 have to say is that it's just, you know, it's missing and it'll be there next week. I have it being 630. So if we're ready, I will go ahead and convening this Board of Directors meeting of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for March 18, 2020. And before I start, I want to say that a director and is ill this morning, so he won't be present. And the other thing I need to announce is that director to emailed me and Holly this morning formally resigning her position on the board for personal reasons, effective immediately. I'm sorry that Tina has to resign and I'm going to miss her contributions. We will agendize for the next meeting of the board the initial steps in filling this vacancy. Holly, would you like to call the roll? President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Henry. Here. Director Smalley. Here. And director false, as you said, is absent. And do we need to vote to make that an excuse absence? Assuming that's what he requested in the chair's pleasure than yes. Yes. Okay. I move that we make this an excused absence due to illness. All in favor, say I, I all opposed. All abstaining. The motion passes. Are there any additions and deletions to if I could just did did we get director Smalley's vote on that? Yes. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry it's and it was that. Okay. Thank you. Are there any additions and deletions to the agenda for tonight? Just item seven district reports. There are no there will no be no operations status report. Now we come to the part of the meeting that is for oral communications by members of the public on any subject that lies within the jurisdiction of the district, but is not on the agenda tonight. Do we have any attendees that would like to address ward in that regard? Seeing none, hearing none, we will go ahead and move on to item four new business. And the first one, but item four a is the little lion recoding contract. Rick, you want to introduce that for us? We should have the district engineer present tonight to present this to the board. Great. Okay. I'm not seeing him on here. Yeah, neither am I. I'll text them real quick. Okay. Well, let's just move on. We have a recommendation to that the board instruct the district manager to enter into negotiations with the superior tank systems to finalize award of the little lion tank recoding project. As a result of the the CZU fire, the tank coatings and painting and exterior painting of the little lion reservoir was damaged, requiring recoding and repainting. The district went to formal bid for this project. We received two bids, one paid from a superior tank company. And the second one was from tank clad HS, I do believe, company, low bid for the project was superior tank in the amount of $215,578. The staff took this to the engineering committee to review. Engineering committee has reviewed this. Staff has prepared a motion for the board to consider to accept superior tank systems bid and authorize the district manager to enter into a contract. With that, we can answer some questions if the board has any. Okay. Do we have any questions from the board? Director Smalley, since you're on the engineering department, if you want to say anything, why don't you start? Yes. As Rick said, the engineering committee did review this on Tuesday. We had a few questions on it that Josh was able to address for us. And we concurred with his recommendation that we move ahead with bid from superior tank. Okay. Lois, did you have anything you wanted to comment on? So, how since I was only involved with Redwood tanks and then Wampicco, how long does this new coating last, Rick? You know, I was going to say 15 years, but James, you've been involved in much more recently in coatings than I have. Is it a 15 or 20-year lifespan on coatings? Yeah. So, they recommend that there are about 20-year lifespans on the coatings. And so, this other company unified, what is the stuff that they were going to use that wasn't something that you thought would be a good thing? Um, you know, I don't have that in front of me. I thought Josh was going to be here. And I had the prices backwards. The superior came in at $196,227. They were low bid. Superior tank is a company that we've used many a times and has excellent references. And so it is the second company, but I did not do, I'm sorry to say the background on the actual material product being used. I can address that to some degree. What superior is providing met the specifications of the district provided in the bid package? The other firm was providing an alternative material that did not meet the specifications, but it was for our consideration if we wanted to take an exception on the specifications. So. Thank you, Mark. Sure. Okay. We'll go out to the public for any comments or questions. Are there any? Seeing none, hearing none. We'll come back to the board. And if you don't mind, I'm going to read this motion and make a motion. And I'm sure that Holly has it so that she can do it. But I'll just read it for the record. I move that San Lorenzo Valley Water District Board of Directors instruct the district manager to enter into negotiations as specified in the request for proposals for little lion tank recoding with superior tank system Inc. The district manager shall make every effort to enter into contract with superior tank systems Inc. To obtain complete and satisfactory rehabilitation of a little lion potable water tank and return said tank to beneficial use by the district. Is there a second? Second map. Okay. Holly, can we go ahead and take a vote on that? A roll call vote. President may hood. I Vice President Henry. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. And director false is absent. Okay. So the motion passes unanimously. So the next item on our agenda is the Olympia watershed restoration contract. Yes. And the environment. Thank you. The environmental planner will present this report to the board early. Great. Thank you. So on November 14 2016, the board of directors approved a low effect habitat conservation plan for the for the probation tank replacement project and other maintenance and replacement projects located in sand parkland habitat to mitigate the impacts on rare species and sensitive habitat during operation maintenance and capital improvement projects. The districts opted to set aside and manage a 6.7 acre acres of high quality sandhill habitat within the Olympia well filled which is an 180 acre property owned by the district and used for water supply and watershed protection. The Olympia conservation area management and monitoring plan was developed to guide habitat management restoration enhancement and other related projects within the Olympia conservation area. As part of the Olympia conservation area management and monitoring plan, a five year phase of implementation was agreed upon with reports due annually to the federal fish and wildlife service to maintain an incidental take permit. In February 2021, the district received a proposal exhibit A from Jodi McGraw consulting to complete the 2021 annual report. This proposal was taken to the environmental committee in March 2021. A discussion around the proposal brought up the question of going out to bid for the annual report. The environmental committee directed staff to bring the proposal along with backup of Jodi McGraw's credentials exhibit B for approval. Staff recommends the board approves Jodi McGraw's proposal with the consideration of the firm's completion of the conservation area management and monitoring plan. The 2020 annual report and their qualifications as one of two fish and wildlife approved biologists for the specialized habitat type. And I'm happy to answer any questions regarding the contract and the proposal attached. All right. Director Henry, did you have any questions? I really don't have any questions because I think Jodi McGraw does a fabulous job. She's very familiar with the district. And I believe she was involved in the probation tank where we got this very prestigious award for our conservation. Is that right, Kari? Yes, that's correct. Okay. Yeah, I don't have a question. I would go with her at any time. Director Smalley? Yes, not regarding the proposal from Jodi McGraw specifically, but there was a reference in the contract to the strategic element number three, the capital improvement plan. Is that a final plan, Carly? That's a good question. Brick, you might be able to better answer that. It is not the final plan. I do believe. When will we have a final on that? That we can, as a board, start to look at that. You're gonna have to refer to Carly on that or we'll get back to the board with that answer. I'm trying to figure out the element three, I'm not seeing that in the proposal. Did you say it was a capital improvement project list or was it the Habitat Conservation Plan that you're referring to? It was attached to the plan. I could pull it up, but it was referenced as one of the attachments. Okay. There were two strategic elements referenced element two and number three because I assume that that's our capital improvement plan that she's referencing. I don't, I'm not sure about that either. We're gonna have to get back to you Mark on that. Is that potentially an error and it should be the Habitat, the HCP Habitat Conservation Plan, which should have been, I mean that would have been a more reasonable thing to attach. Possibly. No, I'm asking Carly if this was just the reference. We're gonna have to get back to you on that. I don't want to ask. Okay. Okay. Do you have anything else to ask Mark? But regarding the proposal itself, I liked what I saw. I thought that the breakout that they provided was very reasonable given the scope of work. So I have no further questions on it. I would agree. I thought, you know, for $11,000 we were getting quite a bit of work done both, you know, improving by moving, removing the species, adding some of the native species back in, and also getting the report, which struck me is pretty reasonable. And we know that as Lois said that she does excellent work for us. The question I had actually is given that there were required to do this report for a number of years, would it just make sense to to go out with it? I mean not now, but next time to have a multiple year contract with her so we don't have to revisit this every year? Yes, I actually do think that makes sense. I had a phone call with Jodi discussing that and she was willing to put that proposal together and we could actually create a formal RFP if we wanted to go that route. Well, I think probably for now we don't want to do that because we've got this here and ready, ready to go. And just kind of a little addition to this on the Santa Cruz hand, Sandhills references, there are two people or two firms that are US and US Fish and Wildlife approved biologists for this type of work. One is Jodi Gural, the second one is Richard Arnold, Dick Arnold, who is the master of this type of work and really doesn't do the field work anymore. So we're very limited but it doesn't mean that somebody could not bid and we could check references. Okay, I'll go out to our attendees and see if there are any questions or comments. Rick Moran, go ahead, Rick. I have a comment and a couple of questions. One, as I agree with Lois and you that Jodi McGraw is a highly qualified biologist with a great deal of experience in this water district. But I have a couple of questions. Is there an update on the endangered species population in the Olympia conservation area and is the water district doing an ongoing survey? So that's one question or two questions but around the survey and the populations of the endangered species, particularly the Ziony Bandwing, Grasshopper, and the Mount Herman, June beetle, as well as the Ben-Loman spine flabber. So that's one set of questions. And the other question is what is the status of the endowment that is supposed to fund the conservation area? Thank you very much. Thank you, Rick. Yeah, so those are great questions. As part of the monitoring plan that we put together, we initially surveyed the property for the species in 2018 and we'll reassess those counts at the end of the plan, which will be the fifth year. So it's final fifth year of that plan. We'll go back out and do those counts. It sounds like according to Jodi, that's a little more expensive to do those annually. So we opted to do it every five years. So the counts are actually in the actual management and monitoring plan that's on our website and you can find that in a table. And then as far as the endowment, we have been receiving some funds from that and part of that money will go to fund this contract. I believe this year we ended up with about $7,000 from the endowment. Are there any other comments or questions from the public members? Seeing none, hearing none, we'll go back and I'll go ahead and if you don't mind make the recommendation or make the motion because again, it's kind of a complicated one. I'll just go ahead and read it out. I move that the district manager enter into a contract with Jodi McGraw Consulting for the completion of the 2021 Olympia Conservation Area Annual Report as required in the Olympia Conservation Area Management and Monitoring Plan. Is there a second? I'll second that. Okay. Holly, would you take a roll call about please? President Mayhood? Aye. Vice President Henry? Yes. Director Smalley? Yes. And Director Fultz is absent. Okay, so the motion passes and we go on to the next item of new business which is professional services for communications and outreach. You want to take that one off? And once again, the environmental planner will present this report to the board. Great. So I'll just start with some background here. In March 2020, the district entered into a contract with the Buzz PR which was formerly Chatterbox PR to begin establishing an Outreach and Communications Plan. Since the implementation of the plan, Buzz PR has assisted the district in increasing its social media presence, publish monthly newsletters, improve relationships with local media publications, develop monthly outreach plans, release an annual State of the District campaign, which we got grant funded this year, and launch the district on new social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram to reach a wide variety of customers. A detailed overview of their accomplishments can be found in the environmental planner status report under public outreach item 7.2. In July 2020, the board of directors voted to extend the contract for an eight month period to complete phase three. Phase three included execution of marketing plans, launching all marketing elements, weekly communication reporting for marketing and monthly reporting for social media. The Buzz PR plans to continue its progress with its outreach and planning and measurable goals. Attached is their proposal for the next nine months exhibit A and an example of the outreach planning schedule provided to staff exhibit B. It is recommended the board authorize the district manager to enter into a new contract with the Buzz PR to assist and guide district outreach efforts or give direction moving forward in regards to an outreach strategy and strategic communications. Both myself and Marcy Bronco from Buzz PR are here to answer questions. Okay. Director Smalley, would you like to start? Yes. Since I'm reasonably new to the board, what's the board's or what's the district's objective or goal with this public outreach? What are we trying to accomplish? Who are we trying to reach? How is that being done? I guess an overall would be that we're trying to reach our customer base, right? And it seems like more people are turning to social media for information and looking to websites or Facebook or Instagram, you know, all these different media types before going to let's say their newspaper or something that might have been more accessible in the past. So this is our planning to try to get that outreach on to these different media sources and be able to get the accomplishments of the district out there to the public. How it had originally started was we did a survey to understand what your customers want, how they want to receive their information and data. And we have taken all of those survey results and we're working on communicating better through different channels, being more in touch with the media, making sure the media know all of the different actions and opportunities and what's happening. We actually do media tours now, even during COVID where we do car tours, where we go and see what's happening in the district and make sure that we have Rick and the district as our spokespeople out there in front of the media and communicating and being more consistent. One of the things that had come up out of the survey was consistency and communication. So we ensure that we're meeting all of those guidelines and being a resource and also we're a resource for you during the crisis PR. So we help with any type of crisis situations and making sure communication is taking place. Our original target was to get out information on our capital improvement, get out information on what we were doing on spending our ratepayers funds on pumps, tanks, replacement. The CZU fire in COVID kind of hijacked our plan a little bit and obviously we went into a more water quality, water supply and damage through the CZU fire and then the complete change of all of our operations due to COVID. So we're trying, you know, we want to get back now to our capital improvement plan and get back to really getting the word out of our construction because, you know, as the board knows, we will be pretty much excavating from one end of this valley to the other on mainland replacements, new tanks and we've got to shift back to start to get that word out. So that's kind of what we'd like to shift back and you'll see more, you know, construction photos, more tours, more of outreach into the capital improvements. But we still have, you know, the ongoing emergencies and we're still seeing, you know, a real increase in social media and trying to figure a way to adapt to our customers using social media. A lot of our customers are starting to use social media as a primary way to communicate with the district and that really concerns us due to the fact that, you know, Carly was monitoring social media at 10 o'clock the other night when people are going online saying they're either out of water, does anybody know what's going on? They need to call the district. We can't, you know, quite cover the social media as much as that. So there's some concerns moving ahead on how we combat the need to address social media and keep our, you know, we're a critical operation and we need folks to, you know, to use our main ways of communications, which is the telephone, you know, to call in when they have issues, not just to go on the social media. But right now, we're trying to get back to what we're doing, you know, the repairs from the CZU fire and capital improvements. So Rick, am I hearing you say we're getting feedback on social media, but the district's preferred is phone emails, that type of communication? For interruptions from the public? Yes, for interruption of water service, for these health and safety issues, if someone's out of water, it's best for them to pick up the phone and call, you know, hold up our staff immediately and not just go on social media and say, does anybody know why I'm out of water? And people are turning more and more to social media for that type of stuff, and it's dangerous, you know, it could be because we don't monitor social media 24-7, it's impossible for us. Close. We tried to, but, you know, it's an endeavor to monitor social media. And we need people to get the facts from the office when there's out of water or you have a water quality concern and contact the appropriate district staff. We'd rather have you pick up the phone. You know, I even get emails, do you know why I'm out of water? And I come in in the morning in the middle of the night, somebody emailed me. And those are risky because nobody monitors that. And we could have a, you know, a large main breaker. We could have an issue out there that needs to be addressed, and we don't find out about it for several hours. So, Mark, one of the, one of the things that came out of our surveys was a lot of the consumers wanted to have more social media and have information and have the social media be an information base. And you walk a fine line when you do that, when you start offering information on a consistent basis on social media, then you open up the door for everyone to make a comment about anything and everything. So we've grown our numbers, we've grown our audience, but we are working right now on educating people on the right way to communicate for the right situation. So Carly and I have put together about 15 frequently asked questions. And we've started this frequently asked question series over the past 60 days to really try and educate the consumer that social media is for us to offer you tips and education and board meetings and important things they should know, but it's not the place to say I have no water or a water main broke, who's going to solve my problem at two in the morning. And so we really are trying to walk the fine line of educating people on what they've asked for with social media, but also informing people on where to go for what situation. And we have a pretty robust newsletter now that goes out once a month, sometimes twice a month if we have something very important that also reminds people and educates people on what tools to use for what and then we're really focusing on working with the media. Okay. Okay. And then a second question that I have related to this, I see a number of metrics laid out in your proposal for outreach on various media aspects. Do we have a tracking for how those metrics were accomplished in 2020? Absolutely. We purchased a software system called Sprout Social. It is an analytical data software system and also is one of the few software programs for social media that will keep every piece of communication so we can go back to any comment or anything that has ever been posted. And every month it pulls analytics and data month over month so we can see growth and look at what we've achieved for our goals. So Carly and I work together on monthly analytic reports and I can pull yearly, quarterly, however you choose. I would like to see something either quarterly or annual for last year to see what is it that we're getting for this? Absolutely. Carly, maybe you want to share the last month report and then tomorrow I can go and pull the last quarter of 2020 report. It'll take me maybe like an hour to pull that data. I can pull that but you have last month's report, Carly? I'm happy to share that with you, Mark. Okay. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. I'll just, the problem I had with those metrics were it wasn't clear what, which social media they were on and they were like percentage increases which were these fabulously large percentage increases but if they're three to 12, the absolute number matters on these. So I think it's important to know what, which social media whether it's Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or whatever. Absolutely. I think Carly can share that report and it will clear up a lot of questions. Okay. Carly, we can add that report ongoing as part of your report to the board. Quarterly, maybe we can add those, that information into the report. I think quarterly is plenty. We don't have to see it. Okay. Yeah. I'll make the note, Carly, to put together a special, you and I will keep working monthly because I don't want to wait quarterly for us to review analytics and data and then you just let me know what schedule your board meeting, which meetings you want me to pull a quarterly report for and I will pull that data for your team. Sure. Something of a concern about, I guess what I would call overreacting to social media. I spent a lot of time monitoring Facebook and next door during the CZU fire and actually, you know, tried to explain to people what HDPE types were and what VOCs were and things like this when they weren't getting that information from the district and I, now after talking to Rick, realized that that's partly because there's so many complex issues having to do with liability and other things that, you know, it took a lot of time to put these together. But the one thing I have noticed is, for example, next door is can often be quite vociferous, but it's kind of a, it's actually not a gigantic number of people. It's a little bit of an echo chamber and it can be very useful, but I just wonder how many independent, you know, people you're you're hitting with that. I also worry about thinking about, you know, the demographics of our valley. You know, before COVID, you would come to the board meetings and there was not a non-gray-haired person in the room. And I think, for example, if you ask the three board members here, none of us are big users of Facebook or Twitter, right? Or, I mean, I use the next door and Facebook a little bit, but that's our main connection is with the website. And I really would urge that we make that our main source because it's definitive and can't be copied or misinterpreted. And so I guess I'm just concerned about the balance between what we do on the website, which I suspect is probably what a lot of the population, our ratepayers are, would be going to versus, you know, the number of our population that use Instagram is not very large. And maybe those aren't also, there are some, but they probably aren't the people that are paying the bill. The website is always updated prior to anything going on social media. And so the website is our primary source and social media then becomes our secondary tool. And there's two reasons to use social media. One is to educate and inform people. And the other is for organic SEO, organic search engine optimization. We do not have a budget to pay an SEO company, which can be several thousand dollars a month. So if you follow algorithms with Google and you're active on Facebook, a minimum of four to five times a week and you're active on Instagram and consistent, we can organically put ourselves into the rhythm where we're driving people to the website as well. Website is actively updated continually. I think Carly and I are between us probably four or five times a week on making sure things are updated. Lois, did you want to pipe in? Here, you're talking to the dinosaur here. Okay. I publicly said in 2019, which people got excited, I said next door is a cesspool and I have not changed my mind. Sorry. I haven't. The nonsense. I don't really care, but people send me stuff. And I think yikes as far as Facebook, I don't care what you had for breakfast or you're getting your hair cut today. I really don't care. I guess I'm just an old dinosaur. And what you're talking about, Instagram, Twitter, really? Twitter, hey, you get too bad on Twitter, I guess they ban you for life. But I'm in the wrong person to ask about this. Lois, let's re-flame that. What would you like them to be emphasizing? Acknowledging that you don't like that stuff. What do you think? We talked at the Budget and Finance Committee meeting about, and this is one of the things they listed in this report is using ACH for people to pay their bills, educating people. So people know that that's a safe way to have your bill paid. It goes right from your bank account, right straight to the district. And to me, all of this ought to be very educational. But I don't know how to educate people like when Rick Rogers was saying they need to call us. When I was on the Long Pico board, people would call each other. We didn't even have, we had a lot of this stuff, but not all of this going on. And they would call their neighbor, or they might call me. They wouldn't call the district where we had 24-hour service that when they called, their question would get transferred to someone. And so we need more education. To me, that seems to be the issue. Education, use social media to be educated, not jump to conclusions or believe what Joe Blow down the street told you. And I don't know how you do that because people are people. And I love people, honest I do. And I don't know how you change them. We do do a lot of that. I mean, it may be board members don't see a lot of it that goes out because you're not on a lot of that social media. But those are common reoccurring themes on ways to pay your bill, ways to contact the district, our office hours, ways to save water in different times of year and different programs. So we do do a lot of that that you may not be seeing. Because I have a, I catch some of, if it has water or SLB water in it, some of that gets forward to me. I skim it real quick. And I might answer one or two of those, but I go directly to the person and ask them to call appropriate staff. Most of the time it's involved water quality. And I ask them to call our water quality specialist, Nick Lespie, to talk to because a lot of it, you'll see someone will say something about their water and then you'll get five responses about you need to buy a water softener from me. People trying to sell our customers and that just really irritates me when those folks jump in and try to prey on folks. So a lot of it, we try to answer a lot of this is going out. And like I said, the fire did and COVID did hijack our outreach, tough to use the fire because it was such an emergency of large proportion. And it was an all hands on deck and we were probably spending three hours a day on preparing outreach starting early at six in the morning and ending late at night, getting it through all the department heads. And it's important that these messages come from our folks and not from the outside because people want to hear from us. Marcy does a great job on taking the information we provide, but there is a lot of staff time involved in this. And I do believe I have a strong belief that it's important that these messages come from staff. We had another firm in the past that developed a lot of these messages and the folks just weren't receptive to those messages. And our staff does quite a bit, just about does all of them. Marcy does take them and we all have an opportunity to edit and update. But it is time consuming and we are getting those messages out and I think we're getting more and more back to the more normal now that we were before fire. Can I just follow up on that? How much, I realize the staff has to originate the data and the information. And so can you give me an estimate of how much time is spent by staff writing versus the buzz folks and who kind of follows this through the system and makes sure it kind of comes out with one, you know, semi-consistent voice, but doesn't, isn't too much spin because boy, this valley is very spin averse. I would say Marcy and I spend the most time at the end of, you know, the whatever we've put together kind of going through making sure it sounds consistent. There's no, you know, anything typo wise. And what we usually get from other management staff would be bullet points like, you know, so Rick will send me some bullet points all drafts a couple paragraphs if we're trying to put together a letter or if we're trying to put together, you know, some kind of information for a social media post, then it goes to Marcy who will do the final edits. She'll send it back to me and then I'll prove for it to be posted. Another example would be we have a main break or an outage. James will try to do those bullet points and shoot them off to Marcy because what we find people love it when we send them a photo of a main break in action and get that posted. Oh, people are, they're on the most popular that is very popular to get the equipment and they like that instantaneous update of what's happening in the battle. So that's a, it's a push, you know, all of our, we have a photo program that we can send and it gets in so Carly can get it and then there's a narrative that James will do of where it is and anticipated timeframe for the water to be off and that stuff just goes, I hate to use the word, but it goes viral in the valley. Valley viral when we have a something like that and we try to get that out as soon as possible and we even try that on the weekends, you know, because we have a lot of staff out working at all and a lot of times we'll have to call up, we'll text Carly and she'll be on it and we get that out. But we try to update when we have these emergencies because people really like that. And then Gail, I take all of the bullet points that I'm given and present a plan to Carly. So I let her know when I think we should do a press release, what we need to get to the chamber, what I would put on next door and Twitter, Instagram, what should go on the website and I write all the different sections based off of where it's at. She then edits it or approves it and that includes if it's on the weekend, a Saturday or Sunday crisis. It doesn't matter. We both work together seven days a week. And then once that plan is approved, we get the website updated first and then we move forward with whatever the other elements are. And then we have sometimes I attend staff meetings maybe once a month just to see what the staff's doing and see if I can come up with any ideas. Right now we're planning for April. It's Earth month, Earth day, water conservation tips and education being proactive on talking to people about what we're going to do for education on top of our regular posts, looking at what frequently asked questions we should be focusing on for the month of April. And we're going to host another media day. So we plan not only moment by moment, but we have a content calendar where we're planning out month by month that has a bunch of activities. And just sitting on the subject, we'll also run it through legal on all the time, but we do run it through legal to make sure and there's usually changes to the better on that. We had a newsletter going out with pictures of the new board members on it. And you know that was flagged right away and you know that was a mistake and I'm glad legal caught that. But you know, each department will add something to it. Lois, did you have a question? Were you raising your hand? I wanted to say it's not that I'm against information here, but you need to find a way. I'm not unique. I'm not. And there are a lot of people like me who aren't on all this social media stuff. And there's also people in Long Pico. Their cell phones don't work here. They their computers don't work here. I'm fortunate where I am. Everything works. Unless Comcast does something. So how do you reach people like me who really don't use social network? And unlike I'm telling you, I'm not unique. I really am not. I hear that from a lot of people, they're just really disenchanted with social media. Do you receive Lois the state of the district mailer that we did? Do you find that informative? Yes. I did get that. Was that informative and helpful for you or? Well, not necessarily for me because I already knew a lot of it. But yeah, I think it's helpful. We are doing two mailers. We have a budget for two mailers of that magnitude a year. And then we work with the media on a weekly monthly basis. So those are some ways that we reach out that are not social media. Right. I mean, I'm one of these people who would like to read a newspaper every morning at breakfast, except my dog wouldn't leave me alone long enough to do that. But I like to read stuff that's in my hand that I know where it's coming from. Hopefully. But of course, you can't always believe everything you see or what you read. So I tend to be a little bit of a skeptic. Sorry. Can I, I think why don't let's see, do we have any members of the public that would just like to weigh in on this? And we can come back and talk about this more among the board members here. I mean, we sort of have the advantage tonight of a fairly short meeting. So I'm going to take advantage of this to let us range into things that are, you know, fairly sort of maybe broader and more about strategic thinking about this. But anyway, Alina Lang, go ahead. I just wanted to say like with Director Henry, like I resonate with that. I'm maybe an odd millennial that I'm not really on social media. So I hear you there, but I don't know if there's a simple solution to that, but like maybe like an email list if you're interested. I know you said you wanted it in your hand, but like maybe some kind of a listserv you can subscribe to or something like that, because I also sometimes find it hard to get information since I'm not a part of that social media area. Anyway, so that's all. Thank you. We do have a list just so you know that you can subscribe to on our website. And we have a newsletter that goes out while it's not printed as an e-newsletter that goes out monthly. Oh yeah, I signed up for the notifications that Holly helped me with that, but it's usually just like updating like when meetings are and stuff, but I'll look for that. Okay, wonderful. Yeah, I think that might be something that could be used more. You know, the same things that get sent out to social media maybe could be some subset of them could go out by email. Cynthia Denzel, so can we unmute Cynthia Denzel? Thank you. I like email as a notification service and I like getting links to recordings of zooms or informational meetings that may be posted on YouTube, because I would like to see the in-depth discussion of different topics like these issues about the permitting and the sustainability of the aquifer and the possibility of the merger. All of those things I think need more of an in-depth treatment that could be done through some kind of a Zoom presentation. I listen to the meetings, but I always have the feeling that I've missed half of the discussion that might have come before or offline or somewhere else, and I don't really use social media, so something like an email link to a presentation would be great for me. Thank you. Any other members of the public right now? Seeing none, hearing none. I'll go back to board. Mark, did you have anything you wanted to... I'm hearing both, I think, Gail and Lois say educate us first as to what this effort is doing, and I'm certainly of that mindset also. Rather than proceeding at this point with this, is that appropriate? Is what I'm asking myself at this point? If I add on to that, Mark, one of the issues I have is that when you read some of the language we talk about branding and marketing, and I think that we're a monopoly. People don't have anywhere else to go. We don't really have to sell ourselves particularly, except beyond what Rick said about letting people understand where their money is going. I guess I would like to see a better framing of the priorities of what we're trying to accomplish with this, not just creating overall visibility, but what are the most important things for us to do, and how you should be spending your time, and even some things that come to mind is I find the website not very easy to use and not very engaging or friendly. I also feel like I'm not quite ready to move on this. I think the other reason I feel that way is that it kind of falls into a larger question of distribution of tasks among our staff. I just think that Carly has got so much to do, and so many things that are important on the environmental side, and we're going to have in the next few years so many projects to repair from the fire damage that are going to need to have environmental impact statements and all the permitting, that it's just questionable whether she should have this added task of being the one that is the point person more or less for the outreach efforts. And this also gets to an issue that we saw in the budget and finance meeting where there was a discussion of adding a new staff member that would basically assist Rick. And the question in my mind is whether some of these issues should be taken up by a new staff member. And I don't know, Rick, whether you want to talk a little bit about what this new staff member, what you imagine that they might be doing and how this relates to them. Or if you feel it's too premature, you don't have to. It's kind of premature. However, I do believe that there will be definitely this new staff person will work on outreach because this new staff member will be if we move in that direction, will be working on a lot of these high-level priorities of the district and will probably be repairing the outreach statements and what we're doing and then working with Carly and our consultant on getting that message out. So I do see this new staff person working on outreach and communications. I don't want to saddle this person 100% because I don't think I'll get into the same position now that maybe we'll have more outreach, because I have multiple tasks that I want this person to work on. A lot of different loose ends and objectives that we have not been able to get over to the finish line. But I see this person working with all of my department heads and supporting them and their tasks. And definitely outreach could be part of it. I just wanted to add anything you wanted to add. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't. I did. Did you want to answer that, Carly? I didn't. Yeah. I just wanted to add in Gail that it's okay. I just wanted to add in that Marcy and the Buzz PR doesn't do anything on our website directly. They initially had that in their budget and we ended up taking it out. So Marcy will help me put together press releases and then I post them to the website myself, but she doesn't do anything on our website. So that's something we could discuss if we wanted to change, but that's important. I make recommendations and comments, but that's about it. Right. Exactly. So and then as far as my time, if I didn't have Marcy working with me, there's no way I could be doing this work on top of my regular workload. And it does take some time, but being able to pass the very basics of the information to Marcy to then get it back to me for approval really does help me out to get that stuff going and out to the public. No, I hear you. I think you have way too many things on your plate. I do a great job of managing all of them. The website will be one of the new staff members objectives to work with department heads. The website, we had a great start and just because of staff time and all of our other priorities, we've stalled. I really want to see the engineering section bloom because that's an area that we have so much to put out there and so many of our customers want to see that. And then there's other areas that we want to exceed in the website. So that new staff person will work with each of the department heads and move their departments ahead on the website. Okay, Mark, do you have any suggestions or Lois about how you'd like to move forward on this? Do you want me to jump off? I mean, I don't know. Okay. At this point, I'm not ready to move ahead or authorize on the 33,000 at this point. But it's my understanding that we have BuzzFeed under a monthly agreement now that we could continue with them. At this point, is that correct? Their contract has come up. We couldn't get it on the agenda. We just been working with them monthly until we get the contract back in front of the board. I see. Okay. I agree with that. I guess what I would, I'm not exactly sure how to do it, but I would like to continue month to month while either the board or a committee takes up questions that have to do with prioritizing what things we want done. And I'll take suggestions from the board or Rick or Carly on how to manage that. I would like to see the full board continue this discussion because I think it's say important enough item, you know, our outreach, our message to our community that the full board should have involvement. Okay. Any thoughts about that? I go along with Rick. All right. So can I move that we prove payment of Buzz on a month to month basis while the board investigates at a meeting within the next month or two ways in which to focus the efforts? Is that so? Because what I'm hearing is the board is interested in more details of the plan moving ahead. I mean, Mark, can you kind of educate us on how this is helping the district? The three board members that you're talking to here tonight, I don't hear any of us saying we use the social media aspects extensively as our source of information. But we're not the all of the ratepayers, but I don't know what our demographics are out there. Okay. And I realize when we put this together that the majority of the board is new and hasn't seen all that in the past. That's why I want to keep this at full board level. Okay. I got you. There is a percentage of our customer base that likes the newspaper aspect of turning the page, but there is also a great deal of our customer base that wants the right now in the social media and electronic media. So we'll try to... And my question to you is part of what I'd like to see is what are we trying to accomplish with the right now aspect effectively? Part of what I'm used to seeing some of the social media used for is to try to sell me something or get me further engaged in what you're doing. But to an earlier point that was made by Gail, we're a monopoly. If you want water here, you have to come to us. So help us understand what we're trying to accomplish with this in getting it out right now aspects. Okay. And I also agree there's a flip side because we are a monopoly. We have to get our message out to our people and tell, really keep them informed in what we're doing because they can't go anywhere else. So I think there's a flip side to the monopoly. We need to take that extra step. I've always said that people can't go anywhere else. We have to do the best job we can giving them the best water quality, best service because they can't say, hey, I don't like your water. I'm going to go next to it someplace else. So we need to take that extra step and we will try and we try to get that message out so people feel that we don't have that. I'm not saying you have that attitude, but I'm saying I want people to know that we appreciate them as customers. Okay. All right. That's all part of the communication strategy. It should be. Okay. Given that, do you think we can go ahead and move on to the next item of new business? Do you mind if I make one more comment? Sure. I'd like to just add in, you know, thinking about regular print media. We have a kind of limited budget to work with right now. So social media offers this free place for us to be able to get this content out and easily direct people to our website. Whereas we go to print media, it costs us, you know, $1,000 for a page ad. We have to try to get the media engaged if we want them to write the article. Most of the times they want you to pay if it's some kind of content that they want out or you want out specifically. And I think, you know, it is even if we're not a business where people have other options to go to. Like Rick said, I think it is really important that people can figure out how to be engaged. They can learn about what the water district's doing. And I think it makes us a lot more approachable to be on social media and getting that information out. And I think that's important for us. We can assign costs to that. I mean, we talk about other types of outreach in print. And we can talk about what costs would be associated with that so the board knows. So I think we can address that. And mailers do. You know, right now the media is begging for us to talk to them on consolidation. You know, there's give and take with the media that other times they want us to pay for it. So it's a give and take with the media. And we can put together something that kind of outlines different costs like that. Okay. Okay. Everybody. Okay. Then let's go on to. Do you need me anymore? I just thank you. Thank you. No worries. Thank you guys. I'll talk to you later. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. I lowest. Do I get to see your dog before I leave? I'm a dog lover. Do you have your dog there? She's on the couch. She's a big old beast. He takes up the whole couch. No room for me. Okay. Well, I have a dog. So I love dogs. She's an airdale. Oh, cool. My mom had those growing up. They're beautiful. Yeah, but she's almost 100 pounds. Oh, Mark, you have one more thing. Yes. Were you attempting to make a motion here on how to proceed or was that generally agreed upon? I'm not clear. Sorry. I didn't hear you. Could you say it again? Were you attempting to make a motion? I kind of got off of it. And I think it's fine. We don't have to make a formal motion unless you would like it. Okay. I think it's a quick question for council to continue month-to-month. Gina, do we need anything on the board? That's the question that I wanted to ask. About how much is the monthly expense? About $3,600. Yeah, so if it's for a couple of months, it wouldn't create a problem, Rick, if you're comfortable with it. I'm comfortable with that. Lord's working on this. I would argue the board is an agreement. Okay. We should be able to wrap this up in that time frame. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, and the board's aware of it. Okay, so we're having you. Thank you, Marcy. Bye. Have a nice night. Thank you. Bye. The next business here is a letter to PG&E. And right, and I do believe, again, our environmental planner has been working on this with director Foltz from the last meeting, and I will ask Carly to present this item to the board. All right. So in 2020, the board of directors wrote a letter to PG&E regarding PG&E's wildlife mitigation plan and tree removal on district watershed land. The letter was in response to requests made at the February where a 2020 environmental committee on behalf of the Valley Women's Club environmental committee and the Friends of the San Lorenzo Valley water. The final letter was sent on May 7, 2020, and a response from PG&E was received on June 9, 2020. During the first convening of the 2021 environmental committee meeting, it was requested staff draft a follow up letter to PG&E to address their progress and the work completed in response to the CZU wildfires. Staff brought an initial draft to the environmental committee in March and was directed to make final edits to bring the final letter to the board of directors for approval. The final draft is Exhibit A and a list of the recommended recipients is Exhibit D and both all those attachments are below this memo. I was contacted by Nancy Macy and she had two very minor sort of friendly amendments. One was to correct under the CCs where it says Judge Lynn Fuller, actually Lynn Fuller is the staff person for district judge William Alsop, and so that should be changed. And she also suggested that we CC it to Half Fire Inspecting Forester Richard Sampson, and that that's up to you if you think that's appropriate. That's appropriate. We have his contact so I can update both of those. So so basically if we make a motion on this it will include those little minor friendly amendments to the letter then. Okay are there any comments on the letter? I would just like to add that Richard Sampson with Cal Fire has contacted the district just recently and has asked the district to uh permission to tour this area that this letter pertains to the watershed above the cemetery of the Empire Grade watershed. They have concerns in that area with the work that PG&E has done so they will be going out very shortly. Cal Fire. All right so that is okay are there any um I had a question yeah go ahead Nose. So has PG&E cut down a lot of trees and then just left the trees on the ground or is that did I have a dream about that or something? No we believe that's exactly what they've been doing at least on our property above the cemetery there in Boulder Creek. Okay well that is just wrong in so many ways in my humble opinion anyway. They should not do that. Mark did you have any comment? Yes um one um I don't know specific or grammatical. In the opening paragraph where I read in 2020 the district wrote to PG&E in this type of letter I'm used to seeing on May 21st 2020 is a change that I would recommend for that. When I got to the end of this um letter I'm asking myself so what are we asking PG&E to do? And I had to go back through the letter one more time and highlight three specific statements that um I feel are currently buried in the overall letter. One rule that I was told in writing was tell them what you're going to tell them tell them tell them what you told them and that last one isn't here uh I would recommend a short summary paragraph with three bullets on it to identify uh the three things that I saw in here that we were asking them for and then also asking for a time frame because I don't see any kind of so if they get back to us two years from now is that is that okay? I would expect no right but they would get back to us with an answer so I don't know what kind of time frame is reasonable for them to respond to something like this but those are the that second one's the thought that I have on a concluding paragraph. I'm totally in agreement with that I I read through this and I I didn't really know you know it just seemed like it would be really easy for them to um to say oh that's nice you're not actually telling them to do anything so I think it's important to say we would like a response regarding you know the three bullet points preferably before the start of the fire season in May or June right? I mean that this is telling us what you're gonna do um and then at least you can you know if they don't respond otherwise you'll just get a generic form letter kind of yes last time I agree and give them a deadline to do some work like getting rid of all the debris they left if you're gonna make those kind of changes I would ask for a plan not I would ask for what their plan and give them a deadline on submitting a plan to the district for our review and approval I agree with going in just removing those trees make those a bigger problem than leaving them I'd like to know what their plan is not just um let's ask for a plan from them I agree yes because get back to us within 60 days for a date for 90 days with a date with what your specific plan is to address these three concerns that we have that makes sense that's it those are also pretty simple changes to make you know when we brought this this letter to the environmental committee the direction we were I was given was that we wanted to be very diplomatic and not necessarily telling PG&E what to do um so I think the letter here is trying to dance around really saying you guys need to do x y or z and kind of just stating our concerns um we can request rather than tell them we're requesting them to um the last sentence in the third paragraph I'm quoting we would like to know PG&E what PG&E intends to do to address these fallen trees that's the first bullet so just pulling excerpting those out um or to conclude just a summary paragraph to conclude here's what we're asking you to do these three things simply that and we'd like to get a response from you back within I still think that that's uh diplomatic enough okay Lois did you have anything you wanted to add to that oh I I like what Mark is saying and I find this kind of funny because the last letter we wrote to PG&E a member of the board was complaining that it wasn't strong enough and um and so this letter is is a little more gentle than even the one last year so and the person who made that remark isn't here so um I I don't know how they would feel if they were here but I'm all for being polite and um not uh being rude to people you're writing letters but you've got to let them know as Mark has been saying this is what we would like you to do or give us an answer about what you can do however he said it I'm not saying it the way he did but Mark we have it yeah so um I I like what Mark said okay do you think you you've got the information you need Carly yes I believe so and then would we do we want to bring it back to the board or can I just send it to you Gail for final signature or how should we proceed I think we should bring it back one more time there's no urgency yeah okay they're not going to do anything during this rainfall and there's enough changes and we're missing one director so who had it was instrumental in this letter so let's bring it back one more time yeah especially since this is director all right okay so next we have uh to the public oh i'm sorry any uh comments from the public comments seeing none hearing none then we do go on to the next item of uh business which is unfinished business board member committee changes and did you want me to do this rick or your item uh it was brought back from the last meeting director faults asked for more time uh and we brought this back uh to this meeting uh for review right so I'll I'll just remind people that at the March 4th board meeting I proposed that director spultz and henry switched their committee assignments so that director faults is on the budget and finance committee and director henry is on the administrative committee and in both cases I'd be the second member and director faults asked to be allowed to consider it until tonight's meeting um rick tells me that director faults asked for another two-week extension until the April 4th board meeting but um the board the budget and finance committee has already begun to consider a biennial budget and I really don't want to change horses so to speak at this point so I'm removing this uh item from board consideration and the assignments will just remain as they were avoided on in January except that we do have the relatively minor issue that um we have to do something about the fact that the two vacancies on committees that were created by director twos resignation and although the board policy manual allows for having a single board member having two is better um in order to ensure that we have a quorum in fact the engineering committee had this problem earlier this month when uh tina couldn't attend um and one of the other members uh from the public wasn't there and they had to phone somebody up to get them to be there for a quorum and also I think in the case of the environmental committee it's important that we replace tina with someone who has an equally strong environmental expertise um director smally's worked for 20 12 years as an environmental consultant so what I would like to do then is move that until such time that the vacancy on the board is filled and the president that's me proposes a new set of committee assignments the board approved the appointment of director smally to the environmental committee to join director false who's already on it and director henry is uh appointed to the engineering committee um to join uh director smally is there a second i'll second that is there any discussion among the board who do i know anything about engineering is um gonna have to educate me no but you you know about pipes right you were involved with the lombico thing importance that we have two members you know as uh quorum issues as well as expertise so um I think you'll probably I mean we still have those lombico tanks to deal with so true and I have the unique history it's been on a board before this okay so um is there any other comments from the board on this if not we'll go out to the public I'd like to also ask a legal counsel to weigh in on these changes because they're not out spilled out in the memo just to make sure that there's no issues uh with the item on the agenda uh well it's a little bit of a gray area the title says possible actions on committee memberships and uh so I think uh this is not a it's not an earth shattering thing so I am willing to just go ahead and take the risk that it's in the gray area um is there any comment by a member of the public seeing none hearing none um holly can we have a roll call vote president may hood yes vice president henry yes director smally yes okay motion passes thank you um and this is uh just to uh state it takes effect immediately um and which would be starting with the uh april meetings all right um adventure in life for me you know it'll expand your brain lawless it's a great thing to do yeah absolutely I agree um so next item is the uh consent agenda which uh the only item on the consent agenda is the board of directors uh meeting minutes does anyone on board or in the public like to remove this from the consent agenda for discussion hearing none seeing none uh then we will consider um that um next we have uh number seven is the district reports and uh let's hear if um there are any questions from the board about any of the um department status reports or the committee reports their notes and agenda minutes any questions from yes um um I have a few questions on the engineering memo the recommendation in there is that the we approve the february 18th 2021 board of directors meeting but the but the date on the memo is um March 18th um is that a is that a typo just get copied over from the last one yeah that's a typo it should say March 18th not February 18th okay and that should be corrected um the um they see under the pipeline replacement project the last sentence estimated timeframe for the completion of the analysis um is referring to the uh the master plan yeah the master plan when will we see that um and I think it's it's either to the engineering committee or a subset of that and then eventually to the board because I've heard talk of this for several uh a year yeah I will get a an answer for you mark I don't want to say soon but I know it's going to be very soon because it's almost done but I will get an answer from uh Josh I know we're working on a presentation for both engineering and the board okay um and the I see under the ekley tank booster station the last sentence note that this project has been pushed back uh as staff focus on other immediate concerns uh was this a higher priority item does that match or sync up with the whatever capital improvement plan or the ekley boost pump station is part of the cpu fire recovery and it is up and running temporary status at this point so it is not that high a priority to get that fully designed and up and running in a roadway mainline system okay so that's the reason for that okay and then the last question I have on this is on the last page we understand the details um I think it's great that the construction uh standard construction and I think probably you mean specifications instead of details uh the specifications of the narrative and I fully support getting a some standardization on that I'd like to see the draft of those uh when you're or portions of it when you're going through the process to get those updated right I just I just had the the actual design details I approved for the first set on my desk came back to josh today so he'll be moving through on those oh okay well then maybe the I'm just curious what they are I didn't hear about that during the engineering committee meeting so that's why uh put up a flag to me okay that's our engineering meetings tuesdays uh second tuesday of the month yes what two o'clock two o'clock yes yes yes okay lowest any comments oh i'm sorry mark did you have more comments uh that's all that I have on the engineering one I have comments or questions on other memos but I guess if we conclude on this one first yeah Lois did you have anything you want to say about the district report so I'm especially on engineering at this point I I don't know enough to ask could all right directors folly go ahead and uh ask what everyone on the memo uh from the environmental department the curly I see a comment in there on the urban water management plan they're referencing a seismic risk risk analysis that's part of that I wonder if I could take a take a look at that also all right so that's actually something josh is working on for us to include in the urban water management plan that is part of another plan that's coming up known as the america water infrastructure act um so josh is putting all that together and the seismic information will be part of that plan which will then fall into the urban water management okay so if josh is working on that should that be in the engineering committee meetings probably it probably will be um I know I'm not sure if he's fully started we we need a urban water management plan by the end of April um so I'm we're hoping so you got uh five or six weeks to okay yeah you better start running okay it sounds like for that piece just so you know um it doesn't need to be broken down to specifics of each infrastructure I mean they they leave it to where you can find like a county report and report that seismic um assessment they did on a wider scale so I think that's the route we're probably going um with our short window that we have there's any that's the only question I have on the environmental report any questions director smally on the um memo from um finance yes um there's a reference to a revenue stabilization rate analysis on page 147 of the report uh saying consumption is lower by six percent compared to the three-year average I'm trying to reconcile that with what I'm hearing at the Santa Margarita groundwater meetings with what we're projecting a uh almost a point two percent growth every year so uh in that point two percent growth translates into we need more water on a uh every increasing basis based on that projection so are we really using less water on an annual basis over the last five or ten years yes I think that's a two percent decrease I may be wrong um Stephanie's not here tonight um yes that's correct but the for the revenue there's the estimate that every year the water use drops by two percent I'm not sure how you know you can't just do that forever so there's got to be some point at which and it's just going to be not impacted this year um that's that's water use and he's saying two percent increase in development point point two percent annual growth oh okay right so those two two lines are going opposite from each other because when we asked that the Santa Margarita groundwater the input that we got from the consultant that's supporting that work said well we got this information from discussions with the district uh and I was in applying or interpreting that to the urick um that this growth factor doesn't line up with what I'm seeing in this report from finance what's the difference in those we'll have to get back to you on that yeah this is this is important because it uh affects the modeling and you know yes yes and what what page are you on mark um 147 in the uh finance in the overall agenda so pdf numbered pages gotcha uh i'm finding it now revenue stabilization rate analysis from the okay i okay well we will get back to you on there okay and i would ask that maybe you get back to me and mark yes for the thursday meeting so we under uh i don't think it will be this coming meeting but by by what's what's the date for next wednesday um is that the 24th yes yes 23rd okay so by the 23rd at noon and i'd like to see what the answer to that is so that uh gail that i can review it before we go into the senate margarita groundwater meeting which is thursday evening meetings on the 25th right correct uh Wednesday yeah so 24th is wednesday okay then then wednesday at noon okay director smallie do you have any other questions that's all of my questions okay uh director henry i i know i i don't have any questions i okay then we'll go to the public uh rick maram go ahead rick uh are you muted rick not to be is that here we go yeah okay uh i want to give a neighborhood level um review of the pipeline project that's going on on california drive and i live on california drive and i just wanted to say they're they're kind of wrapped it up last friday um but there's some little remaining things but overall what i wanted to say is that all my neighbors have greatly appreciated the conscientious work that anderson pacific employees have done they uh they've always been courteous they're attentive to their concerns and they all look like they were putting in an honest day's work i mean they used a lot of machinery but those guys were down in holes digging muddy wet heavy dirt a lot of times for every hookup and there's 36 of them so those guys put in a lot of hard work here and um the people around here appreciate uh that work that they've done and now we have we've gone from a two inch corroded pipe that was leaking often to a brand new six inch pipe that uh now we have uh we've upgraded from one fire hydrant to two fire hydrants and we all have smart meters and uh i'm wanting to say how much this project means to this neighborhood and to the valley as a whole thank you thank you yeah thank you maric marim nice to get good feedback like that it's only two fire hydrants down there though i thought there was more than two that went in on that project you know any any other uh comments uh from the public on the department status reports or the minutes of the committee meetings um seeing none hearing none um i don't think we have any more items of business tonight so we will go ahead and without objection we'll adjourn that's way too early all right hand good night every way are you waving goodbye rick i am tonight good night