 I'll say things like, let's go to the top of page two, it'll be long, first time for everything, not very long, 6-0-2, so two, I have to go, I'm getting along. All right, let's call our meeting to order. Roll call shows all directors are present, no public hearing. We have a consent agenda. Anything to be pulled by directors? Yeah, I had the 3.1.4, the meeting minutes, and then what's on tap? What's on tap? 3.2. Anything else to be pulled? I think I had a change to, what was it, 3.1.2? One typo in that one. There's one typo. I decided not to pull it. Yeah, I think you actually made the change. I made those changes to design one. Yeah, exactly. Fine, that's done. I was like, should I pull it for that? For 1S? Yeah. I haven't checked it. Okay, so we will pull those two. Anyone in the public wish to pull anything? Seeing no one. Anyone want to make a movement? Yeah, sorry. I'll make the motion that we approve all of the remaining consent items. With the change already made to 3.1.2. Right. I'll second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, so that's unanimous. So 3.1.4. Yeah, I had on page 58 of the packet. It's page 4 of the August 21st meeting minutes. Under reports, 5.3, the quarterly organization-wide abbreviated status report under engineering. The third paragraph under Taj's section, it just didn't say what that was about. And I didn't know if anybody reading the minutes would know what we were talking about there. Answered question about isolating the zone for accepting water and noting that all three wells in the service area should be back online by November. I'm sure it's probably talking about O'Neill well, but it might say that in the minutes. That was all. It just wasn't clear what they were talking about there. Okay. And then I think I had a change to that one, too. Yes. On page 56, it says motion passed unanimously. It wasn't unanimous. And the next one, yeah. Right. Should be additional. Right. Anything else? I'll move approval of the minutes now. Second. On favor? Aye. Aye. I think that's unanimous. All right. Oral communication. So this is the time for anyone to address this. What's on tap? Oh, sorry. What's on tap? You're right. Correct. Okay. What's on tap? Yeah. Sorry. That was me on its page 65 of the agenda. I think it's the third page of the newsletter. Just. It's a long. I didn't know if that was too long about the finance of water, but that whether people want to read the whole thing or not, I'll leave that up to them. But I just wondered if in that first paragraph when it mentions the same thing that's highlighted on the lower right in kind of orange, it says independent financial consultants who specialize in rate setting or higher to develop our rates because of the financial and legal complexities involved in these calculations. I just think somewhere in that first paragraph and also here that is the reason they we hire somebody is not just because of the complexities, but because it needs to be fair and equitable for all. You know, there's there's a fairness issue there. And and that also that we're not a profit, not for profit agency. So just to make clear while we're talking about rates that that people know that we're, you know, a government agency. There's no profit involved and that and that we do these studies make sure that they're they're fair and represent the cost of I mean, it says in the next paragraph about having to be related to cost of the production of water. But just not in that first one we ought to mention those. That's all. I had something on that. I can't bring up at the moment. It was. I was talking about the fact that it mentioned that. We're looking to see that everyone couldn't use water at the same time. And of course we don't design our system ever to make it be that everyone can turn on their taps and it ever works. What we aim for is instead the most extreme day we've seen. So we need to handle that not handling everyone turning on their taps at the same time because that would be way over what we actually need to do or do. The definition of peak flows. Yes. I didn't mention peak flows or something like that. Also behavior and also on the page 54 64 it mentions the this coming winter as part of our next phase of the five year pilot project. And that makes it sound like we have still have five years to go and instead we actually have two winters to go because we've already used up three. So that seems a little misleading. Modified. Yeah. So we have a renewed out. So that's it. This is it. Right. You just out of sentence and said there's two years left. Yeah, exactly. On that five year project. Right. On that five year program. Okay. So I don't think that's a motion. I think I just feedback to staff. So I think we're done. All communications is next. Anyone wish to address us on item not on tonight's agenda. This is the time. See no one any director comments. Seeing none. We move on. Administrative board planning calendar 5.1. Yeah. And I'm glad to present on that. I didn't know if the board wanted to maybe go out of order. I was just thinking since we have Dr. Haddad here. His item is next second to last. Sure. Let's do that. Is that okay? Let's do six five. Okay. Yeah. So I'll lead it off here. Dr. Haddad and a graduate student up at UCSC did an economic study for the district. This spawned originally from a grant application we did about third of the points were based on the economic study analysis. But before I hand it over and jump into it. I asked Dr. Haddad for some of his credentials. And I'll just, you know, stand for Georgetown Berkeley Berkeley Berkeley. So that's the schools just to give you an idea. I've never heard of him. He went from Georgetown to Berkeley told me that was quite a change. I was just asking about that. I think what's important when he did his postdoc or when he did his doctoral, his one of his major professors was Oliver Williamson who was a Nobel Prize winner and economics economist. And then Richard Norgard, founder of the International Society for Ecological Economics. So he's one of these rare birds that has the environmental and the business side, economic side down. He wrote just to give you a sample the economics of watershed management published by Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Sciences. There's several here. One he didn't put on the list and is one of my favorites is Rivers A Goal which is basically a water market economics book for water that it's been out for a while now. So thank you. Yeah. So and in addition to that your student is a PhD in economics. Is that correct? Yes. Brian Pratt. Very rigorous, applying fundamental economics in a very rigorous way. And then on top of that we had as a kind of a review our hydrologist Cameron Tauna who has degrees from MIT and that sort of thing. But he also, and I'm mistaken, I says he has a graduate degree in economics from Stanford. It's only a undergraduate degree from economics from Stanford so I just want to correct that for the memo. But with that I'll hand it over to you. Thank you. Okay. And thank you for inviting me to participate in the grant application. And can I just ask did any of you have a chance to look at the memo in advance? Oh yeah. This is great. This board's good at that. We'll even tell you where there are any misspellings in it. Comma's missing. Well this is great because in my undergraduate classes I'm never sure of the answer to that question when I begin my lectures. So why don't we start actually at the top of page two. And that's where you'll see that we take as our baseline that the district will be in compliance with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014. And that means that it will in the absence of any other project be cutting back its pumping to 2300 acre feet per year for several decades. And we also took that if this particular project, the WaterSmart project was not built, that the alternative project would be simply cutting back on pumping. And that there was not an alternative structural project that had been advanced enough that we could use it as a comparison. So that's our baseline. And then in terms of actually building the WaterSmart project, WaterSmart is the grant name, the peer water project. Thank you. In terms of estimating the benefits, we looked at four different categories. Benefits to residential customers, to commercial businesses, environmental benefits, and then outside of district benefits. So let's jump into residential benefits. And I think the best place to start is on page three with the graph because that will give us a sense of how we went about making this determination. The first thing to do is start at that upper corner that's where we see the intersection of 1,955 acre feet per year and $11,634. And so that's an important first point to look at. And then the second one is if you follow that curve down to the intersection of $3,230 and $4,262. So what we show there, and I'll get in a minute I'll get to how we determine those points, is that if in our analysis of the behavior of the water demand behavior of residents of the district, if the district were to only use price to drive down consumption to 85% of that 2,300 acre feet per year pumping limit. So the reason we say 85% is because 85% of the district customers are residential. And so that's where that 1,955 comes from. If the district were to only use price, we estimate they'd have to charge $11,600 per acre foot. Another way of saying that is that that's how much the residents of the district value water or value this particular 1,955 acre foot of purchase. And so that's basically our starting point. But now if the project gets built, we would be out closer to 3,800. In fact, we'd be at 85% of 3,800 acre feet, which is the 3,230. And we estimate there that the price would be 4,262 per acre feet. And by price, it's not exactly like the price that the district is charging. It's the value that we believe our customers would place on the water at that point. And so at that point, what we say is, okay, here's the difference between no project up above and project down below. And anything underneath that demand curve, which is the sloping curve, is a benefit to the district. And you simply have to add that up for all the years of the project and then take the discount rate, discount it back to present dollars. And that's how you determine how much it's worth to the residents, yes. So by district, you don't mean the institution. You mean the population area. That's what I mean. The customers in the district. Right. And so that's the method that we use. But now the question is, how do you arrive at these numbers? And we did that by starting with data that we had because we analyzed the last couple years of demand data and pricing. And you'll see those interim, that interim spot on the demand curve at $2826.25 and $5500. And that's from our data about the amount of water demanded in 2016 by the residential customers and the average price they paid. So that's actual data. And the next thing we did was we determined the shape of that demand curve. And we did that by looking at analyses of other water agencies, basically. And then we took some conservative, made some conservative assumptions. And we actually ended up coming up with a very conservative estimate of how we thought customers would react to a change in price. And the reason we went conservative is because it's, I would say at least in the literature, it's unprecedented to see a cutback as large as you see on this graph. Because typically you're cutting back 10% or 15% or even as far as 25%. But you're never cutting back to the extent that the district would have to cut back its pumping under the current circumstances. And so we decided to basically underestimate the response. And it meant curtailing the benefits, but it would also seem to us to be a conservative way to go. And so that's, and you can see on, I have that discussion of our demand. Yeah, I see it at the bottom of page four. And so it's, let me just say that the city of Santa Cruz, when they do their estimates of their demand curves, they use negative 0.25, meaning a 1% increase in price will cause people to cut back on water a quarter of percent of their actual consumption. And we decided to go with 0.5%, which means that a 1% increase in price means that the cutback is half a percent. What that means is that you actually don't have to raise the price as much as we would expect in Santa Cruz and elsewhere. And that eventually leads to us having, estimating a lower amount of total benefits, but it's conservative and it's defensible. And so we decided to go with the 0.25%. So... You mean minus 0.5? I'm sorry, minus 0.5, thank you. The next... Oh, and all of that leads us to a benefit to residential customers if the project is built of $120 million in present dollars. And what we're talking about there is the residents would be willing to pay that extra $120 million for the water they're receiving, but because... It's a completely different question whether or not the district would charge that extra $120, but they would be willing to pay an extra $120 million to go from the 2,300 acre feet per year to the 3,800 in pumping. So not having a project, they would lose that value then? Exactly. In fact, that's a good way to think about it is that's the lost value if you don't do the project. The residential. The lost value just to the residential sector. There's a page or two in there that basically says that because the district is not a profit-making entity, it's basically neutral in terms of them as a beneficiary. If this were the private sector, then you would figure out the benefits to the supplier, the producer, but we said that that would be neutral benefits to the utility. Okay, so let's... Starting at the bottom of page six, we calculated something else that we weren't able to put into dollars, but I think it was important to point out that if this project isn't built and we go with the expected future without this project, one of the things that would stay in effect is a housing moratorium. And so we calculated the number of houses that would not be built in the absence of this project and we came up at the top of page seven with the number 2,100 additional housing units. And we discussed briefly that if anything is needed along the central coast, it's additional housing and this is a lost opportunity for providing housing to the people who live in this area. And that's a little over 10% of the existing housing stock. So that's the range of what could be provided if the project is built, but we didn't put a dollar value on that. Okay, let's turn to that next piece, which is the commercial benefits. And even though it's only 15% of the consumption of the district, it turns out that commercial benefits are by far the largest source of benefits to our calculation. And the way we generated them, if you go to page eight about halfway down, there's a paragraph that starts for the differences. And basically what we did is we said, let's take 2013 and 2016 as shoulder years around the drought and we'll calculate the economic growth during that period of time and we will compare it to the 2014-2015 major period of drought and we'll look at the economic growth of 2013 and 2016 versus the economic growth of 2014 and 2015. And then if we find a difference, which we did, we will multiply that by the actual economic output of the district. And so one of the things, well, in doing that, one of the things we found was, well, actually, let me just say that we eventually arrived at $676 million because it was about a 2% difference, as I recall, and I don't think we actually have that number in the paper, but the 2% difference times the outcome of this district, the economic output, then takes you to, and then you do that until 2047 and discount it back. We then compared that to a different way of estimating the economic impact of the cutbacks. And it turns out that the alternative way gave us an even larger number and so we went with the more conservative number, which was $676 million. The other way was there were some studies done in San Francisco by the PUC, and we took the San Francisco approach and saw that it was, they, of course, again, didn't go as extremely as we'd have to go in this situation facing the district, but when we extrapolated, it was nearly the same number and we went with the more conservative of the two approaches. And so that's the, so the bulk of the benefits lies in the fact that businesses would be able to continue to function and grow and would not have to cut back due to a lack of water. There's another element to that which we, again, didn't quantify and that was an estimate of how many job losses there would be in the absence of the project and there we used a study of that East Bay mud did and we took their estimates of job losses based on water lack of, you know, I guess drought is what they were looking at and we estimated using their figures that there would be roughly 725 job losses which is about 3.8% of employment in the district. So, but we didn't quantify what that means in terms of dollars, just the fact that there would be job losses which I think we would all expect. Of course that's economic too because there's, you know, salaries that we lost and then the leveraged effects they wouldn't be buying from stores. The multiplier effects, absolutely. So, turning now to environmental benefits, we looked at, we looked at it three different ways. We looked at the possibility of certain events occurring. We looked at the possibility of alternative scenarios playing out and we also looked at some existence values of environmental benefits. So, basically the source of environmental benefits is that the project itself more rapidly recharges the basin than the no project alternative and you reach your recovery point a little bit sooner. And so what we were looking at was that differential between the two projects. The project and the no project alternative both recharged the basin, only the project alternative could recharge the basin quicker. And so, in comparing that to the no project alternative it means that there's some extra water that is generated and it's basically stored and that's how we thought about that. Is extra water available? And then we asked, in what instances would that extra water have value and then how would you quantify that value? And so the first thing we thought was well there could be certain events where the district would benefit from having that extra water and the examples on page nine, there are three bullet points. A massive drought beyond modeled expectations. Another is the possibility of a chemical spill or what we call an anthropogenic spill that contaminates the aquifer. And then a third one would be a failure of a neighboring water system or a water intensive fire event that could be anywhere in the region that would demand, not necessarily demand but it would prompt the district to share water and if it had extra water that would be extremely valuable under those circumstances. So those are events. We'll look at the table in a moment but the next is alternative future scenarios just at the bottom of page ten below the table and what we see there are, it's possible that, so when modeling is done there's a range of alternatives and eventually you settle on some midpoint that becomes the number you choose and what we were asking ourselves were well what if we're beyond that midpoint and what if we've simply underestimated certain impacts or it just hasn't been modeled in how it will actually turn out. And so the three scenarios in that regard that we thought about were there are climate change related reductions and the overall recharge of the groundwater and that another one would be is there is the seawater intrusion along the coast going to be worse than we thought. Even with the recoveries planned we just haven't modeled seawater intrusion as well as it is in reality. And the third one is that it's possible that we didn't model future demand properly and that future demand will actually be higher and it could be it could have been modeled properly but it could be that the state says we are insisting on more housing or it could be that there's some economic change that results in higher demand such as cannabis is water demanding and it could be a new crop that grows here in the district. So things like that just unexpected changes in demand about the scenarios. And then finally in terms of existence values the presence of extra water in the aquifer could provide three benefits and one is improvements in stream base flow which its very existence provides a value and next is improved ecological function of springs and streams that result from the increased aquifer storage and then finally it was in one of the papers we wrote we read we saw a discussion of land subsidence as a possibility and so we decided to include that as a possible thing that can be avoided with additional water in the ground. So now we can go back to that table and we'll give you an idea of how we put those events and scenarios to numbers and so in terms of the option value for these events the three on top we basically thought that for an extreme drought that if there was a multi-year extreme drought we would estimate that as a 0.25% occurrence over the 30 year period of the project and if that drought occurred the district we estimated would benefit from having an extra 1,000 acre feet and we also thought that in the instance of an extreme drought multi-year that the value of water at that point would be extremely high and we put it at 10 times the average value that we have today and that's what that $55,000 per acre foot is 10 times more than the average price that people are paying now that's how much they would value it. I'm not saying that's how much the district would charge for it I'm saying that's how much it would be valued by residents and businesses and so you can basically do that same logic for all of the option values and then if you run out the math you can come up with a value for those benefits of having the extra water. In terms of the alternative scenarios meaning the future is just different than we have in our models if you look at the seawater intrusion risk reduction this is actually the bulk of the environmental value is trying to by recharging the aquifer more rapidly you're avoiding that risk and there's a positive value to avoiding that risk and again we said that the probability of that being the true scenario is 0.3 about 30% and that the benefit of oh and the amount of additional water needed if that's the actual future would be an extra 200 acre feet per year and then the benefit would again be 10 times the current value of water and so that gives us you can do the math and come up with the value for reducing the risk of seawater reduction and then finally in terms of the existence values we thought about what would citizens of the district pay to have these existence values protected or land subsidence avoided and we thought about that it would be on a per person basis it would be small but it would add up to about $55 per acre feet per year or $50 per acre feet per year and so when we do all of those calculations what we end up with is a benefit of $83 million and that's on page 11 just above outside of district benefits just to clarify something if all of these benefits were exercised it would be a little bit more than is being saved by the project and that's why we actually said the existence values would be negative because you're actually drawing down the aquifer a bit in light of the droughts and the fires and the chemical spills and the things we thought could be in the future so ultimately we arrive at $83 million as the benefit of that extra increment of water and then finally turning to outside of district benefits there is a range of 16 to 685 acre feet per year this is the bottom of page 11 that could be available in the red sands aquifer and so we thought about if that is available and if neighbors to the district utilize that water what would it be worth to them and so it presents a wide range and so we selected 420 acre feet per year as an estimate and then we took a very conservative value of $4,000 per acre foot and in part we chose that 4,000 because we didn't know how that water would be used what value would be put to and the fact that it's a wide range would begin with and so based on that we came up with a potential value of $24 million in benefits to the southern neighbors of the district from the project so turning to the summary when you add up all of these benefits residential, commercial, environmental and non-district or outside of district it adds up to $903 million and the costs oh, I didn't really tell you how we estimated the costs this was based on the Brown and Caldwell data that they did when working on the project they just gave us their materials on what they estimated the costs would be and we basically took the net present value and so that's an 8.6 benefit to cost ratio I think one of the major take-homes here is how important it is for the district to take action on the district knows this take action on the groundwater crisis that it has and the very large amount of benefits that would accrue to the residents and to the businesses and to the neighbors if that occurs so if you have any questions I'm happy to any questions? Marks? I got one it was just a somewhat of a quibble it was just that I wasn't sure that we should use the subsidence risk reduction for this district that has it really been a factor at least under current conditions? I had the same question as you did that's why we got Cameron on the phone because of the MGA recently we said well we might be able to get out of that as a sustainability indicator but in conversation with Cameron I think he recognized there is a small probability of that well we came across it in the documentation oh really? I can't remember where but it was somewhere where there was a discussion of subsidence risk and it seemed to be very small and it also seemed that the amount of additional water in the future that would be generated by the project would not have a very large effect on subsidence even if it occurred so small and then small again and then we thought to ourselves what would what would a homeowner or a building owner pay in insurance to avoid what could be a very expensive damage to their property that has a very low probability risk and that's why it's we were imagining someone would say oh 50 cents per year or a dollar per year but then that adds up because there are so many houses and buildings in the district but it only adds up to about 50 I think we had either 50 or 55 dollars per acre foot and so that's a 55 dollars per acre foot and so that was our thinking about that even though it's I would say I agree with you that that is the least likely of all scenarios that we looked at but it has a high impact if it occurs to the homeowner or the building owner and so we decided to include it yeah but it's like valued higher than stream base flow accelerated recovery or give an equal weight on some things that are kind of important to the district that was my conclusion I think that it is fair to think about those values and we did our best to estimate them but to go further with it you actually would do some surveys and ask people how they would value different scenarios and then you can add those up to a value for the district but we thought that for what we were doing that was a little bit too much for us to do and I understand that but I still I understand the other ones I see the climate change impact reduction the seawater intrusion risk and the buffer because those are really things that are that are visible risks and important to act against in the district but these existence values had negligible impact on the outcome and in fact as I mentioned they actually lowered the benefits a little bit but we thought it was important to include them I looked at the same thing myself and subsidence really occurs in certain aquifers where typically there's a lot of clay other things are structurally sound even if the water leaves them and don't have much the water levels drop saltwater comes in and fills in so we don't really have the lowering of groundwater levels tens of feet even a decade or per year sometimes that would lead to real subsidence so I agree that of course it's only a thousand times less than the seawater intrusion risk so actually I would say subsidence risk really turns into seawater intrusion risk so you have one? I noticed that as well although your ratio might go from 8.6 to 8.5 it actually goes up the odd thing is that the existence values count only if the water is there but to be consistent with the entire section on environmental benefits we assumed that all the other things happened and that extra water was all used up and so by the time all those other bad things happened you were actually down a little bit compared to the baseline scenario and so it dropped the net benefits by 1.5 million which again out of 903 not much but if we were to have removed the existence values the net value would actually have gone up a little bit because of the way the math works out but the real big player here residential is a big player but the real big player is commercial so I want to make sure I understand that so you use the shoulder years compared to the middle years during the drought where you were trying to basically remove a trend if there were some other factors causing the trend is that the standard way to do things yeah it is a standard way to get at this is to and we happen to have the data and it worked well for this region to look at the two well they weren't necessarily non drought years but there were less restrictions regionally on businesses in 13 and 16 and then there were heavier restrictions on 14 and 15 and so that's why we set it up that way because the business actually didn't have as strict reduction mandates as they would in the scenario that's the no project scenario so it would actually be worse than what we used okay and then in thinking about benefits so if the benefit is to the commercial is it fair to say that they should be paying for more of this project than residential or is that a policy decision well there's a prop 218 discussion around that too well it's an interesting question and I'd have to give it some thought it's ultimately a policy decision and it's but it is correct that you can see the ratio it's about six six to one in the difference in benefits so but that would be I'd say up to the to the board to think about that interesting question I can point out a couple things first of all on the ratio the project is it positive it's greater than one of the three areas so the environment it's in itself worth it to just the environment in itself worth it just to residential and as you noted several times worth it for the commercial sector regarding this very astute we had a discussion around these three items and Director Christensen it was one of the questions well some people may value stream base flow a little bit higher than the other but and then we went on about subsidence but the bottom line I guess our guidance was well if it makes the estimate more conservative let's leave it in we could argue to the cows come home but again our guidance was do the most accurate but be on the side of conservatism so we don't overestimate the project and I believe they took that too hard and we also have a graphic summary I might pull that up can you do that? just one more question before we leave the table sorry just I just wanted to make sure I don't understand under the seawater intrusion risk how the volume needed is 200 acre feet per year like where did that come from the 200 I estimated that and I thought about I I simply thought about what kinds of demands are needed right along the coastline or agricultural and other demands and what would we need to satisfy some lost water demand along the coast so I would say that's a number I came up with and you can see I didn't really distinguish it either to but just a conservative estimate of what how much additional water would be needed to try to preserve the aquifers or work around the loss of them right along the coast another way to calculate that we've estimated protective levels all along the coast so this has to be so many feet above sea level and then we can look at how much water supply would take to get some of that rise to happen that would that would work that would be directly from our scheme that would be a good way to some percentage of the overall 1500 extra we need we have a summary graphic that we put together the district did just trying to encapsulate this so when you look at the total economic benefit it's about close to a billion dollars 903 million you know a little over 100 million in residential a little over 100 million in environmental and the rest go into business but again total economic benefit and then the things that weren't implicit into that 903 million dollars are these three little graphics here which we've gone over but it's just a way to summarize it so the higher cost to customers without the project if you did it just by pricing alone which I don't think the board would necessarily do but it gives you a reflection the cost of water is about three times more than if you did it with the pure water project $4,000 an acre foot versus 12 and then as Dr. Dodd went over at 725 job losses if you don't have the project which is roughly about 4% about 4% and then less homes built which is partly out of the urban water management plan job losses over 20 years correct so anyway it's just a graphic just to help the layperson some of this economic stuff is quite hard to understand so we wanted to just extrapolate out kind of the take home points relative to our customers and there it is anyone in the audience wish to address us on this item so no one okay thanks for doing this work it's really good and I was just going to say we need to share this with the local officials we'll get it out to see the value okay so let's go back to 5.1 5.1 okay it's the board planning calendar yeah so we're back on our winter schedule again two months we meet one meeting per month I think we actually up that with some special meetings we probably exceeded what we were trying not to do and in September there'll be another MGA and GSP meeting coming up I did leave off on Monday the 10th at 3.30 pm at the district is another water rates advisory committee meeting so if you're part of that please take note 3.30 to 5 so it says under the 20th it says stakeholder meeting yeah yeah that's a different thing I believe it's not really a stakeholder meeting is it no it's not I'm not sure why I left that on there but I did let's just call it a mid-county MGA meeting I'll copy and paste that I think it's a regular meeting sometimes we do have stakeholder meetings before the MGA meeting well then there's the I forget what they're called not stakeholder meetings there's another that's what I think of as the stakeholder meetings is where we have private well owners come but they have the beforehand ability to come by and talk right kind of about the office hours yeah so anyway this is just a regular old meeting right so it was the actual stakeholders issues at that meeting I think that's just a mistake by me just a cut and paste thing yeah it's just a board meeting Melanie's pulled it up there so okay yeah so nothing else to add unless there's any questions on that well I just want to add that I I'll be out for the rate meeting on the 10th on September 18th no the rates meeting on the oh the 10th okay it is September 10th where's that it's not August 10th it's not on there it should be I heard that any public comments any public comments on this item none so really four hour meetings now for GSP hard work is still to come caffeine included four hours intravenously they're all meetings a lot to get through and a lot of turf to cover Mr. Taj hi we only have one will serve tonight it's an ADU that is a conversion ADU in Capitola any questions any questions from the public see no one I'll move approval I'll second any discussion okay all in favor I vote no thank you passes a resolution amending the district's conflict of interest code yes this is a requirement every two years as part of the California government code and we have to do it in even years and anything that might set off that we need to notify them about the conflict of interest even if we don't we need to tell them that nothing's happened but in this last over this last two years Melanie mouse Schumacher was promoted to a position that makes that change necessary so I think the motion is to adopt that resolution and give us direction to submit the work to the county I'll make the motion I'll second I have a motion second all in favor roll call yes yes yes yes yes direct Daniels Daniels this second reading of ordinance 1801 I just want to make it clear that this action is being taken as a result of legal action that one of your rate payers had to take in order to correct this, the invalid rates. So I just want to make that clear for the record. It's due to a court action. Thank you. Anyone else? See no one. Back to the board. I'll move approval. I'll second. Okay. This needs to be a real call of vote as well. Yes. Director LeHue. Yes. Director Jaffee. Yes. Director Christensen. Yes. President Danverson. Unanimous. Thank you. Okay. 6.4 grant way well site improvements. Reject bid authorized staff to open, obtain proposals for pumping equipment, electric equipment, and re-bid the project. Quite the time. Is that enough? Hopefully the memo is clear that we received only one bid despite extending the bid date and trying our best to advertise this project. It's a hard bidding climate right now and the one bid we received was over budget by over $200,000 and we're recommending that we will re-bid it with us, the district procuring some of the equipment and piecing out some of the installation, the well pump, and buying the electrical cabinet and then re-bidding that project in about a month or two. I'm pretty confident that we can make up the difference or more and be maybe under our budget. I just have one question. How can an engineer's estimate for all of their work be $10,000 and the bid be $140,000? We just don't understand. We asked them that because we thought did we miss something and they didn't really clarify. They don't have to clarify that. We thought that was the miscellaneous little items, not $140,000 worth of stuff. Sometimes it's just due to somebody's spreadsheet error. It seems like a real logical way to proceed, so I'll make all of it public. Anyone in the public address this on this item? Seeing no one. There are three suggested motions. The three motions. I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Let's see. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay, so now we go on to a resolution, unfortunately. I assume the board president will want to read the resolution, but I'll just say on behalf of the management team and probably the board too, this is one of those kind of mixed emotions, bittersweet things where you lose somebody you hate to see go, but you see them taking a step in a direction that's better for them and full of good things in the future. So that's the sweet part, but Karen Shirley will miss you and thank you for all your high-level professionalism and diligence over these, I think, five years, and certainly your help to me as I came in and kind of showing me the way and teaching me what I needed to know. So thank you. Yeah, always super professional and organized and attention to detail really, really appreciated and how nice you are to all of us. Yeah, it made working up here a lot easier. Yeah, definitely. I'm going to miss you. And I especially appreciate the help you gave me in getting oriented to four years ago. Thank you. Resolution number 1823, resolution and appreciation of Karen Rees, executive assistant slash board clerk 2013 to 2018, the board of directors of the SoCal Creek Water District at its September 4th, 2018 meeting made the following findings, recitals, whereas Karen Rees executive assistant slash board clerk is moving on after five years of outstanding professional service to the SoCal Creek Water District and whereas Karen joined the district in June 2013 as the executive assistant slash board clerk to the general manager in the administration department and to the board of directors and whereas Karen lends a high level of professionalism and a keen sense of stewardship to the SoCal Creek Water District board meetings and public access slash response responsibilities and whereas Karen's hawkish attention to detail. I like that word. And her focus on structure and consistency have contributed to several improvements toward efficient and effective administrative operations and whereas Karen has demonstrated reliability as a key member of support to the district and to the board of directors and shall be missed by those who have benefited from her knowledge and warmed by her friendly smile. Now therefore be it resolved that we all join in extending our sincere and grateful appreciation for her dedicated service and our best wishes to her for continued success happiness and good health in the years to come. Thank you very much. I make emotional all second and if I if I may ask could could I get Karen just to stand up in front of the board and get a shot Karen. Let's come on and I do it after they vote. Yeah. Okay. That attention to details. Ever official. That's hawkish isn't it. We might forget it. Director Lather. Yes. She must do the vote first. Yes. Director Jaffee. Definitely yes. Director Christensen. Yes. Of course yes. There we go. That's better. I'll let you take one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Take one without me. Yeah. Are they longer? Oh they go. Are we all in there? Yeah. Okay. Thank you Karen. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. Okay. Okay. That was good. And bad. Yeah. I know. All right. And we have one piece of written content. Okay. Okay. That was good. And bad. Yeah. I know. All right. And we have one piece of written content. I know. I know. All right. And we have one piece of written communications in correspondence. 7.1. Nothing to be done there I think. No. Okay. And there's no closed session. And therefore we are adjourned. Okay. Thank you Becky Steinbrunner. First of all it appears that item 6.5 the economic study was moved in the agenda. We did that early. Yeah. I think he was here and moved it. Okay. I came specifically for that but it looked like it was later in the agenda. So I'm sorry I missed it. If you want to talk about it you can. I would. Thank you. May I? You have three minutes to do that. Sure. Thank you. I did want to do that because I read this study and what bothers me is that on page one in the benefit analysis. It says that there is no readily available feasible alternative to the district than to move forward with your water so Cal. And I think that's not true. Your district is moving forward with another feasible alternative. You have done the pipe studies, the water quality chemical studies and have determined to accept water from the city of Santa Cruz and you're going to be doing that this fall. The contract for that will be I hope renegotiated in 2020. And so that is a very near term solution so that the whole benefit analysis stating it is predicated on the issue of not having any other choice is false. And I want to make that clear. I also take issue with some statement on page four when it's talking about price elasticity of demand. This is in the last paragraph. It says that the calculations that this person has made seem to indicate quote meaning they, your rate payers value water consumption less than others. And if I were your rate pair I would be quite offended by this because your rate payers have shown that they really do value water. And they are very willing to do conservation. So I want to use my last minute to speak to you about the communication that I sent you and thank you, Director Daniels for responding because it involves the EIR, the draft EIR and the late comment. And again I really feel that your district could have had a much better public face had you just given the public a little more time to explore and to learn about how to submit valid comments for your draft EIR. It would only have been another 15 days. And what is left is really no opportunity of any value for people to submit comment. As your response has said, there really is no point because it will not be addressed in the final EIR. It will have no legal merit and would really be meaningless. And that's a little bit difficult to hear. But thank you for providing that clarification. Thank you. So I think we're all done now unless someone else has something to say. So I believe we're adjourned. Thank you everyone.