 If you're the attendee with the initials BK, if you can please use your entire name just for attending purposes and minutes. Okay, so it looks like we are waiting for town of Windsor. Oh no, maybe so. Hold on a second. Drew, I know that Christina Boulart from the town of Windsor will be joining as she sent me an email this morning to that. Okay. And she's new staff there if you're, if you haven't made it. Yeah. Thanks, Paul. I did add her recently for some of our emails. Colin, do you know if Jennifer or Peter are gonna be joining this morning? I would assume the answer is yes, but I have not seen any email or heard anything from them. So I don't have any update on that. Drew, I did receive a message from Christina with towns of Windsor that they're having an invalid meeting ID issue when they try to log on. So I will try resending the information one more time for those that may be running into some type of error. I'm not sure if maybe it's on their side, but I'll go ahead and resend that. So I had the same problem Easter, but the link in the agenda worked, but the one in the email did not. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Tell them to click on the agenda link, not the invitation. Okay, thank you. I'll go ahead and send that message right now. It was a little late, Drew. This is Craig. Morning, Craig. Morning. We got, we definitely have a quorum. We're just waiting to see if apparently town of Windsor is trying to join. And then we'll get going. There's Jennifer. Good morning, Jennifer. Good morning. Sorry for being late. It's all right. We'll get started in just a minute. We're trying to see if we can get town of Windsor is trying to get logged in. So we're just waiting another minute. Okay, Easter is Gina on the call too? Yeah, I see. Hi, Gina. Yes, Gina is here. Okay. Let's go ahead and get started. I'll go ahead and call them the meeting to order. It's 904. You're gonna follow my logistics protocol here. Just remind all the TAC members when we're doing roll calls to state their agency in the full name, that'll help Gina or Easter get all the correct information together. And be sure to mute your phones or microphones if you're not speaking. So Easter, are you gonna be doing the roll call or is Gina? I will today. Okay. Why don't you go ahead and get started, please. City of Katari. Craig Scott. City of Petaluma. City of Petaluma, Kent Carruthers. City of Brunner Park. City of Brunner Park, Mary Grace Pausen. City of Santa Rosa. City of Santa Rosa, Jennifer Burke. City of Sonoma. Northruin Water District. Northruin Water District, Drew McIntyre. Town of Windsor. Valley of the Moon Water District. Valley of the Moon Water District, Matt Poehler. And Marin Municipal Water District. Marin Municipal, Paul Sellea. And for staff and public attendees, we have Don Seymour, Pam Jean, Lynn Rizeli, Paul Enclose, Paul Piazza, Barry Dugan, Bob Anderson, Claire Nordley, Margaret DiGenova, Peter Martin, Tony Williams, and Grant Davis. Okay, welcome everybody. Let's say we're gonna go ahead and obviously just follow the agenda here. Agenda item number two is public comments. And so we're now taking public comments on any non-agenda items. So if you wish to make a public comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. Or if you're dialing in via phone number, you can hit star nine to indicate that you will raise your hand. So if you can do so, I'll stand by briefly here to look for any indications from the public. Secretary Perez, do you see anybody indicating that they'd like to make a public comment on an item not on the agenda? There are no raised hands. Thank you. And then let the record note that there were no voicemail messages or any emails that I received on public comments for items that are not on the agenda. So we will move then to agenda item number three, which is two parts here, three A has an attachment. And it's basically water production relative to 2013 benchmark. And we have various tabulations here. If you look at a year-to-date water use, which is the most stable data here for, we're almost completing a full year now. You'll see here that water use compared to the 2013 benchmark is down 10%. Chart two or chart one essentially has a graphical representation of the deliveries and also the gallons per capita per day. And then chart two is the one that shows actual gallons per day per capita for a much longer period, much earlier than 2013. And again, it shows that the partners have invested significantly in water conservation practices and the results are demonstrated quite satisfactorily in terms of looking back at water use in 1995 and where we are through 2019 in terms of overall water use. And this graph also shows that the population increasing over that period as well. So with that, we'll now take any public comments on item three A. So if there's anybody that from the public who would like to speak on this comment, please raise your hand and zoom or hit star nine if you're talking via phone. Secretary Perez, do you see any comments? There are no raised hands for this item. Okay, thank you. And again, there were no questions raised via voicemail or email to me over the weekend. Any other comments from the TAC on agenda item three A? Seeing none, we'll move to three B, just an update on the 2020 urban water management plan and Colin, this is yours. Excellent, thank you so much. So just a quick update as you all will recall, the staff from nine agencies have been working with a consultant together to develop shared methodology for projecting demands out to 2045 and for analyzing our water conservation programs and looking at what shared programs would be preferable. We met with the consultant EKI on November 12th to discuss our draft final reports. So we are in the final stretch here. Six of the final reports have been delivered to retailers, three are in progress. Some agencies did revise some key data inputs or made some assumption changes. So that may impact their demand projections slightly. In addition, this did require some use of contingency funds. I think I've mentioned before that with COVID and fires and a number of issues, we definitely ended up taking more time from EKI than we had originally intended. So final reports will be sent to Sonoma water once I have all of them all set up a one drive folder for those so that Sonoma water can easily download all nine of those at their convenience. And just a couple of outstanding pieces. So that's one part of the work that we do together. There are some other pieces that we do together on the urban water management planning. One of them is the water agency Sonoma water is going to be analyzing their water supply out to 2045 based on our demand projections and they'll be getting back to us. So I did let them know that some of those projections from I think it's going to be about three of the agencies may change slightly. So once I have updated demand projections, I will provide those to Sonoma water and then they can finalize their water supply reliability assessment out to 2045. Another piece is the drought risk assessment. This is a new urban water management plan requirement. This follows on the heels of the drought that we all experienced statewide. The agencies now must assess their water supply reliability for a five year period specifically 2021 to 2025. And they have to assume that the hydrology will be the same as the five driest years on record. So the state held a training on this on December 4th. In the meantime, the nine contractors have been all working together to come up with a shared methodology for estimating our water demands for 2021 to 2025. Obviously we will have the 2025 from our contractor, the consultant that we worked with, excuse me, but we needed to find a way to pro-rate out between our current water use and our projected water use for 2025. So we came up with a methodology. So we will fairly soon be able to send to Sonoma water our projected water demands for 2021 to 2025. So I've asked all of the water contractors to let me know if they could get those to me and then I can compile those and get those to Sonoma water. Another piece of the urban water management plan is that is new. We are now required to provide in our urban water management plan a methodology for analyzing our annual water supply and demand, assuming that the current year would be followed by a dry year. And so we need to include procedures for assessing the reliability of each water supply, each of our sources of water. We will need to turn in the actual assessments until July 1st, 2022. That's when the first assessment will be due but the methodology will be due with the urban water management plan. So I've mentioned this to the partners and I've reached out to Sonoma water and I think all parties are agreed that we'd like to work together on a shared methodology so that there's a regional approach and so that it all makes sense. So Sonoma water is needing to do some internal work coordinating, discussing this new requirement and then they'll reach out to us in scheduled meeting. And then the other piece I wanted to mention on urban water management plans is the SBX7-7 compliance. That was to reduce water use per capita 20% by the year 2020. So in this urban water management plan we will close out our reporting to the state. During this period we'll include a chapter in our urban water management plans that reports how we did on meeting the targets that we set together back in 2015 and any individual targets that each agency made. So during the training on Friday that I attended the DWR staff mentioned that they are aware that some agencies have quite unusual 2020 water use, particularly agencies that have lots of folks who commute out of their area and work elsewhere. Their water use has gone up considerably with shelter and plan. And you'll need to bring your urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plans to your board or council for adoption. And that concludes my update and I'm happy to take any questions that folks might have. Thanks, Colin. Very thorough update. And again, appreciate all your efforts in coordinating this through all the different water contractors. So we'll start first with any comments from the TAC members themselves on Colin's report. I don't see any comments from the TAC. So we'll go ahead and open this up. Again, this is agenda item 3B for any comments on the 2020 Urban Water Management Plan update from the public. If you wish to make a comment, please raise your hand in Zoom or if you're talking via the phone, press star nine. Secretary Perez, did you see any comments? We don't see any hands raised at this time. Okay, thank you, Easter. And let the record reflect that there are no comments that I received via voicemail or email on this agenda item. So that means we move to agenda item number four, water supply conditions and temporary urgency change order updates. Is this gonna be Pam or Dawn? Morning, Drew. Dawn's seeing more, I'll take this one on, okay? Okay, you bet. Good morning, everyone. So starting in the upper watershed, storage at Lake Mendocino is currently just under 30,500 acre feet. And that's a little less than 53% of the target water supply storage for the reservoir. Release is about 115 CFS and that's meeting the minimum stream flow at down a yield of about 110 CFS. It's interesting, we're tracking almost exactly where we were, storage at Lake Mendocino is tracking almost exactly where we were in 2013 for this time of year. At Lake Sonoma, storage is currently about just a little less than 163,400 acre feet. And that's about 67% of the water supply pool. And the releases there are about 160, about 115 CFS and that's meeting the minimum stream down at Hacienda of 160 CFS. We're currently trying to keep those flows about that range right now, because we have Chinook and Steelhead coming into the system and we're trying to make sure that areas where passage is difficult has adequate stage for the fish to get through. And so with that, just wanted to also give an update on the major deviation request. We recently had conversations with the Army Corps. That's moving ahead, but it's likely the timing for that to be approved by the Corps if it is. Keep our fingers crossed is the late January, mid-February timeframe. Kind of as a stock gap measure, Sonoma water requested from the Corps a minor deviation which allows the Corps to, can everybody hear okay? I'm sorry? Yes, I can. Which will store about an additional 5,500 acre feet at their discretion in the flood control pool. And again, that's kind of a stop gap measure in case we're able to get to the top of the water supply pool before the major deviation has been approved by the Corps which we anticipate it will be. With regards to the temperature change order, it expires on December 27th of this month. So we have a couple more weeks of complying with that order. With the dry water supply conditions, we're still facing precipitation is almost exactly where we were this time of year in 2013 going into 2014. So Sonoma water staff is really closely monitoring water supply conditions. Status of Lake Pillsbury, QNU of inflow, which will set the threshold for whether we stay in a dry water supply condition or move into a normal water supply condition which would significantly increase minimum stream flows. So kind of in a wait and see on whether we take additional action going into the new year or out of the new year whether we need to pursue another order. So I don't know if anybody has any questions I'd be happy to answer them. Questions from the tack. John, I have a couple of questions on the release is did I hear you correct it? The release is both at Lake Medesino and Lake Sonoma. They're both at 115 CFS. You're about 115 CFS. Okay. And then the major deviation So that's around what that's around 11,000 acre feet into the water supply or the floods pool. It is, it's about it's about 11,000 acre feet and also includes the cores, new use of, you know, pure road city support tools in managing that water that's in the flood control pool. And because the major deviation is the request was for a five year period. We'll loosen you a little bit. As a stop gap measure. And that's been, that was approved about a week ago. So we're currently operating under the minor deviation which will go away once the major either as a March 15th or when the major major deviation is approved. Okay. And then as far as what was, what's the timeline again as far as when releases would have to be increased? January one is when the water supply condition or the water for the Russian river is reassessed as based on cumulative inflow starting October one through January one at Lake Pillsbury. As of today, that cumulative inflow is just under 4,000 acre feet, which is the trigger has to be under that to be a critical water supply condition. So it's definitely going to go about that into the dry for dry water supply conditions. But the next metric is to become normal for a normal water supply condition would have to exceed 8,000 acre feet. So fairly low bar. So that's why we're going to be keeping a pretty close eye on things. All right, thanks Don. Any other follow-up questions from the tech? Okay, let's open this up to the public. Again, this is agenda item number five water supply conditions. Agenda item number four, water supply conditions and temporary emergency change order update. If anyone from the public has a comment via zoom please raise your hand or press star nine if you're participating via phone. Okay, is it Easter Gina? Any indications of interest on the public on this item? There are no raise hands on the public. All right, thank you. And then let the record reflect that there, I did not receive any emails or voicemails on this agenda item as well. So we're going to move, we're going to move now to agenda item number five, water supply conditions, public outreach messaging, timeline and Paul Piazza, you're in the lead on this. Thanks Drew. So obviously the winter has been dry so far more in terms of the extended forecast not seeing any rain to come. And so it's been on our mind obviously that we want to be prepared for any needed conservation messaging whether it's starting now or early in the spring into summer. And so anticipating that the community and government affairs staff Barry and Andrea along with my staff met to discuss initial work to develop a framework essentially for the implementation of that annual summer ad campaign. And part of this was needed not necessarily because it's a dry year but just to kind of put the workflow in place to make it easier for our staff to develop the thematic messaging on an annual basis and to anticipate what the needs are in terms of the additional review by the partners and the work that actually has to be done to create that campaign in order for it to launch every year in time which traditionally has been the last weekend of May the Memorial Day weekend holiday. So we met once already this month we'll be meeting again in the next couple of weeks. As I mentioned again, essentially it's just to detail the workflow and timeline that we're going to be following each year internally and externally. And then we included in those initial discussions that the thematic content would include multiple tracks essentially anticipating the different and changing hydrologic conditions related to our water rights. So as Dawn was just mentioning we do start monitoring at the beginning of the calendar year based on cumulative inflows whether we're in a normal dry or critical dry hydrologic year. And so initially we were working to use that with developing multiple themes essentially so that as we move further into spring we're able to change and be nimble to the changing hydrologic conditions. And again, as we move further into spring that message becomes a little bit more clear we'll be able to narrow down which of those different themes that we've decided to come up with would be the needed theme for the summer. Start developing some of the campaign materials working with the TAC water conservation subcommittee for initial input and review and then elevating that to the TAC ad hoc before the launch at the end of May. So that's really all we've started doing in that regard. We hope to have a little bit more clarity on those steps in the coming month. But for now, given the dry winter conditions that we're experiencing, although it's too soon to call it a drought we wanna be proactive. So we are gonna be putting together some winter outreach for social media essentially and websites both to put out on cinema waters, social media sites but also to push out to the partnerships so that they have some consistent messaging coming from us to go out to their customers and the idea being that although it's a dry period for winter it's still the case that we wouldn't wanna have supplemental irrigation running except in extreme cases where they may have outdoor potted plants that need a little supplemental irrigation. But otherwise most of the perennial landscapes at this time of year in spite of the low rainfall are in a dormancy period and there's enough moisture in the soil to keep them through the next couple of months. And so we're advocating that people make sure their irrigation system is off for the winter as would be normal for this time. It's also the winter averaging time for many agencies who also provide sewer based on an average monthly indoor water use. So most of the partners are already in the habit of pushing out similar messaging every year to make sure that their customers are not adversely impacting their sewer rates for the coming year. So it'll be a combination of those two messages that we envision going out in the next couple of weeks. And then again as we move further into the winter months depending on how things are looking we'll be making adjustments as we go. So that's all I have on that right now Drew. I'm happy to take questions. Okay, thanks Paul. Questions from the TAC on Paul's report. Paul, do you know, have you? Oh, go ahead Jennifer. All right Drew. Thank you. I did the right hand, but thank you Paul. I appreciate that update and report. You know, I know that we're trying to balance the messaging and I continue to hear that we're tracking the same as 2013. And I believe in 2013 we had already launched a pretty robust winter campaign by this time. So is there, I would like to request I guess if we could put more of a timeline together in terms of conditions and check in point and win that would trigger launching more robust outreach and communication related to where we are and water supply conditions. I don't understand, I have a watch went off. Sorry, my watch went off. And if we could request that the Water Conservation Subcommittee convene and really start looking at what those messaging should be. I know in Santa Rosa we have already put together our winter messaging and have been putting that out, requesting folks to suspend the irrigation and we're doing some supplemental radio ads and a number of things just related to encouraging people to be water smart and water wise. And I'd really like to see more of that throughout the region and kind of what our plan is between now and May. Thanks, Jennifer. Thank you, I appreciate it. Happy to reach out to the Conservation Subcommittee to start talking earlier. As I mentioned previously, our internal discussion, we've only had one meeting to try and lay out a timeline. And working with our staff internally, there are not any indices that I can rely on in December essentially to determine if we're in drought because we had still a long runway in front of us in terms of the opportunity for additional rainfall this winter, but we're certainly keeping a close eye on it and helping to coordinate better with all of the contractors in terms of the messaging that needs to happen. Any other questions from the TAC on this item? So Paul, I think just to follow up with what Jennifer, Jennifer's comments is, you know, I think it would be good if we again just kind of go back and look at towards the end of 2013 and what all was being developed and rolled out in early 2014, just to see, you know, review again that effort and lessons learned back then and how we might operate moving forward, especially as we keep tracking this and updating it. If conditions continue where we don't get any rainfall. So good suggestions, Jennifer. I'm gonna move now to public comment on this item. Again, this is agenda item number five for water supply conditions, public outreach messaging timeline. And so if you're participating via Zoom and wish to make a comment, please raise your hand. If you're participating via the telephone, you can hit star nine. Easter or Gina, you see any comments from the public? There are no raise hands. Okay, thanks Gina and let the record reflect that I did not receive any comments from the public via voicemail or email as well. So that brings us to agenda item number six, biological opinion status update. Pam, I think that'll be yours. And then before turning it over to you, Pam, I just wanna encourage the TAC members, especially while I'm encouraging you to mute your phones. Please, if you can participate via video it always helps show the strength of the group visually. So with that, Pam, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you. Okay, I don't know who put this up, but thank you, whoever that was. Hopefully everybody got this in their agenda packet. And there's some great photos included in this particular update of the biological opinion implementation. I'm just gonna hit some highlights. I'm not gonna read it all, it's quite lengthy. So I'll start off with the Fishflow and Water Rights Project, which we commonly call the Fishflow Project. That project, we continue to work on the draft environmental impact report with the expectation of recirculating the draft in the spring of this year. So that is ongoing. And other than that, there's really not any major changes there. As far as the Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement Project goes, our contractor that was out there working this year is wrapped up now. They completed the project elements that were required to be done in 2020. And they ended up actually working beyond the normal October 15th date that is allowed by permits because it was so dry. So we got extensions from the regional board and California Department of Fish and Wildlife. So they kept working through November 6th and got the work done that they needed to get done. There is still work on two remaining projects for next year in that phase three portion of the project. So we do expect that to start in the summer of 2021. That same contractor, which is Hanford also completed some maintenance activities for us on four locations out on Dry Creek. And that was mostly to remove sediment that was deposited in February, March of 2019 during the pretty high rainfall and high flooding at that point. They also repaired some minor erosion and a few other things. So that work also got completed this year. As that work was going on, we were also working with the Corps of Engineers to make progress on phases four through six of the Habitat Enhancement Project. And they're continuing to work on right of way out there and are currently reviewing the 99% design documents and preparing bid packages. So the big bid package is hopefully gonna include construction for 2021. It's a very fast timeframe, but they're hoping to get there. And just in last month, I believe it was our board approved a project partnership agreement. This is a formal agreement with the Corps of Engineers that describes financial terms, roles and responsibilities of this project which is a core led project. So we expect the Corps to approve that public, sorry, that project partnership agreement in early December, early this month. There's quite a nice little write up in here about fish monitoring and what's going on out there. Of course, one of the purposes of the Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement Project is to create Habitat for Coho salmon. Because there are so few Coho salmon out in the watershed, it's kind of hard to validate exactly what's going on. So we do, however, I think everybody is aware of the brood stock program at Lake Sonoma at the Hatchery. And so when they take those fish and they out plant them, the small fish, the juveniles out plant them into tributaries to Dry Creek and the Rush River. They tried something, I don't know if it was new just this year, but where they took those fish and the young fish that you see in this photograph here and they've kept them in those tributaries in cages for a few days in order for them to sort of imprint or get used to the water that they were in. And they found that instead of having the fish leave those locations, which are habitat, they're enhanced locations, they're meant to be occupied by these young fish. They actually had a larger percentage of them stay in that location to rear. So it seemed like a pretty good program and there's a nice little write up in here about that. And it sounds like they're working on improving that as they go along. Next item in here is the Rush River Estuary Management Project. The management period ended on October 15th and the river mouth is currently closed. And we do have an expectation to be out there later this week on Thursday to mechanically breach the estuary, the sand bar across the estuary, assuming that physically they can get equipment out on out there. So that we spoke with the resource agencies just last week about this and that's the current plan is to go out and to breach it mechanically on Thursday this week. And I think Don already talked about interim flow changes and the temporary urgency change order, which expires at the end of this month. So I won't speak to that and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thanks Pam. Any questions from the TAC on Pam's report? I don't see any hands raised. Pam, just a couple comments. I was happy to see and I can't remember if this was discussed previously, but on the cores project for their construction on the bid packages being worked on, I was happy to see that there's an option for constructing the remaining sites. So that potentially everything could be done kind of during, I assume, is through one bid effort and not go out multiple times depending upon what those options come back on. Is that, do you know, is that the intent then to try to streamline then the number of times the projects have to go out to bid? Yeah, I don't, I honestly drew, I don't know. I don't know, Grant, if you know any of the details about that. It has been discussed, I think they're working through a number of different provisions, but ideally if they could lump it together, that would be a significant savings. I'm not sure whether that option's actually the preferred option at this stage though. Okay, and then just related to that, it indicates that the cores San Francisco district office is supposed to sign off on that project partnership agreement. Has that happened yet? Hi. We actually had the general up to view the Dry Creek Habitat Restoration Project as he was touring Lake Sonoma with his staff. And we had the board chair, Susan Gorin, sign it on our end. It turns out that they need to go through a, what is a customary step on a congressional side to notify Congress they're actually doing this. So I think that step actually has to still take place, but it's eminent, it will happen. We hope to do it in a larger way, but just too many things can conspire against us. But I will take this point just to say that Jay and Dave Manning had an opportunity to brief the general and the colonel and staff involved with things like the major deviation, forecasting for reservoir operations and whatnot. So it's just pretty good, solid relationship building with the core at this stage. So really a lot of work to staff on both organizations. Okay, thanks Grant. And then Grant, can you remind us again with the colonel? So this is the colonel that's based out of the San Francisco office, correct? And this is, they rotate every so many years in this particular individuals on what year two now? Yeah, I think so, believe it or not, entering into year two. So it's damn near impossible to keep up. I think that probably looking at 20 of these changing of the guards, it's just so rare. In fact, you guys know this, that we have Len Cardoza, who used to be the colonel for the district in San Francisco on contract through Interflue to stay on top of running our XCOM meetings and making sure that all the stuff we've done over the years takes place because one of the thinking is, Len knows core speak better than anybody and can stay on top and can get through the red tape unlike others. It's nothing like having a colonel that's been through the ropes, but forgive me, all of us, it just seems like whiplash every two years, you're welcoming somebody new and sending one off. And it's hard because you have to reeducate much of the leadership at that time and it takes time and effort. Yes, that was a good idea to tap a past colonel to help continue on. Any other questions from the tack on this item before we open it up to the public? Okay, we'll now open this. This is agenda item number six, biological opinion status update. We're looking for any public comments on this item. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. Or if you're dialing via telephone, you can hit star nine. I'll take a brief pause here to look for any questions, comments. Gina or Easter, do you see any comments from the public? There are no raise hands for this item. All right, thanks, Gina. We will now move to agenda item number seven, Potter Valley project relicensing updates. Pam, is that gonna be you? Sure, thank you. So we are in early December now. In mid-November, all interested stakeholders, agencies, et cetera, filed comment letters with FERC on the initial study report that was released in September. And the meeting notes from the meeting that was held, I can't remember if it was now September or October when that meeting was held. And so that, again, was mid-December that those were all filed. We've been working very diligently since, well, even before they were all filed, but diligently to respond to all of the comments that were made and our response to comments are due as the two basin solution partners due to FERC on December 14th. Following December 14th in mid-January, we expect that FERC will issue a study plan determination. And at that point, we will have hopefully a full picture of what they expect in terms of studies in order to move us towards a licensing proposal and a licensed application that's a couple years out. So right now we're working, as I said, very hard to get our response comments document done. It's always an interesting thing to have five different entities reviewing and commenting on things, but we're working at it. And we're also working on making sure that we have a pretty good understanding as a group of what priorities, what studies are a priority and what order they all need to go in, et cetera, in order to help us with funding them. So funding's gonna be a big deal. We're working on that and trying to make sure that we're doing the most important things first in terms of the studies. But again, we won't have that study plan determination until about mid-January, and then we'll know exactly what we're gonna be required to do by FERC, so I think that's about it for me, Drew, unless there's any questions. Thanks, Pam. Questions from the TAC on Pam's report? Pam, any new communication at all from FERC staff over the last month or so? No, we really haven't had any contact with them beyond after the initial study report meeting was held. We did talk to them just to check in with them, make sure that they were okay with the way it went, and check to see if they had any questions or anything. So, and since then, we haven't heard from them. Kind of, I know we've gotten questions about scoping document four, and we don't have a timeline from them on that at this point, so I'm not sure what their timeline is. Well, you answered my scoping document number four question already, so thank you. Any other questions from the TAC before I open this up to the public? I don't see anything, so we are going to open up a general item number seven, Potter Valley Project re-licensing update to the public for any comments. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand or press star nine if you're participating via phone. I'll take a brief pause here. Drew, I do have one member of the public, David Keller, and I'm going to allow you to speak. Morning, David. Good morning. Nice to see all you guys and hope everybody's healthy and staying safe. Thank you. And so speaking for Friends of the Eel River, we're working with Caltroud through our NDA with them. So I have a couple of questions. The first one is on response to Congressman Garamendi's letter and the pressure coming out of Lake County to keep Lake Pillsbury and keep Scott Tam. And so I'm wondering if the agency has any specific outreach to Congressman Garamendi and Lake County interests, including supervisors, pushing back on their demands that Lake Pillsbury and Scott Tam be retained, which of course is not at all compliant with the two basins solution. So just Pam, is there any specific outreach that you guys are doing? Well, David, the partners have met with Lake County supervisors, the principals from the partners. I don't think it's specifically to tell them what you just said, but we do continue to meet with them. Sorry. Sure. There was supposed to be a meeting of that group set up earlier in the early part of this month. I haven't heard whether or not it has been set up or not. But there is definitely dialogue going on. And I think that the Lake County supervisors are pretty clear about what they would like to see. And I think the partners have been pretty clear about what the current plan is. So that's kind of where it's at. Do the Lake County soups express any understanding or recognition of the costs and liabilities of trying to keep Scott Tam? Brian? Yes, they do. We've made that part of our discussions. What prompted us to have to take action at this stage. Doesn't mean that they subscribe to that same point of view, but they've made their case to first pretty clear as supervisors and they've obviously got a strong year in the congressman who represents that portion that's his district. Right. Yeah, and looking at his letter, it seems fairly uninformed regarding some of the liabilities and problems with Scott Tam. So I appreciate any continued strong pushback to both his staff directly to him as well as to the Lake County supervisors. The other concern that we have is about the engagement of Russian River break growers and wineries who I'm not sure if it's a specific formal or informal outreach to them about understanding changes that may or may not come. We know that there's a fair amount of misinformation out there and wondering if the agency is doing any specific outreach to push back on that. So we are working on an outreach strategy, so to speak with regards to not just Sonata County but Mendocino County and some outreach has happened in terms of trying to understand what folks know and what they don't know and we're moving forward with that but there is no formal process right now, I guess you can say. Yeah, and one of the, I appreciate that. Kambigos, one of the things that obviously needs to be addressed is how do you guys pay for, or we all pay for all the studies to move forward and given the $2 billion grape industry in both counties, it seems like there's, should be if there's understanding and as beneficiaries of water transfers, there should be, I would love to see some formal conversations with them on setting up some kind of structure to be able to tap into their profits, shall we say, from converting water to wine. And I'm hoping that that's part of the conversation with them. Difficult one, but nevertheless critical. David, I guess I feel like commenting is one of the folks that works with Cal Trout on this and communicating directly to you that that is far more difficult to do than maybe realized. And that's why this takes time and it will take a concerted effort. We've been meeting for many years but to achieve something like that and to say we'd like to top your profits and keep this going is far more difficult than some of our environmental colleagues think. And it's quite a challenge. So I'd appreciate a little bit better understanding when you say that the Congressman has a lack of awareness on what it's gonna take the Polo Regional Solution off, I would say this is another part of it that is gonna be extraordinarily difficult and take time and energy and a lot more information exchanged. Yeah, I'm fully cognizant and appreciate that Grant and it's one of the conversations that we have on a continuing basis of what would be the vehicle, how would it get established to be able to gather some of the expenses from that industry. And so yes, I fully appreciate that and recognize exactly what you're saying. This is not going to be an easy task but necessary. So do appreciate that and do appreciate the outreach that you're doing. We're concerned as well about the continued resistance in looking at studying the issues of Cape Horn Dam which might involve redesign or full removal and replacement. And we think that's a very important piece to go forward as part of the two-basin solution. Okay, thank you, David. Any other questions from the public on this topic? Gina, let the record reflect that I did not receive any public comments via voicemail or email on this topic as well. So moving on, that brings us to agenda item number eight. FY20 Sonoma County Water Agency budget year-in review and Lynn Razzelli is going to be giving this. So Lynn. Good morning, everyone at the tack. I'm Lynn Razzelli, Administrative Services Division Manager for Sonoma Water and I believe Easter is going to be bringing up the presentation for everyone to see. There we go. Okay, so we have prepared a brief presentation doing a financial recap of fiscal year 1920 budget versus actuals for revenues, expenditures and water deliveries. Can you go to the next slide please? So we're going to start off with water deliveries because those from the basis of the rate and the revenue that we receive, we receive about 90% of our revenues in water sales. There was an increase or actuals of 45,649 acre feet actually delivered through June 30th, 2020, 4.1% increase over what was originally budgeted. The original budget was based on 12 months of water deliveries through December, 2018. And for those who may not be familiar with our fiscal year, it runs from, this 1920 would run from July, 2019 through June, 2020. And for, so our deliveries are remaining in that 45,000 acre feet in deliveries, actual deliveries. We're anticipating that we are beginning to prepare the fiscal year 21-22 budget and we're expecting somewhere in the range of 45,000 acre feet, it will be based on the three-year annual average water deliveries. We believe we don't have all the water data in yet but that's where we think we're going to land for the fiscal year 21-22 budget. So let's go to the next slide, please. And so here we can see that the revenues were 5.65 million higher than budget of 42.67 million. The budget is the 48 million that we had for actual revenues, 90% of that or more is made up of the water rates and the water sales. But and because we delivered a little bit more water, 1,780 acre feet more than the budget that increased our revenues by about 2 million. The remainder of that increase that you're seeing there that 5.65 million is due to grants and interest earnings and other miscellaneous revenues that either were not included in the budget or were not envisioned in the budget at the time. And then on the expenditure side, we have a 13.26 million less in expenditures than budgeted. And in the subsequent slides, we'll go into some detail about where we expended our funds for our budget for fiscal year 1920. Next slide, please. So this is just a pie chart to give you an example or show you visually how we expended the funds, 63% were spent in operations and maintenance. In capital projects, we spent 9%. The budget that we showed you back in 1920, well, back in 1819 for the 1920 budget showed about operations and maintenance at 53% and capital projects at 21%. So there was a big switch there between operations and maintenance and capital projects where we spent a greater portion of our expenditures on operations and maintenance and less on capital projects. And we'll go into that in a minute. We'll on a subsequent slide. Next slide, please. So this slide tells you by function, how we expended our funds. We spent three million less in operations and maintenance. And that is largely due to the tank maintenance agreement not having been signed and negotiated and board approved at the time. Capital projects were 7.39 million less than budgeted. That's a big difference there. That is due in part because of the FEMA NEPA delays on the hazard mitigation projects. And because the capital projects did not get awarded, yet construction had been budgeted. And the biological opinion compliance, water supply planning and water conservation, there was 2.2 million less in expenditures than budget. And that is due largely to the Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement right away negotiations being delayed. And that's probably in part due, some of this is in part due to COVID, but also just generally due to the challenges with negotiating right of way agreements for the Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement Project. And then on the debt service side, we had 550,000 less than budget. And we had a decrease there because we issued slightly less in revenue bonds than we had anticipated. And there'll be another slide that shows some information on that. Next slide, please. So here we're showing what we did with the budget of 24.35 million. Most of that budget is for routine maintenance. The projects, the summary of some of the subset of projects and studies that we work on are shown here. Those made up about 2 million in expenditures out of that 24.35 million. So really the majority of expenditures and operations and maintenance is routine maintenance. Next slide, please. And on the capital projects expenditure side, we had 3.58 million in expenditures. The good news here is that we were able to advance capital project designs and the majority of these will be going to construction in this fiscal year or next fiscal year. We spent in 1920, we spent about 750,000 on hazard mitigation projects and the remaining 2.84 million on other capital projects that are shown here. And then we awarded two capital projects, the Sonoma Booster Pump Station, Seismic, Electrical and Pumping Upgrade Project, which is still in progress and the Water Transmission System Equipment Building. Next slide, please. And these are our sub fund expenses. We have four sub funds, water management, recycled water, local supply, watershed planning and restoration and water conservation. We spent $30,000 on the Urban Water Management Plan. Obviously more will be spent this fiscal year because the Urban Water Management Plan is due on July 1st, 2021. And on watershed planning and restoration, we spent 3.8 million. The majority of that was spent on the Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement Projects miles four, five and six. For recycled water and local supply, we spent 362,000 on the Marin Municipal Water District LRT2 project, the final leg of that project that was completed. And we spent 2.1 million in water conservation for water education and water conservation and the Sonoma Marin Saving Partnership. Next slide, please. So for debt service, we spent 4.29 million. We expend approximately plus or minus one million in debt service on each one of these. We had the State Revolving Loan Fund and then the three water revenue bonds. The 2019 water revenue bonds were issued in early July of 2019. And we issued those 2.4% interest rate. We received a rating increase from S&P from AA plus to AAA on those revenue bonds. And so that certainly helped us get a very good interest rate. And next slide, please. So the next steps where we're going forward here, we're already working on the 21-22 water transmission budget and rates. We anticipate providing that to the TAC ad hoc budget subcommittee by January 15th, by middle of January. Then we then provide the draft budget to the TAC ad hoc on Monday, February 1st. The TAC votes on the budget and rates on Monday, March 1st. We present the budget to city councils and district boards as requested during the month of March. And then the water advisory committee will vote on the budget and rates on April 5th. And then it will be adopted by our board in April, usually in mid-April. It has to be done before April 30th in accordance with the restructured agreement for orders applied. And that is all I have. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you, Lynn. I will open this up first for any questions from the TAC. Don't see. Lynn, it's for you with city epsilon. Oh, sorry not to raise my hand and all that, just to interrupt. So anyways, I appreciate the update, Lynn, on financing a lot of the water contractors faced an increase in costs for buying water this fiscal year, but didn't increase the rates to our customers. I know in Sonoma we differed our rate increase for six months, just understanding the economic impacts of the pandemic on the community. And so it'll be really interesting looking at next fiscal year's budget and look forward to more budget info coming up. Thanks, Fergie. Any other questions from the TAC? Lynn, I have a couple of questions and then Easter, Gina, if you can pull up that presentation, I'm gonna refer to a couple of different slides by their numbers. If you could go to slide number four, which has a pie chart, perfect. Lynn, on debt service does the, so the debt service is about 11% of the FY20 budget. Is there a debt management policy that the agency has and how does this reflect overall debt right now? How does it reflect per what the agency has for policy? Well, the agency follows the county debt management policy and I don't recall the exact percentage that is in that policy, but certainly we were able to get a very good rating from S&P for issuing the bonds. And there was no concern regarding that debt level. And we also just recently had a review, a surveillance from Fitch and they also indicated that this debt service amount is not of concern. It is a reasonable amount. I just don't recall off the top of my head what the county policy percentages are, but we were certainly approved by the county debt advisory committee to move forward with our issuance of bonds and they reviewed all of our bonds at that time. Okay, thanks, Lynn. And can we go to slide six? So, Lynn, you had indicated that the O&M budget expenditures were lower primarily just with a slower start on the tank maintenance program. Correct? Yes. And is the Forestville tank recode that is underway though? I believe that project is actually completed. So it was certainly in progress and awarded and I think it was awarded in probably 18, 19, but it was very much in progress in 1920 and I believe it has been completed. That's right. Okay, and then moving on to slide seven on the capital project expenditures. Okay, so on the capital projects, is it safe to say that one of the biggest projects that resulted in significantly lower expenditures was the Warm Springs dam hydro turbine retrofit? The Warm Springs dam hydro turbine retrofit is about a $1.2 million project. I would say that the Russian River Crossing project is probably the largest of those projects there right now in terms of when it goes to construction and it's actually been bid, it has not been awarded and that is a large project that had construction budgeted but had not been awarded in 1920. Okay. But it's expected to be awarded this fiscal year. And then any, Pam, can you give, do you have any updated on the bladder replacement? Yeah, my recollection and grant maybe, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that we bid the project, we didn't accept any of the bids, we bid the project just recently and bids were not really any better. So I would expect that they're gonna go ahead and award that and it should be under construction this summer. The bladder itself, the fabric for the dam is on site. It was delivered, I don't remember what month, it's on site. And of course, one of the decisions on that was not just the cost, it was whether or not we were actually gonna receive the rubber bladder from China, it continued to be promised and get sliding back. So during COVID, this was a risk and it's one of those things that we decided to err on the side of caution and weigh back and implement the project this coming year. Would you do have the bladder now? We do. Okay, let's see if I had any other, yeah, those were my questions. So thanks, Lynn, Pam, Grant, and I will open up this agenda item for public comment. Again, this is agenda item number eight, FY20, SCWA budget year in review. So if anybody in the public would like to make a comment, please raise your hand via Zoom or hit star nine on your phone. I'll take a brief pause. Easter or Gina, any? There are no raise hands for this item. Okay, thank you. And let the record show that there were no comments that I received via email nor voicemail on agenda item number eight as well. So we're getting to the close here. The last item is just agenda items for the next meeting, which is January 4th. I just wanna remind everybody that the 2021 WAC-TAC schedule is that was approved at the last WAC-TAC meeting is, if it isn't posted, will be posted on the agency's website any day now in case you're trying to find ready access to that. And in addition to our regularly ongoing items, there will be a couple items related to the engineering or the emergency training and coordination group, some updates on new alerts, alert system and emergency parts items as well. So any other things that the TAC wants to have included on the agenda above and beyond what's mentioned. Okay, any final comments from the public on agenda item nine, just in terms of the January 4th agenda items. Again, if you wish to make a comment, please raise your hand and zoom or hit dial or dial star nine on your phone. Gina or Easter, do you see any comments from the public? There are no raise hands for this item. Okay, again, thanks everybody. It's 10, 18, the meeting is adjourned. Hope everybody has a good week. See you later. Thanks Drew, bye everybody.