 for June 21st, 2023, Holly would you take the roll please? President Smalley? Here. Vice President Hill? Here. Director Ackerman? Here. Director Fouls? Here. Director Mayhood? Here. Any additions or deletions to the meeting? Yes, Chair Smalley, before we start the meeting, I would ask that we take a moment of silence in honor of Joshua, District Engineer, who passed away on June 8th. He will be greatly missed, both professionally and personally. Thank you, Rick. Proceed with the meeting now. Formal communications. This part of the meeting is for anybody from the public who has an item that's not on the agenda this evening, that they would want to bring up that's within this jurisdiction of the Water District. Does anybody from the public wish to do so? No, I see none. We will move on then to a new business. First item is the Foreman Pressure Break Structure Project. Rick? Yes, I will present this to the board over staff is asking the board to approve, authorize an expenditure of $119,400 for design of the Foreman Pressure Break Structure. The district's North System surface water supply is comprised of water diverted from Foreman Clear, Peabody and Sweetwater Clear and Cool. This raw water is collected near the Foreman Creek intake structure and conveyed to the Lyon Water Treatment Plant. Prior to release to the distribution system, the collection of the raw water from diversions ranging in elevation from 1,300 feet down to 928 feet requires that a pressure break be provided prior to conveyance into the water treatment plant. This reduction in pressure is accomplished in a pressure break structure which brings the collected water to uniform pressure. During the CZU fire, the previous pressure break structure was destroyed by fire. This is a proposal to redesign the structure for construction. We did receive two bids, one from FNL for $119,400 and the whole thing just disappeared. There we go. And we had a second bid was from Sandus for $382,299 or $999. Staff is recommending that we award to FNL in the amount of $119,400. Okay. Questions from the board, Bob. Any idea of Breck why the big difference? I'm sorry, Bob. Any idea why the big difference in bids, even after the normalization? No, you know, obviously we've dealt with both of those firms in the past. I'm not sure if Josh had conversation with the firms to find out. I have not, but yes, it is a big difference. There is some engineering calculations for velocities through the box to remove the entrained air, but basically it's just a huge concrete vault with chambers and screens in it. I couldn't tell you why there's a big discrepancy. And what kind of structure was there before? Large concrete, based on like a large septic tank with a wood roof where staff could walk in and access catwalks and screens and chambers, but it actually cracked from the high heat. And had several stress cracks in the concrete chamber. And the building that was off the side of it was a wood frame structure. It burnt as well. And there was considerable battery bank that created a hazmat. And so everything was removed. And the new structure will be fire resistant. As much as possible, it was heat, that was definitely be part of the design criteria to talk about that. And obviously the wood roof, probably not the wood roof, it'll be a metal roof structure and the building will be almost like the concrete with a metal roof structure. But Jeff. No comments. Seems straightforward to me. Jim. This seems very straightforward. Obviously we need this. So I'm prepared to vote to support this, but Mark, I just want to take a minute to say publicly how sorry I am to the staff and to Josh's widow, Araya, for his loss. And so I don't know that there's more appropriate time for me to do that, but just know that he's been in all of our hearts. And with that, I will send it back to you. Um, Gail. I agree with Jeff that this is largely straightforward. And I want to echo Jamie's comments. I think we've all had Josh and the staff in our thoughts. And I think it must have been really difficult to carry on and I'm just very impressed at how you guys powered through and produced the agenda that we see tonight and that despite all the things that have been going on, you managed to continue keeping the district going. And I really appreciate the fact that you've done that. Thank you, Gail. A couple of questions that I have on this pressure break structure. When was the original one installed about 20 years ago, 30 years ago? Yeah, probably 25, 30 years ago. Okay. I see that in the memo here, no environmental review or no environmental requirements. Is that just for this investigation portion? Just, that's just for the design, for the actual construction will require environmental. Okay, that makes sense then. Do we need this now being, if we're, are we feeding foreman water in there solely right now? That is correct. Okay. If we're feeding from one source, do we need the pressure break or does the pressure break come into play if and when we have p-vine? Yes. The pressure break will come into play when we have one additional source to form it. So that most likely will be p-vine run. It's the quickest one to install. One of the problems we'll run into without contacting FEMA is there are time restraints when we need to move ahead. And there will be considerable environmental on this project and may take some time to get through. It'll definitely take field visits with Cal Fish and Wildlife and probably other regulatory agencies as it's right in or outside of the security corridor. Right, okay. So moving ahead with the design. Right. Instruction, ideally would sync up with whenever a next. With p-vine. Waterline is installed. That's correct. Okay. That makes sense then. Okay. And to question that Bob asked earlier about the cost differential, we've seen similar cost differential with these two firms on some previous bids. No, I don't. But I was just curious if we had some. And as to, I looked at the number of hours that Enda's had in versus what? Yeah, I know it wasn't yet, you know. Significant difference in the number of hours and the time it was taking. So I don't testify, I don't believe her. This may have something to do with how busy they are, how much they want the business. Yep, that's what my thoughts are. Could be all right. I actually talked to Josh about it. Yeah. And he said, I said, well, what happened to your old firm, Sandus? And he said, guess I didn't want the job. Okay. So. Okay. Okay. Well. Yeah, I did, as a follow-up to that, though I did have a question about in terms of FEMA's timelines, in terms of restoring the actual structure, they're obviously going to contribute to that as well. Are we okay on that? If that doesn't... We have been requesting extension, timeline extensions and been working with FEMA, because those projects haven't even been obligated yet. So they're still reviewing our proposals and our damage. And that is our reasons for continuing to ask for extensions, because the work was supposed to be completed 18 months after the actual event, but obviously in the way that's happening. So they've been granting the extensions, but I would get nervous if their process was done and then we were asking, because they want detailed reasons why you want an extension. And obviously environmental review and those type of issues with the project, they have no problem with. But if just because we want to wait, we may have some issues. Okay. And I think the timeline will fall in with the P mines timeline. Once we get designed and then start the environmental, I don't doubt the environmental will take some time. Yeah, I mean, the agencies are going to operate on FEMA schedule or anything like that, right? So, yeah, okay. Okay. Before we go through the public, then I'd like to make a motion. The board director of district manager to enter into a contract with Ferreira Moreta in and about not to exceed 119,400 for the purposes of design work related to the foreman pressure break. I will second that. Okay. Any comments or questions from the public about this item? Seeing none. Holly, would you take a roll call, please? President Smalley. Yes. Vice president Hill. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Fouls. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Okay. Moving on then to the next item, the Bracken brain force brings initial study and mitigated negative declaration. Yes, and I'll ask the environmental planner, Carly Planchard to introduce this item and our consultants. Great. Thank you, Rick. We do have Garrett Peterson with us today to answer questions. I'll go ahead and introduce the item. And then at the end, we'll go ahead and jump into questions. So the district is looking to consolidate two small mutual water companies for springs and Bracken brain to provide water supply to approximately 440 customers. In 2022, the California department of water resources awarded the district with a small community drought relief program grant of $3.2 million. The grant included funds to upgrade and install approximately 9,000 linear feet of water main and to install a new pump house station. However, the grant did not supply funding for all the project infrastructure needs. So in addition to the installation of the approximately 9,000 linear feet of 10 to 12 inch diameter water main and the pump house station installation of one or two water storage tanks for a total of 120,000 gallon capacity at the existing forest springs water storage tank site will also be needed. The district prepared a draft initial study and mitigated negative declaration or ISM&D in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act state guidelines. The 30 day public review period commenced on April 28th, 2023 and ended May 29th, 2023. During that period, we did receive four comment letters. Those are included in the draft ISM&D with responses as well. And after that public review period, the district worked with Panorama Environmental Inc to respond to all those comments, create a mitigation monitoring reporting program and finalize the ISM&D. Unfortunately, it looks like the ISM&D was not attached as exhibit A in the memo, but it was included in the link on the website page. So hopefully everyone was able to find that. Garrett Peterson from Panorama Environmental myself are ready to answer any questions. Jeff, why don't we start with you? See what questions you have. So first question is this doesn't look like there's any money or expenditure tied to this. We're just adopting a study that's already done. Exactly. Okay. Do you believe the study that is done is adequate to meet the needs to move forward with the rest of the project? Yes. And it also appears that we have responded to all the comments that we received. So we should be all set with the mitigation measures and everything for the project at this point. Okay. Okay. Okay. Jamie? How long are we doing the mitigation and monitoring reporting for the duration of the project or is it for the duration of the period that the tanks are in use? Right. So it's just for the construction period. But what it would look like is pretty much any time we have any ground disturbance, especially in any vegetated areas, we would have a biologist on site. During certain seasons, we do have to complete nesting bird surveys, bat surveys, bee surveys. So there's some different pieces, depending on the time of year when we go into the instruction that we'll have to complete. And we also did have some pre-vegetation surveys of the site to ensure that there wasn't any special habit or special type plants out there. And so those programs are factored into the overall cost of the project. Unfortunately, no. So that would be a separate cost. So when we actually go to construction, we would bid out the work separately to have a biologist on the project. But neither of those are we deciding tonight. No, I understand. I just was trying to understand the parameters of what that program looks like. Okay. Gail? Yeah, this looks... I was very pleased at how the comments were not extensive. I mean, people looked at it carefully, obviously, because they even caught little minor errors. And then you responded well with panoramas. So I think we've done a really thorough job here and we're definitely going beyond, well, not beyond, but we're definitely meeting the requirements, environmental requirements for this. So I feel pretty good about it. Okay. Well, as always, I find it interesting who responds to these, which is mostly other agencies, not really the public. From the public's point of view, it's like, we need to do this. They need the water. They need the pipe. What's the problem? So the granular part of the review comments I always find pretty interesting. Just to make sure that I understand the MMRP program, that's basically just having the biologist on site. Right. So there's different mitigation measures outlined in those MMRPs and it is project dependent. So this one, it has pretty typical ones, where it's biological nesting bird surveys, bee surveys, bat surveys, depending on the time of the year, vegetation surveys, and then the biological monitor on site, depending on the type of work happening. And are they on site the entire work day for the entire construction period? It's really just dependent on when there's ground disturbance. So they could be there part of the day. It doesn't have to be the whole day. It's really when they're just doing that initial groundbreaking work and making sure there's nothing there. And then usually they're on call as well. So if something was to come up, they would be able to come back to the site. I mean, we're putting in a fair amount of pie. Right. A lot of it's in the roadway, thankfully. So that gives us a little leeway. But all of it in the roadway. That's a good question for Rick, probably. Most of it, I believe is, yeah. I mean, we're kind of doing that with other projects, right? It's predominantly in the road right away. I think there's one short little like 100-foot section where we're crossing up in four springs, but it's all moved into the roadway. And so that's that 100-foot section that is the only part we would really need the biologist for. As far as I know, not unless we run into a some type of cold stream crossing, which I don't believe there was anything identified like that. So most likely, yes. And now, and there's also a bridge, two bridge crossings that may require something I'm not sure, but we'll, I think the construction plans don't, because we're out of the, out of the parent corridor. So we should be okay there. So most part, no. Okay, so 100 feet, two bridge crossings. That's basically it. That's basically it. And most do require a training program for all crew that's on site. So initially, before the project kicks off, we'll do a training with the crews of the contractor. Contractors, right, okay. Okay, so the additional cost for this sounds relatively modest, but currently not covered by the grants. Right, I guess it depends on what we end up with the grant funding. If they're right, I think we're gonna work through it pretty quickly. Yeah, we're already short. I mean, that's no question about that. And we do need to get that funding mechanism square before we start getting into the some way, the other, the rate payers of the current center in Zviwara district can fund this. Right, that's correct. Okay, I did have a couple of questions on the ISMD itself. And this again, just probably my ignorance here, but it doesn't sound like we need the incidental take permit, or we do. We do not, and Garrett can jump in here. We did do a pre-construction vegetation survey and I don't believe anything was found. The same thing with frog, the FYL. Right, yeah, we shouldn't have any red-legged frogs or the yellow-legged frogs. Okay, so now ITP's required in there. Because that looked pretty substantial at work stoppages. It's like, no good. Okay, and then there was a question about type abandonment. You know, I know historically we haven't removed pipes. We sort of capped them, right? I mean, is the highway department saying that we gotta remove them? I think that site Pacific, I know there may be some pipe up in Brackenbray and Forest Springs that is above ground. Oh, yeah, that they want or remove. But most of the time, as you say, we plug cement plug and so forth. We haven't seen the Caltrans permit yet. They're just getting ready to apply until we get the Caltrans permit back. There may be, no two permits are the same. You get different inspectors, require different things, but we wouldn't push back on any significant pipe removal. I mean, the disruption to remove the pipe for roadway would be worse than capping it off and the risks associated with that. Yeah, that just doesn't make any sense. We said the way that we see the increase at the county doubtful would require that. You never know Caltrans. And we should be receiving the approach permit on the lower section of 236 any day. So that'll give us a good indication of what they're gonna ask on the upper section. So we'll know more here shortly. Yeah, because we're gonna be putting some pipe in 236 for the lion. Right, and that's the approach permit should be here any day and there's started construction. Okay. And the coal got her questions answered so she's happy and Karen as well. Right. And I believe they might be on this call as well. Yeah, I think that's all I heard from Karen before. And plus we meet with Nicole and Four Springs again tomorrow to talk about the outcome of this meeting and continue on the project. Okay. Definitely wanna make sure that they remain very happy with what's happening in support of this. Great, thank you. Mm-hmm. Okay. I wanna point out one thing on the noise impacts that I picked up on which may be significant in particular to our residents. The ISMND points out that we're going above and beyond for noise impacts because we're choosing to not take an exemption that we could as a water purveyor and instead we are abiding by county noise ordinance regulations and maybe Rick you can tell us what we're doing that's that's that. The noise is probably the most inquiries that were received and that has to do with the pump station located at 236 and Ridge. We go the extra mile on noise reduction. I mean, this will be a concrete structure. We will use all noise dampening louvers, doors, venting generator will be installed inside the concrete building with noise reducing mufflers and so forth. But it is a concern and we have pump stations next to people's homes from one end of the valley to the other we have 26 of them plus or minus. And it's always a concern and we usually successfully work through that and work with the customers. I think that the closest customer is 70 feet from this pump station according to the ISMND. It appears that noise may be a bit of an issue during construction, but we're talking about noise blanketing blankets. There'd be more noise during construction than operations. A great deal of input and thought goes into design on noise reduction. Okay, thank you for that. We've received the most comments from Fish and Game that the Bob was recognizing. We see that we aren't taking measures in response to their comments in your mind or have you checked the Fish and Game or the measures that we're taking then sufficient to have? They should be, yes. We pretty much responded to each one and they're pretty, that's a very standard response that we would receive from that agency. So we should have met all the requirements in the measures. Good, thank you. And since we've already mentioned Nicole and Karen Vitali, I wanted to also say thank you for your comments on that. It improved the accuracy of the document for the comments that they input to us. So good job on providing those. So I'd like to, before I go out to the public again, make a motion on this. Hello, Mark. We're doing something similar on noise reduction at the Redwood Park Tank, right? The swimming tank replacement. Correct, pretty much everything we build. And when will that be complete? The Redwood Park Tank, the pump station in particular, where it's gonna look at our budget and see what phase that comes in. The pipeline's just being completed and I think we go right into the tank. I got to look at them. The reason for that is that that would be, I think a good example of what noise reduction we do do. If someone wants to dive into it deeper to understand what our design is all about, we can point them to that. That's what I do. Right. I'd like to make the motion that the board adopt this initial study and mitigated negative declaration for the consolidation of Brackenbrae and Forest Springs. I'll second that. Okay. From the general public then, I'd like to see if there are any comments on this. I do see one online. Alina Lang. There, Alina Lang, Boulder Creek. I live in Forest Springs where the pump house is going. And also I was Joshua's neighbor and also worked within the E&E committee. So just my condolences there, definitely miss. But I'm here tonight has a lot of my neighbors have come to me with their concerns regarding the pump house and asked that I attend the meeting. They're really worried about the pump house operating noise. I know you touched about a bit on that tonight. But in the initial study and mitigation, the only the generator noise was listed, but not the normal operating noise. So there was really no way to answer that question. And this lot over there, it's its own parks and it's been used unofficially. So, I mean, this is a lot where a lot of kids go and ride their bikes to be safe off the street. You know, now it's turned into this huge staging area. It's really noisy with back up alarms going off all day that you can hear all throughout the neighborhood. The pipe stacks have collapsed, creating dangerous situations. And none of these materials are safely secured behind a fence. And if the activity is really ramped up actually since the comment period is closed and it's bringing it more to the forefront of people's minds. And I just wanna know what the comments from this board have been made about not supporting other consolidations because of the impact it would be on the current customers. And, you know, this project is currently impacting people that are current customers. So the couple of people that wanted me to bring some questions for it is, how loud is the baseline operating noise gonna be? I don't know, how much is this lot costing that you're purchasing from HeartMath? Is there no other burn site lots available for purchase that could house this type of equipment? And why wasn't everyone being impacted by this notified? Like I got a notice at my end of the street and my neighbor who can hear the backup beepers just a few houses down, they weren't notified. And then what is like the long-term use for this site? Is this gonna be a continual staging site for equipment and a lot of people in and out? And if this moves forward, the neighbors are asking, can they have something pretty on the walls, like a mural? And that is all. That's quite a list of questions that you've presented us. I would like to address some of that, Chair Foley. Okay, please. Alina, those were all really great comments. And there's the project that this ISMND is talking about has nothing to do or the environmental review has nothing to do with staging of all the pipe and material in that big lot. That pipe and material that you see staged there, a contractor, a contractor who's on a different project for the district, the 2021 pipeline, rented that property because he couldn't find another place to store piping material. That pipe and material that you see there equipment is part of the Blue Ridge Project, is part of several other mainline projects on North Boulder Creek and had nothing to do with this environmental review. We have had received complaints and we are working with the contractor, but the district really had nothing to do with him, that contractor renting that property. That was something the contractor did with HartMath. Just like right now we've got contractors looking for lots all over Boulder Creek, the store pipe for several of our big projects. So that really has nothing to do with the environmental review and the project for springs and Brackenbrae consolidation. Although, it's very easy to believe that it does because it's right there. The pump station is gonna go tucked away in the corner at Ridge in 236 and I do believe that that building has a footprint of like 15 by 25 and then there's a propane tank. So there are two complete different issues there, but I understand your noise complaint and we are working with the contractor because he does have in his contract with the district, he does have hours of operation and he was starting earlier and Josh was working with him and then he was following the rules and now I understand last week that they started getting there and staging earlier. So we will address that noise issue and we will address the safety issue. Okay, but it's two different projects. Okay, that clarifies a lot for that. I think a lot of people are more upset about the in and out right now than the actual pump station. Sure, and we can talk about the colors and so forth with the neighbors at a later date of pump station. Usually, I think it will be planned either be a tan like his wet face block pump station and it won't be in the middle of that big lot. It is tucked away in the corner and we have not negotiated a price with our math as of yet until the ISN and D is approved and legal counsel is getting up to speed on that. We did contact, I do believe three other property owners in that general area that had locations that we did want to put a pump station or the pump station would work, they adamantly refused and the district would have had to either think about intimate domain or move to a different location. Heart math agreed right away when we first asked and so we went with the homeowner or property owner that was agreeable. Okay, because we don't like him in the domain. We don't like him in the domain. We don't. Thank you, Rick. Seeing no other respondents questions, I'd like to put this to a, I'm sorry, I see a handout comment. Sure, what I said was basically a compilation of what all of the neighbors, I were kind of informally representing about 20 neighbors and depending on how you count them, whether it's by household or properties, that's. Excuse me, could you identify yourself please? Eric Martin from Boulder Creek and about 150 feet from the proposed pump station. Just to start off, my wife has sleep issues. I was talking to Josh and my condolences with Josh, we were having some back and forth and it was friendly and professional and my condolences, I don't have anything else other than just that, that's just such a horrible thing. The environmental impact is great. I mean, it's covering the birds and the fish and the lizards, but there is no mention of any environmental noise that is gonna be produced by the pump house. And I had back and forth with Josh as to what the decimal ratings were and we couldn't come up with enough, he couldn't come up with enough. And so what you're asking us is to accept this on blind faith that it's gonna be fine. We're already living in an area that's impacted by public noise for most of the day. And the only peace and quiet we get is after 10 or 11 o'clock at night during the week. And now you're asking us to sit and he told me that that pump station was gonna be in service 24-7, 365 and with no schedule, no timers to turn the pumps on or off during the sleeping hours. It's an on-demand issue. That to me is a problem because that means I'm gonna have to sleep with my doors and windows closed. The other thing is, is that lot that is proposed is 25 feet wide by 100 feet, I think. If your building is 15 feet wide and 25 feet long, there's gonna be zoning issues, setbacks and everything else. And absent more information to us to be comfortable with this, there's probably gonna be litigation. And it's not a threat, it's just that we, this is only benefits that Brackenbrae and the forest-free people, it doesn't, I've got water. My water turns on, it works fine. But you're asking us to take a risk on environmental noise for somebody who's up the road. Let them have the pump house on their properties for somewhere near their properties. But like I said, I had a whole bunch of questions that Alina got to most of them. And this is just kind of a comment without more information, it's gonna be hard to say, yeah, we're gonna sign on to this. And I know that the details are still to come, but the environmental impact and the noise section off of your own thing had nothing about after construction noise. This was only construction period noise. And we can deal with short-term noise, we can deal with that for years. But to have something that's gonna be there long after I'm gone is something that I think requires a lot more thought and information processes for the people who live in that area. And I can honestly say there are a lot of people in the area that are nervous about coming here and standing up in front of a microphone or a TV. But we're trying to do this through the proper channels as opposed to going willy-nilly with our hair on fire. Thank you. Can I address that? Please comment. You know, I think with what would be a good idea is that you and I go out, and I'll take you out to very similar pump stations. Yes, the pump would be in operation, it'll be operational 24 to 365, but the demand in those two zones are only about four hours a day runtime on the pump. Yes, the pump will come on at any time for fire flow and everybody does things differently. And it may run six hours one day and maybe run only an hour the next day, but it's estimated through the demand that it'll be counted, it'll run about four hours a day. It will be able to come on at any time as needed, especially before a fire is on the right. And every zone has a pump station. Everybody has a pump. Your pump station is down next to somebody else's house. All of us, I can take you out to very similar pump stations, very similar designs, take an afternoon or a morning and let you see and hear and then take that. I mean, I have no problem doing that, I've done that so many times with people and spend some time to get you comfortable. I'm more interested in actual, the empirical evidence. I wanna know what the DBA is. Well, we can get that. We can get that. Oh, so I can get a sound view that we can take. I couldn't find it in the document either. I found construction noise, but I couldn't find the actual operational noise level. I looked through the document today. Like I said, my wife has sleep issues and I know a couple other folks in the neighborhood that do have sleep issues. And how much noise does that pump make when it comes on online? Camutation from a centrifugal pump is significant. Right, there we go, yes you're getting it. And as you read, one will run at a time. It's mostly generally running. But let's, let me give you some information. And if you can, I get your name and I contact. That'd be great. And Rick, to your point about generally runs maybe four hours a day. If it's on demand of water use, is it not likely to run at night and much more likely to run it during the day? To be honest with you, you know, now when we size our pump, our water storage, their size so we can go time abuse. And can we get a much less PG&E rate? Now when time abuse in this area is most likely it'll be at night. It'll be an off peak and we can look at that. But I'm pretty confident that noise will not be an issue. So do we have a block building? Yes, several of us then that we can throw them. Okay, we can come in through. That's a good first step, I think. And specifically the pump station, that's why I was asking the question earlier about the written tank park and other areas that might have similar pumps. So specifically you're gonna be showing him pump stations that have substantially similar specifications around pump size, correct construction, that sort of thing. So it's gonna be an apples to apples type view. And if necessary, we could get a noise meter on it to be able to measure. I mean, I was pretty confident, but I'm pretty confident too, our engineering design team at Sanvis whose design and pump station can come up with an engineering document. So with the noise meter and a comparison. And I will make sure that we have two pump station, one at Scenic and Highway nine and one at the Pelton Intertide, which is right down the street from that. So they're very similar to what the design will be, residential neighborhoods. And if you would like to go out, I will, but I will definitely, yeah, I'll definitely order Sanvis to produce engineering data on the operational noise. Because it sounds like you have some background in this or you understand how to read this kind of information. I'm a retired airline captain, close enough, and a mechanic. Okay. I've been around hydraulic pumps all my life. Sure. And without taking, I don't wanna say extraordinary measures, they're noisy beasts, especially center people. And all of the neighbors, they're kind of intimidated by a parliament to your thing. I'm a cap, I'm like Secretary Captain, I'm a Navy Captain, I can talk in front of you. And so I do, but my concerns are, is are the startup noise, because everybody talks about running noise or they talk about construction noise, but nobody talks about those details. Like when that pump first kick, first that 15 horsepower motor kicks on and that pump starts spinning, if the pressure head is up high enough on the input, that pump's gonna catapult it. And that's why they start up under a closed valve. And then the automatic valve slowly opens so it doesn't catapult it. Before it shuts off, the automatic valve closes and puts a positive head. So it shuts down by the time. So this is not in any of this. So what's, it sounds like- And we can get together. Follow up discussions. We'll get together and show you what we have. Right. But you can then take back to some of your neighbors. Yeah, based on what you see and hear from Rick. Well, it's the forest springs area. Right. At least the forest pool area is there. It's probably one of the most popularly, heavily populated areas in North, North Boulder Creek. Simply because the houses are right next to each other. And this has the most environmental effect to, and I can think of five or six households within a hundred feet of that proposed station who are retired folks. And the noise complaints with the, with the contractor that's there, that was me. When I get woke up at 6.30 in the morning because of back up for us. That's totally what I said. I, you know, I can handle that. But the point is, this has already started. The process is, is creating a lot of disbelief and distrust in the, in the, in the community. And if you can't control the contractor who's doing work at your behest, then how are you going to control the process as it goes on? And that's, that's our concern. We don't get a piece of quiet as it is. And now we're going to have a pump station that's maybe going to take what little we have left and evaporate. So Rick has offered to have some follow-up discussion. I'd like to wrap up that discussion or tonight's discussion here and let him speak with you then. Afterwards. Okay. All right. I do see that. Yeah, it looks like Garrett Peterson who actually wrote the document wanted to jump in here. There is a section on operational noise, but it looks like it really just addresses the generator. It's very, it doesn't address exactly the pumps. I agree with the comment. But let's see what Garrett has to say here. If you don't mind. There's no operational noise. I was looking for that also. Yeah. Go ahead, Garrett. You stole my thunder because that is exactly what I was going to say. And, and so the reason why we did focus on the generator noise is cause that would be the, the maximum noise from the pump station. So we wanted to find out the maximum impact. And so with that being said, the project would adhere to the county noise standards. And so the noise standard for nighttime would be 60 decibels. And that's comparable to a normal conversation. And at night that could, that could be loud. You could hear that at your fence line. But like Rick had said previously, given the design of the structure and some of the measures that the building would have to reduce the noise itself, such as the structure itself is going to be a cement. And there'd also be mufflers on the vents. We believe that it would be below that 60 decibel nighttime threshold, which would be a requirement for the design of the structure itself. And so as far as meeting the county standards, we believe that this project would do that. I understand that. Okay. And if I can add real quick, I did pull up from the Redwood Park tank, which we had a pump station as well installed there. They did some conservative modeling is how they addressed it, but they said it was approximately 43 DBA from the pump house station. And what distance? That is at a distance of tank site property line. I don't know if Rick, you know what the tank site property line. 35 feet, 35, okay. It's a very small line. Okay. Let's have that discussion that Rick is offering after the, to look at an existing facility, which I think is the best demonstration of what we have. Okay. Thank you for that then. We have a motion on the table for us, Ollie. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Vice President Ackman. Yes. Vice President, I'm excuse me. Yeah, a lot of Vice Presidents. And we have to get rid of the mid-level management. So I'll take a denotion. Yes. Director Mayhead. Yes. Okay. Go to the pass. Moving on then. The next slide is the emergency construction management, emergency construction management contract with the Quail Hollow. Yes. Thank you, Mark. I didn't know that the district has been working on Quail Hollow Road. We just recently installed a large 12 inch distribution main and completed that project. And then when the atmospheric river rainfall storms came, the roadway failed around the pipe and in our trench, the district went out immediately and played at the road about 200 feet of roadway that caved in. Wasn't, I think it was our last board meeting, the board approved a TNM contract with Anderson Pacific to do emergency repairs to the roadway. Our district engineer, Josh Wolfe, was the project manager on that project who was a PE with his departure. We no longer had a PE on that project which we needed to design the underdrain system and submit to the county for approval and to monitor that construction. I went out and procured the services of ME, civil and structural engineering who has worked and does have contracts with the district right now like on the fish ladder and contracted with them to manage that project with a not to exceed $50,000. I'm asking the board to authorize the expenditure of time materials not to exceed $50,000 per project manager management with a failed waterline trench and quail hollow road in accordance with the attached contract. Okay. All right. Jamie, any questions on this? No. Gail, any questions on this item? Seems like it's something that we have to do. So, that's all. Yeah. Just one clear, is the contract been executed already or yes it has. Anderson Pacific was already on the project and working. County was wanting a plans to resolve the problem because of all the steel plates on the roadway and the road was getting worse in certain sections with the amount of groundwater. So, I executed this contract with MME and came to the board immediately. Because you're, the typical was like $30,000, right? That is my limit, 40. Was there a possibility of being able to do a $30,000 initial limit? I probably could have done 30 and then come back to the board again. But I didn't, I needed them to move right in and I needed to get this off the road. Yeah. That's why it's a $30,000. No, I hear it. Thanks. Is there any chance that this is gonna run over 50? No, I would think that it's gonna be under 50 because the county accepted the proposal from MME drain pipe that they put in. They have a great relationship working with the county and they've designed a lot of their drainage and Anderson Pacific is on the job. I'm hoping that we come in under the 50,000. Because the construction management part of it now is minor because we have a good diagram of what we're doing. It's just an undercurrent. This is principally to meet the county requirement that we have a PE on the job. For design, they wouldn't accept that design and that wasn't stamped by a PE. I don't blame them. Yeah, I wouldn't either. Yeah, exactly. I just, yeah. So to the point of the cost, this might be half of that. Could be or could for some reason it could be over that. You know, I'm not gonna, I mean, just from that protocol, I think we've had the number of these emergencies and I get that, but in a case like this where we could have done a 30K and a follow up if necessary, that's a better way to go from the point of view of following policy. Yes, I could have done a 30K under my limit and not bring it to the board and then I could have done a 20, but I do believe our purchasing procedure says that we you don't want to explain it. No, but you could have done the 30 and then if they needed more then you can come up with that. So because the policy doesn't, it doesn't want you to piggyback like that. Exactly. I'm just saying from a, I don't want to, I don't want to be an asset. Sagerly, you're right. Absolutely. Point taken. Right. Agreed. Ian, I do want to point out that we were doing all of this project management, construction management in house. We no longer have that ability. Josh's loss and the fact that he had a PE was able to do the design. And this is a design that's solid on the fly based on what we're seeing in the field and based on what we're seeing in the field, here's what we think as a PE or and then passing that front was correct. No. And I do agree with direct faults. You know, I mean, my urgency was to get this moving because we had the contractor already on the job from the other emergency contract that was approved by the board. Right. But do you have any feel that MME wouldn't have participated if it was? I think they would have. I think they would have. Okay. I don't see that. I just wanted to move through it. We've got so much going on right now and trying to cover projects that I understand. I didn't want to, yeah. I wanted to take care of this project and move on to the next. Right. But they would have. They would have. They would have been participating now. Yes, they would have. Okay. That's the other question. This was a question on the, we did approve hiring a construction engineer, right? The inspector. The inspector, right? Right. Is that, he's not a PE. He would not be. He was on that project with Josh. He was doing the day-to-day inspection and working on that. And Josh was being the PE and working with the county on that. So they were doubling up on that project. Hi. Can I just, this conversation for me raises the question about whether the emergency spending authority that we have allocated to the general manager is appropriate. And so not something that we can talk about here, obviously, but I wonder if we shouldn't think about raising that at some point. I think 30,000 sounds low to me. So it was five and we raised it to 30. So, I don't know. Something to address. Something to address. I don't feel to the meeting. Can we leave it as Rick, if you feel that you have the need for future, just put that on as a agenda item. There's, I think Jamie is suggesting before we, you need it another time. So think about that between now and the next meeting. If you want to. I agree. Okay. Well, we're going to go through this very shortly. I'm on the right. Exactly. No, we're going to do the same thing. Okay. Right. I don't think we're going to do it again. Then I'd like to make the motion that we direct the district manager to a point of my second. We're not directing the executed. We're directing, we're ratifying the contract. It's already, I guess, right. So that's slightly different language, but it's still important because it reflects the reality of where we are. Correct. Yeah. I agree. We're ratifying the contract. Ratify the contract with. With MME's civil instruction for the amount not to exceed 50,000 for the purpose of some project management. Of the failed potable water, main trench and quail holler growth. Second. Okay. Did I hear a second? Second. You did. So any questions or comments from members of the public on this item? Seeing none. Pauling. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Poles. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Moving on then to the next emergency contract. Being for the Blue Ridge. This is similar to the last one. And yes, I'll be asking the board to ratify a contract that I've already entered into. With MME not to exceed $50,000 for project management of the Blue Ridge water tank replacement project. For the attached contract. The district is in construction replacement of the Blue Ridge tank, which is a redwood tank located in the Blue Ridge Drive area in North Pole Creek. The district engineer Josh was project manager on this project with project inspection done by our in-house inspector. With the loss of Josh, we definitely need a PE on this project because of the fact there is considerable structural on the foundation and compaction. I'm asking the board to ratify this contract with MME not to exceed $50,000. Okay. This is pretty much the same. Instead of questions and issues that we had previously. Gail, any questions on this one? No, I don't see the point, it's the same thing. Almost. So just so I'm clear that there's, this is part of the 2019 project. What was it? It was part of the 2021 CIP projects. There's a Blue Ridge tank and there's several main. There's names. I thought the Blue Ridge was part of the 2019. I think it's 2021. It's 2021 CIP pipeline project. And I'm just dealing and the rest of the 2021 projects, all of the pipelines and so forth are in-house inspector. We'll handle those. We do not hit PEE on that. So he's handling all of the other parts of this. This is just for the tank. This is just for the tank because there is pipeline going in as well. Right, there's a lot of pipeline going in. It's a ton, more than a mile. Yes. Like mile and a half. Okay. Great. Thanks. Joe. Same. Basically issue for same comments. Jamie. Same thing. Okay. All right. I would comment that until we have a replacement we're probably going for Josh. This won't be the last one of these. We'll see. We're covered pretty well right now but I can guarantee you that I won't expand over $3,000 without coming in for it. Now that we've had the. Okay. We're using MME on both of these. That we need emergency contract on. Are they able to utilize forces since they're now doing two jobs at once for us? The jobs are both concurrent ongoing. For us then you have gone up to two different firms. Is there a cost benefit to the district having all of this with MME? Are they? Are they ability? Are they at all sympathetic to our issues at this point and why we're coming to? I don't think that has anything to do with price. I think that the sympatheticness is that they made staff available for us. And just for clarification, MME is also on the fish ladder as project manager. Okay. But they brought in an additional engineer in for Blue Ridge and the fish ladder doesn't take an eight hour a day inspection. The inspector who is a PE and the principal at MME are on the Quail Hollow project. So I think there's the sympatheticness is they made time available. I see. And I didn't want to bring some of the other contractors in because those are the ones that designed. They want to bring the design engineer on Blue Ridge and do their own work and so forth. So I was conscious of that. Okay. And I'd like to use the same language that I just did for the previous one that the director folks provided with ratifying a contract that we've already entered within MME civil and structural again for not to exceed 50,000 for the Blue Ridge water tank replacement project. Second. Okay. Second. Any comments from the general public on this? Seeing none. Okay. Holly. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Pulse. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Okay. New business. We now talk about the award notification for the Urban Community Dropper League program. I'm sorry, you missed one item. 4E. DWR funding. That is it. Oh. You said new business. So that was so weird. Oh, I'm sorry, that is under new business. Yes. Is it? Oh, I'm so sorry. Thanks. Okay. Yes. And the environmental plan program manager Troy Blanchard will present this item to the board. Great. Thank you, Rick. So the Department of Water Resources or DWR 2022 Urban Community Drought Relief funding opened in December of 2022 and proposals were accepted until January 31st, 2022. The program had a $3 million minimum award for applicants and a 25% non-cost share. And all award funds were to be spent by December 31st of 2026. The district submitted an application for a replacement of five redwood tanks that are currently leaking and undersized with 120 gallon bolted steel tanks. The application also included one polyethylene tank that was undersized and damaged in the 2020 CZU fire. And the grant total request was $4.5 million with a total project cost of $6 million. Tanks submitted as part of the application were outlined in the memo. And then each tank was costed out about a million dollars to replace for a total project request of $6 million. On June 12th, 2023, the district was contacted by DWR with the news that the district was awarded the full request of $4.5 million in funding for all the tank replacements. This is an informational item, but we're ready to answer any questions. Okay. Great news. Yes. Thank you. Any questions on this? Yes, Jeff. So we got the word on this on June 12th. Harley, is this in the budget we're going to be looking at tonight or not? It is not. I didn't think so. Yeah. The timing of everything just didn't allow to... So in thinking about the budget later, we need to keep in mind that there's four and a half million dollars more. There have been a million and a half a week I've just found. Right. Okay. Jamie. Under the environmental impact section, you mentioned that we need to do additional sequel analysis on, I assume one analysis for each of the remaining tanks. That's correct. Is that an additional cost? Is that a cost factored into the grant award? Is that... I believe we counted that as our cost share. So any money that we spend towards the project that isn't the actual construction of the project, I believe is what we're using as the cost share. So that's part of our 1.5 million. Exactly. Got it. Yeah. No, just to echo that this is wonderful news. Yeah, this is very good news. And I think this is like the, one of the last big grant determinations we were waiting for. Right. At another time, we'll talk about the pipeline not tonight, but I am interested in the pipeline. My only question this is December 31st, 2026. So I see we have to see clips complete for two, but not for the others. And what happens if we aren't done by December 31st, 2026? There's most likely an option for us to get an extension, but ideally we finish out the grant prior to that. Well, no, ideally, but as we've seen, we're still wrapping up a pipeline that was out of 2019. And I know the fire got the way of things and all that, but things happen and things take time. That's three and a half years more of us. Yeah, as soon as we sign that grant agreement, we can start moving the other pieces forward, like the sequas that are remaining or the reviews that are remaining for the other projects. The Felton Heights tank, we do have a consultant ready on board for Sequa. So we're just waiting right now to select that site. And that'll probably be one of the pieces that we need to work through sooner than later. And it's in process. Okay. And about how long does it take to construct each tank? That's probably a question that Rick would be able to answer better than that. The actual construction was quick. It's the Sequa and moving ahead and the bidding and all, it takes the time. I'd say public year, start to finish by the time we got water going in the tank, with construction season and so forth. Thanks for the quick, but everything else coming to that morning is very time consuming. But, you know, like Bloor's tank is already moving Felton Heights right apart. So some of these projects are already way in progress. We can start, we can start environmental and geotechnical on Highland and Echo. We can get that going right away as soon as we do adjustments to the budget. Yeah, just for the interest of full disclosure, I live right across the street from the Highland tank. So, you know, we'll probably need to revisit any conflict of interest type questions. I think we've talked about that before and determined there wasn't anything about it. I don't believe there is, previous council, but I did want to mention that. I'd like to suggest that we rename the Highland tank just in the interest of disclosure. Bob Foltz lives across from the Highland tank. Because you never know who is going to listen to the tank. Yes, Bob Foltz's tank. Yes, that's right. Well, we should name it the Raven tank because the Ravens like to attack it where they hurt themselves. And the Felton Heights tank. So that's really the only one that we don't have a specific site already. Right, the problematic tank site will be the Echo tanks because we have a very narrow property lot there and your traditional round tank, 120,000 will not fit. So we're going to have to take a look and maybe even relocate, which is never easy. So that'll be the problematic one that we should start investigating. Right. Actually, that's getting closer. Somebody just can't close the raisin. See, I know. Okay, yeah, because I'm, I mean, the money's great. The Highland tank will take quite a bit, as long as you're okay. You guys can move right in there and so on and these other ones. But the Echo tank is a very problematic tank site. Great. Anyway, great. I don't know who found this grant. Was that our grant writer? It was, yeah. So yeah, let's talk about pipeline for forever. As long as the grant money is flowing, we need to take advantage of it because it won't stay flowing forever. And we're in discussion looking for future grants right as we speak now. And one of the pipelines, the Lumpiqo pipeline, is one top of the list on pipelines. We're recognizing that one of the tags that this covers Blue Ridge is already in construction. What's the timeframe from assigning for accepting this? So I actually believe we were allowed to start spending prior to the grant award. Yes. I'd have to get that, the date, exactly. I don't have it right now, but. When can we start recovering? Ah, yeah, as soon as we sign the grant agreement, which we've already submitted the first paperwork, which was a docusign authorization. So now we're just waiting for the grant agreement to come to us for review. And then we'll have Rick docused on it. So it could be imminent within the next several months? Yes, I believe it should. I mean, if they're moving this quickly with these pieces, I would assume we'd probably have in the next month or so, the longest. Okay. Good. Yeah. Exciting. Yeah, a bit of good news on the financials. Yes. Okay. You weren't asking for any just informational recommendations on that, any comments from the general public on this, we can move on, that we have finished new business. We can move on to unfinished business. We're now talking the biennial draft budget for fiscal year 23 to 25. Okay. And the finance manager will present this to the board and public. Okay. So this is the final budget package for fiscal year 23-24 through 24-25 budget. I'm assuming everyone had a chance to review the full package. So I'll just cover the main highlights of that. And then we can go to questions at the end. So for the operating revenue and expenses, operating revenue for 23-24 is 12.6 million, 11.6 million, not including the fire recovery surcharge. And for 24-25, 12.7 million and 11.7 million, not including the fire recovery surcharge. Operating expenses for 23-24 is 9.8 million. And for 24-25, 10.3 million, leaving a operating income of 2.7 million for 23-24 and 2.4 million for 24-25. Or 1.7 and 1.4 million excluding the fire recovery surcharge. Non-operating revenue for 23-24 is 1.7 million. And for 24-25, 1.4 million. And we have total capital contributions of 10.7 million for 23-24 and 15 million for 24-25. The capital contributions are a blend of estimated FEMA reimbursements and also any capital grants. The capital and grants included are the Fall Creek Fish Ladder, our WaterSmart AMI Meter Grant, the IRWM Fire Hardening, and the DWR Brackenbray Forest Springs consolidation. And like we mentioned before, it does not include the most recent award from the item before, but we can do a budget amendment for that. Non-operating expenses, the majority of that is our Debt and Interest principal payments of 2.1 million for each fiscal year. Other non-operating expenses are for the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency, about 165,000 for each fiscal year, bringing the total non-op expenses to 2.3 million for each fiscal year. So the high-level summary shows a total income of 2.1 million for 23-24 and 1.7 million for 24-25, excluding the fire recovery surcharge, it'll be 1.1 million and 700,000 for 23-24 and 24-25 respectively. For the capital budget, for 23-24, we have 27.1 million. The majority of those are our loan funds or our loan projects or our FEMA projects and the grant projects and then the remaining are out of reserves. For 24-25, we have 11.8 million in the capital budget and for the statement of revenues, expenses and changes in reserves, in 23-24, we are estimated to decrease of 2.5 million primarily due to the capital project expenses exceeding any grant, FEMA or debt funding we received. And in 24-25, is an increase of 4.2 million primarily due to our anticipated FEMA reimbursements. Debt coverage forecast, you'll see the top one was the debt coverage forecast from the prior biennial budget for fiscal year 21 through 23 and the bottom is the proposed budget for 23-25. You'll see as of year three, fiscal year 25-26, we fall below the, if we exclude the fire recoveries recovery surcharge fall below the 1.25 debt covenants. And so with the rate study, they'll be looking into that and analyzing that situation. So the recommended motion would be the board of directors approve resolution, I guess to be determined for 22-23, adopting the biennial budget for fiscal years 2023 through 2025. Questions? Okay, I'd like to start with the members of the budget finance committee and start off with Gail as the chair of that committee. Gail? Sure. Well, first I wanna thank Kendra for responding to all of the input that she got from the board and budget and finance so that we now see as Bob has requested for quite a while, we finally now have the surcharge dealt with explicitly and I think that that's great. And also wanna thank both Kendra and Rick for taking the time to think about the capital expenditures and spreading them out over the next five years so that we have a little bit more of a realistic capture of what the activity there is going to be. So this has been a huge task and I think that Kendra and Rick and the rest of the staff have done a great job of putting this together and I thank you for it. Okay, Joe? So like Gail, I congratulate you on doing what looks like a very good job to me. You have digested multiple pages of comments from me, from Gail and from others and by and large, it all is represented in the work you've done. So I congratulate you on that. I would comment that the number one takeaway in my mind on this budget is that we're in trouble in two years, two, three years because we dropped below our loan covenant coverage and our gross margins, our operating margins drop way down. So it's crucial that we get the rate study done and we make whatever adjustments we need to make to bring this back in the line. Looking at this first next year, 23, 24, we still look pretty healthy but you move out there a couple of years and it's been budget. What you've given us as a tool is bringing the fire bill and saying, there's an alarm here, we've got to do something. Right. So. Okay. Jamie? Comments? I mean, I appreciate all of the work that goes into producing these documents. You know, I commend you for the thought that went into it. I think it reflects all of the conversations that we've been having for several years now. So thank you. Okay. Well, yeah, I would appreciate you answering a lot of the questions that I think everybody had asked, including myself. So we are, I think, making some real improvements in the budgeting. And I particularly like the start around creating those graphs and sources and use of funds. So I will have a couple of suggestions here about that once I a little bit to what Jeff mentioned. So Jeff was mentioning that we have a fire alarm going off in two years. Oh, really now? Well, I get that, but my point has always been about these budgets is that we have always had a fire alarm going off and that fire alarm continues to ring. And the reason that that fire alarm is ringing is because of our operating expenses. The trend of that, which historically has been well above inflation, combined with an operating margin that I don't believe we have as a group established what that operating margin needs to be in order for us to be sustainable relative to our infrastructure and capital requirements. That operating margin had been running at about three million a year. If you just look at our inventory and take the lifespan and all the rest of it, it says we should be spending somewhere around five to six million a year. And that is a big difference. We're definitely better than we were during the 90s and 2000s where darn little infrastructure spending was going on. Rates were held down artificially low, in my opinion, for political reasons. And it had nothing to do with running the business. It's better than that, but we are still well short of where we need to be. And so that fire alarm to me goes off every time I look at this and think about it because what I wanna hand off to the next generation, generations after that is something that's a lot more sustainable than where we are today. So that's, I appreciate you bringing that up, that fire alarm analogy. I just rang the bell a heck of a lot earlier and I've been ringing it for years. So I would comment that to be clear, what I was attempting to say and probably didn't say as clear, the alarm is going off now. In two years, the building is pretty well burned. It's been going off for years and the building's been burning a little less. Anyway, you know, Mark, I will take the time that I need to take to go through this. I agree, I didn't want to have Jeff interrupt me. No, no, no, in fact, I might have back and forth. I think that is actually something that we should engage in more often, actually. So that's great. I, one of the other things I asked for last time was about the cash flow report. Is that going to be coming, do you think? Or did I miss it? It's not in the budget, but I am working on a cash flow projection, which goes out five years and it'll have like a six month that I'll include in the status reports. That is really great. That is going to be huge for us to make sure that we don't run out of cash. Yes, yes, definitely. Especially with this whole FEMA shot. Right, yes, yeah. With respect to the, I'm sorry, I'm going to scroll through here, so it might take me a while to get there. With respect to what I saw was one of your innovations, which is the source and use of funds. The only comment I have about that is that we're conflating, operating in capital when we do that. And I'm not sure that that gives the right picture about the fact that we have really two different worlds that we operate in. And the fact that the operating margin flows into the capital budget in a way that allows us to sustain the loans and the other projects that we have that go on. Of course, now that's much risk by the fact that we've recently gotten a lot of grants, which is a huge thing, but conflating the two together, I'm not sure it gives the right picture to the community. And that's something that you may want to talk about with financial advisor or something like that. It's definitely moving in the right direction, having that kind of chart. And so I want to say big thumbs up for that, but the conflation part bothered me a little bit. And that just may be being a finance guy that's bothered me a little bit. Okay. I was a little confused about what our actual reserves were versus sort of what I call the enhanced reserves. So to me, the actual reserves is the cash that has not been earmarked for other things or is not a limit. And I wasn't sure I was reading this right on page 20 of 62 Okay. Is the actual cash that's not earmarked for other projects, not alone, not the FRS and all that, is that the combination, is that the 5.5 million and the 9.8 million? Correct. So that makes up our operating reserve, which is essentially just our general reserve fund that we can use. And then it goes by our reserve fund policy. So the number one would be the operating reserve, which is four and a half times our operating expenses. And then our compensated absences is at the 180,000. And then any remainder of that is put into the capital reserve. And but then there's also the restricted reserves that are earmarked for the specific, the only assessment district and any other debt like that. So, but that's actually like cash on hand. That's cash that we have absolutely no restrictions on how we'd be able to spend it, no loans associated with it, anything like that. So minus anything that says restricted, anything left over would be yes, the cash on hand that we can use for whatever. Okay. And then on the surplus reserves, I'm not sure that that's not a category that I'm aware of in the reserve policy. So that's just anything left over in excess of the, like project or the, what am I trying to say, the what's listed in the reserve fund policy. So if we're saying our operating reserve needs to be four and a half times our operating expenses, anything over that would just be put into like a surplus reserve for use of. Okay. So, but the capital reserve is currently substantially underfunded, right? Because I think that it's at two or two and a half percent of a big number. Yeah. So in the, in last year's budget or last biennial budget, it was based on 150 million. But now that the master plan was completed, it was reduced by the total replacement cost, which I think was about 75 million or something like that. I can't possibly be. So that, I mean, it was based off of the replacement costs in the master plan, two and a half percent. The 75 million was the replacement costs only for the projects, not for the entire system that we have, right? The entire system we have is somewhere closer to 400 million. Okay. Well, I, then I would need to. We'll need to maybe look into that. Yeah. I'll need to look back into that. And Rick, that may be something that I can talk about offline because I think I, I think I know where the 75 million came from. Okay. On the chart on page 21, the next page, this looks new and it looks interesting. Could you walk us through that? Yeah. So this is basically showing a reconciliation for the fire recovery surcharge and the amount of CZU related expenses we've incurred to date, the total we've received from FEMA and then the total fire recovery surcharge we've received from our customers. So in the first column in is basically all of the expenses we've incurred from the beginning of the event, the fire event through June 30th. So there are some estimated actuals in there. So with that, we've incurred for or or paid out $4.7 million worth of CZU related expenses. And that can be whether that's operating expenses for, you know, overtime for, you know, the employees going out for fire related events or, you know, non-capital items or capital project expenses and things like that. So that's the 4.7 million. The total we've received from FEMA to date is 475,000. So the net of that is we've spent out of reserves 4.2 million. Okay. I think I get that now. Okay. The other question I had is, are the numbers each year or are they cumulative? They look like each year. So the first column is cumulative from when the event happens. Right. And then the two other columns, the 23-24, is what we anticipate based on the budget spending in fiscal year 23-24 and then obviously 24-25. Okay. So it's about $15 million on line one, more or less. The reimbursement we're expecting to get from FEMA through the end of 25 is only about $8 million. No, $9 million. Yeah. Around there. So there's your cash flow issue. Yes. Right. So do we expect to get more than that? Yeah, we do. I only included what's in the budget, but there are projected to be more in future years. I just, I guess in hindsight, I should have included that. Well, no, no. But it's fine. I mean, I think for the budget, I mean, I'd like to see more than two years. You're right. But that's just me. I think for the budget part, the two years is great. When we start talking about these longer term things, reserves, FEMA, that sort of thing, looking at it longer might be helpful. But I get what you're doing here. It's very good. And yeah, I think I'm just worried about cash flow. Yeah, right. He says, yeah. Before we leave that page, I want to ask a question, rather than coming back to this one specifically. On the top line for CZU related expenses, we have on the order of, what is that about? About 14 million. So far, I think it's closer to 50. Excluding, is it about? Not an account. If that's what we've spent so far, exclusive of this pipeline, the cross-country pipeline, which we're throwing all kind of wild numbers around, how much more do we have? Because if this is 14 or 15, right there, we should be projecting 20 million before. No, that was all, we knew that was gonna be 40. Right, right. But let me address it to Rick. I found, how much? Do we have another 10 million coming in for that? Do we have another? I don't believe, I don't believe so, it's the pipelines that threw us. I think this covers probably most of the projects. Yeah, it covers. It covers a lot of pipeline. It does cover most of the projects except the pipeline. Right. And won't the rate study take it out five years, Kendra, or Pima? Well, if you're going for a five-year rate. Yeah, so what you're looking for additional years will be, I think we'll cover on the rate study. Yeah, but five years is the max, you can get one. Exactly, two to the team. We're gonna go for the max. But yes, that's your question. Yes, but the wild car here is the raw water supply fence. I understand that. Yes. Right. Other than that. Okay, yeah. You've identified. Yeah, I've identified. And if you haven't identified, we could put it in the theme anyhow. Yeah, you haven't necessarily spent it that you identified. Everything has been identified. Right. Now the FEMA funds are coming soon. Now we do have, obviously, this year's FEMA storm and projects that will add. This is just kind of the far, far, far, far, far. That's all. This is correct. Yeah, sure. Okay, sorry. Go ahead, Bob. Yeah, no problem. Again, that's great. On the property taxes, I know that there's a big hop. And I think that reflects the fact that our demographics are changing and homes are selling it. When they sell, they get free value to the market. And since I think the median home price up here is approaching what 800,000 and 850,000, that's a big jump if that home had been in property 13 for many, many years, like mine. Okay. On the salaries and benefits, number being substantially lower in 2223, that is due to a combination of open positions and retirements that have been replaced by people lower in compensation. Correct. More so open positions. Yeah, no, I figured that, yeah. Okay, let's see here. Oh, high school kids that would work for this. Well, funny you should mention that. Back when you could do that, I did work in our water system when I was a kid. I also like the, some of the context you're putting around the departments, headcount spending, that sort of thing. I think that's a really good innovation as well. This isn't directed to you because this question isn't for you, but it's still not clear to me what the community is getting now, that they weren't getting in 2016 for what is a very significant increase in headcount and operating expenses around there. It is still not clear and we have almost doubled our operating expenses since that time. And in fact, most of the rate increases the last two rate increases have gone to operating not capital. So, until we can answer that question, I have to say, okay, I understand the number and disclosing the number is great, but the quantifiable benefits are not explained yet. And I think that's a factor that should be addressed in whatever rate study we're doing and the rate increase that is coming. Oh, there might have been a typo on page 41 of 62. You have a supply treatment department. I noticed the title on the graph is Environmental Department. Oh, we'll see. Okay, I'll make, I'll take it. In fact, I think that's the case in all the graphs. Oh. Yeah, it seems like that got, or at least on the- Page 41? No, sorry, at least, no, no, I'm wrong. Just on page 41, it looks like that leaked through. Okay, let's see if there's anything else. Oh, yep, okay. Oh, on the capital projects, I think we also need to be looking at, which by the way, this chart on page 48 is good, but I think we also need to be looking at not only budgeted because a lot of the charts earlier on the source and use of funds was around budgeted, but also actions. What did we actually accomplish out of our capital budget? I don't know that we have ever received a report retrospectively looking at what capital projects were completed relative to what was planned in the budget. So it's great we have the budget, great we have the line items, big thumbs up, but now we need to take the next step. Yeah, so yeah, it's while it's not in the budget that we'll show up in the quarterly report where we can show what was budgeted and what we actually spent. And whether the project is complete. Okay. I think I heard you say that we're gonna hopefully get an answer on including the FRS money or not in the debt coverage for the rate study. Yes, yes. That would be important to know. And I think that was, it's okay. With all that said, I'm, I still, we're getting closer to being able to support for me to be able to support the budgets. Kendra, you've done a really good job on moving that ball down the field. And I really appreciate that, but I can't quite yet do it because of the other concerns I have about our operating expenses, where we're going with that and how that feeds into capital. That is still not good. And the fact that we don't have as a board or district what those target margins need to be to be sustainable to me is a big issue that has to be addressed very quickly, particularly when we're going back out to the community to ask them for more money sometime within the next few months. Mark, I just wanna sort of what you were saying as part of the rate study, I don't know if it's possible to consider this as part of the rate study, but it would be really interesting to get a bit more information about the way other water districts are navigating increased operating costs because we're not alone. Like this is a problem that is occurring across the industry as a result of rising operating costs that are largely out of our control. As you pointed out, our costs are not going up because we're adding lots of extraneous staff or something, we can't even fill the positions that we have vacant. So largely our costs are being driven by the cost of increasing energy, right? We have to pay PG and the same increasing bills that everybody else does, increasing costs for generation services because we have to keep running our generators every time the power's out. And there's all of these other sort of factors. And so I think that as part of that rate study we need to not just look internally at what our rates and costs are going to be over the next five years, but also look at like sort of generally in our area what's happening with other water districts. But that kind of begs the question, right? Because in fact, we are elected to address these issues and not sort of go, well, the entire world has got a problem and we can't do it. We have to do something about our distance. We are either going to, at some point, forthrightly address the capital requirements of this district through substantial increases and operating margin, or you're not. And if you don't, then we're going to continue doing what we've been doing for decades. Either we're going to rely on FEMA money for disasters, though at some point as our infrastructure gets better because of FEMA money there's not going to be as much of that. Or we're going to rely on kindness of strangers through grants. And at some point the strangers are going to say, we got our own problems to deal with. Or we're going to forthrightly address what our revenue and operating costs are going to be. When operating expenses go up, multiples of inflation over a historical period of time, that to me says we have an issue. And the fact that they're not under control, particularly when the last rate study showed operating expenses increasing about the amount that I would have thought would it be sustainable and would have increased our operating margin. We didn't do that. And the reason we didn't do that is because we didn't pass a budget for that five year period that we actually managed to. The rate study was sort of a, oh, okay, this is what we think. But we're not making a commitment. Why didn't we manage that budget over five years, Bob? Why? Because we didn't have the previous board that had this didn't pass a budget. They were doing year by year budgets. They didn't say, okay, for the rate study, we're going to come in and pass a five year budget that commits us to this level of operating expenses, this level of capital contributions, this operating margin, and these capital projects. That's part of it, but that's not the entire reason. And what you've been asking of us for years is to behave not like a public government agency that is subject to statewide regulatory code, but as a private organization. And I know the tropes about government needs to run more like business, but the fact of the matter is we can't run more like a business because we're a government agency subject to regulatory conditions. So hold on, I listened to you, hold on. So I think that the issue is that we need to understand within the envelope of operating agencies that are dealing with the same kind of conditions, what are our rate options that we can legitimately employ to address the kind of concerns you're raising? I don't see what they are, Bob, and I need someone to tell me what those options are because you keep saying there's a path. You don't ever introduce one. You ask the staff to figure it out for themselves, but we haven't gotten there yet because I don't think that the path that you believe exists actually does. So that's why I'm asking staff as part of the rate study if we can consider these questions that you raise. Well, that'd be great. By the way, I do believe that it's not my job to do operating budgets if the board wants it because I've been told in the past to stay out of operations. By this board, I'd like that, okay? So my thing is the board establishes policy. The policy must be achievable. The policy that you establish, you basically ask staff to go do what it takes to meet the policy. If it's achievable, I mean, if we want the staff to have the dry and pink elephants, they might have a hard time doing that. When you approach it from that point of view, then you're definitely going to get the right answer that you want to look for, which is there nothing you can do? Well, you can approach it. I don't believe that there's nothing you can do. You're not going to get the right answer for years. Until this district can articulate to the community what they're getting for a doubling and operating expenses over the last 10 years, what they're getting now that they weren't getting 10 years ago, that is a problem. And this community should not give this district $1 more an increased rates until that and other questions can be answered. Geez, I want to pay my taxes that way from now on. We have no way to communicate to our community what it is we are actually doing with the money other than say, trust us. So last rate study, we said, trust us, it's going to be 3.8% increase in operating expenses. We did not do that. Show us about Bob. I've heard a question from Bob and I've heard a question from Jamie. And I'd like to surface those questions to Bob's point. What's the district getting now? Or what are the rate peers getting now? Versus 2016, with the increase in staffing costs, but I think that's okay, but then Jamie is also asking, what can the rate study bring us in terms of what? I reject the premise of the question that Bob is asking. So no, I don't agree. And I reject the premise that I have to tell you what the operating expenses are. You tell me when the rates have to be sustainable as a district. That's the rate study, Bob. Bob's asking the question. He's asking, I'm not justifying this question. He's asked a question. That's fine. I hear you. I reject the premise of the question that he's asking. So I don't know if there's an answer to it. I don't know that there is either. I don't know if there is either. But there's a question here and there's a question here. You've asked, what can the staff get in a rate study to help us figure out where we're going as I think those are two separate questions. We're not going to get an answer to either of them tonight. And I would point out that I think the question that is in front of this board right now is does the budget that staff has presented accurately represent where we are financially now and essentially the consequences going down stream which we don't look very good of the current approach to everything. And so do we agree with this budget? We agree that this budget is an accurate budget. Yes. Well, not that it's accurate. For me, the question is not just it's accurate. I mean, I don't have any question about the numbers that kinders come up with. I never have on any of those. The question is, does this budget represent a sustainable budget for this district to address this urgent capital needs on infrastructure and the answer to me is no, it does not. It may be yes for you, that's fine. But for me, it's no. I agree it does not represent that. But what's in front of us now is what staff has presented as an accurate representation of where we are and where we would be as we continue on. It's up to the board to change the direction as you've indicated that there's a direction change that needs to be made here. It's up to the board to direct that. And I think for tonight, the thing we wanna ask ourselves is has kinder presented an accurate presentation where we are and what the consequences are down several years. And I think she has. Mark Gale has had her hand up for a while now. So I think. Thank you for pointing that out to me. I was gonna go back to her after. Yes. We've concluded this in-person aspects here. Okay. Good with that. I would like to hear from Gale also on this. I guess I would echo, first I would echo what Jeff said. And I think it's entirely unrealistic for Bob to think that you can somehow pivot on a dime and somehow reflect that in a biennial budget. If you wanna make major policy changes about reserve levels and other things, those are decisions that have to be discussed in great detail and they're not something that you can implement overnight. And so I would go to what Jeff said that what we have in front of us is a budget which I think does accurately reflect the situation now and any implications down the road. To answer Bob's question, he does this every time and I guess I just get so tired of it, is that this increase is pretty obvious where this comes from. One thing is during that interval, we added Lompeco. So to think that somehow you can add a large number of users in a system that is ancient and requires a lot of repair and update without an increase in headcount is totally unrealistic. And if you look at the jump in headcount since 2016 that it happens around the time Lompeco and since then it's been much a shallower increase. The other Jamie has already pointed out is that we are subject to a huge number of unfunded mandates. And I mean, one that Bob, you and I are involved in is Santa Margarita. This is not something that, you know it costs us something on the order of $160,000 a year in administrative costs plus a significant fraction of Rick's time and Carly's time. And this is not something that is because we're being inefficient. This is a task that's been added to this. Another is the increasing standards for water quality for environmental controls for the level at which environmental stamp that both the environmental standards, the fact that virtually every time we turn around everything requires some kind of CEQA study. And so those costs are increasing. So to think that you could somehow just magically have our expenses go up by inflation is rude. And so I wish you'd stop making that argument and would do something that, you know would be at least somewhat more realistic with what is going on. Then to Jamie's question, we are somewhat limited in what we can ask the great study folks to do. In other words, there's a lot of questions that we might all have, you know that what are other people doing? They did, for example recently do the Santa Cruz rate study. So they're familiar with that and they're picking up Soquel Creek. And so I think that an informal way they can they're very aware of what's going on regionally but whether we can actually ask them within the scope of the contract that we have right now to do anything formally to try and answer the question, Jamie. I think we maybe need to formulate it a little bit more carefully and go back to them. But certainly when they come on, what is it? July 13th meeting that, you know that's a question you've posed to them in a general way. And then we can go from there if there's things that we feel it's really important to understand. Okay. I'd like to hear from anybody from the general public, I'll come back. I need to respond right away to Gales particularly because she said ludicrous and all the rest of them. And so I apologize, but I'd like to do that. And I asked for your communities forbearance on that. I've heard this argument before about my ego being the one of the primary reasons for the significant increase in operating expenses staffing in 2016. I won't use the same word because I do think that gets into personal, not policy. But Long Pico represents about 12% of our current rate base. And the square miles associated with Long Pico I think is even less. In addition, Rick himself has said when I asked him this question the Long Pico system was at least equivalent to the general average of the San Lorenzo Valley water district in terms of quality and what kind of repairs that it had to do other than the tanks, primarily the tanks. So to think that we would have to increase staff by 40% to handle a 12% increase in subscribers to me is a big question mark. Really? I would have to say as at a business level that that doesn't seem to make sense to me. Yes, and by the way, I don't believe I have ever said that operating costs shouldn't go up. I think I've said they should go up at a particular multiple of inflation, which coincidentally is about the same number that was in the last rate study. Which if we had done that over the last 25 years would have resulted due to the magic of compounding an additional $30 million of operating margin that we could have applied to urgent capital infrastructure requirements. A simple one to one and a half percent lowering of the rate of growth and the operating expenses leads to huge benefits down the road. And I've been asking for this actually for many years if we had started this in 2019 we would have been well on our way to increasing that operating margin in a way that wouldn't require trying to make a change on a dime, which I've never advocated for either. So, at some point, this board and this district have to tell the community what they're going to do to address the actual infrastructure costs associated with that and what that rate structure is going to be. Historically, this board and district have not done that. So you can't have it both ways. You can't say, Bob, you need to be showing us how you're going to change the operating expenses while not showing on the other side what you're going to do under your plan to address the capital infrastructure of this community because this board has not done that historically to any level of satisfaction. Okay, I'd like to hear from anybody with the general public comments on this aspect. I see Jim Mosier. Can you hear me? We can, though. Yes, I just want to add, I'm on the budget finance committee as a citizen member and I want to add my thanks to Kendra and the staff for putting together this project. We are definitely in difficult times. I just wanted to bring up one other thing about this issue of the operating expenses. At the budget finance committee, I asked about how we handle the staff component of capital expenses that we have. What particularly came up for me was that Carly's time working on issues with all the environmental issues that arise in capital projects is her time charged to the capital expense budget, but I heard back was, well, we just don't do it that way. So it won't be showing up in the budget, but there's this reality that when we have so much capital projects, both from the fire and the floods and also from the long-time maintenance needs, that a lot of the staff time that shows up in the operating budget is actually going to the capital projects. So as we increase the capital needs of the district, we're going to see operational expenses go up, even though it's really to deal with these capital expenses. So I think that's just something to keep in mind as we go forward in looking at the operations budget. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anybody else from the general public on this? Without the creek again, sitting here and listening to this, I don't hear anything that's unusual in terms of whether government or private sector. You're talking about cost increases, you're talking about operational costs and inflation and everything else. And my question is, is a lot of other bigger organizations do things slightly different. I will ask, and how many acres of property does the water district control as far as you have fenced? This isn't a conversation, but you can make your comment, please. Well, it's kind of all above. I'm trying to make a point is you're talking about your operating costs. You pump water during the day, at pondering on as necessary 24, 7, 365. What are your electric rates during the day versus electric rates at night? I'm shooting myself in the foot because that pond passed me on a red night. Because if you're getting your electricity during the day, you're paying a lot more money for the electricity than if you were pumping water at night. And during the day when your water usage is highest, why aren't you reverse using some sort of generation process to feed back into the electric grid? All of your, I got two minutes. All of your tanks, what are on the roof of your tanks? Do you have solar cells on the roof of your tanks to supplement your pumps and your electricity or sell it back to the grid? That's what San Luis Reservoir is. It isn't a recreational, it's a storage battery. They pump water into the reservoir at night and they run it back to the turbines and they generate electricity during the day. Not saying this has to be that, but thinking outside the box might buy you some margin until more federal money comes or whatever comes. But it seems to me that this is the same. I've been here since 1981. And materially nothing has really changed up here except a few more people. And I hear talk about the aging infrastructure and the processes that you're using. Okay, that's a given, some of it's antique. I mean, Joe Cohn lives across the street from me. He says, you guys don't even know where all the water pipes are. All right, that's an understandable thing. But that doesn't mean that you can't approach this from a slightly different perspective and figure out a way to maximize what you get for each dollar spent. You're gonna, if it costs you 10 cents to pump a gallon of water, that's just an arbitrary number. But if you pump it at night, it costs you a nickel. To me, that's a no brainer. But there's a lot of other things. This county, as far as I know, does not have any commercial solar on it. You go to San Benito County, all the farmland in San Benito County is being converted into solar farms. You go out into off of Highway 33. There's a solar farm out there that's got its own high-tension towers. So solar electricity in the areas where it makes sense actually makes sense. And if you use that just to offset some of your pump costs during the day, and if you fill your tanks up at night, you're not using a high dollar electricity and you're using solar to supplement what you do need. And unlike, say, I'm not an engineer and I just know what I see when I see out in the world. And the thing that I hear is very common. Okay. I think I've heard of common spirit. One quick comment I'd like to make. Okay. You may have noticed that as we are replacing various tanks, we invariably make much bigger tanks. And currently, we only have a couple of days worth of storage in tanks. That's most time of year. Yeah, depending on the time of year. So one of the things that having bigger tanks does is it enables us to pump at night, which is exactly what we're doing. But having the bigger tanks is a key to that. And storage is the story. You mentioned earlier that we use time of years to program all of our tanks. So, okay. Thank you for your comments. Okay. Then we have a budget in front of us. I agree with Jeff's comments earlier, but I think this budget appropriately reflects our current conditions and where we are at. I appreciate the work that in particular Kendrick and Rick have put into this, but also the budget finance committee in general and the comments that they've provided to get us to this point. This has been the third or the fourth round of discussions that we've had on this. And I think each time we've moved this into a better framework for where it is right now. So with that, I would like to move to the board of directors with proof of the attached or the resolution adopting the biennial budget for years 2023 through 2025. One second. Okay. Holly. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Falls. No. Director Mayford. Yes. That's your passes. Okay. Moving on then to the next item, the ad hoc report on the recruitment for general manager. Director Hill is prepared to give this report. Okay. Since Jeff put together the memo for this, I will go forward with that. Okay. So we all know that general manager Rogers has announced his desire to retire and that an earlier board meeting or selected Jamie and me, Director Ackerman and me to be an ad hoc committee to explore the process and look at what we need to do to go forward. We've had several meetings. We've met with Rick. We put together a series of questions and criteria that we would use to look at recruiting agencies and subsequently a letter was sent out to I think what 17 agencies, 17 agencies to solicit proposals for recruiting a new general manager. So with 17 requests for proposal out, we received three valid responses. One of them, GMP consultants, we rejected primarily because almost all of the work that they do is in Washington state. They have very little experience as we could, at least if we can tell in the state of California and familiarity with people in California and our rules and regulations here. So we narrowed the field down to Ralph Anderson Associates and Kauffman Associates. Jamie and I held conference calls with principals of both companies for our long interview, our long interviews. Both of those firms have experience recruiting for public sector jobs, particularly in California. After talking with both of them, we have concluded that Ralph Anderson Associates was the best choice. We believe that the president of Ralph Anderson Associates would be more personally and directly involved in the recruiting process. President of Kauff Associates conversely gave the impression that he was planning to delegate much of the recruiting process to a subordinate that we met, but who had very little to say during the interview. We were more impressed with the thorough approach described by the president of Anderson for recruiting someone who would be an excellent fit, not only from a resume point of view, but from a cultural and cultural fit and someone that would provide a feeling of confidence for the district. And I have to thank Jamie for this. We noted that Kauffman Associates has a number of positions listed on their website as open that looked like they've been open for an extended period of time, nine months, 12 months, more than that. And Jamie called them on that. And the explanation we received was, oh, well those positions have been filled, but they haven't reported for work yet, and we're leaving them up there in case somebody doesn't show up for work. And we thought that really was kind of a bait and switch approach to running a website listing positions that don't exist at this point. And we got the impression this was indicative of a lack of attention to detail on their part. So we are recommending that we retain the services of Ralph Anderson Associates of Rockland, California to provide the recruiting services for hiring the district general manager to replace Rick Rogers upon his retirement motion. I moved that board direct the district manager to retain Ralph Anderson Associates of Rockland, California to provide recruitment services for the district general manager position as described in Anderson's proposal dated May 18th, 2023 for the fixed fee of $32,775, including recruitment services on all related expenses. Can I hear a second? I will second that. Yes. Jamie, since you were part of the Sadhawk committee, I'd like to see if you have anything to add before I go to Bob, myself, of course. I think Jeff's done a really good job of providing an overview of the interviews. It just came down to what we thought was the best fit, the person that we thought was going to be most directly involved, the person that we thought was going to be most expeditious. She seemed to have a real path to getting the job filled in three months. And as Jeff pointed out, they made lots of noise but they didn't seem to have a lot of success or at least I can't tell from looking at their website what that success looks like. So I support the motion with my second and we're happy to answer any questions. Okay, all right. Bob, I'll go to you. Sure, yeah. I mean, sometimes in those websites, the positions open as a way to sweep in. Yeah. Prospects, they can switch. Well, it gets their database. Let's put it down. Yeah. I mean, we know what they were doing, that's the response we got was not. Yeah, if they're not gonna say, hey, yes. Does it build confidence that they're filling the positions that are being listed with them quickly? Well, I mean, that's a different question, obviously, but and so their fee, if I, that I read it right, it's 25,000, that was six feet. And so we're, it'd be a, we feel, we collectively would feel the value of the additional 7,000 for something. Yes. Did they provide you with sort of a list of positions they filled and how long it took to fill them? Both agencies provided us with lists, both of them had an impressive list, but how long it took them to fill them? I don't recall that the list actually sent them. Yeah, no, it didn't have the actual timeline for the complete. And so that's why we asked the follow-up question because they were making the case that they had filled, you know, a really significant number of these kinds of jobs at this level recently, which sort of surprised me, frankly, because I'm kind of aware of what hiring conditions are right now in public agencies. And when I went to their website, their website didn't really support what they were, what they were suggesting to us. So I just don't know how. You're saying they, which one? I'm sorry. So I was asking a general question about either one of them. Did either one of them provide a list of positions and how long it took to fill? Because to me, I don't recall, as long as we had a list of positions we knew had been filled, but I don't recall that we asked them about how long it took them because they're saying three months to fill this. Right. I mean, I would sit there and say, first of all, I think that's pure BS. And, but they can prove that by giving a list of positions and how long it took to fill them. And if it came out to be an average of around three months, then that's great. So I mean, I would say my experience with these firms is they're all a little, yeah, Google Flames, yeah. Not my first one, but I'll give this. I didn't have mine. Quick search. So what happens if they don't fill it? Do we, is this a payment up front? Is a payment on completion? Is a payment on production of a district manager? What's the term in that? I'm sorry. Is this a fixed fee regardless of their success? No, no. The fee is based on the successful identification of a candidate. Successful identification of a candidate or that they fill the position? I see. That's an interesting nuance. I'm sure it's a one-year guarantee that they'll refill it the second time. Okay. I understand that's their included. Okay. Their work out. I just want to. We have a list here. Yeah. All right. Following kickoff and finalization of recruitment brochure, $9,835. So they have the brochure at that point. So basically what we're saying here, I just want to make sure I'm clear about this, is that they get paid regardless of whether they perform or not. Well, but they also say that they will continue performing until they get the person. Right. So they don't just stop after three months. Okay. So after how long it takes and when it's time, they're going to keep going. We're going to keep going. So after the closing date, $9,835 after finalist interviews, $9,835 and upon placement, $3,207. So we get progress payments as we're going here, but they don't stop after and the contract will reflect that. But they're on the hook until they're on this position. Yes. And there's a guarantee for one year. Yeah. First candidate doesn't work out. For free. I didn't see that. In terms of identification of candidates, did you guys talk at all about their process of doing that, including identification of potential people in the area? You know, Santa Cruz, San Diego, Monterey, at least San Mateo, Santa Clara, that sort of thing. Because there are people I think that are in the area who might and who are familiar with the San Francisco Water District, that might actually be strong candidates. Yeah. Yeah. So they have a process for doing this. Do they ask us who those people might be? Yes. So the... We will have a meeting with them and cover those issues. Thank you. That's what I was going to say. They plan to not only meet with staff, but they want the candidate that we are suggesting we select as a board will also orchestrate meetings with each individual member of the board to get more information about who you think that she should be looking at, as well as any thoughts about like, you know, the process, the type of candidate, the right fit for the district. So yeah. Okay. Well, three months from their lips to God's ears. Yeah. I have to see the move. I think three months is probably optimistic, but very much so. But to that point, one of them says three months, the other one says four months. No, I know. We're down to one of these two that is one of the two of the best. Both of them. This is a very tight market. Whether it's three months or six months, this is the fee. No, no, I get that. I just want to make sure we're all, we're all good, we're all good. At the end of the day, Jamie and I felt the one group was our professional, yeah. Thanks. Longer than, okay. And justified the value of that, justified the increase in fee. Yes. Gail. I would just echo that I thought Jeff and Jamie did a good job of vetting these people and they explained why they made the choice. So I agree with it. Okay. All right. I'd also like to say thank you to Jeff and Jamie for getting us to this point. It's never fun. What's that? It's never fun. Thank you for dealing with this on fun. I did have one of the questions. This is wonderful. Okay. Did you all talk about community involvement in this process as well during the ad hoc committee? The last time we did this, there was a community involvement component. I don't think we really addressed that. I think what they brought it up. So she brought it up and asked us if we would want to have that. And we said basically that we assumed that we would want to have some kind of opportunity to introduce the, you know, maybe top two candidates to the board and the community. And that we would come back to that with a recommendation from the board about what that looks like. When we get to the point of having candidates that we want to introduce. Yeah. I think there was actually a more formal process of the last time. Not necessarily the manager, but not you there because I wanted to be clear. That was a formal process the one before, but it was just, it became very, very political. Well, and I recognize that, particularly since I was involved in it at the time. But I still felt there was value in having more of a community. And it wound up with the community pick, the individual, the community pick, the board pick the different one. It was... And they made the community may have been right. I don't know. It was just a union support wasn't it? Okay. A few questions that I could. In Ralph Anderson's proposal, they list district resources required by the proposal. And it's a political list of about 10 things that they're asking us for. It's on pages 84, 185 of the agenda. When do we, how quickly do we need to address all of these things? Fast. Well, fast. Yes, yeah. So, I think by Christmas, I think you have a lot of things out. How fast do you want? Basically, the first thing we have to do is reach an agreement with this person, with this company. And then we'll address all those issues in the process of reaching the agreement. Can I just say that the consultant is not going to reject the opportunity to find a general manager for us if we don't have one of these items, like an educational or whatever, right? It's just that these are the things she's saying. If we can furnish these to her, it will help her to move more quickly. Most of this is information that goes in for sure. It goes into the advertised channels. They're going to want it pretty quick. I love the world-class part. That was very good. I also want to reflect that I was impressed by the experience, or the list of candidates that Ralph Anderson provided and where they were placing those individuals. They went through and they called out utility related experiences. The other firm provided candidates that they provided, but it was for city manager, general manager, city government, exactly, it was much more broad in general. Their proposal costs looked to me like it was more generic. They could have given that to them. This one was tailored more towards the utility related environment, which to me was saying, okay, they were paying more attention to what we were asking for. That's exactly what Jamie and I felt overall. I also am noting that it looks like people use them over and over again. They weren't just one and done. They went back to them for other positions. Okay, all right. Then we have a motion on the table in front of us. But before we go there, since we mentioned his name several times here, I wanted to ask, Rick, thoughts, comments, anything from your perspective in this? Given, no, not really. I don't, Ralph Anderson has been a go-to firm for a lot of public agencies. You've got a good firm. And, you know, I'm just probably supporting what we had on this. I think we should come back and agenda this transition. Well, I don't believe that Brown Act allows to discuss transition tonight with this item, but I think we should agendize transition because now that this is in motion, I have things to do in motion to start my retirement with PERS and so forth. So now that this is in motion, I think we should discuss transition so I can do what I have to do. And, you know, with the loss of our district engineer and the loss of district council, both, you know, long-term employees, there's going to be some type of transition that, you know, just for me to walk out the door in two months or three months, I'm happy to do that, frankly, but I don't know what that would do to this person to start off would have one heck of a... And you don't want to just have them in the caves as you're walking? Well, I mean, that's definitely, you know, that wouldn't hurt my feelings, that's my frankly, but I don't think that's the best thing about the district. But on the other hand, you know, the manager is the manager and that person needs to take the reins and run with it. So what we should agendize it and talk about it so I can move ahead with my plans. Okay. Okay. So we have a motion and a second on the table in front of us. Public comments, right. But with that, do we have any comments from the general public on this? Yes. Okay. My name is Rick Moran, I'm from Bedelogh. This is awesome, awesome. Rick Rogers deserves a smooth transition into retirement. To help facilitate that transition, the ad hoc committee should and plan for the possibility for the need for an ad for an interim district manager. Rick has been an interim district manager a few times and I'm sure he understands the importance of preparing for such a possibility. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else from the public? I see none. So Polly. President Smolley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Fulce. Yes. Director Mayhood. Director Mayhood. Did she leave? We lost her. You really lost her. She's still on form and she might be just muted. She might be. Can you hear me now? Yes. Yes, sorry. Yes. Yes. Push and passes. Okay. The consent agenda. With anybody wishing to pull anything from this. District reports, committee reports. Any questions on that? Jeff. Okay, Jamie. Well. The budget finance committee, no. Gail. No. Next meeting. I'd like to bring up the question. We do have next meeting on the last part of this agenda. It's right after the 4th of July week or after the 4th of July holiday. I do have a lot of staff out that week. And we do have some board members that won't be able to make the meeting. I am going to read. We couldn't piggyback it on the 13th, if it was real. For you. Yeah. We have a lot of pressure being made. That's what we're going to do. But it doesn't check out. Right, for the holiday. It doesn't work good. And then we have the workshop right after which I sent out the rough agenda for that workshop. We used to not even schedule it because of exactly this week. Yeah. Okay. And just before we adjourn, I do want to thank Kendra and the management team and Josh to put a lot of effort into the capital part of the budget. Kendra, you did a fantastic job. Sort of the management team. A lot of changes and a lot of information. She worked tirelessly on that budget and trying to meet the needs of the board and the community. And thank you to the staff for being able to get this to us in a timely manner after the loss of Josh, which realistically now has only been two weeks ago. So I commend all of the staff for that. It's greatly appreciated. And there is a, Ollie, you want to, is there a memorial service being planned? There is a memorial service, more like a celebration of life is being planned for July 23rd. It'll be held at his parents' home in Watsonville. But we don't have any specific. I think it's a suggestion that when we make our motion to adjourn meeting, make our motion in Josh's honor, that's typical in my world. So I'd like to move that we adjourn this meeting in honor of Josh Wolfe and all that he meant to the water district. Here, here. Thank you for that thought. Do I hear a second? So I don't know if that's a motion, but. It was a motion. It was a motion. Yes. Then yes. 904 is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.