 I have 530, Olly, I'd like to convene this meeting of the Board of Directors for the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for February 16th, 2023, Olly would you take roll please? President Smalley? Here. Vice President Hill? Here. Director Ackerman? Here. Director Fouls? Here. Director Mayhood? Here. District Manager, are there any additions or deletions to the closed session agenda? Yes. I would like to remove item A, the public employee's annual performance evaluation from the closed session agenda. Okay. Okay. Oral communications regarding items in the closed session. I see no one from the public in attendance. So I think we can move beyond that. Yes. Okay. Well, given that, I'd like to adjourn to the closed session then. And we will see you there. Yes. Hi. It's 630. We will get information from Olly at a later point as to the list of movies. So I'd like to convene this meeting of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for February 16th, 2023. Olly would you take roll? President Smalley? Here. Vice President Hill? Here. Director Ackerman? Here. Director Fultz? Here. Director Mayhood? Here. Rick, are there any additions or deletions? Staff has none. Open session. Staff has none. Okay. Okay. Oral communications. This is for the, this portion of the meeting is for the public to bring up any items that are not on the agenda for this evening. Does anybody from the public have anything that they want to bring up? I see that Jim Mosier has his hand up. So Jim. Can you hear me? Yes. We can have a quick question. I've been very curious about what the next steps will be about replacing that pipeline, whether we're going to put it underground or not. And I just thought we would have had a next step by now since it was, since we've had the two opinions. So I just wondered when the board and the staff was going to let the public know what's going on with that decision. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Jim. Since this is not on our agenda, we can't discuss that this evening, but I think it would be appropriate Rick, for you to bring that back at a subsequent one. Yes. And we're getting close to coming back to the board. Okay. Good. Thank you then. Moving on then to the precedence report. I have none this evening. Thank you. Rick. Moving to unfinished business. The first item is the quick base and water company. Yeah, so it'll be a joint presentation and I'll let, I'll let Gina kick it off. District council kick this item off to the board. Jim. Thank you, Mark and Rick. I was asked to co-present this item with. Because of our status as the designated co negotiators for the district in connection with big base and water company. Potential consolidation and of course the board will recall that in. November of 2021, roughly 18 months ago. Use the board direct authorized the district manager to explore the possibility of consolidation. Following its extensive damage in the CGU wildfire. At that time, you authorized the district to expend limited resources to explore feasibility. Including various barriers such as legal barriers to consolidation and to determine in particular consolidation could be accomplished out the district. Without the cost being borne by the district's existing customers. We have since that time. Well, I should say the district staff has since that time been evaluating the state of the base and water company facilities and the costs. And it would entail to bring the system into compliance with state water quality regulations. In August of this past year, about six months ago, the board formally designated Rick and myself. As the district's negotiators and. We and other representatives of the district have in that, in that capacity have participated in a number of meetings with stakeholders. Including the owners of the water company. The PUC, the state waterborne and the county. And despite these, these fairly extensive efforts. We as the negotiators and staff have not been able to identify a path forward for consolidation that protects. The existing district customers from absorbing the cost of consolidation, which may be substantial. And there's additional information about those potential costs presented in the background section of the memo and Rick may want to further as well. But I'm just going to state the staff recommendation before turning it back to Rick. I think the point is that the board by motion directs the district manager and staff. To suspend efforts to evaluate a potential consolidation based in water company and he designate the manager as negotiators. Okay, thank you Gina. Rick. Anything that that. I think district council laid this out pretty well. The memo stated, we do not see a path forward at this time. And this would also sunset the district's emergency and other support that we have been giving big Mason. Okay. Thank you for that. I'd also like to recognize that the board did receive a letter from county supervisor Bruce McPherson that expressed the county's viewpoints on this. They recognized that. The city of San Lorenzo Valley water district has put a considerable efforts into us like this for those efforts. County also indicated that they have spent considerable amount of time on this. But they are no farther along. Enable in getting to any kind of a solution or seeing anything from the state on that. So, with that said, I also wanted to reflect. As a board member, I participated as the board's representative in a number of the discussions with both county and state, starting in about December of 2021. Since that time, I have not been able to hear anything from the state as to a viable path forward financially that they could provide to the district on how this consolidation might happen. So, with that, before we go out to the public to hear any comments that like to hear from members of the board. Any comments that they have regarding this or questions. Start with Bob. Just a quick follow up our efforts with Bracken Bray and for springs will continue unabated and unaffected and correct. That is correct. That's very important to make sure we, we let that be known and in those cases we do. And in case there's, there is a funding path that that we can see to support those efforts. So, it's not like we're saying we're going to do nothing in the wake of the fire but but there is some issues around big basin water. I mean before the election, the recent election during the election and after the election I've made it very clear to the people that of our community that I did not support investing district resources their money into this effort. Without there being a funding mechanism for this from the state the feds County somebody. And I'm consistent in that position I don't expect to change that position. For any reason going forward. This has to be resolved in a way that does not put our district constituent communities on the book for for funding. I did have one other question, Rick with respect to cutting off the emergency support that we've been given with that also include for example the water filling station that we put up periodically when big basin water does have issues supplying water. I would not recommend taking that down. It's very little expense to the district, and it is a vital water supply to those folks. I do believe that they're back in possible water so we will take it down but we wouldn't hesitate to put that back up. Well that's exactly what I want to hear because I think it's you know water is life and and we're going to continue to be good neighbors in that respect. And we've we've done so I think right from the beginning. So, people can can count on us for that too. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I would echo many of the things that Bob said and it's it's regrettable that we're in this circumstances where we haven't been able to elicit from the state. Commitments that would make it possible for us to move forward. And I think it's right that we adopt the motion that's here because I know that the staff has been spending a lot of time. Evaluating things. We've been spending the time of our legal counsel, which, you know, all these things cost us money and distract us from our other activities. And yet there's been no progress. And so there has to come a point at which we say that's enough it's in the. All court of the state and other agencies and that we simply cannot be the backstop or big base and water company anymore. Thank you. Jeff. So, I'm the newcomer on this issue here. But I think it's important that everyone understands that our district has had a number of mergers and consolidations over the recent history, but every one of those has had either the rate payers of the group that was joining us. And I think that's important to understand. So, I also am in favor of this motion. Jamie. I'm not going to surprising when I say I'm also in favor. I just want to say, for the record, I don't think, you know, there are very many big base and water customers that are on the call today but even though this is, you know, the end of our ongoing process to try and find a path to consolidation, you know, as a as a resident of the valley. I remain open to helping support on a personal basis any, you know, needs they may have in terms of, you know, outreach or engagement or thoughts about you know how they might continue to make their case to the various authorities that will be able to help with this. So I just, you know, want to say that to any residents who might be watching right now or might might tune in and watch this later. Okay. Now I would like to hear any questions from members of the public. Before we go out to that, like to get a sense of the number of individuals that want to ask questions or speak on this subject. If you could use the raise hand function. So that we could see that. Seeing one only. Any questions that come up from either Jim Moser or subsequent ones would like to address at the end of the discussion. So, Jim, go ahead with your questions. Jeremy. I don't actually have a question I was expecting there'd be a fair number of people from from the big basin to be here and talk I just want to express as Jamie did as a citizen of the valley I would really like to help those folks up there. Deal with this problem. And I totally agree with what the board is indicated they're going to take in the staff that we have to step out and hopefully by us stepping out of the process that might put a little more pressure on the county and state to actually get engaged here because this is just really unacceptable to let these people in this situation and it's there's a lot of responsibility to spread around but I feel like the district has done everything reasonable to try to be a positive neighbor and I and it just makes me sad. That's all. Thank you. Okay. Seeing no other commenters from the public. We have a motion in front of us. As read by district council nickels. To direct the district manager and staff to suspend efforts on evaluating the potential consolidation. I would like to make that motion. Second. Okay. Holly. Will you take a vote on this. President Smalley. Yes. Vice president Hill. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Mayhood. Aye. Motion passes. Okay. Moving on to the next item of the fall creek. Fish ladder. Rehabilitation project. Yes. The district engineer will present this project to the board. Josh. Thank you, Rick. This one's fairly straightforward. We put the fall creek fish ladder rehabilitation project back out to bid. We received two bids. From McGuire and Hester and sibling reconstruction. Siblin Reed was low at just shy of 2.4 million. So we're going to move on to the next item of the fall creek project. I think the staff recommends that the district award. To sibling Reed and have provided. A recommended motion. With that, I'll take questions. Okay. All right. Questions from the board. Gail. I don't have any questions. Okay. Jamie. No. We have two bids. How many did we go out for? How many companies did we ask? I directly emailed. Over 25. Almost 30. And made contact with a couple others via phone or. Folks that I ran into in other situations. So we have been. Scouring. The landscape trying to get more bids on this. Any reason. You. Would care to. To speculate on why we got of all those contractors only to. I think that the compressed timeframe scared a bunch of people off because of the arm. And I think that. I think it's important for the department of fish and wildlife requirement. That work within the stream be completed between June 15th and October 15th. And I think that the access to the site being as limited as it is. And some of the challenges about how it's going to have to be built. Are scaring off some of the others. Okay. Thank you. Well. You know. Even even more so with, without everything around it. So I, you know, while I'm disappointed that we only got two. I am happy that we got somebody with whom we're not familiar with. I mean, as you know, Josh, I'm very interested in expanding the. Portfolio of companies that we've worked with that may in the future. Want to continue working with us and continue bidding on things. But I do have a lot of work that we have to do. So thank you for your efforts and getting that. I had one other question, which was. At one point in time, I think we had a grant. To cover part of the cost of this. Is that. Is that grant gone or is that grant still available to us. To the best of my knowledge, it's still available. Rick would know better than I. And how much is that grant? Do you want to give a. Amount again. Sure. It's a million dollars that we have towards the project. So we're on the hood for 1.3. Plus, yeah, plus a little more for the project. And Rick, in terms of the. The 2019 COP. How are we doing on that relative to what we are spending on the lion pipe. And now this, are we still okay? Or are we going to have to dip into other funds? I do believe we're still okay. We still need to come back to the board with. A modification amendment to the resolution because we pulled one of the projects. And we do that million dollar grant on this. And we need to factor in the FEMA money for the lion. So we'll first, we'll bring an update on the, on those projects to the budget committee and into the board. Including the, including an update on the numbers and where we are with that. Correct. Correct. I think that's really great. I'd like to, I'd like to see that. But yeah, I mean, I'm. And I'm Josh, I'm glad you checked them out. Given that they are new. So, so that's great. Let's, let's do it. Okay. Two things that I wanted to bring up regarding. The project experience. I looked at their project experience sheets. And to me, they were impressive. The project experience that they provided to us. Were for fish ladders. Some of them ranging up to seven and eight million. So they were interested in this project because they have experience in this type of work. And I think that's great to have a contractor that. I hope knows what they're doing with this. And from the project description sheets, I believe that they do. So Josh. Good job in getting a hold of somebody like this. And getting a bit from them. The question that I have is on their overtime. We asked the question about, can they do the work in standard hours? They said, no, they want to work up to 10 hours a day. And some Saturdays. I don't expect that 10 hours a day are going to be an issue. Will Saturdays. Given the fact that they're in a neighborhood. Do we anticipate or is that. Likely. I don't anticipate there being a large difficulty. But it will require some additional time spent. Largely by myself and engineering staff. In. Some PR work. In making sure that the folks who live in that area live on Fall Creek and to a lesser extent. On farmer across the bridge. Are aware of what's going on and. Have a good picture of what we're doing, why we're doing it and how long it's going to take us. Okay. Good. Okay. Before we go out to the public. I'd like to put the motion on the table then. We direct the district manager. To enter into a contract with slide bond read construction. For the construction of the fall Creek fish ladder rehabilitation project in the amount of. $1,365,720. Not a penny more. Okay. Thank you for that. Wait, is that legally binding? Cause we might. I think that was tongue in cheek. Very much. The one that was in the packet. The motion that has read. Yes. Thank you. So, uh, with that motion, do we have any comments. From the members of the public. Yes. I see none. Um, Holly, would you take a roll call, please. President Smalley. Yes. Vice president Hill. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director falls. Yes. Director May hood. Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Moving on to new business. Um, first item is the policy for the return to in person board and committee meetings. Ask district council to present this to the board. Thanks, Mark and Rick. I'm going to do my best to summarize the recent changes to the Brown act in a way that that kind of simplifies them. Um, it is as easy as to understand as possible. Um, unfortunately, that's not. The easiest thing to do because the new changes to the Brown act are a little bit convoluted in terms of how they deal with remote eating situations. So I'm going to start briefly by jumping back to before COVID. Um, when the Brown act did have certain provisions to allow for teleconferencing, which includes teleconferencing, by the way, in this context includes any kind of remote. Um, use of remote meeting technology so it can include video conferencing, but it's called teleconferencing in the, in the Brown act. Um, so we had before COVID. Uh, provisions in the Brown act that allowed. Board members or committee members to participate remotely. For any reason, as long as a quorum of the board or the committee was present within the within the boundaries of the district. And at the location where the board or committee member wanted to participate from, they posted the copy of the agenda and make it. The location open and available to the public. And the agenda itself has to describe what each of those remote meeting locations is. Um, so those provisions haven't changed. They still continue. There's additional provisions that predate COVID that allow for remote meetings to be conducted under emergency circumstances and a declared state of emergency and those provisions. Still continue with COVID. What happened is that, um. Initially, we had a governor's executive order that. Modified the Brown act to allow for remote meetings, and then we had AB 361, which codified some of those changes. And that's what we're operating under right now is AB 361. Which allows board and committee members all to participate from remote locations. Subject to certain limitations. Those provisions are no longer going to be applicable. At the end of February and the reason for that is that the governor has indicated and we don't have any intel to the contrary. We fully expect that the governor is going to. Lift the COVID state of emergency declaration at the end of this month. And when that goes away, the basis for continuing to conduct. These fully remote meetings under AB 361 also goes away. Those provisions will still exist, but the basis for these meetings will be gone. So now we get to the most recent change in the Brown act, which is AB 2449, which was enacted in September and took effect at the beginning of this year. AB 2449. Retains some aspects of AB 361. And it creates sort of a new regime to allow that would allow board and committee members and members of the public to participate in remote meetings. But it puts a lot of red tape on the ability to do that. And in particular, some of the red tape that I think may be important to the members of the board here include that. There are only certain reasons why a board member can participate remotely. And those are. Define terms, just cause and emergencies. And I think to kind of cut cut to the chase on what is not an emergency or just cause. Business or personal travel wouldn't qualify for either of those categories. So district we're conducting meetings under these. AB 2449 provisions, or I'm sorry, partially remote meetings under the AB 2449 provisions. And board members would not be able to participate remotely where they have business or personal travel or any reason that isn't one of the specifically defined reasons in this new law. Another aspect of AB 2449 if we're taking advantage of those new provisions to conduct remote me partially remote meetings. Some of the board has to be present in a single location within the district's boundaries. And there's also a bunch of rules that apply to what happens if the district were to experience a remote meeting disruption. And one of the most significant disruption provisions is that if a board member is participating remotely and the board member, the board member must participate by video. Video is lost, which in our experience happens, you know, not infrequently because of various types of internet disruptions and so forth. Then the board member can no longer participate in deliberating on items on the agenda. So there's more nuance to it than that, but I think that's kind of the short version of what it looks like to conduct a meeting under AB 2449 because of the limitations and the red tape that go with the AB 2449 provisions. The administration, the district's administration committee and considering how to implement a hybrid meeting policy for post COVID recommended and this is the policy that you'll see in the board packet. There's a recommended and approach that sticks to the old pre COVID provisions of the Brown Act that, you know, folks who've been serving on boards longer will be well familiar with where, for example, if a board member is going to take a business trip, then you would tell where you're going to be for the board meeting. That information that's put in the posted agenda and then you have to post the agenda at that location and make it open to the public. So that's the approach that's been taken in the proposed policy that you see in the packet that's been developed with a lot of input from the administration committee. A few other features of this proposed policy that I'd like to point out and I'm just scrolling down to it now if you'll bear with me. This proposed policy would make, would affirm that it's the district's intent to make meetings accessible remotely to the public to the maximum maximum extent practicable. However, it's not, it doesn't sort of guarantee remote access for members of the public. The primary meeting location would be the district's physical meeting location. And because we're not using the more complicated remote meeting provisions of the Brown Act, if the video broadcasting gets lost during a meeting, the district would not necessarily have to stop a meeting because the meeting, the physical meeting location is the primary meeting location. A quorum would be present there and the district has the opportunity to participate in the meeting from that location. So the remote access is being provided as a courtesy and not as something the district has to have in order to proceed with the meeting. I think that's important to understand about this proposed approach. And it also contains a number of provisions related to staff and consultants use of remote meeting technology because of course the Brown Act doesn't dictate how staff and consultants participate in meetings. And so some guidelines have been created around how that would occur in sort of the hybrid meeting environment. And Rick may want to speak to what the district has actually done to outfit the hybrid meeting room for use as we transition for this new approach. Well, we have been preparing two offices in our what we call the Johnson building. And the address is 12778 highway nine in Boulder Creek, which is adjacent to foster freeze to have to go back in person they operate building just as a large enough to to conduct meetings. We are doing a setting up a hybrid situation where we're using zoom technology for to have these meetings video or teleconference as well as in person. We will be setting up a YouTube account. So we can store these videos online. We hope to be ready. For the March 2nd board meeting we're still getting parts of our technology in doing a supply chain delays. We will be putting out some information to the board with the Wi-Fi address of that building and some other instructions before the the board meeting in March. So there's there's more to follow on that subject. If it would be helpful, I could actually walk through quickly through each element of a proposed policy, but I will share a mark with that be helpful. I believe I read the policy and the board has had in my mind sufficient time to look at this also. I'd rather solicit questions from the board at this point. Since I take it that we've all read this at this point. So, with that, I'd like to hear first from Jamie Ackerman who chairs the admin committee and has been heavily involved in developing this policy. So, Jamie, you want to comment on it further or any questions. I don't have any questions. I think Gina has done a good job of laying out the reasons for the recommendation. I, you know, would also say that as a as a board member who joined the board during the COVID pandemic and so under the emergency authorization rules. It would be helpful, just in terms of like, okay process. If there was something Gina that you or Holly might send the board members just feel like, okay. So, so now you have to be away somewhere here's what you need to do contact Holly and give her these three pieces of information. Whatever just like sort of a clear, you know, step by step so that we when it does come up we don't miss anything important that would make our ourselves legal in terms of hosting the meeting but you know we can cross that bridge down the road so I support this. I think, you know, hopefully it'll be the best of both situations for our community and that they'll still have hybrid access, but we'll have a little more flexibility as board members. Okay. I like your request to Holly for a procedural description of what we need to do, but also when since we understand that this is supposed to be an alternate address if if we intend to have a meeting from there needs to be part of the agenda packet. So, if you can lay that out for us Holly as board members, so that we can see that. Okay, Jeff. So, so to follow up on Jamie's suggestion and you're passing that on to Holly. I think this should be something like a checklist rather than a long bunch of long legal paragraphs. You know, step one step two step three check check check and get it done. I'm not particularly happy with any of it, but that's either here or there and I will follow through with what needs to be done. Okay, thanks Jeff. Bob. I believe you were involved in developing some of this last year. Yeah, I mean, given the fact that our legislature is still struggling to enter the 21st century. And apparently doesn't travel for business. You know when Gina laid out the changes that were made to the Brown act to support. Remote meetings became very clear that that wasn't something I could support, given my upcoming work schedule and travel and the like. So I was advocating for exactly what has come to this board, which is the ability for the public to participate remotely, as I think that is the key aspect of this particular policy change. You know, so that so that people don't have to leave their house if they don't wish to and drive, you know, half hour each way in the dark usually going back to be able to attend the board meeting and I think that is a really important part. And frankly, to me, it is even more transparent than what the original Brown act was attempting to do. So, so that's why I'm definitely in support of this. I've because I just find it so quaint. I mean, when I was in Germany participating for some reason not a lot of people there wanted to come into my room and and engage in a board meeting I was shocked actually by that. They probably couldn't read what I posted in the hotel. So, yeah, it's it's just quite quite comical actually. In that regard, I did have one comment though I wanted to make about this. And that is while I'm okay with a policy that says that, you know, the meeting is at the board facility. And that's where the quorum is. If we were to lose power or broadband or what have you on a very significant issue, like for example, a rate increase, proposed rate increase or budgets or something like that. I would advocate for a delay in the meeting unless there was some really super urgent reason why we couldn't have a special meeting or or reconvene at a later time. And I think the policy gives us the flexibility to be able to do that. And I would definitely support that kind of a decision that if the board were to make that under those circumstances. So, yeah, let's, I can hardly wait to see the room. Rick, thank you for your guys doing all this work. I think I'm the only board member that actually has participated in a meeting. So it's going to be very interesting to see all of you. It was four different people, but the last happened. So it's going to be great to see all of you in person when, when we do get back together. I share Bob's horror at AB 2449. I mean, when I read it, I was just dismayed. It's like, who are these people. They must all live in metropolitan areas and don't understand any of the challenges that those of us out in the hinterlands might have or have real lives. But I, so I, I want to compliment the admin committee and coming up with what I think is a very sensible and clearly written policy that I can support. I just would add that I think it's really important that we did this because if we'd actually followed AB 2449, I think that most of our public members on committees would have quit because the demands for them to will have to come up with that. Basically, there was some terrible family emergency as an excuse to be remote would have just been too much. So I think that this is a good compromise and hopefully most of our public members can continue to participate as we value them. That's all. Okay, thanks. On the public members side, though, I think there's still the need for a quorum locally. It's just, it does give people that can't make it for whatever reason, the flexibility to do that. Yeah, and also Gina to just to make you feel better to Santa Margarita groundwater agencies attorney had exactly the same reaction that you did, which was this was quite, quite not a workable policy to the changes that were made for, quote, hybrid meetings. So we're not alone in our disdain for this new law. Jeff. So I should make myself clear that my earlier dismay about this whole thing has nothing to do with the committee or Gina's understanding of it or any of that. My, my beef is with the legislature and like Bob, I have conducted global meetings around the world. I've hired and fired people across continents. Managed teams that were global. This is just ridiculous. I think those guys up in Sacramento have. They've never been out of town. You've never been out of Sacramento. I think I don't know. Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox. Okay, Jamie. I just have to get on my soapbox for just a second and say that I work for my professional life for a joint powers authority similar to Santa Margarita board it's it's different jurisdictions. We have 37 board members that we have to get together in person starting next month. Whoa. Oh, good luck. That's a 19 quorum. Okay. Um, so given the distasteful nature of what we're being presented with. I don't see any way around this. I'm not happy with it either, but this is what the state has presented us. This is where we have to be going at this point. So given that I'll put the motion out there before I solicit comments from the public. We adopt the attached hybrid remote meeting policy attached to this memo. And staff included in the forthcoming update to the board's district policy manual. I second it. Okay. Do we have any comments from members of the public. Okay. Alina Lang. Go ahead. Hi, Alina Lang, Boulder Creek. Let's sit on the committee. So I had some questions, you know, COVID isn't over and actually COVID cases here on the rise in Santa Cruz County again and I'm just curious what safety measures have been put in place to protect those that are participating in these meetings or committee meetings for both of them, like ventilation, you know, appropriate room size for the number of people they're going to be there. I'm just wondering what steps have already been taken. Rick, can you address that for us? Rick, you're muted. Elaine, I'm sorry I didn't hear you. Could you repeat that please? Did we lose you already? No, I just had to unmute it again. So I was just asking since COVID cases like are again on the rise here in Santa Cruz County, like what safety measures have been put in place to protect the people that are participating in the meetings like ventilation or room size or anything. Gotcha. Okay, I'm sorry. The room will be quite large for committee meetings. The desks that we purchase are, I do believe they're two and a half three feet that we can separate so you're not bunched up. We feel that we'll have good separation. There's at least two doors for ventilation. It's a big room. In that sense, you know, with masks, I don't think there'll be any issues and obviously we'll take the disinfection type precautions. It is a much, much larger room. It's pretty close to the same size. I don't know if you've been in the Santa Marta Rita room at Scott's Valley Water. It's a pretty good size room, especially for committee meetings. We'll have social distance. Okay. Thank you for that comment, Rick. Mark Wilson. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. So I appreciate this too. As a member of the admin committee, there was a question that came up at our last meeting that I'm still a little unclear on the answer to so I wonder if Gina could just clarify this. It leaves open the possibility, at least the impression of one that a committee member could be part of a core and while attending a committee meeting from their home within the district's boundaries. And I'm wanting to understand whether that's in fact the way we will operate or not the way we will operate. Thanks. Mark, did you want me to. Yes, Gina, please. So the Brown act. Does allow when we're using the older Brown Act provisions as we are with the policy, it does allow for the possibility of multiple. Locate that the quorum could participate from multiple locations within the district's boundaries. I think to those would have to be identified as a meeting location. And the policies it's written right now does say that board committee members would be expected to attend hybrid meetings in person unless arrangements are made to participate telephonically. The presumption would be that. Board and committee members would participate. In person from the designated physical location within the district's boundaries. But the Brown act does leave open the possibility that the district could designate multiple locations within the district's boundaries from which the quorum participated gets a little unwieldy, but it is possible. Okay. Jamie, one of the comments. Yeah, I think that it's a, it's an interesting loophole. I mean, I loophole maybe is the wrong word or, you know, but I, I would want to know how much. I guess I don't really have a sense of like how much extra work and impact does this place on on district staff. You know, when people are participating from disparate locations because you know I want us to have the flexibility to do this but I also don't want to make it a burden. And so, you know, I, I was sort of leaning towards the interpretation of the policy that said that a quorum had to be together in person. If, you know, but an individual could be elsewhere. So, Mark. Mark, you're muted. We're getting reverb from somebody that's either has a radio on in the background, or a second computer. Could the participants please mute your computer devices or however else you're listening. Thank you. Sorry, Jamie. I think it was me and I'm sorry because I, there was something else going on in the background. So I think that that was coming from me, which is why it was difficult to hear. So do you need to repeat that? I heard most of it. I heard it and I guess I would dispute what Jamie said a little bit because I think we need to make it clear that we've written the policy in a particular way. To say that your expectation is that people will, you know, must show up and you have to have a quorum in one place is. I think that the way it's written is the way we interpret it, which, and we may say that we hope that there will be a physical quorum in a room in the Johnson building but that's not at all required by this policy. And so I just want to clarify that because I think especially for the case of committees, that may, you know, just, it may not be the right thing to do. I guess the other thing I would also say is that I would say let's adopt this with under the understanding that it can be changed. You know, if we after a number of months find out, you know, Holly says, Oh my God, this is just way to, you know, burden some or unwieldy to keep track of different people in different places. You know, we can come back and revisit this but I think the way it's written right now is good. Yeah, I also want to mention that I think it's great that there's flexibility for the staff I've been an advocate right from the beginning of my time on the board that it should be that that if there are circumstances staff wants to participate from home that they're able to do that I know people have families and home lives and evenings they want to spend maybe doing other things and I'm glad that this is in there so big thumbs up. Okay, thank you. And I want to reiterate what Gail said. The policy as written is what we're going by. I understand the intent of what we would like, but it's the policy is written that we will be going by. And if necessary, we will make adjustments down the line. This is going to be a learning curve since there's only one board member now who's been in public board meetings. Bob. And it was different back then it was all in one room. I attended a lot of those meetings crammed into that. But as board members, one has, so we will be on a bit of a learning curve at least for the next three or four months I believe and if we need to make adjustments down the line because of difficulties that we see, or other flexibilities that we see that could legally be built into this. And we'll go there. We're going to have to take that experiences first. So, okay. James has a stand up. Oh, okay. Question about the alternative locations that are identified on the agenda. When this does happen. Are they required to be open to the public. Yes. That's what I thought I thought. Yes. Thank you. I'm going to go to Bob's house whenever Bob's at his house for a meeting. I will be in my house for a meeting I might be in Germany. I believe that the policy does state that that locations have to be posted. Okay. We have a motion in front of us it's been seconded. Okay. Can you take a roll call vote on this? President Smalley. A very begrudging. Yes. Vice president Hill. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Mayhood. Hi. Okay. Ocean passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on. We received a notification from Lafko from Santa Cruz County Lafko commission regarding an election for the regular member representative. The election will be conducted by mail. There are two candidates. The first one is from Lafko Lather from Soquel Water District. And James Joseph Gallagher from the Parro Valley health care. We need to vote for one and the ballot is due no later than 4pm on March 24th. Okay. Thank you for that. So is the motion asking us to designate a representative to put this vote in? And that representative votes or are we to authorize a voting designee to execute the ballot on behalf of the two members is what I'm reading. Holly. That's correct. So we need to decide who, what the vote is going to be. And then the designee has to, and we also need to designate someone to do the actual voting. So there's two parts to this. What we're going to, who you choose to vote for, as well as who is going to sign the designee, who's going to sign the ballot. And I think, I believe that can actually be me. I can be designated as the person that sends in the vote that you make. Okay. All right. Well then any questions or comments from the board? Jeff. I don't know either of these people. So I have no idea. Okay. Okay. I move that we cast our vote for Rachel Lather, given that she's also part of a water district. Designate Holly as the person to send in our vote. Second to that the combined motion, it sounds like. Okay. Not too separate one. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, Rachel is going to be a good. Representing. Okay. Jamie. I was going to nominate Rachel if nobody else did. So it sounds like there's a broad consensus. I concur. I don't have any questions on this. I think the motion has been put out in front of us and seconded. Holly public public comment. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. Any members of the public to comment on this? I see none. Okay. Holly. President Smalley. Yes. Yes. Vice president Hill. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Fultz. Yes. Director Mayhood. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Moving on to the consent agenda. Are there any items on the consent agenda that anybody wishes to have pulled? Seeing none. We will move on then. District reports. The district managers report. I have two items to personnel items to report to the board. The first one we want to welcome Devin Jackson to the district as a new environmental planner one. Devin comes from the city of San Jose where he was a environmental specialist. He's also had past employment with the Santa Cruz mountain trails stewardship. He was a trail project manager there. Devin has a bachelor's of science degree in environmental management from Cal Poly. My second announcement is that we've done an in-house promotion of Jesse Geiber a 10-year employee to the water quality and treatment manager. Jesse's been with the districts like I said for 10 years. He was a treatment supervisor. He's been in that position for almost a year now since Nate left. He has a TE4, D4, and is a certified lab manager. So those are two changes that have been made. Yay. Well I'd like to say welcome to Devin and to Jesse. That's great. In particular the certified lab manager that's not an easy achievement. So congrats and that's great to hear Rick. Thank you. Okay department status reports. Questions on these if any. Bob you want to start? Yeah Mark did you want me to run through all of them across all reports? Yes. I don't have that many but I do scan the reports. Yeah go ahead. Yeah first question was on engineering report. Any news on the Fulton Heights situation? I can I'll let me answer that Josh. We have any communications with the property owner and we're looks like we're scheduling a meeting a week from today to tour the new site with the property owner and we're moving ahead working on that. Definitely keep us up to date on the Huckleberry Island main. Any issues with getting the easements? Well there are two different sets of easements if you will that we need for that main. One is on the south side of the river on the Howard property that they've already agreed to. We are finishing up the paperwork there on the bridge and the easements across the two breed parcels. We are still working on this. Okay on the Stewart Street main break as the county finished their evaluation of the extent of the slide and provided that data to the district. If they have completed it they have not provided data. But you don't know if they've completed it yet. That is correct I do not know. Have they given you an indication of when that might happen? They have not. Turning to the environmental report on the DWR Sustainable Groundwater Management Grant program the application submitted in December 2022. I'm sorry what were the target projects for that one? I believe that date might be wrong. It should have been 2023. That was the recent grant that we had the board for resolution for on the tank replacements. Okay gotcha. Okay that's one of the views was that. Okay and the other one that was just submitted the 2022 urban community relief grant projects for that one. Yes maybe let me take a look there Bob. That's the one I actually think I was referring to. So what was the 2022? It says DWR Sustainable Groundwater Management Grant program application submitted in December 2022. Is it a dupe? It might be. It might honestly have just fallen in there because that doesn't seem correct. The most recent one we submitted was the one that the board approved the resolution for recently. Yeah that's why I was that's why I was asking about it because I didn't recall. I thought maybe I was just having a senior moment. Okay no worries no worries. Next one on there sandhills habitat conservation plan. Please can you tell us that this is done? It is not done unfortunately but we do have the drafted chapters. We're currently waiting for internal staff review. There's just with all the storms and everything going on. It's been difficult to have operation staff and Rick's time to dedicate to that review of that document but as soon as they complete their review we'll be bringing it to the environmental committee so it is it is not held up on the consultant side at this point. Oh good that's the main thing that I was because this has been going on for seven years eight years. Right yeah it's been a good amount of time. It's been a long time and we could definitely use that report. Okay and then on the just a comment on the operation production comparison and this I think probably is for Rick but you know it would be it would be really great if we could get a at least for me my opinion that'd be really great if we could get a report that had the production and sales for a month on the same page and it would even be better if it was on the same graph because I know we have a forecast and an actual and if we could put production on a line on that would just be phenomenal. That way I could just kind of look at everything at once and see how we're doing relative to the production versus sales. And I think that is it thank you very much. Okay Jeff any questions? No comment no questions. Okay Gail hearing none seeing none Jamie. Okay I don't have any questions at this point yet either James. Yeah I'd just like to make sure everybody noticed that the flushing district-wide flushing is going to begin and that was highlighted in the report just want to be sure everybody realizes that. Okay thank you for that. Okay with that oh I do want to comment that during the closed session and I don't think we reflected that at the beginning of this meeting we have nothing to report on the closed session item that we discussed so the public can hear that. Okay with that I think we can adjourn this meeting without objections and I do have to say I'm sorry to say that this is our last official by Zoom meeting. Maybe you never know what Gavin's going to do. And you never know. Okay good night folks.