 So I'd like to start the meeting to convene this meeting of the Board of Directors for the St. Lawrence of Valley Water District for December 7th, 2023. Holly, will you take your roll, please? President Smalley. Here. Vice President Hill. Here. Director Ackman. Here. Director Falls. Here. Here. Director Mayhood. Here. Let's see. Do we have any changes to the agenda this evening, our new Interim General Manager? You know, there wasn't accident between here and where he lives. There may have, that may have been delayed a bit. Yeah, delayed a bit. Was clearing. Did anybody just come up Highway 9 past? I gamed it, and it was just clearing. It was just clearing, yeah. So the car went in the ditch and down it, okay, over the side and a little tree. Yeah, he, I was just with him, he's just taking, he wanted to double check and do some editing, I think on one of the slides. He should be here any second. Okay. Not good. Not good, but interesting. He'll be here, I'm sure. Yeah. It was just based on some discussions. I don't believe he had any changes to the agenda. No. When last I spoke to him. No. He did not. No. And he did not. And let me continue with, I can proceed with oral communications, does any member of the public have any oral communications on matters that are not on the agenda tonight that are within the purview of the district that they want to comment on? There's one. Yes. Please. Eric Martin from Boulder Creek, today being December 7th, asking the board maybe we have a moment of silence for those that were lost to Pearl Harbor. Thank you. I would like to welcome interim general manager, Brian, so you have any changes to the agenda, any deletions or additions? I do not. Okay. All right. And I already see 15 people attending remotely plus another five here. I expect that most of the individuals are here to talk about the rate study or comment on that and the subsequent public outreach. Based on that, I want to limit public comments to two minutes once we get to that point of the item. So first item under unfinished business is the 2023 rate study. Brian. Okay. Who's presenting that? Yes. It will be me. Okay. Are there still out with anyone? She has personal business. She had to take. So I'm taking that. So, and you got my latest. Okay. So, we are, look at this a number of times, so we are talking about water and wastewater rates. I wanted to just put forward the recommended motion just to have it in front of you another time that what we're asking you to do is to accept the rate study and then to move the process forward to 18 process forward, which involves the preparation of the mailers, et cetera, and the ballots and having that mail by the 29th. And then leading up to a public hearing on the 15th. So with that, I'll highlight just in the next bit to the rate schedule. We've seen this before. I just wanted to just zero everybody in and where we are in the process, December 7th, we're looking at the rate study and then authorizing staff to go forward with the outreach. If we have another item on outreach, I'm not going to get into the details here. Just to let you know that that's just to center everybody in on what the process is. And then I'll briefly want to touch on, we've seen all the different rate structures, et cetera. I want to touch on some topics to highlight a few points and also bring up one new item that you may not have seen before and also just some redistillation of data that we haven't seen some examples. And so that's really what I want to touch on here. So here, I want to point out, this table should be for everybody by now. This is the variable rates that we're charging. And of course, we have the tiers. The reason I've highlighted this is because you have the industrial rates also include schools. The schools is the industrial rate. And the irrigation, the parks fall into the irrigation rate. And that's why I highlighted those two bits there. And again, I don't think there's any reason to reveal all this right now because we've all been through this part, but I believe that these were two outlying questions, so I wanted to highlight that. So the next slide, we've seen a version of this slide before, but what I want to highlight here is nearly two-thirds of all users fall at or below six units of water. There we used to turn. We used CCF there, which is 100 cubic feet of water, which is one unit of water. So six units of water, that's two-thirds. If you go all the way to 16 cubic feet or 16 units of water, you're talking about 94% of our customers. The other thing I want to point out in the slide is you see where the discrepancies from current to future are proposed billing rates are as they happen at the lower end and at the upper end. The upper end is because we're turning over to tier rates where customers that do use say 11 units or more water, they're going to see their rates going up higher than say somebody that's in the middle area there. And also I wanted to touch on the lower category, that two-unit category, and there is a jump in that category, excuse me, how would I put it, it's just an example of usage. So with two units, yes, it jumps up. And the reason behind it is that we pushed our rates so that they readjusted our rates so that there is more fixed costs, so more of a percent of a single bill is fixed cost and less of the percent of the bill is variable cost. Another way to think about it is imagine an example hung somewhere in the valley, imagine all the pipes and infrastructure, tanks, pumps, maintenance, maintenance workers, overhead before a single drop flows out of that service, it's quite substantial. And so the rate structure that we have now is more based on that cost of service. So yes, that smaller, lower usage does jump up, and that is the reason why. So that's what I wanted to point out with this slide. Okay, and then I wanted to jump to some examples because I think there may have been some concerns about summer usage, so I have two slides here on just summer usage. This is a smaller home, couple of people maybe, and maybe a small garden, and then to just show the before and after, or excuse me, current and proposed. And so perhaps there were two and a half, three units in the winter, but then they go to summer and they're using more because they're watering their garden. They're still looking at less than a $5 a month rate increase. So let's go to the next one. So now let's say they jump up during seven units, remember is one unit under cubic feet. So in this case, well, now they're in tier two. So they're paying more for that extra bit of water still under the new rates. In this case, they're less than $2 difference per month. So this wholesale entertie, this is new information that I want to talk a little bit about. We have a bulk entertie or bulk rate in our current rate structure, but we didn't really kind of dive into the details of having, and I believe that's just a bulk volumetric rate, if I understand it. And so this is, we asked Reptel us to actually come up with a rate that takes into account that these enterties, the customers on the other end of that entertie aren't necessarily paying anything on their parcel tax to the county, which is that one line item that goes back to the district. So if you're a district customer, you also pay some small portion on your property tax. So this takes all of that into account and proposes a rate for entertie customers in absence of an agreement, because an agreement usually needs to go in place for any one of these enterties. And we only have a handful of them right now. Some of them we have where we don't have an agreement, we're selling the water. But the idea here is that we have a structure, we have a guideline. And for most of those agreements, maybe this is the appropriate charge, but you can have something different. Let's say we're tying into Scott's Valley, for instance, that could be a different scenario. There could be other costs that have to be considered. That would be a negotiated deal altogether. But here is the proposed entertie rate. The other thing I want to point out here, and I'm going to have council comment on this, these are the subject of Prop 218, because these are, again, aren't users in our system. These are, you know, they're not our rate payers. So perhaps you want to add a few more words on that, Barbara. Right. As you know, Prop 218 is a property-based rate, property-based fee. What you're doing here is not based on ownership of a piece of property. It's what we'd just consider a bulk or wholesale contract or agreement. It is subject to Prop 26, but it fits within the exception to Prop 26. And 26 is really to deal with collection on fees or taxes, whichever you want to, terminology you want to use, that, you know, fine with cities and governments that have police power more geared towards those types of fees and the clash of those fees. But it lists, it still captures special districts and water, and then it says, but you're excluded from all these other things that you need to do to pass a rate. But you're still subject to it, and you still have to justify your rate. In other words, you can't just pull a number out of the hat, out of the air, and say, we want to charge you a hundred dollars, because that's what we feel like charging you today. So you're subject to 26. Recording in progress. That's all I have for now on the presentation, and so I'll open it up to questions. Excuse me, Chair. We are having an issue where the attendees are not able to see the slides. I have just realized that. And the person that is supposed to be on the CTV is not responding to my texts. So I just wanted you to be aware of that. All right. Thank you. And know that we're aware. And CTV, could you please share anything that we have on our screens on the live feed, please? As well as please read my texts that I have sent to you. Thank you. Okay. First of all, any questions or comments from the board based on what Brian has shown us? Gail? Yeah, I just want to address some of the examples that you showed, and this really gets to actually a comment that Bob made last time about showing proper scenarios. I think Jim Mosher mentioned it too. And I'm afraid that in this presentation, and I see it in Lee's sort of a misimpression, which I see Mark Lee got that misimpression. And that is that the average usage is not a meaningful number for most people in the Valley in terms of figuring out how much it costs you, especially in a tiered system where the third tier, the water costs twice as much as it does in the first year. So if we just take a look at what things really cost, in the winter, most of us are going to be almost entirely in the first tier, zero to four, because we're not watering our gardens. Maybe some really large families might be higher than that. However, so there's that. I don't think there's actually very many people that use six or seven on an average over the, you know, maybe over the year. But then in the summer, what you have is people with gardens, will or pools, and especially large properties will be using much more. And that may be that their average is down at six or seven. And I don't know where that number comes from. But most of their most of their usage will be in tier three. And what that means then, and I just use myself as an example is one of these crazy people that has a huge piece of property that I irrigate in a pool. My usage at the high end during the summer, excuse me, during the winter, I will be in the first tier. In the summer, something like 90% of my usage will be in the third tier. My bill is going to go up about $100. And the increase will be about 20, 25, so people that are large users, which are about 20% of the population. And so it's important to show that because what that shows is that the way we've tiered the rates, most of the burden for generating the 10% increase in revenue falls on the heaviest users. And most of that use will be during the summer. There is so the average number just isn't a very meaningful number. And that's why, and I think Bob sort of understood this when he said that we need to show realistic usage scenarios for different times of year and different kind of settings. And so I would just hope that when we present this to people, because otherwise what's going to happen is people are going to fixate on the fact that there's a $5 or $10 increase, which for the people that use two units of water is a large percentage of this. But in dollar amounts, it's not so large. And they're also going to fixate on the fact that for people in the middle, the increase is fairly small. But it's obvious if you look at what you have there is if you look at what the increase, for example, for the average family that uses seven CCF in the summer, they're only seeing a 1.4% increase. People that are using the one to two only uses four CCF is a 4.7.7% increase. That gets you nowhere near the average 10% increase in revenue. So where most of that revenue is coming from is from summer use of large users. And I just emphasize how important it is to make this clear to the members of the public so that they will realize that we've fought hard about how to minimize the impact on low to moderate users while, and there is a little bit of bump, especially at the bottom end, because we're trying to get more of our costs on a fixed basis and reflecting the cost of service. But I think this is really important and comes up in terms of the outreach and in the materials that we send out. Any questions or? Okay, I think just going to ask about the question that I had about our time. Well, no, I was just going to say that what you've explained is exactly what we were trying to do, which was to put the bulk of the burden on the big users. And I think when you dig into it and you look at the actual scenarios, that's exactly what we've done. So, Chair, if I may, I'm going to ask the question to myself based on what I've just heard, if I may, I'm sure. Will Stad please make sure that when we do public outreach, whether we make this more clear, yes, we will. How's that? Yes, we will. I understand. You need a weighted average. And a simple, simple amount of average won't cut it. So I think that because it's meaningless in a tiered rate. So I understand. So I understand that we can, we can work on that. It might even be worthwhile to show a whole year of, you know, month by month, what happens for a heavy user versus a light user. Okay. So for example, in my case, the 16 CCF, which is the highest number that you show on the diagram and imply that that's a heaviest user. That's, that's what I use on my property during what might call the shoulder season, the spring and the fall. Right. And so to only show up to 16, I think misrepresents what a lot of it, the upper 20% of the users are using in the, it needs to go up to 40 or 50. All right. Anything else? No, I'll defer to Bob. Bob has a question. Well, I was just going to actually piggyback on the comments you guys made as it turns out that information is actually available. Should we wish to be transparent about it? A couple of years ago, I got from Stephanie, the distribution of meters per unit for January, February, March, and I actually have done some graphs here to show what that, what that looks like. And certainly that information can be used to calculate what, you know, the numbers are going to look like for that information for the summer was not available to me. So I don't have that, but I'm sure it's available to the district inside of our spring group system. It didn't seem to take Stephanie very much effort to get it out of the system and the format that I was looking for. I will be very interested in the notion of price elasticity. I don't think we've had very much discussion about that at all. And within the context of, yes, putting basically almost the entire burden on people that have that kind of usage, I expect we'll see significant reductions in usage, not from everybody, not uniformly, but enough that it will impact our revenue expectations. And it would have been nice to have that kind of elasticity, sensitivity analysis done. It was not done. What happens if we don't achieve the numbers that we're looking at? I'll have more to say later. I think that one thing that will, in addition to some of the additional information that has been discussed here tonight that we could present as we go through the public outreach process is to show over the course, what you showed us was the rate impacts for the rates for the users if we adopt them this year. And I think it would be good to show each year for the subsequent years so that people can understand what their bill will look like five years from now in addition to what the bill would look like in this coming fiscal year. Okay. Any questions on? Mark, after you, I do have one more. I've got a question on the volumetric rates that you show and on the industrial rate. You said that the industrial rate applies to the school district. The volumetric rate that Raftelus proposed is at 1017. But for next year, the schools industrial would be at 1206. What's the basis for the justification of almost a two dollar difference for that volumetric rate? On the intertie sales versus what we're charging our school district. Okay. Sure, I can explain that. So, as you mentioned, industrial volumetric, it drops down from the 1266 and we go to 1203 the first year, et cetera. And that's the same one that the schools are on. So that's clear there. Right. That's clear. The intertie is based really off the residential rate. And it's looking at that. You look at that first year, 869. The second one is 1179. And volumetric rate is also based on what's called the peaking factor. And so it's how much variability there is in that variable rate. The same thing that electrical utilities use is they will hit an electrical user with the demand charge. It's like that thing at the fairgrounds where you bang it with a hammer and it goes up to 100. You only have to do that once on your electrical bill to be hit with the demand charge for the whole month for that 100 that you hit in terms of demand. And it's similar in the water. It's not so extreme. But you think about it because there's that peak demand is infrastructure has to be built to that high peak. It's not to the low threshold. So what they did is they took and made basically a smeared residential rate. They took into account, okay, now you don't just have one user at a certain usage, but let's amalgamate them and average them all together and come up with this rate. So they distilled it. So does the school represent more of a peaking factor? Yeah, they're more like an industrial right. But a peaking factor versus the intertide rates. Correct. And that's a basis for we have to account for that aspect of it in the rate to the school district versus the intertide rate. Well, let's see if I can answer your questions. The school has a higher peaking factor than an intertide. Okay. If you think about it, just things like they all came out of gym class. They're hitting the showers, et cetera, et cetera. So there's an event, and so there's a higher peaking factor associated with that. And in industry, they also have that same higher peaking factor. An intertide, it's residential, and then you can start pushing 100 or 50 or 100 homes together. Now you've started to, that peaking factor starts to disappear. And then I can understand the peaking factor is a basis for that differential rate that we're able to justify for the intertide versus the school district. Okay, I have a follow-up question on that. So I have a follow-up question on that. As I recall, though, there was zero quantitative information provided about peaking. I mean, I actually had a fairly lengthy question to the consultant about this, and they were not able to provide any numbers. Unlike in the electrical utility, who actually measures on a very granular level what that peaking factor might be, we have zero information as far as I know about that. Qualitatively, I agree with the assertion, but quantitatively, we have nothing to back up that the assertion that's being made, it's currently acclaimed at this point. Do we have any additional information that we've gathered to be able to back that up quantitatively? We actually did. We looked at the billing and the monthlys on some of the intertides to come up with that. I'm talking about in general, not just the intertides, but the school and whatever other justifications would use for the tier rates. So that part of the question I wouldn't be able to answer, because it wasn't a point of focus when I jumped into this, but I know that we did use the peaking factor and did look at actual quantitative data to come up with the intertide rate. I'd be very interested in seeing that before the next meeting. That would be great. Okay, and Jeff, you said you had a... So, there's also an intertide, the pipe is only so big, it's kind of an intertide is a space available sale. It's like selling extra seats on an airplane. When you're out of seats, you're out of seats. If you're a school and you have a peaking problem, you may come to us and say, we need bigger pipes, we need this. We would have to try and accommodate their needs. On an intertide, you use the pipe you got, and if that's all it'll carry, that's all it'll carry. I mean, I think there's a priority issue here in addition to a peak factor. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's a space available sale rather than a guaranteed seat. And a follow-up question now of the intertide. I think I was hearing you say that individual intertide agreements would be on a negotiated basis. Is that... Yes, I mean, there could be different factors that you may want to consider. For all, it's likely that we would still follow this as a guideline. It might be that every single one pretty much adheres to this, but I could see reason why that may necessarily not be the case. And so you're negotiating these individually. But we do have agreements for a number of them. Okay. Like I said, we know that there's one outlier, but... Right, okay. I mean, for example, the City of Scotts Valley whistle a lot of water to the City of Scotts Valley. Okay, then we've heard from the board with comments and questions. I'd like to go out to the public now for similar questions. So anybody here in the audience, again, I'm asking for a two-minute limit. Please use the podium with the microphone. And we ask that you identify name and location if you're willing to give that to us. My name is Jim Bond. I'm a Rocky Rape player here from Venlo. And I just want to... First of all, my experience, whenever you go out to the public, and this wasn't the public presentation that you will eventually get, half the people are going to say that's too much information. They're going to have to say no, no. But I do want to echo and agree with Gail and Jamie and say, bearing you with information, give me different scenarios, project it out five years, and let me deal with the information. But I'm supporting that idea of more is better. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? Here. I'm Bruce Holloway. I live here in Boulder Creek. I took a look at the 2022 most recent Autitude Financial Statement and I saw that water revenue was $11.9 million and the district sold 415 acre feet of water, which translates into something over 600,000 units. I figured out the average cost in that year was around $19. And something. I know everybody's gotten a raise since 2022. So the cost of water, the average cost of water is over $20. All three tiers are below that rate. So the tier system does not promote conservation. Every one of those tiers is a low cost. It would really be the same as if the gas station over there, which probably has a price close to $5, as if they had tiers of $2, $3, and $4. And then you would say, oh, look, tier three is twice as much as tier one. That promotes conservation, except today it's more like $5. So if you drop the price, that does not promote conservation. Also, the basic rate is a regressive tax. In Santa Cruz, they can't even get a sales tax passed, because people down there say it's regressive. Well, at least a sales tax is a proportional rate based on your consumption. The basic rate here is just tax everybody equally. Every household equally, no matter how much your income is, no matter how much your property is worth, no matter how much water you use, just tax everybody equally. It's like a $780 personal tax. And it is regressive. So you're implementing a highly regressive tax, and the tier system, it does not promote conservation. I think that's just a misnomer. I think the school district should be the most favored nation. They should have the most favored nation's status. Apparently, you're going to be selling water to the Scotts Valley water district. For less money than our school district. And I don't agree with that. Anybody else here from the general public? Thank you, Mark, and the rest of the order. I'll make this really, really quick. You have my speech in front of you already typed out. The proposed increase we have is too expensive. Unaffordable, non-understandable. And that should be rejected by the board tonight, and sent back to the finance and administrative and engineering committees for a concerted review, refinement with a more affordable, equitable schedule of rates. The combined monthly service fees and water uses charges favors those who are used more water over those who can serve, as Mr. Hall made indicated. The inequity is regressive, excessive and outrageous, with no quantifiable cost of services that the consultant can tell us provided. In order to find, there is no defined plan where the money will go. The report does not reflect our community values, or serves our district financial planning needs. Our community should be aware that the sighting of a rate increase over the five years in 10%, 10%, 7%, 7%, is to 7%. It's an average, not actual. We've just got to sit a little bit better. The plan does not honor our reporting rates by passing this proposed water rate increase for the city 8,000 homeowners here. We'll be paying the highest water rates in the county, as the proposal also describes. That's unconscionable. And it's not formal, especially for those that are low in moderate income and retirees, which makes up 20% of the county. This is a forced gentrification. They have no place to go. They will be forced out of the county. I advise the board should not pass this proposal tonight, not even move forward with it. But send it back to review, establish a more, and to establish a more realistic and equitable model, a modest rate increase to better honor our community values and district financial help. This will be voted down. I'm telling right now. Thank you. Eric Burt, I live in Felton. And I just want to tell you on a personal basis how these rate increases, and especially when you put in percentage increase every year, how that affects me. I'm on a fixed income. We moved to Felton six years ago. And I've watched my PG&E bill go up $100. I've watched my water bill go up with the fire surcharge. I've watched my taxes go up. My every gasoline, everything. And when you talk about how does this affect just the regular people, people that are retired and on a fixed income. And I'm telling you, when you put in these bumper increases for every year, it impacts us greatly. And it's going to absolutely cost us out of our house. And not just the water, but everybody else is doing this. And I know inflation is a thing. But if you look at what we're proposed paying over other county water agencies, I'm just pleading with you, please take into account people that are retired on a fixed income. And as these increases go into effect, where's that money going to come from? Except selling and moving out. When I tell my friends and family what I pay for water every month, and we've not irrigated our property since we bought it. We haven't put in any plants, we haven't put in any watering systems because we were in a drought and we were trying to conserve. And I'd love to have a garden. I'd love to be able to irrigate. But with these rates, I can't. Thank you. Okay, I'd now like to, okay. One more here. Eric Martin, Boulder Creek. I think it's kind of a backwards process to lump in the school district with industrial users. Everybody that lives in this county pays for the school district. So this is another tax that's being placed a burden on us when you charge the school district the same as an industrial for-profit. Recording stopped. Should I stop? Why? And pause for a moment. Recording in progress. Thank you. Thank you. And so including the schools along with for-profit industrial users, it seems to me kind of backwards. We're paying you so the school district can give you money. And then we pay the school district the same time. So it's kind of a double whammy. And I just think it's for another governmental agency. As far as enterprise, I personally, if they need water, then they should cost them. Maybe their first form, maybe even a second form. But no, no deals. How much water have we bought in the history of this district? And it's a rhetorical question. So if Santa Cruz or Scotts Valley or anybody else that's proposing enterprise wants to buy our water, because this everything that happens in this valley wants everybody that lives in this valley and selling it outside the valley, they should have to pay for it. Thank you. Okay. Um, I'd now like to, unless anybody else here's, I've heard, we've heard from you once already. Thank you. Thank you. So twice. Thank you. We've heard from you already. Okay, please read my report. Yes, we have it in front of us. Thank you. 20 years from you. I'd like to, I'd like to now, I'm sorry. And is there something you'd never have from me? Yes, please. If you could, I didn't see any other hands up. I was looking at our online participants. I've just been here for 30 years. I came from Germany and I've never seen anything like this. The increases and people going forward here, I guess, is a true line. When you have 51% of people more than all, you can do this, but nobody is here and you keep increasing. I'm retired now and I have to live for $2,000 a month. How about you to do that and you retire to live with that kind of money? So every increase, it's insane for me. You know, anything else. And I don't get a raise from, you know, my social security or whatever. So, I don't know, I said this before, why don't you, people who are not against it, raise their rate and people who are against it, don't raise mine. You know, why can't you not do that? You know, people don't show up. You always say, that's not, you can't do that. But for me, I don't know how long I can live here. When I came here, this was, I've been in 38 different states. This is the most beautiful place and I want to stay. I want to retire, but it's almost impossible for me to retire here. Because all the increases, you know, that's pretty much what I gotta say. I don't know. I don't understand that not 40% of people say, hey, this is a messed up. You need more money to save some place, you know, sell some of your properties. You got properties everywhere. So some of those and show people with faith that you actually want to do something to save money, but I don't see that. When I look at your things, you know, you're buying more stuff. And then it's always infrastructures, but yeah, I can see that. I haven't done nothing in 60 years to do anything that would fire on them. You guys, I guess you don't have any tunes. And then something runs up. I don't understand how did this all work, but it's all right. I'd like to transition now to the participants that are online. Alina Lang, you have the mic. Hi there, Alina Lang, Boulder Creek. And I just really wanted to express my concern as far as the schools go. You know, my son is a student here at Boulder Creek Elementary and they can't charge me more if you charge them more because it's public school. So where is that money going to come from? That might be less books on his shelf for them to be able to read at reading time or not being able to put in accommodations of any sort because that money is going to get drawn for somewhere else. And also when we're talking about the parks, they didn't pass their measure and we're going to see their water rates go up. So where's that money going to come from? They're going to have to cut things. And that may be that my son doesn't have grass to kick his soccer ball around on or they can't refill the bark chips as often, you know, creating the parks to not be as safe, you know, that all it is a domino effect. And so I just, I think that, you know, doing these enter ties and the charges that we did, I think it's worse than if we would have just explored a merger because now we could get in a situation where other people that have our water have a lower water bill than us. And if we should be selling this water at more of a premium to help keep up our own infrastructure here and also talking about, you know, people who can't have that garden anymore to help alleviate that, like I think the district really needs to be working with more rain barrel options so we can collect that water during, you know, high rain, high flow events and then be able to use our gardens and people can still eat because that, like $100 extra, I'm probably just going to go to the grocery store and that's unfortunate. But thank you and I am overall, I approve the rate increase and I'm willing to pay my fair share, but just think about everyone else is not that can afford this. Thank you. Okay. I have an individual identified as Shar's computer. Hello. Yes. Oh, okay. You can hear me. I have some mixed feelings about the rate increases. It's a lot in the last several years and then there's more, but I mean, I do understand the rates have to go up probably. But one of the question I have just for understanding as I see there's a new capital charge and what is that? Oh, good question. Go ahead and proceed, Char. That's my question. I wanted to know what that represented and it does add additional amounts to our bill and so by, you know, the end of five years it's going to be so much more. I see. Okay. I'd like to solicit any of the other questions from members of the public. Can I? I think we can respond to that one if you want. That's amazing. Yeah. Brian. So the question was on the capital. We have a meaner charge and a capital charge. Are you shall I put that to the budget and finance committee? You can, sir, if you want to address it. Is anybody from RAF tell us online? So that's money that was previously baked into the bill and it's been separated out so it's more visible. We have borrowed money for capital expenditures and this is the cost of borrowing that money. The interest that we pay and what we're doing here is being more visible to people so that you can see what the cost of our money to do some of the major projects that we have to do. So to clarify, that's not necessarily a new item in the bill. It's just that we're showing that. Yeah, exactly. It's not a new item. It's just we've broken it out so it's more visible. The cost was on there all the time. Yeah. So are we going to, when I get the bill, whenever the rate, you know, whenever the new rates go into effect, is there going to be a line item with these amounts on it that I'm going to be paying every month? The capital charge? Because right now it's not on our bill. You're paying and it's just not broken out separately. Right now it's part of the bill, but you don't see it separately as a line item and we're just showing it so that people understand where that funding is going. Where is it a part of my current bill? What item does it fall into? It's total, I don't understand this. Under this, it's subsumed under the service charge and as part of the rate. Part of the rate. So part of this is what we were trying to do is make it, as Jeff said, more transparent where your rates are going. And essentially this is a commitment that that amount is going to be spent solely on paying for interest for the loans that we have to do the infrastructure projects. Well, he can call the office. Yeah, it's a bit of a misnomer. Yeah, it could have been named better. Yes. Yes. Okay. I'd like to now go to Mark Strudley. Yeah, hi. Mark Strudley, Boulder Creek. I just wanted to say I'm happy to pay my fair share and to help the district keep up with cost and capital inflation. I think it would be particularly helpful to hear outreach to describe the efforts the district has taken to attempt to reduce cost burden to the great payers. For example, if you have gone out for grants or either section 406 with FEMA betterments to, you know, CZU improvements, or if you've gone out for other hazard mitigation grants or state grants or federal grants, I think that would be a good demonstration that you've done all the due diligence you can do. And this is the cost rate increase that's left after that due diligence has been done. And it would certainly give me a lot of additional comfort and helping the district keep up with increasing costs. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. April, Zilber? Here you go. Just a little bit of a delay before the mic unmuted me. I hope you can hear me. Yeah. Great. I really appreciated the points that were made at the very beginning of this discussion about needing to see what different scenarios are during the year. And I got a kind of a wacky idea, but maybe it's doable that if somebody could design a calculator that a rate payer could enter their meter size and they could look at an old bill and say, oh, I usually use this many units in the summer and I usually use that many units in the winter or the fall, and they could see the calculator would do the math for them. We could all do this for ourselves, but sometimes you've got to make it easy for folks to see what will it look like next year. And then pursuant to another person's suggestion, you could even have that be year two, year three, year four, year five, like a person could advance the calculator through the different years and see how bad is it really going to be for me? So that's my idea. And I'm also happy to pay my share. I think a lot of people have reasonable concerns, so whatever the district can do to alleviate those concerns would be great. Thank you. Okay. Lorraine Palmer. Hi there. Can you hear me? Yes. Lorraine Palmer, Boulder Creek. I'm curious if someone in the room can say how what your annual operating budget is and what your annual output of water is in gallons and tell us what it costs you to produce per gallon of water. Is there anybody that can answer that question? Well, Brian? Yes, I think we could answer if they called the office. I'm sorry, I don't know if she could hear you. Could you? Yeah, I heard you and then my part two to that question is can we see what it costs per gallon to use one unit, two units, three units, or being tier one, tier two, tier three, and what per gallon is the cost that you're charging to the school, to what you said commercial, to the parks, and what you're charging to Scotts Valley so that as a, I can look at my bill and see what I'm paying per gallon versus what you're selling water to the larger accounts. I'd just like to understand what anybody's paying per gallon where they fall on their usage. Does that make sense? I believe that all of that with the details that you're asking for there have been presented in our previous presentations for the various rates structure going forward in 2024. So I'd actually go back and take a look at the most recent presentation that we did about the race. Who's speaking right now? This is Mark Smalley. Mark, okay, so if I have that sort of a question I can get information from you. You would have to get that from staff. I'm not on staff with the district. I'm part of the board. Okay, thank you. Okay, so we've heard from everybody that I've seen online. I'd like to circle back to the board. I would like to, before I do that though, I want to read the recommended motion. I move that the board accept the rate study prepared by Ref Tellus and direct staff to prepare and mail as required by law a notice of public hearing on the proposed water and wastewater rates and a public hearing to be held on February 15th, 2024. Is that a motion you just made? Yes. I second it. Second. Okay, all right. So I'd like to come back to the board based on the questions, comments that we've heard. Bob? Yeah, I have comments and fairly lengthy ones because this is a very serious situation. So I view the rate increase proposals through the lens of not only what the district needs in order to fund itself, that includes operating infrastructure and also trying to pay down current unfunded capital obligations, but also through the lens of the district performance relative to inflation. These are some numbers that you guys need to be aware of. In the last 10 years, since 2013, roughly, boards have increased the price for four units of water by 140%. That doesn't count the current proposal. During that time, the cost to operate the district double. That's about 100% increase. At a time when inflation was about 25%. Most of the other metrics associated with the district in terms of water produced, customers served have all been relatively static. In fact, the water actually has tended to drop in terms of what's been produced. The only small increase was the acquisition of the Long Pico district, increasing number of customers by about 12%. We don't really keep statistics on operations. So we have really no idea what our community received and benefits for that massive increase in spending. Now, you can say maybe the increases went to infrastructure because that was what was in the marketing material for the last two rate increases. But unfortunately, because of the way Prop 218 works, the boards don't have to make that commitment to the community that they're going to spend the money in any particular way. Therefore, two thirds of the incremental revenue over the last 10 years has gone towards operating expenses, not infrastructure. That number really needs to be reversed at the minimum. Further, with the economy affecting even tech jobs now, and in light of the fact that this district did not historically, even though I recommended we do so, try to lower the rate of growth and operating expenses to give us more money for infrastructure and possibly rate relief. I'm not inclined to give this board any more money in the form of a blank check. I have zero trust that this board will spend the money on infrastructure as it has consistently sold the community and not delivered on that. I also respect those people who are struggling to pay their bills, and I'm deeply concerned that the 40%, 35 to 40% of our community that has a household income of 80% or less of the median household income are going to be seriously impacted by this. And if the district isn't going to manage its growth in spending, I don't know that we need to keep feeding the beast. I also have some process related issues. The first one, the board refused to commit to a budget that matches the length of the rate increase. The model that's put together, that's the basis of these, that was stated as being just that a model. It is not a commitment on the part of the board to the community. The board has not been able to provide a convincing argument as to why the community should believe the model will be followed this time. In the past, the models talked about a 3.5% increase in operating expenses. The actual number was 7%. This model talked about a 4%. If we use that same doubling, we're talking about actually probably saying 8%, rate increases, 8% increases in cost, which is going to consume most of the rate increase every year, meaning that that money will not go to infrastructure. Unless the board passes a budget that matches this five-year rate increase, you have no ability later to be able to say, never mind, we want to withdraw that rate increase. The Prop 218 process is a one-and-done thing. And it is a backwards vote, which means it's not like any other vote that you're used to taking. It is something that the state of California voted on, but I don't think people really understood that aspect of Prop 218. Most of the focus was on the other half of it for passing tax increases. This huge increase in operating expenses for me is a big red flag. And it really goes to the fact that the board consistently refuses to guarantee that the majority of the revenue is going to go to infrastructure. Under the model approved by the board, and I think I have the most recent model, it's hard to tell sometimes we do not have a collaboration system so I can get the most recent items. But the one I have shows that about half of the increase in revenue will go towards infrastructure, more or less. But that's well shorter, what I think the minimum necessary is of about two-thirds. And that's to not only deal with current infrastructure, but to dig us out of the hole that we're in relative to deferred maintenance and other deferrals in infrastructure. If our operating expenses go from 4% to the historical average of 7%, then we're back to the one-third ratio of increased revenue being applied to infrastructure. In other words, what we've just done for the last 10 years, meaning most of the revenue is going to go towards operating expenses. This is why the five-year budget is so important. The other thing that really disturbs me about this budget is that consultants use a borrowed money as reserves. Folks, borrowed money is not reserves. Borrowed money is money that has to go to specific projects. When you conflate borrowed money with actual cash reserves, that is money that we can use for any purpose, including responding to the disasters that happen in our community periodically, those are two very different things. In the private sector, if I tried to do that, my board would fire me, most likely. And if I was a public company requiring out-of-stations, I might get prosecuted. So we really need to... And none of this is clear. In fact, it wasn't clear to me, or very clear to me, and we had a very lengthy conversation with a consultant about that. In addition, the current calculations include the surcharge. I can understand why that might want to be done relative to what you're going to pay this year versus next year. But the actual percentage increase needs to reflect the base level, because the surcharge affects both your numerator and denominator, which makes the numbers look a little bit different than what your actual percentage increase is going to be. And that surcharge does go away in a couple of years. The board also is not... I mean, they recognize that this is not a normal vote, but the process to deal with the fact that the kinds of questions that we're hearing reflect, generally speaking, the fact that this occurs very infrequently, like once every five years. The community isn't used to it. It doesn't follow the normal ballot process where there is a real ballot. You have to vote for something. There's pro and con statements, requires an affirmative vote. This is all completely backwards. I want to interrupt you. You're going down the path on Prop 218. That's state law. That's what you follow. Mark, if I could finish... My point here is you need to compensate for this in order to give transparency to the community. One public meeting that may or may not be included in the mailing that goes out, that wasn't clear to me, is not sufficient to be able to provide that transparency. I'd like to finish my comments here, and then you can certainly interject as you wish. I talked a little bit earlier about this peaking situation, providing a quantitative rationale for why there's a jump from four to five and eight to nine. I have not seen any quantitative numbers in that. Before we vote on this, we need to see those numbers because that's the legal basis for why the tiered rates exist. You can't just do tiered rates without having a quantitative reason to doing so. I did not get any numbers from the consultant. I got hand waiting. I would like to say in the future, if we could please agree that we will never again use messaging, if you save water, you'll save money. That is a very short-sighted statement. That is not what happens because we're a high fixed cost organization. If you save water, your bills are going to go up anyway. We need to stop giving people the impression that saving water saves money. You want to save water for different reasons. You may want to save it to save money in a particular short period of time, but it's not a long-term thing. Next time we need more money, the rates will go up. Bottom line here is we're repeating the same playbook from 2013 and 2017 with a slight variation or two, but those variations are not intended to change the preordained outcome here. By preordained, what I mean is I'm recognizing the Prott 2.18 process, being a rare backwards vote, is virtually impossible for the community to vote 51% no. It happens, I think, only a handful of times in the entire state of California since 1996. It is an extremely rare thing. Therefore, the community without any additional information should expect the same results as what we've had over the last two rate increases. There's a word for doing the same thing over again expecting different results. It's simply not going to happen. The results are going to be continued skyrocketing operating expenses in lieu of a committed budget, a minority of the increased revenue going towards infrastructure, contrary to the sales pitch. The steel tanks in our district will continue to deteriorate even further because we do not have a plan to maintain them. All of those tanks, except the handful, are well beyond their maintenance life. And an effective operating margin that's about half of what the district needs to stay even, not to mention dealing with our unfunded capital obligations. And using the rationale that we're no different than anyone else doesn't cut it with me. My daughter used to say, hey, the cool kids are doing X, Y, and Z. That doesn't mean that that's what we have to do. We have to be different. We have to be better because we're a smaller organization. I appreciate the time that you listened to all of this. This is a summary of the items that I've talked about over the last few meetings. I don't expect people to go back and listen to all of those meetings to get the information, but I wanted people to know that. These are my objections to it. This is why I'll be voting against it. So Bob, let me go to Jamie first. So I think that what I would like to make clear is that that was Bob's opinion. He states many things as appreciate if you would get up and make a comment, but not shout from the rafters. Thank you. Oh, fuck you. So please proceed, Jamie. Can we mute Maureen because I think that that was the F bomb. So that was Bob's opinion. He often states his opinion as fact and persuasively so, but that doesn't make it true. Thank you, but no more, Mark. Otherwise, we'll ask you to leave. Do you understand? No, it's in the next election. You're out of here. I want Jamie to be able to. Mark, please settle down. I'm settling down. Jamie, please proceed. Thanks. I appreciate that, you know, it is burdensome to live in the state of California. It's burdensome to live in an incredibly high cost of living area. And those burdens, as director folks pointed out, are fixed to us just as they are to everyone who lives here. When an individual's PG&E bill goes up $100, so does ours. More than that, you know, proportionally because we are such a high energy user. We use a lot of energy to pump that water up and over these hills. One of the reasons that in this valley in particular, our water rates are higher than in other parts of the county is because of the very high cost to deliver water in a mountainous, very wide geographic terrain like we live in. We have far reaches that we have to send the water to. And so all of those things are fixed costs to us. They are not costs that are under our control anymore than they are costs that are under your control when the PG&E bill goes up. When we have to buy more propane or gasoline to run our generators, we're paying those same increased gas costs and propane costs that individuals who live here and are running their homes on diesel generators when the power goes out are paying. And so we have to reflect that in the rates that we ask people to pay. I understand how challenging it is to sort of have these conversations and figure out what that right rate is. But on top of that, we also have to pay the people who work here. And as Director Fultz pointed out, we have a very small staff. And their costs, they live in these communities, are going up as well as yours. So we renegotiate every few years our contracts with them, many of them being union employees. And we have to honor those contracts once we've entered into them, which we as a board did earlier this year. So I want to sort of look at this from the lens of how do we as a district continue to do business if we don't reflect the fact that our costs are going up as well. I think that it would be really helpful in the public outreach process for staff and, you know, in the context of giving those presentations to talk about all of the capital projects that are underway and that we are committed to and those costs associated with them. And all of the capital projects that are yet to come. In addition to the things that we want to do, which often get turned into deferred maintenance, we are left with immediate urgent pressing needs to deal with the infrastructure that has been burned in fires and lost in storms. And unfortunately, those things often end up having to take priority over the maintenance that we would love to be doing, because we have a 35 person staff. So I think that it is really important to talk about these issues through the lens of not just the people we serve, but the way that we are able to do this business and run this business. And it is not a for-profit organization. We are a public agency. We set our budget and have to meet our budget on an annualized basis. We do not have an additional amount of funding that is sitting there that we can invest as a private sector company would. So I just wanted to state that to respond to some of the things that I've heard tonight. So I would comment that a couple of things. First of all, in his comments, Bob, I think that will refer to this board did this, this board did that, etc. Most of the people on this board were not on the board at the time when these heinous acts were performed. We did not raise all the costs. We did not raise things that he contributes to this board. Now, if he means the board generally as being the board of the Water District, yes, the board made lots of decisions. This particular group of people with the exception of Bob were here for most of those. And I would second say that what we haven't heard from Mr. Falls is any specific examples of where we have spent too much money, alternative proposals, things like that. So I guess I'd put up or shut up, Bob. If you're going to say that we are spending too much money, provide us with an alternative. What else would you do? May I respond to that? Because he did challenge me right off that. I want to take that outside of this. I want to discuss the motion that we have in front of us. You have to come back to me now. Gail? I think I don't really have anything to add to what Jamie and Jeff said very clearly and articulately. So I don't need to. Okay. All right. We have a motion in front of us. Excuse me, Mark. We have a motion in front of us. Bob, if you have aspects, I think it's important for context for the community to know what the deal is relative to what Jeff said. Leaving that hanging mark is not good for the community, not good for transparency, not good for understanding what the board's role is. I won't even take that one. Okay. Look, here's the deal. I'm not responsible for operating the district. In fact, this board has criticized me for even doing the kinds of things I do relative to just creating models and using public information to come up with the information that I communicated earlier. I have been criticized for that pretty severely. So the notion of me to say, well, we're going to do this and this and this and this, yeah, I don't operate the district. My policy, though, is to not raise operating expenses 100% when inflation is going up 25%. Even if it was 50 or 60 or what have you, it would have been better than what we had now. At a board level, that's policy. That is what we do. We don't say do this, this, this and this with specific line items. That's not our job. That's not your job. That's not my job. And to make the implication to the community that that is in fact my job, does it the service to the community relative to them understanding what our roles are? I would like to respond to that in just briefly. I understand where Jeff is coming from. Can you speak up, please? Pardon me? Can you speak up, please? I understand where Jeff is coming from in his statements because it's frustrating to hear the same things from you over and over and over, Bob. But I think that, well, I'm not going to say it, I'm just going to get myself into trouble. Never mind. We have a motion in front of us that has been made and seconded. Holly, would you take a vote on the motion, please? President Spally? Yes. Vice President Hill? Yes. Director Ackman? Yes. Director Falls? No. Director Mayhood? Yes. Motion passes. Okay. Motion passes. Now I'd like to move on to the next item of unfinished business and it's a public outreach. Brian? So, I believe Carla is going to get this presentation. Okay. Thank you, Brian. Take it away. So right now the district is working with Miller-Maxfield, the district's outreach consultant to move ahead at outreach surrounding the top three process. Miller-Maxfield will assist staff and the administrative committee to develop social media posts, newsletters, add the paper, press releases, the Prop 282 notice itself, as well as a public event to invite the community and to engage and discuss with staff what the rate increase will be funding and what it will look like. We've also developed an FAQ that will capture some of the common questions we receive and will allow it to be buildable. So tonight's questions and comments that came up, those will be fed to the FAQ as well. We do plan to release the initial FAQ version tomorrow on the website, so that'll be available for most of you. As part of this memo, we do have the draft Prop 282 notice that Miller-Maxfield developed with staff. We also have a schedule that Brian outlined in his presentation, but to add into that, we hope to hold that public event in January of 2024. So that'll come right after the district prepares and prints the Prop 282 notices. And then from there, we will host the actual public meeting in February. Outside of that, I'd like to add that we hope to focus all the outreach with the just staff and the administrative committees moving forward, and that's what staff is requesting from the board. And staff is happy to answer any questions. Okay, all right. Jamie, let's start with you. Well, first of all, I want to thank staff for reflecting the conversation that we had with Miller-Maxfield and sort of helping to wrestle with how do we want to give people an opportunity to learn more about this in a less charged atmosphere. I think it's really important to have this workshop so that members of the community may can come ask questions and talk with staff about all of these things that we're hearing tonight, whether it's trying to understand the way that the bill appears, whether it's trying to understand where the funding is going to go over the course of five years. And most importantly, like breaking down very clearly, what are people going to be expected to pay over the course of five years? And how are we going to be using those rates to help deliver their water? So I want to thank you for thinking that through. I think that I've seen an increase in just in terms of the communication for this meeting, and I appreciate that. And I expect that we'll continue to see more discussion as we move through this process. So I don't have any questions for you, though. Jeff, did you want to? I was going to. No kind of transition. Nothing. Okay, Gail. So what would you what would you like from the board tonight in the sense that I, for example, read the Prop 218 material that was sent the draft? And I have a lot of comments on it. Some of them just editorial because I thought parts of it were not very well written. Others are kind of more maybe even say sort of philosophical about, for example, do we really want to talk about Big Basin Water Company in the material that we're sending out, given that that is such a fluid situation? I like I don't I don't think that's really part of our Prop 218. It might maybe be something that could be in a frequently asked questions. Similarly, you know, talking about the rate assistance program, I think we should say that there is this place that low income people should go. But I'm not sure that, for example, we should say that will increase the amount to $20 a month. I think that's what budget and finance would like. That hasn't been approved by the board. And I don't want that to get snarled up. That is actually the rate assistance program is a policy decision that we make at budget time. It is not part of the rates. And that, you know, and that I think budget and finance, Jim Bond is on that committee. The intent was that that amount would go up every year and would in part offset the increase that especially the lower income and lower water users see in the fixed part of their charge. But I don't want to commit us to anything. I just worry that maybe that's not a good thing to do. And so then would you like us to like send editorial comments? Who should I send them to? Or I mean, they're too lengthy and it's kind of nitpicky. It shouldn't be done at the board. I'll answer your first part of your question where you said what you're asking. What we're asking from the board tonight, the motion, the recommended motion is that you're allowing the admin committee along with staff to carry the ball forward for the public outreach. However, that does not include any board member who has comments on what's been presented as draft to see, yes, to round them to Carly and I and we'll be happy to assimilate your comments in with the rest of the packet. And some of the other comments we've heard about public outreach in your earlier comment about creating scenarios. In fact, I like April's Silber's comment about an online calculator. I don't know if we can cook something up like that. They exist. I've run into them in my course of trying to compare. Somebody can create that which is for me. I'm happy to do it. But the question before you just to emphasize Carly's presentation is we're just asking that that's how the board is directing staff to carry the ball. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, you know, I do want to I do want to say one thing. I do want to give props to us for the fact that there is one significant modification in this process as compared to 2013 and 2017. And that is this interim public meeting where hopefully people will come and ask questions and and receive information of both pro and con in order to make an informed decision. Previous ones did not do that. And so this is really good news. But let's be clear here. This is all taking place within 45 days. Within 45 days, a community of 8,000 customers is expected to assimilate information that they only really examine once every five years and participate in a vote that's completely backwards. 45 days is simply not enough time to do that. It doesn't have to be forever. But 45 days is effectively effectively what this process is going to be as a district effectively providing only pro information selling the community on raising rates. There will be no other information presented in any of the materials that's either online or mailed out to the community. In addition, I also have concerns about what the mailing is going to look like. Past mailings have been what I would classify as junk mail plus in their appearance, which typically ends up immediately going into the trash. If you go to the post office after these kinds of things, they're usually all over the place. I'm really hopeful that this is going to be ballot, vote, etc. to make it really clear that this is something that is of vital importance to the community. I don't suppose it can be an official ballot like coming from the county, because we're not engaging in a regular vote, but at least something to give people a sense that this isn't junk, that this is something they really need to examine. And finally, on the social media and other outreach that's been going on, I'm concerned that we might be burying the lead and the information. Because when I click on at least the Facebook one, I click on it, it goes to a page that doesn't really provide any summary information that's like right there that you can look at. You have to wade through all these documents and you don't know which one is really important and it's historical and it's too much. People aren't going to be able to deal with that. We need to think about this in a way that you would think about interacting with consumers, with customers in terms of how you communicate the information, not as a traditional government agency would communicate things with rings and reams of information that don't really get necessarily to the heart of the matter. Even looking at this, it was like a lot. And I probably would have a lot of the same comments that Gail would have relative to that. So those are kind of my thoughts about this. So some progress from previous rate increases, but we still have a long way to go. And I'm not optimistic that we'll be able to address all of them this time around. Hopefully, maybe five years from now, we will. Okay. I have a couple of questions on this and one comment. They want a rate schedule that we see in the agenda this evening, page 37. I want to recommend that somebody on staff go through every one of the numbers here and confirm that what we're sending out in the mail agrees with what we've been discussing, what REF tell us has provided us as far as rates so that we're not sending out something that is a, oh, we really didn't mean that part of it. So if you can ask somebody, and my recommendation would be somebody who hasn't been dealing with this at all, a first set of eyes, just having them do that cross check and on the dates also that we're citing in here. And I see exhibit B referenced in the addendum being the draft 218 notice, but then I didn't see that in the agenda packet. It's underneath the presentation from Miller-Maxfield. Oh, okay. So it is here. Okay. It's that. Okay. Okay, I missed that. Okay. That's all the questions that I have on this. I do have some comments on the text, the understanding this notice and some of that that I will send back comments on that. And you're recommending that if we have comments and what's a timeframe, what's our deadline for that? When do you want to be able to begin to move that part of the process forward? Well, we're going to start firming up the notice, probably starting tomorrow, the May 8th. We have until the 28th to have it corrected. Right. So give us a reasonable, is Tuesday this coming? Reasonable? Yeah. That's reasonable. I think that's okay. What's the date for Tuesday then? Because I don't... 12th. Okay. Okay. So 12, 12. Okay. Okay. All right. Then before I go out to public for comment, I do want to state the motion that we have in front of us. So I want to make the motion that the board accepts the memo on the public outreach, Proposition 218 Outreach, and directs both staff and administrative committee to collectively complete and carry out the remaining tasks associated with the Proposition 218 Public Outreach process. Second that. Okay. So comments from the public on this? Please. I just want to echo what Todd just said, which is we're trying to put our marketing hats on and really not in the sense of selling this, but providing really crisp communication that is easy to navigate and not too obtuse. I'm not saying you've had it in the past, but there might be a little bit. Okay. Anybody else here in the room commenting? Otherwise, I will go out to... Or online folks. Okay. Here at Martin from Boulder Creek. This is more of a question, not rhetorical, but maybe it could be answered at some point. This is a sales pitch. We don't have any say in how this goes other than the ballot box. Correct. And I'm kind of wondering why I noticed in here in the back statement, you spent almost $18,000 on outreach. Where are we outreaching if this is a done deal that we don't have any saying as citizens and ratepayers? And so maybe you clarify that. Thank you. Jamie. Yeah. So I'm not sure exactly what the charges that you're referring to, but we have to pay Miller Maxfield as a consultant for their time to develop all of these pieces. We have to pay for the advertising that we're placing both on Facebook, online, and in newspapers. We have to pay for the printing of additional mailers to send out information to notify people that we're having these conversations and to let them know where they can come to attend a workshop or learn more about it. So there are costs associated with trying to communicate to people what is happening and what their opportunities are to offer feedback and learn more. And so I think that if we weren't to spend any money trying to communicate to people what we are proposing, then we would be in the situation of not telling people what their opportunities are to weigh in and as Bob so frequently says to vote against it if they want to. So it's a cost of doing business. Yes. Okay. Folks that are online that want to comment. Alina Lang. Hi. Alina Lang, Boulder Creek. Yeah. Everyone kept talking about the calculator, but I just like, you know how PG&E gives you the summary and a little pie chart for exactly your bill. I don't know how difficult that is, but you have our past bill information. You can just plug us into what the new tier was and, you know, send it in the next bill or whatever so people can take a look at that. And then kind of to address what Mahood was saying about the rate assistance program in like not going out in the mailer. I hear what she's saying, but then it also feels like that's just kind of an empty promise. Like we're going to do this and protect tier one. Maybe if we pass it and I just feel a little nervous voting for this. If like our most vulnerable aren't protected as we go through this rate increase. So if that's something that you guys could push forward since it is policy factor. And so we know all these things are in place to help the most in need. That would be great. Thank you. Okay, Stacey Wilpert. Okay. Hopefully you can hear me. We can, Stacey. Okay. I live on Meadow Drive. One of the 56 homeowners are part of the wastewater system. And I was curious, assuming when you go into the 218 process that the wastewater will have its own 218s, but you'll be able to tell whether there's a 50% or more vote to not want to do it or not? Yes. Okay. Yes. Did you hear the response, Stacey? No. I have my volume all the way up, but I can just barely hear you. The answer is yes. Okay. It's going to be a separate 218. Yes, separate. Yes. Okay. Thank you. One of the 56 residents there, the ratepayers. Yes. Okay. Lorraine Palmer. I'm sorry. I don't have a question. Okay. Cynthia Denzel. I would like to support Alina Lang's suggestion that the Lyra proposal be voted on sooner rather than later. I think that would be very helpful to ratepayers to know that that is in place before the 218 notice goes out. Thank you. Okay. That's all the public comments, public commenters that I see online. Seeing all the comments then. We have a motion in front of us. Holly. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Till. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Fouls. I beg your pardon. No. No. Director Mayford. Yes. Motion passes for one. Now I'd like to move on to the next item. New business committee appointments for 2024. Brian. Thank you, director. Thank you, chair. So Holly, you're going to present this one. Okay. It is recommended that the board review the current applications and appoint public committee members to the standing committees for 2024, not 2023. Sorry about that. And so every year we go out for committee appointments and this year we received just five of them. Yes. Yes, just five. And so we're just, I have attached the applications that were received and I have also added a table that shows that if they get their first choice, if each of the people get their first choice, what the committees would look like. Okay. So comments on any of the applicants or the process? Yeah. Well, I think we'll accept all of them and welcome all of their participation. It's a little imbalanced in that we have three for engineering and environmental and only one each for the others. I did notice that Skye Herrick, this budget and finances her second choice and given her training and her interesting work experience, certainly if I'm on that committee, I would welcome her joining budget and finance instead. But on the other hand, I want to honor what people most want to be involved in. So that's all I have to say about it. Okay. Okay. I don't know that it's appropriate to reach out at this point to make that change. I can certainly recommend make that recommendation if he was interested. You can always change it. We can, I mean, we can point to what we could do is point it as Pauline presents it tonight and then ask Colleen to give this special thing to Skye that we'd like her to be involved. And then of course, we'll have to come back and change it. But we have to, at the time we point the board members, we have to also say how many people are on each committee. So at that point, we could change her assignment as she wants to. Okay. Or not. Then Okay. Jeff, I have only one comment, which is that we certainly were not overwhelmed with the number of volunteers. And is it possible that we could continue soliciting to see if we can find a couple more volunteers going forward? I think we've been faced with this in the past. And we set a deadline. Holly solicited all of the existing or current committee members. And this is what we were able to draw to go back out again and readvertize is the only fair way that I know of to do that. And I'm not going to advocate for that at this point. Yes. Yes. A question. I'm not sure what the appropriate itself was, but it was a question. Okay. All right. I'm just curious about the process, Holly. I'm surprised to see one of our existing admins, many members appears not to have resubmitted an application. And I just like, do we do we personally contact them? Or do we just sort of assume that they're going to see the deadlines and no Some contact me. Some contact you. Yes. And they, they let me know that it was fun, but it's over. I've had enough fun. And I correct Holly in my recollection. You told me, I thought you told me that you contacted each one of them. Oh, I did first. I contact everyone and then they come back with a response. Okay. A bit underwhelming, but that's what we're dealing with at this point. Candidly, I'm not surprised actually after the rate increase and the Outreach that will happen in January, you'll be back to doing what I would call more nuts and bolts work around budget and admin, but engineering is going to have quite a lot to do still, even with the raw water pipeline for P vine already decided. So I'm not, I'm not really surprised. I am glad to see a couple of names that that are new. I'm familiar with the people I'm looking forward to working with. I think this will be really exciting thing to get some additional different perspectives on on this. So I would only advise that we modify the motion to reflect that the composition of the admin, budget, finance, committee and engine, environmental engineering committee be three, three and five respectable. That actually is done when we do the policy manual. Has not been done that way in the past. In the past, we have, when we've appointed public members to the committee, given that we have two elected members that we fixed the composition at the time of the appointment. That's what we've done in the past. You don't have to do it now. Fix it when we appoint the board members, because actually the board policy manual says that you can have a maximum of two board members on each committee. So there could be a situation where there might be one. So I think it's okay to wait. And then also we can check the sky. It may be that we have done the board committees before. That's right. I have to admit I was a little surprised not to see that. That's why we have got. Okay. Then I moved that the board appoint the public members as provided to us. Mark doleson to the admin committee. Jim bond to the budget finance committee. Ken Landy to the engineering and environmental. Jeff smelter to the engineering and environmental. And sky herrick tentatively to engineering and environmental, but with the possibility of revising that to budget finance based on holly contacting. Mark just just just to make it easy. Can we delete everything about after sky herrick to the engineering environmental committee and delete everything after that? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Then read off the names into the standing committees for 2024 to complete the motion. So we have a motion in front of us. Second. Okay. Anybody from the public want to comment on this here in front of us online. Alina Lang. Hi, Alina Lang, Boulder Creek. Just because it was specifically asked by someone, I just wanted to say as an E and E committee member, I actually was not emailed the application. And I was told about it though, and I could have done my due diligence to go look for it. But usually it does come to our email with the due date that's on it. And I missed it. And usually we are actually a point on the second meeting of December, at least how it's been. But I'm fine with it as I can take my leave from the committee. It's been a long run. But for the future going forward, I did not get an email with the application date. I just searched my email to make sure. Thanks, Mike. Thank you. Okay. That's all of the public comments. Then Holly. President Smalley. Yes. Yes. Vice President Tilt. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Maynard. Yes. Okay. Let's see, the next item is on the election of board officers. And Brian, are you leading that one? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So basically the memo pretty much speaks for itself. You're to nominate someone of your choosing. And director. No cheating. You're required to do this once a year. December is the month that you typically vote for a new president and vice president. And so that's pretty much it. You nominate someone of your choosing and then... Okay. As the staff recommends, I, as the board president, will entertain nominations for president and vice president. Well, I'd like to start it off then. I would like to nominate Jeff Hill to be president of the board for 2024. Jeff has been a vice president for this past year and has worked a lot with me through the process of identifying interim general manager and all of the outreach that we were doing with our consulting firm and was invaluable to me at that point in helping us through that process. I'll second that with that. Thank you. Jeff, do you want to comment on this acceptable? This is acceptable. I will serve with pleasure and attempt to do my best to listen to everyone and take everyone's viewpoint into consideration and do a fairer and even job. Okay. All right. So I propose that we go through this one first. Jamie. I support the nomination. I know that Jeff serves on two committees, the admin committee with me and the budget and finance committee. And I think that his contributions on both have been invaluable and he clearly has a deep understanding of all of the issues facing the water district. So I would support the nomination. Okay. I know. Okay. All right. Well then, since I want to do these separately, Holly. Public. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. So I have a motion out there. Anybody from the public want to comment? We've got feedback again. Somebody engaged there. Somebody turned there. Yeah, I think it's going down. Okay. Seeing nobody here and nobody on line. Holly. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Thank you all. Okay. We now need to nominate a vice president or so. Well, since you're going to be in that role. Yes. I would like to nominate Director Ackman for Vice President. I haven't talked to her about it, but she may. Okay. Not wanted. I don't know. If nominated, I shall not run. Yes. Selected, I shall not serve. Yes. I appreciate the nomination. I want to caveat my acceptance of that by saying that I often have a conflicting board meeting, the second meeting of the month for work. I serve at the leisure of a publicly elected board, which meets on the third Thursday night of every month in San Rafael. And so that's why I can have these conflicts. And it has placed a little bit of strain on me as a board member. So I would accept the nomination with the understanding that I have some limitations in terms of my availability. Okay. Okay. Any comment on? The nomination was not seconded. Oh, okay. I will second that then. Any comment on that? Gail? I don't know. No comment. Okay. Anybody from the public? Seeing none. Hearing none. Holly? President Smalley? Yes. Vice President Hill? Yes. Director Ackman? Yes. Director Falls? Yes. Director Mayhood? Yes. Just as a small thing though. Does Jeff take over right away? Yes. Actually, I should have been the president. Yes, absolutely correct. And I can see that Mark is eagerly gathering his papers together to pump up my test. You can just move the chairperson in here in the gavel. Okay. So what else have we got here? Yes. Well, we've got a cancellation of the December 21st, 2023 Board of Directors meeting. Request has been made to cancel this meeting. Does anyone have any comment on that? I think it was a point of discussion. How do you want that? Brian? Brian. Sorry to meet. The cancellation of the next board meeting. December 21st. Right. I hadn't seen that when we discussed it. Given lack of business time of year, there isn't really anything else bringing up at that meeting. That was my suggestion anyway. Okay. So can we get a motion for that? I'll move that we cancel that meeting. I'll move that we cancel the December 21st meeting since our Interim General Manager indicates that he doesn't expect to have an identity board approval for. Second that. Okay. Any further comments, Bob? Yeah, no comment. Sammy? Mark? Okay. Holly? Public? No public. Yes, public comments. Okay. Holly? We have a vote. You all don't want to be here on December 21st. President Hill? Yes. Vice President Ackman? Yes. Director Falls? Yes. Director Mayhoy? Yes. Director Smalley? Yes. Motion passes. Okay. We have the consent agenda and there is one item on under that the recertifying the discrimination, harassment and retaliation prevention policy for 2024. I'd like to pull that from the consent agenda for procedural reasons and make substantive changes to the policy. Can I continue to comment on that? Yes. This policy is adopted annually by resolution. A resolution requires a vote in which the eyes, nose, absent and abstains are recorded, hence it can't really be done as a consent agenda item. One more importantly, a reason for adopting the policy annually by resolution is to highlight its importance and to make sure that the policy is consistent with current laws, putting it on the consent agenda does neither. The member that came with this said that staff and legal counsel concluded that the policy did not need to be changed. But when I read it, I noticed that Rick Rogers is still the contact person if you want to file a complaint and that the term district manager appears globally throughout the document and needs to be changed. Moreover, the language concerning sexual harassment training, prevention training sounds out of date and not reflective of the fact that most such training is done today online. So I would ask that staff and district counsel take a closer look at this document. The other thing is that I think that the policy needs to be revised to indicate more explicitly that the policy applies to members of the board of directors and to members of board committees. There's a statement at the beginning of the policy that it applies to all people in the workplace, including customers and vendors, but everywhere else in the policy it only refers to employees. Given the power imbalance and interactions between members of the board and staff, it's important, I think, to spell out the board members are not allowed to discriminate against staff or harass them or retaliate against them or, for that matter, against other members of the board. Additionally, it's important to mention board members explicitly because the management staff have to interact on an ongoing basis with the board, say in comparison with their occasional interactions that they have with, say, customers or vendors. So there's much more of a possibility for a hostile workplace situation to arise. My honest experience as board president makes me think that this policy needs to be more explicit regarding board members as board president. I dealt with along with district council three instances in which three different board members were potentially in violation of the policy. The third instance rose to the level of a formal complaint on the basis of hostile workplace and it required considerable intervention on the part of me and district council. It would have been easier and simpler to deal with all three of these cases if the policy made it explicit that it applied to members of the board of directors and laid out the potential disciplinary actions that could be taken by the board against board members in such cases. I've made a number of suggested edits and additions to go over at the board meeting. I'll send those to the GM and the district council for their consideration in revising the document for future consideration by the board and I'd encourage any other members if they fail in the desire to read it and provide their feedback as well. When we adopted the policy almost exactly three years ago it was at my first meeting as board president. The then district council commented that it would be a good idea to make sure that the older respectful workplace policy be revised so that this prevention policy and then be harmonized and I hope that the admin committee will take that up while they do their annual revision of the board policy manual so that all three documents are consistent and at the same time make more clear the expectations regarding board member behavior in regards to treatment of staff. It will also provide the general manager with more tools to protect staff and will spell out potential disciplinary actions that could be considered for a board member or whom informal resolution is not successful. So given that you've opened that can of worms when I'm looking here at the topics associated with this particular policy I'm not sure this is the right place for that. I think there's also a substantive and very serious and we'll get into this more next year for sure in response to earlier charges regarding what I view in my opinion as a fairly sustained authoritarian assault on the board members ability to conduct and fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities in addition to free speech considerations but political speech being the most centrally protected form of speech that we have you know regrettably this kind of suppression seems to be pervasive throughout our culture nowadays it's regrettable but it is what it is and we will have to deal with that if we continue to to push on this. I am deeply concerned and I think there would be substantive illegal issues here that I don't know that this board is prepared to deal with should we try to expand this in any way that would inhibit a board member from fulfilling their duties. This is really serious stuff guys and while I appreciate and will respond appropriately to previous charges you know this is nothing more than a political attack and it's really a shame but yes it is the culture of today and the sending opinions are to be squashed not heard and it's really a shame. So if I have a question on this what's our time frame to review and get comments to to Brian on this? I honestly don't know okay I want to suggest this is two weeks reasonable because I don't see that there's an urgency on this one but I think we had on the prop to retain. Yeah about consulting Don I wouldn't be able to comment on that if we had there was a due date if we rehab this I don't know so I can't comment on it but Can we could I ask you to consult with staff and with the council and then come back with the time frame or recommend time check from going this totally reasonable just we'll get back to you and when we need to comment. I mean we're bouncing into the holiday season we've got twenty-teen process going very busy and I don't know what our okay what our deadlines are on this off the top of my head so this is the first renewal of this policy since it was adopted no second I just want to clarify my understanding I think that what I heard director may have to say was that she wants us to look at this policy in the context of looking at board manual which is something that's underway we have yeah we have a meeting in January we we had it on the last agenda to look at we've I know that Mark Dawson has sent in some comments on the manual we were going to bring that back in January at the admin committee so maybe if there's not a huge amount of urgency we can bring this there hear from council at the admin committee about what the recommended changes are make any other additional changes to that along with the board policy manual and potentially bring all of that back to the the board at the I don't know the second meeting in January or February or the first meeting in February the way sounds more realistic there's a lot of stuff a lot of paper here and we're going to if we're going to look at all of the policies then from my perspective I'm going to I've never I haven't seen any I've looked at the board policy but outside of that I haven't spent any time on any of these so I don't want to crunch my review time in December and it's not going to happen right good so I think Jeff's suggestion Brian yes Brian work with council then come back to the admin committee with some recommendations and we'll we'll go through it at the admin committee in January or I was just going to fire off an email just to make sure that I had it taken care of so HR and Barbers and over if there is a time Brian then we need to go and I don't think we're asking you to come back with a detailed recommendation by them but generalized areas of concern that the admin committee could work on with you okay so then are you not expecting it's going to shock you interrupt are you first I was going to I thought I would check on there is a deadline procedurally but then are you directing that it goes back to the admin committee first before it goes to the board again generally yes okay I'm not aware that there's a specific deadline for this the timing the board policy manual says ideally but there's there's no firm one so I think you were correct in capturing what I wanted to have happened I hope that there would be an initial revision to correct some of these things by staff and district council and they would send it to the ad board they would then work on it some more and so that deadline should be whenever that ad work meeting this is going to end up having George Reeve looks at I got it okay so can we just move on that from that one okay next district reports um can I I think that uh ex-president may have made some very sensible suggestions there about changing the name of the district the name of the responsible person to report changing the name of the title of the general manager those seem trivial changes and they seem like good things to do like I'm hearing a process here that's going to maybe take months um so I don't understand why you don't make trivial change you go ahead and then leave it to the admin committee to figure out what to do in the future um the other thing I want to say is I don't think I agree with what director may have said about the consent agenda and the eyes mays, abstentions, and absences my understanding is that the ground act requires all of those eyes mays, abstentions, and absences for any action that the board ever takes whether it's on the consent agenda or not so that's nothing out of the ordinary thank you okay um district reports we have department status reports and do we have any committee reports I thank you partner we do have a hand up oh we have a hand up I don't unfortunately I don't have the the screen there yes uh Alina Lang yes Alina hi Alina Lang Boulder Creek and I really appreciated what Mahood um had to say and I just wanted to know if there's a way we can also include some language to protect committee members because Bob you know you sat and yelled at me repeatedly and everyone you had to sit there as if this wasn't acceptable and if anyone notices all of the E&E is new and you know and if it hadn't slipped my mind about the date I probably would have sucked it up again and uh because the public trust me in this role and a lot of people like to see me there but you know I had a sense of relief when I was pointed out I missed the deadline because it was just out of my hands and the treatment was over and so I just you know also protect us committee members please thank you thank you I'd like to point out Mr. Landy is a returning committee member could you Mr. Landy has served on the committee before yes I I you know again guys this this board is allowing a lot of personal attacks that we are supposedly by policy not supposed to allow yeah but because it's directed at me it's okay fabulous um two sets of rules we're talking about revising the policy manuals to try and avoid it would be great to stay on policy but we don't seem to be able to do that okay do you have anything else oh I will let a later time okay thank you okay um department status reports so we did have a financial report unfortunately Heather not able to make tonight's meeting uh due to personal reasons so again we have the report if you reviewed it you could motion to go ahead and accept the report um we don't normally do that just take questions national there's normally no second report so there's no actions taken it's just a discussion yeah we're just we're just accepting the reports so then in which case I don't know if anybody's reviewed if they have any questions I've read through it I didn't give you that in detail okay that was budget and finance um thank you um I don't have the document in front of me if I did I would leave through it and tell you exactly what lines I'm talking about somewhere in this financial report there's a couple of lines that show the unspent balance from two construction loans so there's two two loans that the district took out one for about $15 million in 2019 another one for close to $15 million in 2021 and those two lines show that more than five million dollars remains of the 2019 borrowing and more than $10 million remains of the 2021 borrowing so I'm familiar with the payment terms of these loans and the district makes semi-annual payments of principal interest so for these years that have been going by the district has paid down these two loans I'm estimating you can buy around five million dollars so to get the picture here the district borrowed 30 million dollars spent so far less than 15 million and has already paid back five million dollars so you're you're essentially transforming unrestricted general fund money into restricted money you pay interest on millions of dollars pay down the principal before you ever put it to the purpose that it was that the borrowing literally was for so I think the finance committee should certainly look at this and check me out figure out how much of this money has already been paid back before you ever spent it so I will bring that up with the finance committee I'm on the finance committee so I will bring that up just about sorry this is as someone who sits in on the zoom I'm going to ask everybody to speak up because the real people can't always hear us Jeff usually I don't have to ask you to speak up but I'm going to ask okay well unfortunately I have a a throat loss in my mouth at the moment and I'm losing my voice so I will try okay we will look into that at the finance committee and see what we can find out committee reports future committee agenda items committee notes minutes um I think we're just going to accept all of that that came in we have two letters that the communications letter to the board from D loan and a letter to the board from friends of SLV water I'm not quite sure how we should handle those the board all has them do we have any response or anything to them their information I'm sorry their information information only the board member wants to comment they can but otherwise we don't do it okay informational material we have a leak detection report and I think we'll just accept that report as is and so the next item on the agenda is adjournment is there any objection to adjourn it this meeting is adjourned thank you 851