 Looks like we have all the board members we're expecting, correct? All right, well, I believe it's after 1.30, so I'll go ahead and call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the city's Santa Rosa to order. Secretary Aitha, when we have a roll call, please. Yes, Chair Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Arnone. Here. Board member Baden Ford. Here. Board member Grable. Board member Walsh. Here. Board member Watts. Here. Board member Wright. All right, good afternoon to all of you. I'll remind you to the board members to mute your phones or microphones when you're not speaking and make sure you put away all cell phones and personal computers. So we'll now move to item number two, which is statement of abstentions by board members. Do we have any? All right, hearing none, we'll move to item 3.1, which is a study session. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. I'm not sure what we're seeing from the screen. Item 3.1 is fiscal year 2022-23, regional local wastewater and water funds, operation maintenance and capital expenditure requests and making the presentation will be Kimberly Zanino, our deputy director of administration. There we go. Okay, thank you. Great. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. This is our study session on fiscal year 2022-23 budget. Next slide, please. Today we will go over all three fund budgets, reserves, CIP, regional partner allocations and the budget schedule. Next slide, please. To begin with, we provide assumptions for the budget each year and as shown here, we are expecting most revenue to remain flat except for the miscellaneous revenues in the regional fund. Those revenues are increasing due to additional participation in the high strength waste program. And this year, customer rates will increase by 3% for water and 2% for sewer based on the approved rate schedule. Next slide, please. This year, we are seeing many uncontrolled costs increasing listed here are areas we are seeing increases. Salaries are increasing more significantly than typical and that is because of a delay in negotiations with our bargaining units last year because of delays, two years of COLA's are reflected in the 2022-23 budget. The first of the increases at 3% was incorporated in September of 2021 so it was not reflected in last year's budget and the second at 2.5% will be implemented in April of 2022 instead of July, which would be the normal timing. In addition, there was also negotiated an employee wellness payment per employee and so that is added and reflected in the salary line items this year. Benefits, energy costs, vehicle costs, information technology and insurance are also in increasing as shown here. Operational supplies are going up and that's just based on the fact that all costs of goods are increasing now and so we're seeing an increase in that line item which basically leaves the controllable costs in the lists as professional services and operations and maintenance projects. And the majority of those increased costs are due to regulatory requirements and O&M projects for the regional plants. You've heard many times this year about some emergencies that are happening I'll talk a little bit more about that later. And then I will also discuss the purchase of water on another slide. Next slide please. In this budget cycle we are also requesting that have not received approval for some staffing increases. The first request is for two USOs, one in the water fund, one in the sewer fund. For many now years now the water and wastewater systems have been increasing in size and complexity. However, we have not increased staffing and we've even decreased staffing levels by two USOs. When several years ago in city-wide cuts they were required for all departments. This is making maintenance of the system difficult with the existing staffing levels. We're also asking for a supervising lab analyst. This position is needed now because of state imposed regulation that requires the certified environmental labs to comply with the NELAC Institute standards. The requirements call for even higher quality assurance data tracking which this position will assist in achieving. In addition, we are increasing one civil engineering technician. This position is currently at part-time and we want to increase that to full-time in the current development group or division. These changes would help with achieving timeframes that have been set by new regulatory requirements and council goals for processing permits. And in addition to that, we are requesting the reclassification of four positions. There will be one vehicle that will be needed if the USOs are approved. And so that vehicle is on there as well. There is also one vehicle that we need to have replaced that was at some point dropped out of the replacement program. And so there are not funds built up for that vehicle's replacement. None of these numbers are shown today yet in the budget screens because they are not approved. They would be added if approved at a later time. Next slide, please. You can see here the effects of those increases with the largest being in the sub-regional fund as a result of those O&M projects that we want to increase and professional services. And then the increases in all of the uncontrolled costs that I was discussing. Next slide, please. I will go through each of the funds individually, but to start, this is a graph of the total Santa Rosa water O&M proposed budget and expenditures. I wanted to provide a little different view here of the expenditures because in the citywide budgeting system, the costs of water billing and administration labor and salaries is included in a lump sum number. So I've actually extracted those labor and salary or the salary and benefit costs out here to show you a truer depiction really of the category of costs for the entire O&M budget. And I wanted to point this out just in case some of you are like me and you actually go through and you add up all the line items and you might see that line items aren't exactly matching. So that's why I wanted to point out that we had extracted those numbers in there. Next slide, please. So I will start with the water funds. Each year we provide you with this look or this chart that shows you the line item expenditures in the water funds. You can see that I have circled in blue all of those costs that we were, I discussed earlier that are uncontrolled. You will see that the largest increases are salaries and benefits for the water funds. And that is just a reflection of that two-year increase and the wellness payments. Operational supplies also going up just based on the cost of goods. And then insurance, you're seeing a significant increase in percentage and while the dollar value is not huge, those premiums are going up. And so you're seeing a big increase in the percentage line there. Next slide, please. The purchase of water, I said I would discuss later. So here I am showing you the increase. On March 17th, you saw a presentation on Sonoma Waters proposed budget and wholesale water rate increase and acted on that recommendation to see council. We're showing you here what that rate is. It is higher this year than it has been in past years. And this is due to the drought and some deferred projects that Sonoma Water is expecting to work on this year. Since Sonoma Water's revenue is fully volumetric with no fixed charges, their revenues are a lot more volatile than others. And in a drought, you can really see the need increase and that is reflected here in this increase. As you probably are aware, we went over it on the 17th, but there are a lot of processes that this budget has to go through. It has to go to a subcommittee through the technical advisory committee. It goes to the full water advisory committee, the full technical advisory committee, the BPU, the city council, all of these steps are just recommendations until it goes to the Sonoma Waters Board of Directors where they consider approval and adoption of the actual rate. Since the wholesale pass-through rate was removed in 2021 with the purpose of providing more certainty to our customers and removing that unknown increase for them, we wanted to make sure that you were aware that Santa Rosa water did develop our current rate schedule based on a 6% increase by Sonoma Water. So this is incorporated in the long-range financial model and will not have an effect on our customers. Next slide, please. I'll show you a graph for each one of the funds. This is just a graph of the water funds showing you at which categories, expenditures, there are in the water fund. And you can see here that purchase of water is the largest expenditure on the water side. Next slide, please. This is the same information for the wastewater funds with the same main increases, increases mostly in the uncontrolled expenses, vehicles being one of the largest and that's due to the large fleet and local operations and the increased costs from the city's garage. Insurance, again, you're seeing that large percentage jump here just because premiums are going up. Next slide, please. And a picture of the wastewater funds by category of expenditure. Next slide, please. Again, the chart here for regional operations. I would again like to just address the increases in the controllable line items for us. O&M projects and professional services have larger increases this year. Director Burke has reported out several times to you during this last fiscal year, the number of emergency projects at the plant. From storm response last October to the aeration pipe failure, the sinkhole that occurred in December and others. And so we are therefore feeling that it's very necessary to increase the budget and work on some planned maintenance projects this year. And that's why you see the big jump there. We have also have some regulatory compliance projects that are included in that, as well as some items for compliance in the professional services line item. Next slide, please. Once again, you see the charts for regional. On this chart though, you see some extra amounts that are included. Once again, just in case you're the person like me who adds everything up from the other slides, I wanna make sure that you're clear on why this slide has some additional items on it. First is the decrease in the $5.4 million of projected miscellaneous revenues. Those revenues are collected and go directly into the regional funds. So they are removed from the O&M allocations to the partners. There is also a required increase in the O&M reserve which we need to distribute between the partners to achieve the 15% per policy reserve. And then also included in this slide, you will see that service. And I will go over the allocations of the expenses for a regional on a later slide. Next slide, please. For the last several years now, we have been showing you a new look which is the revenue to expenditure slide. You will see here, it's indicated that there are higher expenditures than revenues. On the water side, this is due to a decrease in revenue from the drought as well as those increased expenditures. We are proposing the use of undesignated fund balance to cover this, which avoids any need to impact our customer rates. And I'm gonna go into quite a bit of detail on undesignated fund balance in a later slide. Next slide, please. Same picture for the wastewater funds. I will point out on this fund though, you do see Santa Rosa Waters contribution to the regional fund. And that is because wastewater rate payer funds are what we use for our contribution or to pay for our contribution of the sub-regional system. Next slide, please. So as I said, I'm gonna go into a little detail about reserves today. Since we are proposing to use fund balance to cover expenditures and reduced revenue, I just wanna provide some detail on our reserve balances. All reserves in the chart are based on June 30th of 2021. We provide reserves from the, or they're based on the end of the last fiscal year, where expenditures and revenues are all completed and audited. The good news is that while we are seeing increases in the ONM budgets and reductions in revenue this year or likely, we have a sufficient amount of undesignated fund balance to cover those increases. All reserve balances, all other reserve balances remain at policy levels. But you can see that those undesignated fund balances are fairly high this year. And I'll go into a little bit detail about why they sit at those higher numbers. To start with in the water funds, you may remember that when the pandemic started, we estimated for losses based on what the city was using for their loss projections. All losses in that budgeted year were based on the Great Recession, which is from 2007 to 2009. We used the same percentages of reduction in revenue from those years. So, and not only did we reduce revenue those years, but we also reduced expenditures. Then following those projections, we did not see the expected decreases in revenues and revenues were significantly higher than we had projected. So that's part of the reason why the undesignated fund balance in the water fund has increased. But in addition to that, we also had the water contamination project from the Tubbs Fire. And in the first year after the fire, we fully funded that project. And now we are seeing reimbursements come back to the funds from FEMA in the last year. Then on the wastewater funds, there are two factors. Some of it is the FEMA reimbursements. But the majority of that increase comes from the fact that we had funds building up in the sub-regional fund. When there is turn back or unexpected or unexpended fund balance in the sub-regional fund, on a typical year, we would just transfer that money back to the wastewater funds since that's where we pay for our portion of the regional system. However, we stopped doing that several years ago because we were building up cash for the UV disinfection project. Then when we went forward with the bond issuance, we had such great rates for the bond that we did not apply any cash to the UV project. And there was a full $12 million of reserves that was moved back to the wastewater fund. And you can see it definitely made a significant increase in that balance. In the sub-regional fund, I just wanna note that those undesignated fund balances are not just centers of waters. Those are all five partners and we keep track separately of how much each of the partners portion of that undesignated fund balances. So due to all these factors, we're in a good place where we can cover for the decreased revenue and the increased costs with no effect to our ratepayers or our long range financial outlook. Next slide, please. In addition, I wanted to go over and also another use for undesignated fund balance that has just recently been confirmed. And we have been working with the finance department on. The city council has had staff working towards solutions to address the city's unfunded pension liability. Staff has worked to find a solution and at the direction of city council, we'll be setting up a 115 trust to begin to build funds for the liability with the goal at reaching 100% of funding status. And beyond that, even reaching a pension stabilization fund. Santa Rosa Water having a significant number of staff will be participating in the process and we will have a separate account dedicated to our funds in order to keep the rate payer funding separate from the general fund. As you can see here, the ultimate goal is to achieve 100% funding, but the starting target is to fund at least the current highest year payment based on the payment scheduled for pensions, which for Santa Rosa Water is seven and a half million dollars. The amount for each fund is listed here separately and then the general fund will be working towards that same target with the intent to increase funding when possible. You'll see that we will be reaching our current target for water and wastewater funds right away, but due to the complexities of the regional fund with the five partners contributing, we'll be developing a strategy for that portion of the funding. The benefit of this approach is to move towards that 100% pension funding so that rate payers are not burdened by unfunded liability and using this strategy will allow for greater financial gains to achieve that status sooner. It also means that we have a clear goal towards resolving the issue which has not been in existence in the past. And then finally, there are some risks, first of which of course is market fluctuations, but the city will take a very conservative approach to lessen that risk. There is also the possibility of pension rate spikes again in the future, which means the liability could increase, but reforms that have been made and implemented in the pension systems makes this less likely. The fund can also be used as to stabilize if there are spikes that happen and avoid increases in the unfunded liability. So moving forward, we are also considering redirecting funding that we currently have being used for pension obligation or pension obligation bonds and those are gonna be expiring soon or they'll be paid off soon. And that would allow us to redirect funding that we're already using into this 115 trust and then wouldn't create increases in our annual budgets. So moving forward, we will be keeping informed about the process as this develops in the future. Next slide please. So next, you can go to the next slide. I'm gonna go over the regional contributions now. You saw their expenditures, but now I will go over the contributions. The operations and maintenance contribution of the budget for the partners is determined by actual flows in a previous year. And so this chart is just defining the basis for those allocations. As you can see, it remains fairly stable year over year as far as each partner's contribution. Obviously the flows go up and down, that depends on wet and dry years, but the percentage of flow has stayed fairly stable through the years. Next slide please. This chart is providing you with the total budget except for debt service. So this is what we allocate to the partners, that total number in the bottom right hand corner, $4.65 million. This has the total operations and maintenance costs. It has the CIP cash funding. It shows you what the additional need is to bring our operating reserve to 15% per policy. And then in the bottom right, it also shows you how we remove the miscellaneous revenues that go directly into the regional fund from the amount that is allocated out to the partners. Next slide please. This chart provides you the entire picture. So here you can see the operation and maintenance and CIP amounts and the debt service amounts and the total change for each of our partners. Each of the various components of the total expenditures are distributed in different ways as defined by the sub-regional agreement. O&M costs are distributed based on those actual flows that I discussed in the previous slide. And then we, so what we do is we determine our O&M expenditures or proposed budget expenditures. We remove the miscellaneous revenues. We add back that additional reserve that may be needed. And then we allocate those costs based on those percentages of flow. The CIP is allocated by percentages that are defined in the sub-regional agreement. And debt service is based on when projects or the debt for the projects as it is issued. This year some of the partners will apply some refund reserve to lower their increases. And while this is not a part of really the budget approval because you're recommending City Council to approve what our proposed budget is, the partners can all choose how to use the reserve fund or their refund reserve in order to use it as really a stabilization for their yearly increases. And I point this out because Santa Rosa is proposing to use $400,000 from that refund reserve. And that was reflected on the slide that was expenditures to revenues for the wastewater fund. Next slide, please. Next, we will go into the capital improvement program. We show you this slide just to give you an idea of the impressive amount of infrastructure that our staff maintains. Next slide. These are the total plan funding amounts in our model for the fiscal year 2022-23 for the VIP program listed by fund here. The charts that you'll see later will actually and the five-year CIP spreadsheets that you've received reflect the actual amounts. They fluctuate a little bit when, depending on the projects that are selected for the current year budget. Next slide, please. We just provide this so that you have the legend so that you can see how to read those documents that you receive. We will, I will point out that the recommendation that goes forward to city council and what they approve is only for year one. The out years are for planning purposes. Next slide, please. And then I'll show you a chart for each of the funds here that are just telling you what the expenditure categories are for those proposed CIP funds. This is the water funds. Next slide, please. This is the wastewater funds. And next slide. And finally, the regional funds. I will remind you that each year, this funding increases, it sits at $9 million this year, but with agreement with the partners, we increase the cash funding to the CIP regional fund each year by $1 million. And now as we move through the next slides, I will hand over speaking to Andrew Allen, supervising engineer for asset management to highlight some of the projects, but at the end of his portion of the presentation, I will be here to answer any questions you may have related to budget and to go over the budget schedule. And Andy, I will hand it over to you. Good afternoon. Thank you, Deputy Director Zanino. Chairman Galvin, members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to discuss our proposed CIP with you for the coming fiscal year. We do have five new projects that are in the CIP. There's a little asterisk there because the one that has the asterisk, we actually did a mid-year budget adjustment to initiate the project and started moving towards design. The first four are brand new and seen for the first time. We do have to start with Meyers Drive, sewer and water project, Crosstown trunk replacement, phase one. Sonoma Avenue, Montgomery Drive water project and Taralina Buena Vista, phase two sewer and water project and a very important project sewer trunk lining down near the treatment plant. It's now renamed Lano Trunk Lining. And then of course we do have continuing projects, sewer trunk projects, which include realignment and lining neighborhood replacement projects, reservoir pump station upgrades and undersized fuel tank with deformed walls. So things are moving forward on continuation basis. Next slide, please. This gives you a map of where the new projects are in red over in the lower left, 2403 is in blue because it's a technically a continuing project but you can see where that sits right near the Lano treatment plant. Our projects are distributed pretty much throughout the city. Those are blue and continuing and red new. Next slide, please. So I do want to highlight a couple of ones I've already spoke to briefly. There is a Taralina Buena Vista phase two sewer and water project. This is phase one is close at hand. And so we're looking forward to, I think that may be in front of you later today. And this project will be the next step in that regional effort to improve fire flow and increase water service and sewer collection. Definitely a fire flow deficient area which has put it up as an elevated project and very important to the area. Next slide, please. The big project that I spoke to also was the Lano trunk rehabilitation. It is phase one, there's more to come. This is a fairly large segment, 7300 feet of a 66 inch sewer trunk that extends down Lano all the way into the treatment plant. There's more to come. There was a recent technical memorandum that was provided by our consultant that based on visual observation of the trunk is in need of lining and as a very, very high priority. Next slide, please. We do want to highlight a couple of regional projects, mitigation bank development. It's a continuing project. And so that is in the near completion of design and hopefully we can get that project out to construction and built. And it will be important for us so that we would have control over mitigation credits. They will only be used for city projects but there are times when we need those with high priority projects or need them very quickly and we will have them in the bank, so to speak. So the purpose of that project. Next slide, please. And another big project to do with regional operation is the electrical infrastructure at Laguna Trima plant. You can see it has seven different locations throughout the plant that where we need electrical replacement and upgrading cross as very clear extends throughout the plant is very critical need at this point. So we're looking forward to that project continuing to move forward. Next slide, please. I'll turn it back over to deputy director Zunino. Okay, so back with the budget schedule. As you can see, there's lots of steps for us before we actually get to the city budget, the city council. We came to you with the Sonoma water rate increase. We also took back to city council on March 29th. We've met with the regional partners three times. We've met with the budget subcommittee two times. We are having our study session with you today and then we'll come back to you on the 21st to request a recommendation to city council. And then on the 26th, we will also be going to city council for preliminary approval of the regional budget. We need to get this done before May each year so that we can inform our partners of their allocations so that they can get their budgets completed as well. And then the study sessions this year for city council will be on the 10th and the 11th of May and budget adoption on June 21st. Next slide, please. And with that, I am here to answer any questions you may have and we have Andy here also to answer any questions on CIP projects. Thank you, Deputy Director Zanino. I'll open it up now for board member questions or comments. Board member Walsh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to comment that the preparation and preparation of this budget, I think is best in class. I've worked with some cities on utility budgets and rates and communications with the public. And this is one of the most straightforward presentations of complicated and complex information I've seen. And I want to thank staff for putting it together and I'm supportive of the requests and the budget. Thank you, Board Member Walsh. Other board member questions or comments? Kind of a similar follow-up. Deputy Director Zanino mentioned that there was a flight in there that showed revenues next to expenses and that had been added. I just want to say I really appreciate that addition because for a long, long time, it's always bothered me seeing only the expense side and not the revenue side. So having that balance really brings it into focus for me. So thank you and keep doing it. Agreed. Board Member Baudenfort, did you have a question or comment? Yeah, thank you, Chair Galvin. And Ditto on the compliments that was, as a non-finance expert, that was extremely helpful. You answered every question along the way. So I did type a couple out though. I'm just curious generally, I'm certainly not looking for any specific breakdown or numbers, but as we've transitioned through COVID, and I know that it sounded like two questions, one on the increases, but then also has there been a meaningful shift in how our staff is working, whether we have a lot more staff working remotely and have there been kind of noticeable impacts to our budget with those changes? So as far as staff working remotely, because we are an operational division, many of our staff can't work from home. So it's about a third of our staff that do have a hybrid schedule and can work from home a couple of days a week, not all of them who are able to do. I am one of those, I come into the office every day instead of working from home. And so really largely, most of our staff are actually working in the office or in the field, most of them being in the field. But I will say that the only real financial impact we've seen is we did have to purchase several laptops and cell phones for people who didn't have those so that they could work from home. In the end though, we are gonna actually see that be a positive, I think for the water department because we have made the decision that we will not replace desktop PCs anymore. So we'll provide laptops in the beginning, we'll have to get some docking stations so that'll be a little bit more expensive as we do the original replacement, but then we're not providing two computers for every employee. And so moving forward, that's actually a positive step for us, but that's really the only financial burden that we've seen. We of course have seen accounts that aren't paying their bill and we've been working on those arrearage accounts. So on the revenue side, we have obviously seen a bit. We have received some funding though, which is great. We've already applied almost $400,000 towards water arrearage charges and have just recently submitted application for another $600,000 towards wastewater arrearage charges. And then our working towards our application to be in another one of the low income programs so that customers can apply for that and have funding sent to us. So we're working on those as well moving forward. Oh, fantastic. Thank you. I know the team really had our customers in mind from the very, very get go and you guys have updated us and managed that beautifully throughout. So I appreciate it. I'm sure our customers appreciate it. And a final question in the beginning on if you could just help me understand a little bit more. You mentioned that there's a 5.5% salary increase reflected for two years. So one is that a total of an 11% salary increase of staff, all of our staff or is there as negotiations kind of conclude there will be some kind of change that gets backfilled before this goes to council? I'm not sure. It depends on the bargaining unit. Obviously, but the majority of our bargaining units got a 2.5% or a 3% and then they're getting a 2.5%. There won't be another increase in 2022, 23, it won't come until the following fiscal year and that's another 2.5% I believe for most of our bargaining units. So that's total increases for the whole three years of the current MOUs. And then that wellness payment which also reflected an increase in the salary line is $500 per employee per year. Great, thank you very much. That's it for me. Thanks Chair Galvin. Thank you. Other board member questions or comments? All right, well, I would echo what's been said. Great job Deputy Director Zanino and your staff putting the budget together and also to the budget subcommittee for all the work that they put in. So at this point we'll open up for public comment on item 3.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. All right, that will take care of item number 3.1. 4.1 is the approval of the March 17th minutes. We'll open it up for public comment on the minutes approval. If you wish to comment via Zoom please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? No, we do not. All right, that'll take care of 4.1. We'll move now to item 5.1, our first of two staff briefings. Deputy Director Burke, please. Thank you Chair Galvin and members of the board. Our first staff briefing is on the 2022 Earth Day event in Courthouse Square. And Tasha Wright our sustainability coordinator for Energy will be making the presentation. All right, I apologize. I'm still not totally proficient at doing this yet. Okay, so good afternoon Chairman Galvin and members of the board. My name is Tasha Wright and I'm the sustainability coordinator for Santa Rosa Waters Energy and Sustainability Team. I'm excited to be here today to formally invite you to all of Santa Rosa's two Santa Rosa's annual Earth Day event. Slide two please. This year, the event will be held on April 23rd from 11 to two at Courthouse Square. This event is free, family-friendly and it brings our community together through fun activities, live entertainment and inspiring exhibits that raise environmental awareness. Next slide please. This year, we are proud to host various city departments and community agencies such as City of Santa Rosa's Water, Police, Fire and Community Engagement. We'll also have community agencies there such as Sonoma County Transit Authority, Sonoma Water and the Luther Burbank Gardens. Zoom Zoom will provide live entertainment and I'm very excited to let you know that Transit will have a new EV bus on display as well. Next slide please. So in addition, these great offerings there will be eco-friendly activities for everyone, information on how to go green and our always popular kids area brought to you by Recreation. And this will feature many games and arts and crafts. You can pick up your Water Smart Toolkit as well that will help you save water during this critical drought. So we hope that you can join us for this fun filled day and walk, bike, roll to our Earth Day event in Courthouse Square. Again, that's Saturday, April 23rd from 11 to two and for more information, you can check out our website that's listed there at srcity.org or slash Earth Day. So we really are excited about this and being able to resume all of our fun activities after COVID so hopefully it'll be a beautiful day and we really look forward to this event. Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. I wish I could be there. I'll be on an airplane to Washington DC but I would certainly encourage the rest of the board to make an effort to go to the event. It's always a fun time. So hopefully you'll be able to make it. Any board member questions or comments regarding the presentation? All right, we will open it up for public comments on item 5.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone. Please dial star nine to raise your hand. Senator Etha. We have no public comments. Thank you. We'll move to item 5.2. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 5.2 is our Water and Recycle Water Supply Update and making the presentation will be Peter Markman, our Deputy Director of Water Resources and Emma Walton, our Deputy Director of Water Reuse Operations. Yeah, thanks for the introduction. Director Burke and good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Happy to be before you with another water supply update. If we could go to slide two, please. Just to start with the statistics for Lake Mendocino Storage. As you can see from the supply chart there, storage continues to tick up a bit. Current storage is at 44,000 or so acre feet and that represents about 54% of their target water supply extra curve for this time of year. Notably that's about 75, excuse me, 7,000 acre feet greater than last year in Lake Mendocino which represents about 6% of the total water supply availability in Lake Mendocino. The releases are at about 30 cubic feet per second and it represents a weekly change for about 400 acre feet give or take right now. So it's increasing just slightly right now. Next slide. In terms of Lake Sonoma Storage, storage is at 144,500 acre feet which represents about 59% of the water supply capacity. It is, of course, dropping quite a bit right now. And, excuse me, not quite a bit, it's just continually dropping, but it represents in terms of storage where we were last year, about 8,000 acre feet less than last year. So starting off the year a little lower than we were last year, but continue to see some declines kind of consistent with what we saw last year as well. Reservoir Outflow is at about 82 cubic feet per second. And I do wanna note that some wanted to tell us that there was some concerns about the numbers of the fish hatchery. So they've been doing some pulse flows at the beginning of this month as well. So trying to entice those fish upstream to get into that hatchery. Next slide. So in terms of what's changed, I wanna remind you that the existing order that some water filed last year expires 180 days from December 10th of last year. So July 7th, excuse me, June 7th. So I think the last time I was in before you are reported that some waters will be filing another petition later this month, perhaps early next month in order to keep the water classification as a critical water year classification. Under this order as of April 1st, water storage in Lake Minnesino is below 54,000 acre feet. And that means that we're remaining in a critical water year classification. What has changed on April 1st is that minimum street flows for Dry Creek to the confluence of the Russian River are reduced from 75 cubic feet per second to 25 cubic feet per second. But as I mentioned in my earlier slide, some waters told us that they are kind of ramping those flows per the request of the fishery agencies to continue to support the fish hatchery needs, getting the fish upstream. And then I just wanted to kind of note that for tailments, as you know, we're lifted in December in relation to the storms that occurred in October, November. The state board is looking at a new emergency rulemaking process that would go into effect perhaps in June or July and allow them to reinstate curtailments. They have started a water availability analysis and a draft of the emergency regulation has been released. So we'll stay tuned and kind of see what their approach is gonna be for curtailments up and down the upper and lower Russian River. However, they did kind of say that the goal is not to just ply a blanket curtailment like last year and focus more on kind of the priority system that is in place for water rate holders and kind of take into consideration any conservation being made on site for perhaps agricultural users and others. So yeah, there's some more to come but it looks like curtailments will be reinstituted but not perhaps as heavy-handed as last year. Next slide. I just wanted to give a nice preview of the spring and summer water conservation campaign that's being launched right now. You know, right now we're really working with the customers to remind them that the drought is still here and those restrictions remain in effect. So you'll see a lot of information going out very soon to remind customers that we remain in stage three of our drought water contingency shortage plan and there are restrictions in place for the city and we're asking folks to save as much water as they can and continue to keep up the good work. So you'll see the tagline is still the same but it's drought is still here just to kind of plant the seed in that reminder. Next slide. And then we're really focusing on continuing to drive folks towards making permanent changes and investments in long-term water use efficiency in their homes and businesses and these can be big or small but of course, we have plenty of resources for folks that are interested in making these changes and so you'll see kind of this slide here with a kind of a before and after of the opportunities folks have in a water use efficiency landscape or perhaps other areas too as well. So next slide. So yeah, just continuing to, you know you'll see a lot of indoor and outdoor materials with this too and this campaign been working quite closely with the SNMOMR and saving water partnership so that we can carry a consistent message up and down the entire Russian river and amongst all of our partners. Next slide. Just kind of wanna highlight some of the key messages for this month. We're really gonna get out there and tell folks it's time for an irrigation system checkup and make sure everything is in good shape before folks start turning on their irrigation systems. We're really working hard to direct folks towards low water use plant selections for trees and plants that they can put in their yards. We remind folks that there are plenty of rebates available and something that we've kind of responded to from prior droughts is that folks are concerned about taking care of trees. It's very important for a lot of reasons that trees remain healthy even during drought. So we're gonna focus on some workshops and messaging on how folks can continue to care for their trees during drought. And then, you know, continuing to try to get those numbers up for the WaterSmart portal. So we'll be really pushing that messaging around getting folks to register for that portal and track their water usage and learn and become aware of what their water usage is like in their home or business. Next slide. Just a reminder that Santa Rosa Water is here to help you save and drought is still here. This will conclude my portion of the presentation. I will hand it over to Deputy Director Walton. Thank you, Deputy Martin. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin, members of the board. I have a very brief recycle water supply update for you today. Next slide, please. Our recycle water production for the month of March averaged about 15 MGD. As you can see, it was below what we produced in March last year and well below what we would produce in an average March, which is about 24 MGD. So our plant has really started to move into operation for summer flows. Next slide, please. Despite our production being low right now, we did receive a little rain previously in the water year. So our recycle water storage is substantially better than it was last year, but as you can see, still below average. Next slide, please. Our 2022 irrigation season has already begun and we already have users using water for irrigation as we haven't received much rain. Just as a reminder, we established our initial allocations in January. We allocated about 900 million gallons of recycle water above what we allocated last year. As you remember, we allocated about 600 million last year. We were unable to increase allocations in April as we still haven't received rain since January, but if we are able to, as we move through the season, we will do so. We have an all user meeting scheduled for April 26 just to get questions answered from any of our users as well as present some big picture information. And just as a reminder, our allocations will be guaranteed until September 30th of this year. Next slide, please. As always, we continue to communicate consistently with our users in many different forms. And if you're interested in seeing most recent information, you can check out our website at the link there. Next slide, please. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Deputy Director Martin and Deputy Director Walton. I'll put it up now for any board member questions or comments. Seeing none, we'll open it up now for public comments on item 5.2. You wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. All right, that will conclude the staff briefings. We'll now move to the consent calendar. We have three items on the consent calendar. We'll move approval of the consent calendar. Second. We have a motion by Vice Chair Arnone, seconded by Board Member Watts. Any comments from the board before I open it up for public comment? Okay, we'll open up now for public comment on items 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3. You wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you wish to make comment via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? We do not. All right, may we have a roll call vote please? Yes, Chair Galvin. Aye. Vice Chair Arnone. Aye. Board Member Badenford. Aye. Board Member Walsh. Aye. And Board Member Watts. Aye. That passes with my rights. Thank you, that takes care of the consent calendar. We'll now move to item 7.1, which is a report item, Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 7.1 is approval of water service agreement between City of Santa Rosa and El Cristal Mobile Home Park. And making the presentation is Andrew Allen, supervising engineer with our asset management team. Chairman Galvin, members of the board, thank you for being here today and letting me present for the water service agreement. Between the City of Santa Rosa and El Cristal Mobile Home Park. Next slide please. What we'll do, just giving you an overview, I'll give you a little background on why we're here, what it's about, the location of El Cristal Mobile Home Park and a little more details on the Mobile Home Park itself, the request for assistance that we receive from the state. I will give you a brief BPU and city council review, is item has been, you've seen an item here at BPU before on El Cristal. Go through our analysis and let you know that what's the response was from our BPU contract review subcommittee and the presentation with recommendation. Next slide please. I won't read this word for word, of course, but the state at times comes to us as the city to consolidate small water systems that are having water challenges and there's Senate bills put forward here and grants are available and this connection of El Cristal to the city water is being funded by grants. Next slide please. El Cristal is part of a nine water system consolidation to the city of Santa Rosa. All nine are on there and I've highlighted El Cristal location. Seven of these are Mobile Home Parks to our multifamily residential properties, duplexes, triplexes, et cetera. Most of these are on and around Santa Rosa Avenue. Next slide please. So all these projects, the state has come to us and wants to consolidate their water systems with us, which we don't get their water, they get our water and then their water system goes away. And one of these projects is El Cristal Mobile Home Park. El Cristal along with arsenic in the wells, less all these projects seem to have. Also recently started spiking El E. Coli contamination in the well and they've tried to clean the well and that didn't work and those residents have been relying on bottled water. Right now there are 57 coaches within El Cristal Mobile Home Park and 130 residents. So in order to connect them to city water, there has to, because they're outside the city limits, they need a utility certificate and the park has applied for that and was granted the utility certificate by city planning. Next slide please. So the state division of drinking water approached us for additional assistance on this particular park and in order to facilitate this, we Water Department has agreed to allow a temporary emergency connection and this connection will be made by El Cristal. They will, they are funding it in the short term and will be reimbursed by the state emergency funds and this water service agreement is required by the state for El Cristal to be reimbursed. So that's really the primary reason and the need for the water service agreement. If they just came to us and wanted to hook up, we would allow them and we would hook them up assuming they followed all their proper procedures. Next slide please. So yes, you have seen this before back in September of 2020. Part of this process to be able to connect them and minimize the cost in this phase of construction was to defer our demand fees for this particular, for the mobile home park. They still pay their processing fee and meter fees, but the demand fees, if with the addition of the demand fees, the cost to do this emergency connection would be real, real high and above the limit that the state had available in their emergency funds. So that's the reason we deferred the, we had the fee deferral agreement that you reviewed and recommended approval for and then it moved up to city council and city council reviewed and approved that agreement. That was one of the first steps in order to make this emergency connection happen. Next slide please. So they will, the state consolidation project, the nine water system consolidation project will continue and will be moved forward in the next few years. But of course, due to the emergency need for the water here at El Cristal, they've actually started construction and they pothold at the connection and they're ready to move forward at their own expenses. And again, this water service agreement is required by the state for El Cristal to be reimbursed for those fees and construction costs. Next slide please. Continuing the analysis, the terms of the agreement are really pretty simple. The city and El Cristal will work together to complete this temporary connection in this calendar year. Hopefully, June-ish, but it has started off a little slow. And then El Cristal is responsible for paying all the cost to connect to city water, including construction costs, meter and processing fees and encouragement permit fees. And they needed encouragement permit from the city of Santa Rosa because they're connecting to our water system and the county of Sonoma because they are within the county of Sonoma right away and both of those encroachment permits are in place. The city will provide water to El Cristal and El Cristal public water system will cease to exist and El Cristal will pay, start paying their monthly water bills. So we have new customer on board and at this point there's no cost of the city for this, with this agreement. Next slide please. We did meet last week with the BPU contract review subcommittee, made the presentation there and it was reviewed by them and they unanimously recommended that the BPU approve the water service agreement. Next slide please. And we come to our recommendation recommended by the water department and the BPU contract review subcommittee that the Board of Public Utilities by resolution authorize the director of the water department to enter into the water service agreement with El Cristal Mobile Home Park. I'm available. Next slide. And we're here for any discussion and questions. Thank you, Mr. Allen. As was mentioned, it did come before the contract review subcommittee last week and we did unanimously approve this. It's an emergency situation and we're fully supportive of what staff is recommending. I'll open it now for any public, excuse me, for any Board member questions or comments. All right. We'll open it up for public comment on item 7.1. I wish to make a comment via Zoom. Please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. We have no public comments. And I should have asked for a motion first, my mistake. So if we could have a motion to adopt the resolution that was presented. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a motion. I move that the Board of Public Utilities authorize the director of the department to enter into a water service agreement with L. Crystal mobile home park, LLC. Second. Okay. We have a motion by Board Member Walsh and seconded by Vice Chair Arnone. Secretary Aether, do we have anyone wishing to make a public comment? We do not. All right. May we have a roll call vote please? Chair Galvan. Hi. Vice Chair Arnone. Hi. Board Member Baden Ford. Hi. Board Member Walsh. Hi. And Board Member Watts. Hi. That passes with five eyes. Thank you. Thanks again, Mr. Allen. We'll now move to item 7.2, which is another report item. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvan and members of the board. Item 7.2 is our final report and findings for the Spanish language, water use efficiency program, enhancements project. And introducing this item and starting the presentation will be Claire Nordley, our sustainability coordinator, water use efficiency, as well as Amy Weinfurter. And I apologize if I messed up your name. Who's the director of strategic projects for the Water Now Alliance. Good afternoon, Chair Galvan and members of the board. I'm Claire Nordley. The water use efficiency coordinator here at Santa Rosa water. And as director Burke said, I am here with Amy Weinfurter, who is the director of strategic projects from Water Now Alliance. So Amy and I are here today to discuss the final report from Water Now on our Spanish language, water use efficiency program enhancement. So before I describe more about this project, I just want to touch quickly on the language that is used in this report and presentation. Next slide, please. So this report uses the term Latinx. And when discussing Latin American or Hispanic identifying community members to be inclusive of all genders with the understanding that this label may not best fit all community members in this group. An exception to this use of this term is when describing census data, which are the terms Latin American or Hispanic by race or by origin. And when we're discussing Latin, when we're discussing census data, we use the original census terms. So next slide, please. Great. I'm going to turn this over to Amy to talk a little bit about Water Now. Thank you, Claire. And as Claire mentioned, Water Now is a nonprofit network of local water leaders supporting sustainable affordable and climate resilient solutions in their communities. Membership is free and we have over 700 members nationwide, including utility staff and leadership, as well as publicly elected officials. And our organization has three key areas of work. We advance policy to create pathways for sustainable and affordable strategies. We provide a forum for engagement to connect water leaders with resources and with one another. And we demonstrate sustainable solutions by supporting on the ground project work that communities can replicate and scale. And this demonstration work includes our project accelerator initiative where we partner with cities, water agencies and other organizations to jumpstart sustainable water projects. And I will turn it back over to Claire to talk a little bit more about what this project accelerator initiative looked like in Santa Rosa. Thank you, Amy. Next slide, please. So this presentation describes over a year's worth of cumulative work conducted by Santa Rosa water and water now. In January 2021, Santa Rosa water and water now signed an MOU to accept the project accelerator award, which provides technical assistance to the awardees of 250 hours. So this is a nationally available award and it's provided to only a limited number of water utilities annually. Next slide, please. So Santa Rosa water applied for this project accelerator award to research water use efficiency work. So this is a project that provides technical assistance to communities across Latinx and Spanish speaking communities here in Santa Rosa. The work also identified best practices to enhance our relationships with our Spanish language community through our water use efficiency work. So now I'm going to turn it back over to Amy to describe some of the work that she's conducted over the last year. Thanks, Claire. I'm going to talk about the five key phases of work shown here on this slide. And these included beginning with baseline research to understand Santa Rosa water's water use efficiency programming and existing outreach and communication strategies, conducting an analysis of customer participation data, identifying best practices through interviews with utilities as well as local community organizations, conducting a survey in both English and Spanish of Santa Rosa residents to hear directly from the customers. And finally, synthesizing project recommendations and findings based on these earlier phases of work. And we'll walk through each of these phases in a little bit more detail through the rest of this presentation. Next slide, please. So to kick off the project, water now focused on better understanding Santa Rosa's water use efficiency programs shown in a snapshot in this slide. This slide shows a quick map of Santa Rosa's outreach and communication practices, which as you can see ranges from print and digital outreach to in-person outreach to educational outreach and customer service interactions. And all of the options shown in this slide show a map of Santa Rosa's outreach and communication practices, which as you can see ranges from print and digital outreach to in-person outreach to in-person outreach to Santa Rosa's outreach and customer service interactions. And all of the options shown in green represent activities that include Spanish language options or components. So as you can see, this includes a very wide percentage of materials and all of the materials in the print and digital outreach and in-person outreach components of Santa Rosa's strategy. Next slide, please. So we're going to talk a little bit about some of the interactive ways to engage Spanish speaking and Latinx community members. Some commonly reported successes included the role of word of mouth in making people aware of programs. Similarly, ads and interviews on Spanish radio stations where flagged is being highly effective. Santa Rosa's participation in events based on the role of face-to-face engagement was cited as a really important key strategy for outreach. Similarly, partnerships with local community leaders and organizations helps to get the word out. And some commonly cited challenges on the other side of the coin include the challenge of making sure people are aware of these programs. And specifically aware of their eligibility to participate in them. The loss of that really valuable face-to-face interaction as a result of the COVID pandemic. Ensuring that the translation logistics are navigated. And ensuring that there's enough bandwidth to meet translation demand. And two points that are certainly not limited to Latinx and Spanish speaking community members. But that were highlighted through these conversations include the fact that the upfront costs of rebate programs can sometimes discourage participants who might feel that they don't have this in their budgets. And that for some renters there might be a few more barriers or a little bit less enthusiasm about participating if they don't own the property. Next slide, please. So to better understand how these factors might be playing out, we compared participation in five of the largest and longest running water use efficiency programs shown here. To different demographic characteristics which we pulled from U.S. census data. Next slide, please. And this map shows where participation in these five water use efficiency programs were most concentrated over the period from 2013 to 2021. The darker red areas on this map indicate a higher density or concentration of participants. While the lighter colors indicate a lower concentration of participants. And you might be able to see the dots which represent individual participants and are informing this data in the background. Just to help orient the map there are two white lines. The horizontal line going across the map is highway California 12 and the vertical line is highway U.S. 101. The dark gray outline is Santa Rosa service area and the light blue outlines indicate U.S. census blocks which are essentially the way the U.S. census defines neighborhoods. And as you can see there's participation all across Santa Rosa but there are some places where it's particularly strong. We can see a band sort of going across the middle of the city as well as some dark red clusters on both the east and west sides. And I think the main takeaway from this map is that again while there's participation everywhere there are some areas where there's not necessarily the same concentration or density of high participation we see in other parts of the city. And if we can move to the next slide please. And we can we can see this conclusion in this slide as well. This figure is comparing the number of participants in a water use efficiency program within a neighborhood. And the green data is looking at this across the city as a whole while the blue data is looking at this for neighborhoods where at least 50% of the people living there identify as being of Hispanic or Latino origin according to their responses to the census. And so you can see the range of participants again is quite right goes from zero to 157 for the city as a whole with the most common number of participants being 31. And when we compare that to Latinx neighborhoods we can see visually that its participation is a bit lower. The most common number of participants is 17. And the range goes from zero to 60. Next slide please. Of course this is not the only thing that affects participation. We also looked at a number of other demographic characteristics to understand how they may also be informing participation in these programs. And what we found was that participation is typically although not always lower in neighborhoods where there's higher percentages of the characteristics shown on this slide. So participation is lower where higher percentages of the population in a neighborhood lacks internet access does not have a bachelor's degree where higher percentages of the population are in rent or occupied housing qualify as being in poverty status. Speak Spanish or in particular speak Spanish or in particular speak Spanish. We also have limited fluency in English. And again identify as Hispanic or Latino by race or by origin according to their census responses. Next slide please. And we feel that this data can be used as another resource or information point to help inform outreach and communication strategies to understand the importance of participation and awareness of these programs. So for example in this map we have selected in green neighborhoods where we think awareness of these programs might be low. And all of these green neighborhoods share three characteristics. They have some of the largest percentages of people without internet access across the city. They also have high percentages of Spanish and Native American citizens. And they also have a number of participation in water use efficiency programs from that 2013 to 2021 time period. And you can see visually looking at this again those dots are individual participants and there's far fewer of them and most of these green neighborhoods. And so this is just one example out of many possibilities for how this data could be used. So you might for instance look at this and infer that in these particular locations based to face engagement might be most effective and translation support might be especially crucial for any interactions that are located there. Next slide please. And we did some calculations to estimate the impact that might be achieved if participation in these Latinx neighborhoods increased to be closer to the levels of participation that are seen at the city-wide average. And we found that this would have resulted in over 90 additional participants in these programs each year and an additional almost 11 acre feet of water savings each year. And this could have resulted in over 19 to 2021 time period included in this analysis. So some fairly substantial increases in both participation and water savings that could be resulting from increasing saturation in these heavily Latinx and Spanish speaking communities. And with that I will pass it back over to Claire to talk a little bit more about the following phases of work and recommendations that we have. Thank you Amy. Next slide please. So after the extensive analysis that water now completed we then went to the community to try to understand how others are reaching out to the Latinx and Spanish speaking communities in their areas. So water now did some desk research and found nine national programs that have shown strong community outreach to the Latinx and Spanish speaking communities in their areas. So we are now moving here at Santa Rosa water which turned out to be city of Sacramento and Los Angeles department of water and power. Next slide please. So we spoke with the water conservation manager of the city of Sacramento who partnered with a marketing firm to launch an outreach campaign in both English and Spanish. Sacramento really recommended that we invest in a long-term campaign. So for example they actually budget their marketing campaign into outreach for Spanish audiences and for English audiences. They stress that a long-term budget is important to be able to maintain a presence in the community. Santa Rosa water does have a dedicated outreach budget and although we don't section the budget into language spoken we do provide all of our outreach materials in both English and in Spanish. So we really emphasize to make sure that we're tracking the progress of our campaigns including impressions and clicks in both English and in Spanish. So for example the breakup with your lawn campaign is featured here received over 2.7 million impressions to the English version of the campaign but only 400,000 impressions in Spanish. So tracking progress and making sure that you're refining your message as you go is really important. Sacramento also used focus groups to refine their message. Next slide please. So we also spoke with the water conservation manager at LADWP and some of the key takeaways from that conversation include the recommendation to diversify outreach techniques. So the Latinx community is not monolithic just like the English speaking community and what may influence one community member is not going to influence another so broad outreach through multiple channels contracted with a grassroots theater company to host weekly plays about sustainability which are inspired by telenovelas with the exaggerated acting, family friendly humor and all in Spanish. So this is also a really good example of developing meaningful partnerships in the community and developing culturally relevant advertising which were other themes that LADWP provided in their feedback to us. So LADWP also partnered with other community based workshops, for example they worked with landscape professionals to provide training about landscape care so again with cultural awareness they offered the trainings at night or on the weekends to make sure that they're not interfering with people's work during the day. So here in Sonoma County we do offer our qualified water efficient landscaper training that's offered both in English and in Spanish and we also offer it at night and on the weekends. Next slide please. So after this research on national programs WaterNow conducted extensive outreach to identify the major organizations here in Sonoma County that provide services specifically to the Latinx community. So we ended up conducting interviews with LoCN Sonoma County and Community Action Partnership. Next slide please. So from the conversations with these two groups we learned that maybe this is obvious but we have to engage in Spanish so for example we have to provide Spanish language outreach materials. We need to indicate on the outside of an envelope that material inside is in Spanish. We need to have a website option for Spanish and we need to have bilingual staff at outreach events. So another common piece of advice for Santa Rosa water is also that the messenger really matters. So we need to partner with trusted messengers including faith-based organizations as well as other trusted organizations like Salvation Army and schools, libraries, etc. We also have to make sure that our outreach materials and our staff include people of color to be able to match the diversity of the community that we serve. We also need to make sure that we're limiting asking for too much personal information such as demographic information or we need to work through a trusted non-governmental organization to make sure that we're reducing any concerns about immigration status. So these interviews also emphasize the need to focus messaging that's clear and straightforward. We need to emphasize program eligibility requirements and cost savings. And then lastly, the conversations really emphasize that we need to meet people where they are. So for example we need to go to places where community gathers grocery stores, schools, libraries, etc. I was also suggested to utilize student or youth groups as an avenue to share information with families. So one example of this is actually at the start of the last school year Santa Rosa partnered with Community Building Initiative Roseland. We provided drought information and supplies at a backpack giveaway event that was hosted in Roseland. And then lastly, in-person events, we need to continue with those. They build connection, they build trust, they help with word of mouth messaging and we are luckily getting packed to more in-person events and in fact we attended a K&E and drought bucket giveaway at the Roseland Community Library recently which was really well attended. Next slide please. So after we collected feedback from our community and national partners, we wanted to actually hear from our Santa Rosa community. So we issued a survey. Survey was English and Spanish. We advertised using some of the best practices that I've just described in this presentation and participation was really robust. So we got over 780 responses to the survey and 134 of those responses were to the Spanish only version of the survey. Next slide please. So what we learned from this survey is that there is actually really good general awareness of water use efficiency programs. In fact, 90% of respondents indicated that they were aware at least of one program. The Cash for Grass program, the Water Smart Home Kit and the Water Smart Home Checkup programs were the most well known programs across both surveys actually in both in English and in Spanish. And then actually 60% of respondents actually indicated that they had already participated in one of our programs. We also learned about the outreach preference of those people taking the Spanish language survey. So the Santa Rosa Water website is a crucial and common source of information. Additionally, participants preferred to receive information through calls or visits to our office, newspaper articles, social media and direct mail, but not necessarily mail that was through their water bill. So some communication mediums like email updates and monthly newsletters and especially water bill inserts are important for all participants, but seem to be less common paths for learning about water use efficiency programs for Spanish-speaking residents. Next slide please. So through this survey we also asked about Spanish-speaking community members potential sources of motivations as well as barriers to participating in our water use efficiency programs. So some of the motivations include the need to already replace an appliance, reduce water usage at their house, save money and protect the local environment. Some of the barriers to participation and this is actually indicated in both English and in the Spanish version of the survey was lack of knowledge and expertise. So customers are indicating they don't know how to start, they don't know who to hire, where to go first. Another barrier to Latinx community participation in our water use efficiency programs is the upfront expense of the project and the need for physical labor to implement the project. Many were also sure that they didn't meet the program qualifications or didn't know what the program qualifications were and then some also indicated that they prefer their current appliance or their existing landscape over a low water use landscape for example. Next slide please. So the next few slides have some quotes from both the English version and the Spanish version of the survey and I think provide us some really key insights into customers' obstacles for participating in water use efficiency programs. So this person said you know I'd like to participate in the larger home efficiency programs, gray water, et cetera, but I don't know how to start or who to hire and this lack of knowledge and expertise came up a few times in the survey in both the English version and the Spanish version of the survey and so you know combat this last year we put into place a contract with a local community organization and they're contracted to help us host four to six workshops annually both in English and in Spanish virtually and in person and so we're doing those continuously. We also record all of those workshops if they're offered virtually and we post them on our website so that anyone can review them at a later point. We also revised our water use efficiency web pages to make them easier to navigate and more intuitive for residential customers. We also added more information from the common questions that we get, for example about who to hire or what stores to get supplies from and we do host links on our website that point people to lists of landscape professionals but based on some of the feedback that we received not everybody knows about this information so we need to do a better job at highlighting the resources that we have. Next slide please. So another piece of feedback we receive is about a language barrier this person said and this is translated from Spanish sometimes they don't speak Spanish and that means you don't understand exactly how the programs work so although the water use efficiency team doesn't have a person on staff who speaks Spanish we do employ the language line for a verbal translation needs so that's on the phone or in person during water audits we also the department has a contract for written translation needs and we've used utilize that to translate all of our water use efficiency program information and eligibility requirements so and then we also have of course within our department we have Spanish by cultural or bilingual people who have supported the water use efficiency team on in person events. Alright next slide please. So this last piece of feedback really reflects the obstacle of financing a water use efficiency upgrade this person said that they just installed 1100 gallons of rainwater harvesting barrels it cost them $1500 in materials and they receive a rebate of $250 so of course although we offer rebates they don't cover the full cost of the project and we continue to seek grant opportunities to increase our rebates and expand our program offerings. Next slide please. So during this year long study the team our team water use efficiency team has learned a lot about best practices for increasing program participation and we've discovered some successes that we've had and some challenges so for example we've already been implementing many of the best practices even prior to this study so we already provide outreach through diverse channels like bill inserts our website social media city connections radio you know we're working with partners we're going to events but we've also learned about new avenues for advertising so for example we have video ads that are currently running inside Lola's market and El Mocahetes restaurants in Spanish so we're meeting people where they are. We're also advertising our Spanish language workshops through posters at locations where community members gather including Bayer farms in Roseland and our libraries another success for us I would say is that we do have a dedicated outreach budget and we have staff who are responsible for implementing water department outreach. We also continue to seek cultural diversity and develop partnerships in our community which are of course essential to building trust in any community so for example we worked with land paths to advertise a survey that we discussed earlier in this presentation and they actually created a poster which they hung in several Santa Rosa locations to a huge boost in survey participants we're also recently invited to be guests on a Spanish language radio program where we had the opportunity to talk about water use efficiency we're also of course increasing our in-person outreach now that pandemic restrictions are lifting and we have a full roster of workshops and events that we're going to be attending this year so you know of course building and maintaining a network is a long-term commitment and a long-term investment of time and resources but of course we're committed to providing services to our entire community and then one of the other things I wanted to mention is as I said before we receive comments from the survey about where to start or who to hire so we need to continue to focus on providing simple education about water use efficiency and highlight the existing resources that we have so next slide please so with that the recommendation is that it's recommended by Santa Rosa Water that the Board of Public Utilities by motion accept the Water Now Alliance Spanish Language Water Use Efficiency Enhancement Project Final Report and further support the key findings and recommendations contained in this report and next slide please thank you very good thank you Amy and Claire for your presentation open it up now for board member questions or comments board member Watts thank you I know this is a huge project and a big undertaking but I just want to let you know the appreciation that I feel that our department has put resources to this this is extremely important not just for water repairs but for the entire city of Santa Rosa and I think it falls along with the mission of real community engagement that our city is trying to really support at this time so just want to thank you for that and just kind of note I know that hiring Spanish speaking staff is not is a difficult aspect while you're looking for staff that also qualify for highly technical jobs that the water department offers but I do hope that we can increase our Spanish bilingual staff so that it doesn't fall on the few to obviously be the ones to go to every single one of these events or answer the questions I know that's a challenge for for all employers but I think that you know the findings in this report will hopefully move us in the right direction and thank you for taking the time to really truly work on all of the recommendations thank you board member Watts board member Walsh Chair Galvin Claire I appreciate what you've done the report significant and it's helpful and I just there are some barriers to using the water efficiency programs that we may overcome that may be helpful there's a lot of compliance that goes into for example installing a research water pump somebody will come out to the property once and then the pump gets installed out to the property again to make sure it's installed then there's an agreement between the person that gets the rebate agreeing that the pump will be in use continually and then if it's not in use they have to give back the rebate what if we weighed the sort of the government intrusion over it or cost versus the compliance the compliance that we get from that if a plumber certifies that yes they made the water efficiency by me coming out and putting in the water pump and then just the plumber doesn't charge for the water pump just the hours for the water and then agrees plumber goes out and builds the city that way we don't have somebody that culturally may not have as much faith in the government because they've been underrepresented working with the government say three times on the property signing a form that says they're going to comply or give money back getting a small amount of money instead just deal directly with the person that will do the work just a suggestion I thank you very much Thank you Board Member Walsh I think that's a great idea I think I understood all of that there's a little bit of a connection issue but I think I understood your idea of the sort of a direct install for recirculating hot water pump and I appreciate that thank you and if I could just add I think we can definitely do some more research and look into that one thing I will know just because I've been in this industry a very long time is that we did see a lot of people try to that were dishonest when we had toilet programs and where developers would literally take a toilet from one house to another house to another house and so I think we also do want to just make sure we are being stewards of our rate payer dollars so I think it's a great suggestion and we'll look into how we best can balance that to be as less intrusive as we can but also just ensuring that we are getting the rebates and the incentives installed as they are appropriately should be installed That's great I appreciate that because I've been a renter for quite a while and lived in very economics and it would just be likely for me to say water efficiency but I appreciate the migrating toilet issue maybe there to take a picture with the GPS camera and the metadata or something like that we can overcome it I just wanted to weigh the cost to the person of the government coming the government three times versus the water efficiency I do have to add to one of the benefits of not being able to go out to customers home in person during COVID forced us to really reevaluate some of our pre-inspection and post-inspection requirements and so we do currently offer virtual pre and post inspections depending on the rebate if we feel like we can communicate easily with the customer the complicated requirements of some of our programs virtually we do allow people to set those up and that's been a really I would say big success for us because customers are able to better accommodate that schedule based on their work schedule or something like that and we can do more appointments in a day because we're able to we don't have that travel time in between appointments so that's been one success for us great other board member questions or comments thank you for your presentation we'll now open it up oh wait a minute we need a motion I'll make a motion that the Board of Public Utilities accepts the Water Now Alliance language water use efficiency enhanced the project final report and further support the key findings and recommendations contained in the report I will second that motion I have a motion by Vice Chair Arnone seconded by Board Member Walsh we'll now open it up for public comments on item 7.2 who wish to make a comment via zoom and if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand Secretary Aether we have no public comments alright may we have a roll call vote please yes Chair Galvin aye Vice Chair Arnone aye Board Member Badenford aye Board Member Walsh aye and Board Member Watts aye we're good passes unanimously thank you we'll now move to item 8 on our agenda we'll take public comments on non-agenda items if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 Secretary Aether there are no public comments very good we have item 9 we have no referrals we have no written communications I believe we have two subcommittee reports Board Member Watts on the water conservation subcommittee yes thank you so the water subcommittee we met on March 30th and staff presented for four water use efficiency award nominees and they were unanimously approved by the subcommittee and they will be presented their award fat city council meeting on May 10th in concert with water awareness month and the council proclamation for that staff also provided a detailed presentation regarding in summer water use efficiency outreach activities including several events and the return of the water smart expo at the Wednesday night market in June this year a lot to look forward to and a lot of events for that department coming up and that was it very good thank you and I'll report that the contract review subcommittee met on March 29th as you've already heard and we unanimously recommended by the subcommittee today's agenda regarding the water service agreement with the El Cristal mobile home park that agreement provides for El Cristal to have a connection with the city's water system and is needed for El Cristal to be reimbursed from the state for construction costs for the connection to the water system and that takes care of the contract review subcommittee report any board member questions or comments regarding those two reports all right we'll open it up for public comment item number 11 if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you dial in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand secretary Aether there are no public comments I'll take care of item number 11 do we have any board member reports seeing none we'll move to item 13 which is the director's report thank you chair Galvin and members of the board I have a couple updates for the board and then I'll recognize a couple staff long-term employees who will be retiring so first I wanted to let the board know that on March 29 the city council considered Sonoma waters fiscal year 2223 budget and rate increase and provided direction to our WACC member which is council member Rogers to vote in support of the proposed budget and rate increase and on Monday April 4 the board voted unanimously to recommend support of the proposed budget and rate so that will be going in front of the Sonoma County board of directors later this month and then second I wanted to thank the board for all of your work and especially chair Galvin for attending the March 29 council meeting I think many probably have already seen because it was in the paper but I did want to let the board know that we voted unanimously to support the demand offset policy and we really could not have been successful without the leadership of the board so thank you so much for your work on that and then I wanted to recognize two long-term employees that will be retiring very happy for them sad for the department because we're using two key staff first Steve Thompson who's a quality control associate in our asset management team Steve Thompson was hired as an engineering technician in the public works engineering survey section in 1990 and he worked there for several years and eventually took on the role of a survey party chief for several capital projects including the Marlowe Road widening Gernville Road widening and part of the Route 12 interchange at Stony Point Road he led him to develop a significant array of surveying applications to include AutoCAD add-in programs successful technology efforts made Steve a resource for public works engineering where he was asked to help develop the engineering documents database and not long after that Steve moved to a capital projects engineering team and the teams decided they needed a database to track and report their work and Steve was tapped to develop a database and related applications which we still use today Steve was moved into the waters asset management team in 2008 where he continued to manage and oversee the document database and CIP database Steve's been an integral part of our asset management team and he will be missed and second we have John Stinson our administrative analyst after a decision to make a career change in 2002 John thought a stint as a temp at the city would be a good transitional job and 20 years later he is still here which we are very happy about in March 2002 John started as a temporary customer service representative for the utility billing collections team and he became permanent in 2003 in 2006 he was promoted to a senior customer service representative in the revenue division and was again promoted in 2010 to an administrative technician where he moved to the recreation and parks department in 2013 John was promoted to an admin analyst in the economic development and housing department and in 2016 he transferred to Santa Rosa water as part of Santa Rosa water John a large part of his work has been planning for the future and he has been working on the maintenance and preparation of the CIP fiscal year budgets and he was instrumental in redesigning the process to make it more efficient and clearer for both staff and those that approve the budgets and all of his positions here at the city John has been known for doing an excellent job no matter the task and has been a true asset that will be sorely missed and that is my report and I'm happy to answer any questions the board may have thank you director Burke any questions for the director from the board alright oh yes Mr. Knutt thank you very much Charles Gavin I just want to second Jennifer's congratulations on both Steve and John they've been fantastic employees with the water department substantially on both of their health the work that they've done it really has been a pleasure having them in the organization and I just want to also express my appreciation for their time here and wish them well in return thank you alright we'll now take public comments on item 13 if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you dial in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand secretary Aether there are no public comments alright then with this time we've completed our agenda we'll adjourn the meeting in honor of Steve Thompson and John Stinson and wish them good luck in their retirement thank you all have a great afternoon see you in a couple weeks