management one of the things that the plan didn't cover adequately on page three dash seven was the role of indigenous vegetation management they talked about forest management but actually there was a lot of indigenous management of herbaceous and shrubby vegetation as well for things like baskets and arrows and bows and weirs and other things that they use for non-food purposes and so um there is some some research being proposed and being conducted that answering some of these questions and the as as everybody knows the indigenous people are starting to rise to the occasion here as well so um these sort of broad landscape level goals would also apply to the restoration reforestation type questions that gale was asking about and so um i suspect that the well i know that the landscape looked very different than it does today or did before the fire and i'd like to understand better about how they did it and uh anyway as i said i think this would be a good exercise for carly to take on in her spare time for the future the third point i wanted to make is that livestock grazing is much more important than anybody wants to recognize and it could apply to the s lv water district land specifically but the rest of the santa cruise mountains has a lot of um grasslands that are grazed by cattle especially and uh this fits into the whole model that jason described about uh around the wildland urban interface there's a zone inside the wildland urban interface that's sometimes called the intermix i like to call it the perry urban zone and that is that there's a lot of grazeable forage inside the cities and inside the zone where towns are backyards vacant lots abandoned vineyards and all that sort of thing and if we could control that fire fuel we could reduce i mean my hypothesis is that we could reduce the severity of fires the you know the throwing off of fire brands and things like that from herbaceous fuels and uh so on page four dash four there wasn't enough discussion about that but all these things i admit are really kind of academic and for future research so i'm not blaming panorama the panorama team for not doing this to meet my academic expectations so that's it thank you back to you yeah well i'm sharing your academic orientation because i i totally lost my mind as the the uh terror and let you go on for way more than three minutes because i was fascinating oh i i'm begging apologies of others but are there any other of the attendees that would like to uh make a comment at this point of the public scene and hearing none i'll go back to the board and bob has had this end up for a while i just just left it up but um i wanted to make a request actually that if um if you received any information about your question that that would be shared with the board in general because i'm interested in learning about it as well so thank you for if we could do that carly it may go to you so if you could distribute it out to everybody that'd be great thank you okay um are there any other uh questions from the board let's see i see uh mark you're shaking your head no i got my hand up dammy go ahead um okay so a quick question when all right will we need to make a decision about whether we want to explore carbon offsets or timber harvesting as future strategies like i wasn't clear that that was something that we've already decided on or is there going to be a future decision point where we have to pursue that there's no timeline associated this time right now we can have someone come in and do a presentation for the board on the carbon offset market that could be something that kind of kick starts that process but it is kind of up to the board as we want to pursue these different longer term management um i ask that only because i know rtc has a number of projects that require carbon offsets that they have um funding for and are going to construction on and they're looking for projects in which to invest those carbon offsets so i don't know if that there is a reason for us to have that conversation or if there's even a desire for us to have that conversation at this point but i i saw in a recent um rtc board meeting that that conversation was happening about their projects we would start those discussions at the environmental committee meeting and then kind of let it grow one way or another from there those would be the appropriate you know form to start the discussion and then bring it to the full board if so am i correct on that one that it isn't maybe a super high priority because the sizes of the land that we're talking about may not be big enough to really be saleable in that sort of market right we probably have an underdated um project with other landowners in the area uh lois you had a question i i did well i had a comment and basically and a question i i listened to what larry said about grazing animals and i thought about the goats that used to roam around in long pico and they would eat the poison oak and if you drank their milk you would not have a problem with poison oak it because i i did have a problem with poison oak but drinking goats milk where they uh eaten the poison oak it was um it was no longer a problem but also those goats kept a lot of grass grass and things down um the other thing was i was wondering okay why would we plant fur trees is it because they grow faster or whatever i i mean like redwood trees have a certain resistance to fire not totally but they don't burn like other trees so i was curious why we might plant fur trees yeah uh hopefully you can hear me um but no the plan is not proposing to plant fur trees um and in fact the only current actual known proposal would involve planting redwood seedlings uh what the plan is recommending is that the only areas of reforestation are areas that were previously douglas fir forest as those will not re-sprout whereas previous redwood forest should just be left alone and no reforestation efforts at this point are recommended as it is assumed that they will re-sprout oh i'm glad you do you clarified that katelyn because i misinterpreted that the same way that lois did that you were going to replant dug furs and i couldn't imagine why would we be planting which is probably what lois was thinking okay that that makes a lot of sense lois did you have another question or comment yeah nope that that was my question i'm just wondering why okay any other uh comments uh by um doesn't look like we have any more from the board how about from the public okay so what i'd like to do is um just divide the question here because i think there's kind of two different issues and um maybe this gets back a little bit to jamie's question of you know what what we prioritize and what we're what we're buying into right now and and one question is to simply um basically recommend that the that the district manager accept the report prepared by panorama um so what i'd like to do is see if somebody would move that question first just to clarify is it the district manager accepting the report or the board accepting the board if you if you prefer the board okay let let me just restate this for the district accepting report that the board of directors has accepts the report prepared by panorama environmental ink on postfire response and the fire management plan okay is there anybody that would like to do that i i can do that okay jamie moved it can i have a second i'll second it okay um can we have a roll call vote holly or wait i guess we need to have a discussion of that first is there anybody that on the board that wants to make a comment on that um seeing hearing that i'll go out to the public to see if there's anybody there that would like to comment on that seeing none hearing none then let go ahead holly president mayhood aye vice president henry aye director ackman yes director false yes director smally yes the the other issue and maybe um i don't know if there wants if we want to have we may want to have separate uh conversation about this but let me just sort of frame it first and then we can see if we have a motion on the table and that would be in this case that we um adopt the um postfire response and fire management plan uh that was prepared by panorama um environmental ink so what we're doing in that case is we're essentially directing the staff to take that plan and implement it um and so i think what we're asking for at this point is if the board or the members of the public see anything in which they strongly disagree with um priorities or any of the other things that are recommended to be done so uh any members of the board that would like to comment on that let's see i can see everybody all at once so yell out your name if you want to speak i don't hear anybody wanting to speak how about members of the public then can i get somebody to move the motion as i described it i'll move the motion as you described it okay thank you lois anybody to second second that okay then um can holly can you call a roll call vote president may hood fine vice president henry fine director ackman yes director false yes director smally yes then that was unanimous and we can move on to our next item of new business uh which is the augmentation of the panorama contract um carly are you going to handle this discussion yes thank you so as everyone's now familiar um with our previous item of panorama environmental um we brought the district to create a fire and vegetation management plan in 2020 so now that that plan has been adopted by the board panorama has also begun assisting the district with implementation and securing funding as discussed in the presentation those projects include post-fire recovery critical asset hardening preparation of the forest management plan grant funded implementation of proposed projects and associated environmental permitting pending most of those pending grant funding as well it is important to note that panorama has also taken on a number of tasks outside of their scope particularly during the fire emergency tasks include hazard tree assessments watershed restoration planning identifying emergency response grants organizing site visits with state agencies erosion control and debris removal permitting potential funding through the carbon market invaluable feedback on various fire related topics most recently a panorama has assisted the district with securing grant funding to complete priority projects as outlined in the fire management plan through partnerships with the resource conservation district of santa cruz county and the california coastal conservancy panoramas contract amendment scope and fee sheets are included in the agenda packet it is important to note that the task six is dependent on the district receiving grant funding and task seven also has the potential for grant reimbursement upon award staff in panorama are prepared to answer any questions the board have okay um i'll start with director faults yes thank you carlie for that i had a couple questions am i correct in reading this that this is actually sort of a catch-up contract that is that they've already done the work and and they need to get paid that is correct yeah okay is there anything outside of things that would be covered for by grant funding is there anything that would go into next year's budget because i'm assuming if we pay them now that's going to go into this year's budget right so we have a separate we'll probably receive a completely separate scope from panorama for next fiscal year um and that we do have a budget for in my environmental budget and is that the 50k or is that sorry that is the 50k we talked about earlier in the last one okay um and then the last question is um regarding the budget is there money to cover this that is and still stay within our budget for for this fiscal year no we're ready we're outside of that budget that we had we also allocated $50,000 in the last year's fiscal year budget yeah and so this would take us to a total of what um we also completed another augment in in in january um and i'm not sure if that cost off the top of my head maybe kaitlyn or tanya if you remember but you guys on the spot as well let me see if i can i can find that information bob and get that to you is it is it somewhat closer to a hundred thousand do you think i would i would say it's under a hundred thousand okay and then but from a point of view of our overall san lorenzo valley water district budget we still have funds available to be able to cover this i believe so um brick i don't know if you want to jump in there and it's also important to note you know with this incoming grant funding um one of the grants will probably be around $200,000 and the other is probably going to be closer to maybe 400,000 so yeah no i i get the i get the roi i just want to just want to make sure we're we're staying in budget um and on an overall district basis you know things go up and down and you know there's always unforeseen things so this is a good one to do right and and you know the original scope of work they went outside of that and assisted the district in the in fire recovery and that's where most of these additional costs yeah they were very instrumental in a lot of this recovery with cal fire with the foresters and those type of things but does any of that get covered by fema then rick uh i don't i don't i don't believe so maybe some of it might on the roadways and then we had some tree review of some hazard trees that that's possible there was a couple hazard trees and some other things that will are possible we can look into that okay great thank you uh lois did you have any comments no questions no comments okay uh how about you mark yes um in the third paragraph um currently you talk about uh tasks out of scope and i understand from rick's comment just a minute ago that some of this was done uh during the fires but did uh panorama provide you any sense of and here's what the approximate cost for any of this is going to be before they were going ahead with it or was this go go go right not during the emergency it was kind of a go go go we needed the assistance and we kind of just had them jump in where they they could but um after the fact is any of this after the fact work i guess no i guess not okay questions okay um and i see in their uh in panorama scope of work that they refer to um some June 7th the coastal conservancy board that uh if we already submitted then for that uh okay so that's uh now you're not asking us to give any uh concurrence or approval on that that's already happened okay uh they refer in their proposal to uh gis management mapping and i think the district has a gis person um does this work overlap with what that person does or are they doing different gis work that um dan our gis specialists didn't assist um with the map he developed particularly for cow fire um at the time of fire and part of the fire management plan but he is completing really separate work and this was something done completely separate for the fire management plan and providing mapping to cow fire in their particular way they wanted it okay okay well thank you that's all of my questions i just follow up on that question about the gis specialists i can understand how um panorama helped us out during the fire but um some of this is post fire like task eight and i guess i'm just trying to understand what our gis person does versus what um you know why we're having to go out and and pay a consultant to to do this sort of stuff um but i'm just trying to understand that better um you know that's a totally separate staff for myself i don't have any way of getting him that work but i'm not sure what his his schedule looks like or what kind of work he's doing at this time you know we we have one gis person that's working on a lot of the fire recoveries and we're even going out and hiring uh we'll be hiring engineering firms to pick up the work that that he cannot get to and plus the daily district stuff that we've been working with our gis have been working closely with our water supply master plan consultants um if we just don't have the bandwidth um to to to do all this work um jamie did you have anything you want to ask no no questions are there any comments or questions uh from the public seeing none hearing none but i'll just go back and see if there's any more comments by members of the board okay if if not um then what we're asking um with recognition is is that we um instruct the district manager to enter into um a grant to augment panorama excuse me enter into a contract uh with uh panorama environmental to continue post fire response fire planning grant writing in oversight of fuel reduction reforestation implementation is there anybody that would like to move that just a point of clarification is it enter into a contract or is it extending an existing contract i don't know the answer to that i thought we were extending some augmentation sorry so i should have i should have said that this is the district augments the panorama environmental in contract to continue post fire response fire planning and grant writing in oversight of fuel reduction reforestation implementation so it's just augmenting them okay in the in the amount of 37 thousand four hundred and forty five dollars and i will make that motion okay any seconds second that other comments by members of the board or members of the public about that motion seeing none hearing none holly would you take a roll call vote on that excuse me president may hood i vice president henry yes director ackman yes director false yes director smally yes we can go on to the next item of new business with it which is the investment policy uh rick are you going to do this or stephanie yes item uh 10 c the investment policy we have the finance manager here to present this item to the board stephanie attached you'll find the investment policy that is slightly updated and rewritten a little bit just to get it a little bit more detailed and then part of it is also each year the board is appoint a treasurer that manages the investment policy and so there is a resolution attached to cover the investment policy and appointing the district manager as the treasurer for the district investment and my motion that i put in there it should be by resolution of the board instead of motion lois would you like to comment or is that it just stephanie are you finished yes i'm finished i could i could add that the budget and finance committee did review this document so if there's any further questions you can kind of go over that so i was going to start with lois and see chairs you know this is in my bailey wick investments and i i've read this over and we talked about it at budget meetings i think this is uh a very good policy updated um i one of the things that i always worry about is when people invest sometimes they lump too many things together but this policy addresses that so that that things aren't maturing at the same time and of course they look at the safety of whoever the district's investing in uh or with i should say so i think it's a a great policy i i don't have any objections or questions mark did you have anything you wanted to comment on one question only well how much unexpected task do we have in a typical month or a typical period that we are investing so it it's not necessarily flowing by by month we hold the majority of the district excess cash in the highest bearing you know liquid accounts which is the santa cruz county fund or the lace account and so we just kind of have our wealth bar go checking account as kind of uh but in and out so it's not chunks of money being invested you know in and out multiple times per year necessarily it more so right now the majority fits in the santa cruz county fund that's earning us the most interest okay i see thank you uh jamey did you have anything you wanted to ask um so i i appreciate um the update to the policy and and i think you sort of answered my question because i was trying to understand um how frequently um we we you know would have a quarterly report on the um you know investment earnings but it sounds like mostly this is like a liquidity holding account that gives us some flexibility and a little bit of earnings um on that money and and you know we're not really looking for anything that's that's uh gonna produce substantial ongoing earnings is that a fair characterization correct and it's almost supposed to be that way you know government agencies you're not supposed to be you know gambling you're supposed to have it in kind of a safe you know something that's earning you some interest so each quarter um we do you know we do have you know it shows how much interest the district's made um and then we do have the month monthly cash reports that also is part of the package so like you said it's not going to be some you know super big exciting thing you know eventually we'll probably be able to invest in some CDs and different stuff like that but yeah it's not it's not meant to be huge interest-bearing safety first jb did you have another question no thank you um so just a little history before i get into my comment there was a point in time when the district did have a substantial amount of money as a result of the waterman gap sale back in early 2000s and there was an investment policy in place at the time and the board was not following it and so that's one of the reasons why it became a hot button item for a few years until until we got all that straightened out into basically what we have now um Stephanie to just to make sure i understand most of the funds that we have invested right now are from our proceeds from the loans is that correct correct that's by far the majority that we have sitting in there and so those are restricted earning interest which is great and then we do have you know our our couple million about three million that are capital and operating we're sitting in as well the the capital operating reserves were refreshed by the loan correct correct that we had spent all that money in in fire emergency and we basically refreshed that with the loan so um my based on what you said earlier then my understanding is that we really aren't taking any risks at all with that kind of loan money it is in fact in these two extremely safe funds the Santa Cruz county and life are those staggered in any way or are those just basically we put money in we earn we're in funds pretty much you put the money and you earn funds we are keeping the majority with the county for one it's local and for two they've had a history of earning more a slightly more than late over the last couple years right great so yeah we're not doing anything really that would be exercising the boundaries of this investment policy at this point in time that may change in the future but at this point in time this is all totally safe we're not going to lose any of our loan money etc correct great thank you that let's go out and see if we have any comments from the public i don't see any or hear any um with that i'll go back and why don't i go ahead and state the recommendation air chair may have may i jump in here for for just a second um in the course of um the explanation of the item i realized that it's not clear uh in the resolution uh who is designated as the treasurer um and if that's if that needs to be clearly designated um then i recommend pulling this item and bringing it back with with something to make it clear who is serving in that role because it's an important responsibility well it i mean it says appoint the district manager to the treasurer role yeah i i thought one i could ask ad rick roger's name um i'll do that but it is covered in the recommendation that's at the bottom of the page right well the treasurer is a role that's established by code um and if it doesn't already if it hasn't been defined elsewhere in the district's uh sort of organizational materials i think it needs to be done in a way that's more formal than it i don't believe that it has but um maybe that's something to look into i don't follow you gina what what what do you mean not more formal uh it's not in the resolution that this is um the the resolution adopting the investment policy refers to the treasurer without saying who that is um and i think we ought to clarify in the resolution who that is if it's not already established somewhere um in the district is that something we take a brief restess and you could write up quickly so that we can do that here just revise that to say hereby delegated to the district treasurer um who is the district manager rick rogers i think you'd want to see what the code says i mean i would like to review that code section of the council just to be on the safe side very well all right well um that one let's just go ahead and pull it and you can bring it back for uh just approve i mean it doesn't seem like anybody's got any problems with this so we can deal with it quickly next time when you've revised the wording there's no big urgency on this so unless there's objections from members of the board i'm just going to say let's let's bring this back at the next meeting that's fine okay all right so onward fish our next item uh is item 10 d u is the fall creek fish ladder construction which staff was planning to bring uh as bids closed uh beginning of the week to bring this to the board for award of construction contract uh the district received no bids uh for this project um in trying to identify why we didn't receive bids uh the uh district engineer the engineering committee chair and myself met and discussed and how to move forward we reached out and contacted the three contractors that showed a great interest in bidding to find out why they didn't complete a bid and basically it came back to uh contractors felt that there wasn't enough time allowed to prepare bid documents we had a very short bid timeframe approximately two weeks we thought that would be adequate however with people's work schedules it was not adequate so the three contractors all said it was due to timing so we decided to do a den them to the original bid and to extend the bid uh period three additional weeks in which all contractors felt that they could submit bids all three of them so we're moving in that direction so there's no action to be taken tonight regarding this item um if uh mark director smally the engineering committee chair would like to to add to that more than happy for comments yes i would um i met with um rick and the engineering manager earlier this week to talk about how to proceed uh on this we talked about several options um including uh the possibilities of including liquidated damages in a contract but setting a firm fixed date on that has a significant downside we also talked about the possibilities of delaying this by on the order of nine or ten months until next year uh and we didn't think that that was favorable also uh engineering manager contacted these firms got their concurrence that yes if we did extend this by three weeks they would submit bids so uh the consensus of the group was let's move forward then with this and uh put some additional language into the addendum as to what the uh necessary deadline is for completing the work the portion of the work that's within the stream itself oh bob if you don't mind i'll i'll let rick just go on to the next thing which is also going to end up just being kind of a informational item and then we can come back and take questions on both yeah because so rick go ahead and report on the item uh teny the fall creek fish ladder construction management contract obviously goes hand in hand with the uh construction uh we did have two bidders uh uh they were quite uh apples and oranges on cost the district engineer is evaluating both of those and we'll be in a better position to bring back there's no sense awarding a bid for construction manager when we don't have a construction project so we will bring uh both these items uh back in hopes of moving this project forward uh in this year's construction i mean this has been uh carly and previous for a predecessor the district has worked on this fish ladder permitting process or i think over six years now we received a hundred percent of our permits we want to get this constructed before prices increase more so we're working with contractors and the regulatory agencies to get this done and we will bring this back to you bob did you have a question on either i i i do because this this project has been i think something of a career for for rick i think unfortunately it goes back even further than six years um rick do we given three more weeks do we do we have time to finish the part of the project that's in the stream before the before october 15th obviously that's a great question that was our number one concern that's why we started with a short bedtime but we talked about you know possibly extending hours maybe so they could work weekends uh and we talked about completing working with the contractor on completing the in-stream work first you know get out of the stream you know that's the big concern this october 15 deadline that you know fish and wildlife and the regulatory agencies want all equipment out of the stream before first rains so it's going to take some project management and when the district engineer contacted the three and these three are all what i would consider you know long-term reputable firms in uh in the county that have worked for the district in the past they have good good working relationships with the district they all felt that they could complete the project so you know we're we're looking positive on moving forward you know definitely we want to we want to be out of the stream by that deadline um and we think that we've got commitments uh and that was pointed out in the addendum quite strongly that's this is not the district deadline so to speak this is the range for the agencies so we feel comfortable um on moving forward just don't want it to go another year no we don't either but you know not to get off subject but this will be an issue we'll bring back to the engineering committee about contractors i think jamie mentioned it earlier finding people to do this work and getting people to bid on our projects are is going to be something that we have concerns that will be addressing all right thank you um do we have any other uh comments um board here jamie go ahead i just um wanted to understand the the do we have funding um or grant funding that we were intending to use to to pay for this work when we do get the contractor in and but you know we're not in any you know if we don't meet these deadlines we're not in any jeopardy in terms of like losing funding uh for this work i mean i'm you know are we going to be fined if we don't hit that deadline like what you know i'm a little concerned about the october 15th deadline and i guess i don't understand what happens if we slip it sounds like we have missed it in the past well you know the deadline has to do with you know weather related of being in the stream during rainfall uh and we feel comfortable that our contractors will be out of the stream the funding for the construction portion of this project is a hundred percent district capital funds unfortunately we have no um grants or any time sensitive funding for this project um so we're good in that and we and the money is in the bank so to speak lois did you have anything you wanted to add yes okay i um i understand that the district is paying for this 100 percent and that there are like four uh state agencies that are having us do this um like the only one i can think of the name right now is fish it used to be fish and game it's fish and wildlife so there's three other organizations and i know this needs to get done i care about the fish but it really bugs me that we can be made to do something by these separate organizations and they don't pay a dime and and i can just be bugged about it and there's nothing i can do about it and i i'll totally go along with this uh and believe that we're going to get this done by prior to october 15th as needed but it just doesn't separate with me i imagine a lot of people kind of feel that way lois um let's go out to the public now that we've heard from the board the first round um rick maran yes thank you rick maran from ben loman uh i'm sorry to hear the latest news about the uh but i have prepared some remarks that i wanted to make and so i'll just use this opportunity to plant the same seed okay um since becoming directly involved with the water district some six years ago the fall creek fish ladder has been a project that has been of great interest to me my wife chris lived on fall creek road when she was in elementary school the state park was her playground she introduced me to fall creeks beauty and history whether as a member of the environmental committee or the board i always supported this project now as work may soon begin and it will soon begin i wanted to make one suggestion i'm not an engineer or a fish biologist but my many years as a house painter i've learned that appearances matter so the fish will get improvement the pipes and pumps will get an improvement i want to make sure the neighbors and the many visitors will have a safe and aesthetically pleasing experience fencing should reflect the importance of this project we should not settle for a simple chain link fence the fence should be neighbor friendly and not try to hide the pumping equipment it would be great if a few fencing alternatives could be presented to the board for public review thank you very much thank you great can you just remind me i was lois and i took a field trip there and am i correct in remembering that there was going to be kind of an explanatory sign that will be put up by the fish ladder so that everybody understands what what we're doing there and i i hope you know that it seems like a great form of advertising hey carly you want to address the the intuitive sign right so as part of our former education grants that the district used to do for the community we do have a sign designer already on board she was funded by one of those grants and because of the the changes in the design throughout the last few years we have held off on completing it but now that we have the hundred percent design and it sounds like we are going to construction we have Nina more working with us and we should have that completed around the same time that the construction is great good okay any other comments by members of the board i actually have another comment or question on what rick moran said surely we can't put a fence up before this work is done because when gail and i looked at where the fish ladder and the small space there it was like we're looking at that thinking this is going to be a very difficult expensive job and how are they going to get in here and do all this work so i i don't know if rick moran was talking about offense before the work or after the work um but i don't see how there could be one before i think you would be rick rogers can you answer that i think uh rick moran was speaking after the project is completed the final fencing um there will be construction fencing taken up put up every night when the construction's over for safety backers dangerous work site um and i think rick moran is speaking about the finished product rick rick did you want to go ahead and comment on that rick moran just quickly go ahead the finished product is what i was concerned about thank you any other uh questions or comments on our beloved fish and their ladder if not we'll go on to the last item of business which is unfinished business on the fire recovery surcharge thank you your mayhood the district council will present this item agenda item to the board you're muted gina thank you this item is coming to the board for two reasons um the first one is that there was substantial discussion at the last board meeting about um ensuring that the fire recovery surcharge revenues would be used solely for fire related uh costs and so um of course the board is aware that when a new charge or is adopted there's a resolution or it could be an ordinance that establishes the parameter of the charge that would typically be presented to the board for approval at the end of the prop to it proposition 218 process uh and the board assuming that the charge is adopted would approve that resolution at the end of the hearing here i thought it was important to provide a draft of the resolution to the board in order to ensure that the language related to restricting the funding is satisfactory to the board so that when the final version of the revolution comes to the board in connection with the hearing um that that that any issues related to how the funding is being segregated have already been worked out so that's that's part of it there's no board action requested on the resolution in fact it would be um the the board really can't take any action on the resolution tonight because that wouldn't be appropriate until the conclusion of the proposition 218 process assuming there's no public protest the other so that that that part of it doesn't require any action the part of the item that where uh i am requesting board action is that under the district's policies and procedures related to a proposition 218 process um the board is it needs to appoint a impartial arbiter to be responsible for receiving collecting tabulating the ballots and if needed uh where there's a material likelihood that there could be a majority protest um you know for example if there's four you know the district receives like 40 percent protests or something like that close to the 50 percent threshold then uh the arbiter would be responsible for conducting a validation process to determine which of the ballots are actually valid and should be counted so that appointment i i'm bringing to the board tonight because it really should be made before the district starts receiving proposition 218 ballots back from customers so that is the action portion of the item that's requested this evening are there any questions about those issues so what what i'd like to recommend is that we first deal with the action item which needs to be dealt with now and is in my mind pretty straightforward and that we're determining who the arbiter is and then we can move on to a discussion of the draft and basically this is in response to concerns that people had at the last meeting where we voted to proceed to make sure that we sequester this money in a specific fund and the good thing about this is it is it basically Gina and Richard responding to those concerns but on the other hand our positive vote last time didn't delay the process so we're kind of getting the best of both worlds so what i'd like to say is that in terms of our discussion of the draft this is as far as i'm concerned this is you know we want to get it this all worked out tonight if we can and then we'll just sort of take an informal poll if everybody's happy with it as Gina said we can't really vote so the the first thing that we're looking at is the question of that where the motion would be to appoint the district secretary to serve as an impartial arbiter to receive collect and tabulate protests received by the district and if necessary to validate the protests during an open public meeting so are there any members of the board that have any questions or comments on that particular issue not uh jamie i saw lois put her hand up too before me i she was either way so um my comment was this and it's a little bit separate from both of these issues i noticed at the last board meeting that i think there was you know some concern from the public that they just wanted to have more information about what the fire recovery surcharges and i know that that's part of the outreach process that we have asked the district to engage in but i was hoping to make a request of staff that perhaps at the administrative committee meeting if that's appropriate we could get the opportunity to to hear what the plans are and maybe see some of the language that we're going to be using to do the actual public outreach to to explain to people what is being proposed and give them an opportunity to um make their uh comments known um well let's can we put that off and go back to what i had on the table okay let's let's try to get this and we can go back to your question lois did you have anything that is on the table right now well we were we're talking about you were talking about having holly right received i i don't have actually a problem with holly but one thing i discovered in going through a 218 process people really want somebody who's not involved now granted the the letters are going to come to the district but people feel leery when if the district is collecting the ballots and then opening the ballots and then counting them so uh one way to get around that to me is the ballots come to the district they're put in a locked box that nobody can open um and then when the time comes to count those uh the box is unlocked and some somebody um i mean it could be martha washington i don't care but somebody who's not connected to the district looks pulls those out and they are counted that they aren't counted by the district or taken out of the box by the district and and i i mean i know what happened when we had 218 uh a vote like say on on the merger with slv and people were lurking around and watching everything they they wanted to make sure we weren't pull on a fast one and that could happen okay let's let sheina and maybe rick comment on on that i have a few responses to that which is there are i'll i'll be honest most absent hiring a consultant to handle the entire process i'm not really sure what the alternative is to having somebody at the district serve in the arbiter will at least initially and and let me explain that there are some checks on this process um and one of those is that uh folks can make a public records request for the ballots after the fact and they have done that before so if somebody after the fact wants all the ballots they can get them in order to determine whether theirs in fact was received by the district and counted so that's one check on the process another really important one is that um it's it's actually not that common that the ballot total gets so close to the 50 percent threshold that they need to be validated but if that were to happen um that validation process would happen it would have to happen in a public hearing the public could watch it and that would be an opportunity in fact if it were necessary to invite an outside third party uh to come you know not withstanding the appointment of somebody in the district being in the arbiter role we could have an outside third party come and help with that process um and uh just as a practical matter it's in order to move the process forward it's very helpful to start to have a preliminary tabulation at the close of the proposition 218 hearing and again absent appointing a like a consultant to receive the ballots and collect and count them and have that tabulation prepared i'm i'm not sure how to do that other than to have a district individual keep that tally and of course keep the ballots secure because we don't want to lose or misplace any of them but to start creating that tally so that the close of the hearing there's a there's a number the uh you know that represents the maximum possible protests that the district may have received that the board's going to need in order to make a decision of whether to move forward um so you know that said the district could hire an outside third party to serve in this in this role um but at least legally i don't think that's necessary even though it's possible uh i'm not suggesting that there would be any um anything illegally done by the district i'm not suggesting that all i'm telling you is what my experience is and maybe people are just crazy in long pico i don't know but rick watches uh are just they they want to feel assured that their vote came in and telling them that hey you can look at all the ballots is that really going to satisfy them i i don't know and i i understand what you're saying and i i totally uh trust s lb i i'm just telling you what my experience has been and i'm i'm not suggesting that we have to change things but i think we need to be very careful that's all rick can i mean i maybe expand on on your take on that whole thing yeah well you know lois has a very valid point and the experience in lump pico was extremely contentious all the way through you know one of the actual elections we were lost by on a boat we actually brought in the county clerk kale pellen totale uh one time there at the firehouse and there was you know a lot of stress and a lot of tension there i'm going through the the lump pico process as it worked it worked out good um this process you know i think there's a lot of support in our community for the fire surcharge the rebuilding of our system i don't believe you know there'll always be some percentage of our customer base that will have concerns but i don't think we're going to see it rise to the level of the protest and so forth like we've seen it with the lump pico or our last rate increase our last rate increase was very contentious and holly did a you know fine job uh very open we did have at least one or two folks come in and actually copy down all the information from the protests uh you know it was a very transparent process i thought you want to have a least account the night of the meeting so you're not spending a lot of time you know going through and counting and sorting them out um so to speak uh the process worked good for slb in the past for rate increases yes the lump pico was very different and it was a very contentious issue and i understand we're we're why lois is is uh bringing that up because that was a that was very contentious i don't think we'll have that and i think you know our past procedures with our district secretary will work fine um and jenna's points about you know the number of protests we have we may not even have to validate you know i'm i'm thinking we won't have to but you know you never know anybody else want to comment on this particular issue let's see if there's any members of the public that want to comment on this hearing none um i'd like to get back to the motion that was recommended by the staff which is that we appoint the district secretary to serve as an impartial arbiter to receive collect and tabulate protests received by the district and if necessary to validate process during an open public meeting i get somebody to move that i'll make that motion second thank you any further discussion and um molly would you take a roll call vote president may hood vice president henry yes director ackman yes director faults yes director smally yes okay thank you on to the the second issue and then maybe we can come circulate back around to what jamie was asking about are we do outreach so um i hope everybody's been able to see the draft of the resolution and so what i'd like to do is uh elicit any comments that people have for suggestions for changes so that these can be incorporated and uh the staff can create a final version for when we have the um hearing on this and so uh we'll start with you jamie do you have any comments questions so um not no the language of the resolution is fine and i appreciated that i think that you handled the question of identifying a specific um account in which the cert the recovery revenues would be isolated um i that's satisfied i think the spirit of what the board was asking for so i appreciate that thank you uh bob i had a question for for jena and um just make sure i understood uh what she had said during her introductory remarks jena are you saying that it is um that the that the district and this board is legally restricted from offering to the community this level of guarantee uh prior to the vote by the community on whether or not to have a um surcharge like this uh no and i i apologize for sort of confusing the issues um the concern about having the board vote on something like this arises because the language is embedded in the resolution that establishes the new rate and it would be a prop 218 violation to approve that resolution before we finish the prop 218 process so it's not that the board can't vote on language to create a restricted fund for example in advance of the 218 hearing but it most naturally would be part of the the resolution as it is presented to you and that cannot be voted upon until the hearing and protest procedures are complete but well but it could have been part of the 218 resolution that we voted on last time we just chose not to do it at that point and that was that was my my concern about it is that you know in in pursuit of maximum flexibility on what to do with the five million i think we short changed ourself on the transparency side by not giving uh our community those assurances up front and what we're kind of doing here is sort of a well maybe yes maybe no trust us um rather than just saying hey this is just part of the deal right from the start as of right now uh the most recent budget document does not reflect this and so um i you know until we have that i i don't know how to square the desire to basically approve it tonight um without having everything sort of wrapped up and and finalized so my objection to this process remains which is we should have done this before and we should have tried to lessen the impact on our community by finding operating cost savings to reduce this even if it were a million this past year has been horrific for many people in our community relative to their income levels um and so we were just sort of continuing what i think is a less than positive experience here with respect to the specific language um i i went back and looked at what we reviewed last time and there seemed to be at least one area that was different and that was the when will the proposed surcharge end and what we reviewed last meeting it was either a total of five million uh or um or terminated early if the net costs are less than five million i think we have slightly different language in this one well i mean it might be slightly different bob but it's you know it's trivially i think the but but you know that's the point it you might think it's trivial and you might cut me off because you think it's trivial but it's not we should be very consistent in the messaging that we're giving people and i think that actually goes to what jamie probably wants to talk about which is what is that messaging how should we be doing it and we should be reviewing all of that in depth prior to rushing in to the vote that we took so i would like to see i mean you asked for comments so i'm giving you comments i would like to see that we harmonize the language that's in this particular resolution with what we had talked about at the last meeting do you have a suggestion for how to change the i i told you what the suggestion was it was the surcharge terminated early if the wildfire costs are less than five million now do i believe that that might happen i don't know strange things happen but that's what we put in our agenda item last time i could be misremembering but i i thought that was a note in either the 218 notice or the memo indicating that the board could terminate the charge early which is absolutely the case under 218 but i wouldn't typically put that in the resolution because that's a decision the board would make at a later time but but that is part of the communication to the community and so you know we obviously have very different approaches on transparency and building trust and communicating with the community one is a legal approach one is not and what i've advocated for here consistently from the time this was brought to the to the board for its discussion and approval was a very different process if we choose not to do that okay but i think we're really missing opportunities here to engage with our community in a in a much better fashion the reality of this is the larger the agency the less likely that a negative vote which is just a complete inversion of our system of government it's less likely that a negative vote will be successful only in small circumstances will that happen our bear creek estates sewer area for example which has 56 people did easily defeat one of the proposals because they were able to organize a very small community you get to the size of of san lorenzo valley water district is very difficult for that to happen in the very short period of time that's available to people so it's not likely as rick says it's not likely to happen even if there was opposition to it but i really think because of that we need to make sure that we're going the extra mile when we're communicating with our with our customers and our owners los well i understand what bob is saying about how difficult it is to defeat a 218 process but to go back to this question of keeping track of the money it is such a simple thing it's an account it's a part of of what stephanie does on a regular basis and she they can keep track of where all that money is going what account it goes into and as it's spent coming out and describing what it was spent on and it seems like we're making a mountain out of a molehill here it should this is just a simple process for any accountant to keep track of money that comes in for a certain purpose and the money goes out for that purpose and anybody any member of the public can look at that now whether we shut it off earlier or we don't shut it off early we don't know what's going to happen we don't really know how much fema is going to pay we don't there's a lot of things that we don't know and maybe we need more than five million dollars are we going to say we're only going to collect five million dollars um i i don't know i just seems like this shouldn't be so difficult to me and and maybe just because i've done accounting and i understand the in and outs but i would think bob knows that um so it this is not rocket science that's all mark did you want to make a comment yes um lois i i don't think that bob's point was regarding how the funds are tracked it's when the funds are no longer being collected um but i'm okay with the resolution the way it is written but i understand bob's point about not having the language in there for stopping the collection of this if the fund if the costs are less than the five million so just that comment i guess uh since i haven't commented here i i would just second what what mark said um and i i guess bob i just because we don't always agree on everything doesn't mean that i'm not a good transparency and developing trust with the ratepayers i think all of the board members are and i think that's one of the good aspects of this board that they're all engaged and they are devoted to these ideals again i i'm perfectly open to you adding a sentence there that that where it says shall end automatically once a total five million surcharge of revenues are collected um by the district comma or you know if you would come up with the specific language but sometimes i get the feeling that what you're trying to do is obstruct a process without suggesting a way to make it more acceptable to you so i would just urge you to just give us the language and i think some of us would probably vote for it i i mean i know i i would bob go ahead well i i i appreciate that but you know i i gave the specific language when i was talking about it and so apparently apparently it was not and i i gave the specific suggestion and how to do it so let's let's set i'm sorry for just i missed it for just a moment it's my fault because well okay but but but that is a that is a recurring theme that you have and i i i i i i don't accept that premise and i want to make make that very clear um here's here's where here's where i'm coming from and where i struggle i don't think there's any question here that our community is basically on the hook for the repair costs that aren't covered by the generosity of the taxpayers of the united states we might get some additional grants we might get some funding from the state but but we are on the hook for this so i think we can all agree and i think we all do agree on that and i think even the community would agree on that as well and i and i agree with lois that that handling this should be a very straightforward thing but i want to be very clear of what my expectation is because when i look at the budget as it's currently been presented to us it does not do that it throws the five million dollars into a big pot and it gets shuffled around at the end of this process because we're funding all of this repair work right now through a loan at the end of this process when that five million has been collected it either needs to be applied over a period of time to the loan we took out for the fire recovery because we can't prepay that or we need to prepay five million dollars on the other loan this should not be rolled into the pnl as it currently is instantiated in the budget documents that have been presented to us and so i'm very interested in seeing how the budget documents come back to us because that's probably going to be on the next agenda to make it really clear that that is in fact what's going to happen because if that is not clear then we are not using that five million dollars in in the correct way the other option we might do for the five million is actually pay cash for some of the fire recovery but because that five million is being collected over a long period of time we're probably going to be done with the fire recovery well before the end of that five-year period or at least the vast majority of it where we're going to be spending most of our money so yeah and and right now i don't this isn't all hanging together for me and that's the struggle that that i have are there any other comments by other members of the board jimmy um so i i guess i i appreciate this conversation i think um i agree that we can add language to the resolution that would better clarify our intentions with the surcharge you know and and i'll suggest something that i think i heard bob say which was something along the lines of be it further resolved that the wildfire recovery surcharge shall end automatically once a total of five million dollar surcharge revenues are collected by the district or earlier at the decision or direction of the board should the entire five million dollars uh not be required i i know jenna felt like we didn't need to do that but i i think that you know the public would appreciate knowing that we are being mindful that it may not be as expensive as it's been priced out to be although i would be surprised by that um but i i think that you know that can kind of hopefully achieve the spirit of what bob was hoping for with this specific resolution you know at the point that we do eventually adopted obviously not tonight um to his larger question about you know wanting to know that not only have we created this you know isolated account in which the revenues are going to be collected um that will you know ensure that they are um being uh directed only to see if i recovery costs um but i i think i i guess i would love to hear from rick and stephanie you know whether the next budget is likely to address some of the concerns about how this money will roll into future budgets um you know in in in a transparent way um do you have any thoughts around that i mean i i can i'll let stephanie step up first but we can you know create accounts and show accounts in the budget that's not and that's not an issue if that's what the board correctly yeah and i think that's what we said at the last meeting is that we'll break it out similarly to the other reserve fund area to where it'll be a it'll be a designated restricted it's going to be considered operating revenue no matter what but but we'll just have it slow directly down to the bottom as showing restricted okay thank you um you know i think that you know being able to see that and visualize that when we get the next um round of budget documents will be really helpful um for that discussion um and you know i just wanted to revisit my uh other questions separately which was just that i i would love just a quick presentation from staff about what is done when when as we go through the prop 218 process to you know help people understand what their role is in it because you know i really i i i very much appreciate the concerns that people have that feel like they're just they don't know what the processes and they don't understand what we're doing and maybe they don't understand you know what what this money is actually going to do or why we need it um you know i want to make sure that we're really answering those questions in a fulsome way understand dami do you want them to do this now or do you want them to do it at some later date no i i i am asking them for a future presentation i don't want to put them on the spot right now but you know maybe we could and that's why i was suggesting maybe at the administrative committee meeting even that's something that we could take up and discuss there and you know i'm i'm open to how we do that but i i would just like to learn more about that um uh for my own understanding because i do hear from people about like well what are they doing to tell us this is happening i'll let you answer whether you would like to do this at a general board meeting or or like consider whether you want to agendize it for a general board meeting or whether you would rather take you know i think uh let's staff regroup first of next week uh and put together what we're going to say you know i'm i have a tendency to want to just because of the you know the magnitude of this issue the full board um i'd like to include jena in that discussion and stephanie and how we're going to move this ahead you know i have no problem bringing this information back uh the director atman has asked for i just wanted to make sure that we follow a process that that legal is comfortable with um and and move forward uh most likely the full board just because of the magnitude uh of the of the issue it may require a special meeting i'm not sure that's what i say like to group up with staff and get back to uh you all okay that's what i'm not really sure where to uh go from here um jamie suggested some language which i don't know whether she wants to formally propose to add in there or whether at this point it might just be better to let this go let jena take the substance of what she's heard and revise the document um i i think i heard uh holly saying that she was happy with the way it was um i i'm happy with the way it was i don't know mark what what's your take on this um although i did say i was okay with the resolution i appreciate what bob's point is and can agree with the language that jamie was proposing or something like that because i don't think that encumbers the resolution any i i think letting jena take a step back take this and reflect that into it yeah i i agree i i thought that um it takes a little i i started trying to come up with some language similar along the line what jamie did that it's going to take more time than i can you know we can just do don't think we need to do that here tonight yeah and i think jena and myself but you know staff has direction we understand where the board's coming from that's why we came back we know the board wants the intent of this money to be spent only on cz u and that's why we brought it back and you know we have time to massage it one more time and we'll come back with something okay could i say something here yes go ahead well the 218 process um really uh defines what you're voting on and who can vote and uh what it's all about it's all spelled out when somebody uh when it goes out to the public it has to go out to everyone um and tells them what the process is so i i can see clarifying uh what uh the surcharge is for but as for the process it's clearly defined it always people have to be told uh that it's a negative vote they and and normally it's like only one vote for uh for a connection it's not both people uh that live there you know man and a wife or uh a woman with 10 kids it's one vote normally per connection and that all that stuff is spelled out in the 218 process and it should answer most questions maybe it won't necessarily answer the question why the surcharge but i think most people get that we have a problem here a financial problem from the fire and so maybe that is an even going to be a big issue i don't know and and i know i don't know everything but i had a certain experience with 218 processes and they're very clear normally and slv isn't new to this they've done it many times i agree there's a there's a lot of constraints that are imposed by the process itself the legal aspects what we do in terms of outreach and other things so i think it's a good idea that um rick and staff bring this back to the rest of the board so with that um unless there's any other comments we can move on so a couple of comments i think the lowest is very right it is spelled out but because at a cultural level this prop 218 negative vote is completely foreign to our way of governing i think that's why people have such a hard time with it it's an inversion of how they normally think about voting one person one vote this doesn't do it and it turns it from a yes to a no um yet but the main thing i wanted to say is i i think jamie had a really good suggestion um because the messaging around this and the work that we would do in that i think is really critical um past 218 processes i've sold certain things and uh we need to be very very clear about what we're selling i think rick likes to talk about how you know we sold the probation tank a couple times in 218 processes and so people have that in mind as well we need to make sure this is very clear so i really like the idea of a more review of the um communications process in addition because it's very clear that we're going to be going back to the community for yet another rate increase after this next one sometime in the near future i think this would be really good for us to get these communication processes in place really well sort of a um i don't want to call it a practice run but certainly this one is a great one for us to be able to work on in preparation for the one that comes after any other comments from the board or from our public members before of them they're still hanging in there with us um if not um the final thing we have are district reports and written communications and in general sure may hood did i did i miss the vote on uh appointing the district secretary as the arbitrarily positive we did that before we moved on to the discussion of the resolution did we not am i imagine we did you're correct it was a unanimous vote in favor okay anything else jina no thank you chair may hood so there um the only thing that we have under district reports was um i was just going to make a brief one uh about um what's coming up and on june 17th you've probably heard that we have a hearing um on the draft urban water management plan so what that means given that and the fact that we don't have a meeting in the first uh the first meeting of july is canceled according to the board policy manual um i will give and mark and i will give a presentation on sort of an update on the santa margarita process on july 15th that meeting um and that is still well before the public um comment period is started and i will say that one interesting thing came out today um the california water department um announced its first um assessments of the groundwater sustainability plans that were sent in last 16 months ago uh for those uh groundwater basins that were critically overdrawn so those the example that you probably know about is the santa cruise mid-county one that has severe problems with seawater infusion and we're kind of the next category down we're overdrawn but not critically overdrawn and the interesting thing that they announced was that santa cruise mid-county their plan was approved as was the um a particular basin aquifer in moray the two of them were um sent back as being categorized as inadequate this is kiyama valley basin and the pasarobos uh pasarobos sub basin um so that that was interesting that it's the first time we've actually seen any evidence that anybody in california water department actually looked at these reports um from the standpoint from the standpoint of our situation it's it's encouraging because we're using the same um consulting uh that santa cruise mid-county that got uh their plan approved so that sort of i think it's well for us when we send our zoom in uh then so that that's all i wanted to right now holly you've got your hand up yes um i just wanted to let you know that we are having a july 1st board of directors meeting we decided at the beginning of the year that that it was not necessary to um to skip that meeting and so we are scheduled to have a july 1st meeting i i thought we voted on that and i checked the board policy manual that we accepted and i it says that we don't have um we don't have that that's one month where we only have one meeting and it's the second one am i i mean that that's definitely in the board policy manual because i looked it up because i couldn't remember and i think there was a split in the vote on that um so did anybody else i i actually i actually thought that holly's right that that we that i i didn't agree with it but i i know i'm pretty sure the majority of it voted to have a board meeting that is correct okay because that's not what is in the board policy manual right now that we we passed on april 15th that's how it had been in the past but this year we changed it to i was puzzled too because i was on the opposite side of bob but when i looked at the thing i so i i don't know what to do about that jina well i think that the board policy manual since it was adopted by resolution after the resolution initially setting the meeting scheduled for the year superseded that prior decision and so now the schedule is that there's only one regular meeting in july i i think that's correct because i think that the first note that you're referring to bob was when we were setting the calendar and um but then when we reconsidered it the vote went the other way um and so uh you know in the direction that you preferred so so i think i think i would prefer that we will not prefer i think we must stick with what the board policy manual says right jina i mean i i we can't like have another i think it superseded the prior decision regular meetings have to be established by a formal board action i think the resolution formal board action adopting the resolution adopting the policy manual superseded the prior action i agree and that doesn't mean we can't have a special meeting or something if we want to but but we won't be in negative okay holly got that and any other questions or comments on the the santa margarita stuff okay well um any other questions or comments that anybody wants to make before we adjourn at evening during them seeing them then nighty night thank you all