 I guess I'll do a quick, a brief introduction. Thank you all for coming to the Senate of the Valley Water District Board of Correctors meeting. We're going to start the meeting. We're not, we're not, we're meeting the meeting until we have a special order of the day of the oath of office for the new Correctors elect. The district secretary will administer the oath of office to the new board members. Would you all please stand and raise your right hand. I state your name. I'm Lois Henry. Do solemnly swear or affirm. I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the State of California. And the Constitution of the State of California. Against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. To the Constitution of the United States. To the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the State of California. And the Constitution of the State of California. That I take this obligation freely. To take this obligation freely. without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. Congratulations. The first step, as I'm sure you're aware in moving forward with today's meeting, is to elect a president who will also presently serve as the chairperson for the board going forward. Of course, you do not presently have a chairperson, and so I would ask that among yourselves you select someone to serve as an interim chairperson solely for the purpose of identifying a president slash chairperson who will conduct the rest of the meeting. But of course, the appointment of the president will require a majority vote of the board. So why don't we have Lois get that. Margot Kedema. You want to be interim? I would be happy to serve in that role. OK. You're calling for a nomination. Director Bruce, at some point before the session is complete, there should be an opportunity for public comment. Thank you. Would you suggest that public comment occur before board discussion or board discussion comes first? It's up to you, but it might be more orderly to have public comment first before the general board discussion. So be it. I would entertain public comment on the matter of the appointment of a board president or chair. Anyone who would like to speak on this matter, please identify yourself and limit your comments to brief remarks. And if you wouldn't mind, please come to the podium so that we can record it and hear what we have to say more clearly. Thank you. My name is Chris Stenia from Boulder Creek. And I actually really recommend that you elect Margot Bruce as board chair, as she is the longest, has the longest tenure on the board. Thank you. Hi, Lady Hannah from Long Pico. I also would like to put an order. And I have Margot Bruce in the chair since she has been on the board the longest. That's her turn on the board. Thank you. You know? If anyone else would like to comment, please come to the podium, Mrs. Briefley. I'm Bruce Hallow from Boulder Creek. Margot Bruce is the only board president to serve two chairs in a row. And many, many reasons why I hope that ex-president Bruce Stenia will be brief on this board. So I would like to speak against the proposal by Ms. Finney. Hi, I'm Dover Lowe from Long Pico. This election had the highest turnout in the SLB history, I believe. And in the county, most number of eligible people who could vote did register to vote. So I think this was a real mandate. So I would like to see one of the three new candidates take the helm because there's a lot of work to be done. And they ran on a very serious platform, and the people who would respond to it could at least be headed by one of them. Stereo, anyone else who would like to comment at this moment? All right. Thank you all for your comments this evening. Now I would entertain the conversation amongst the board. Do we need a motion? Yes, we do. I would like to now let the lowest interview for the board president and I'll second that. OK. Any further discussion? Just to clarify, are you just taking nominations at this point? Are you actually moving four votes on a particular candidate? We have a nomination and a second for Lois Henry. And I would encourage other board discussion if there's anyone else. And is there any way we can? I'm sorry for the interruption. Thank you. I will. Thank you for letting me know. All of you. OK. Thank you. We don't have microphones this evening. Sometimes we do, so we'll remind people to speak up. And thank you for asking. So we have a nomination and a second. And at this point, I think there's any board conversation about this. We've heard from my perspective, we've heard two members of the public in favor and two in favor of one of your candidates, the candidates from the recent election. Mr. Smallman. I don't know. OK. We've heard your second. We've heard your nomination. Lois, your name is in the hat. Do you have any comment? I'll be happy to do it. I've got experience. I would be welcome. I would welcome a vote at this time. Would you be ready to take a roll call vote on the motion and the nomination for Lois Henry for board show? Director Smallman. Aye. Director Brutus. Aye. Director Henry. Aye. Director Slyne. Aye. Director Pauls. Yes. The motion passes. Pursuant to the board manual, the president is the presumptive chair when present. So I think it would be appropriate to deliver the gavel to Director Henry to the new president. Thank you, with either. There's one additional item that's issued that's part of this special order of the day, which is to elect a vice president for the board as well. Two circuit assets. Well, I'd like to nominate Paul Fultz. I would second that. Any other nominations? Hearing none. You want to call for the vote? Holland. Is there any public comment? Sorry. Director Smallman. Aye. Director Brutus. No. President Henry. Aye. Director Slyne. Aye. And Director Pauls. Yes. So I go ahead and keep going. Are there any additions? Now I think we're going to move ahead and the secretary is ready to convene the regular, or the special board of records meeting at the center of the battle water district. Or do you want to clarify that? I do want to clarify that it is a regular meeting that was rescheduled to this date, despite the agenda of this special meeting. This is a regular meeting pursuant to the board actions that it does. Secretary, you can call the meeting to order. I'll call the meeting to order. Are there any additions or should we have a roll call? Yes. Roll call. Director Smallman. Here. Director Brutus. Here. President Henry. Here. Director Slyne. Here. Director Pauls. Here. OK. Now, are there any additions or deletions to the open session agenda? Staff has none. None? We'll have oral communications. You may speak on any subject that's not on the agenda. You have three minutes. Mr. Holloway. So I know there's another item on the agenda. Just want to make. What, sorry. There's at least one other item on the agenda about committee appointments. And I just wanted to make some observations about committees because I've observed this board's committees for many years. One thing I want to warn you about is that when you institute a committee, you institute a bed of ground-net complications, OK? So typically, you have several committees for a lot of the first one to finance, just pick one. Put two people on the finance committee, two board members. They can't talk to each other about finance anymore. They can't call each other on the phone or anything. They can never talk about anything in the subject, that subject matter, outside of a committee. And notice committee meeting that's public. That's a little bit of a complication. Furthermore, not many other board members can talk to those two about anything to do with finance because that would be a serial meeting and that would be a majority board that can't do that either. That's one of the problems. One of the other problems I've seen over the years is that committees begin to think, oh, well, we're in charge of this thing, finance, engineering, they think, oh, we're in charge of that. But committees are only advisers to advise the boards. The board's always in charge. But staff gets confused, too. I've attended many committee meetings where staff brings their getting direction from the committee. Even if all the committee says, well, let's come back next month with more information and bring it back in time, they're taking up staff time. And they're directing staff. So I'm going to warn you about committees. There's nothing that says you have to have committees at all. And maybe if I were on board, I don't think I'd want other people talking about finance, other people talking about the environment. What am I, chocolate? No, I would be participating in all of those discussions. So I don't know if the committees are your friend. The last board got rid of bill list total. They thought Terry Vier got a $125,000 judgment yesterday because he voted for a bill list one time. Well, I can straighten you out. He was in trouble because he had a conflict of interest. He had a financial interest in the interest of contract. That's where his problem arose. Voting in a bill list was just sort of a detail. I think you need to get back to voting for bill lists. That's just cowardly. The last board voted cowardly to stop voting for bill lists. And the last thing I want to say is the last time the board met in this room. Go ahead and finish your statement. Thank you. Last time the board met in this room three months ago, the old board approved a conflict of interest code. Conflict of interest codes do not go into effect until they've been approved by the board of supervisors. And I have not seen that on the board of supervisors agenda. It's been almost three months. So what's the status of the district's conflict of interest code? You didn't do a biennial review two years ago. You did one this year. But did it ever get submitted to the board of supervisors? And specifically, I'm interested in section 87200, which I think applies to board members. I think it was proven in court that it applies to board members. I think the conflict of interest code should reflect that 87200 applies to board members. And if we don't get this armed out, well, I think we better. Hi, I'm really a hand phone speaker. I'm more than happy to let you have a minute of my time. I'm only two. On your committees, since you brought it up, on your committees, I would really hope that the two board members that you put on your committees don't normally speak with each other on a regular basis, especially if they live in the same neighborhood. That way, there would be no appearance of conflict of interest on those committees. And I do think you need to keep committees with a citizen member to have citizen participation in the process that happens with this water board. It's completely transparent, but it's all we have to say for the seconds. I'm Kristen from Boulder Creek again. And I actually wanted to address a couple of items. One is that the new slate has committed to fiscal responsibility and transparency. And I have a couple of suggestions on those. One is that the agenda be published earlier. 210 pages is a lot to read, even if you read as quickly as I do, and even more to actually research and absorb and stuff like that. So having the agenda out earlier would certainly make it a lot easier for citizens who wanted to participate or who wanted to comment to know what was going on. Secondly, in terms of transparency, it seems a poor idea to me to actually make a proposal like to change the procedure manual and to vote on it six days later. It seems like that's a very compressed timetable. And it doesn't really give people a lot of time to put it out, read it, comment on it, stuff like that. So more time for that, I think would be a very good idea. Maybe to introduce it tonight and to vote on it next meeting. The second one is about financial, fiscal responsibility, shall we say. Doubling meetings doubles the cost. So having two meetings a month doubles the cost of meetings, which is fairly substantial according to the figures that were in the agenda. An additional $3,000 a month is not that this needs that. Hiring a consultant could be pricey as well. And I think that most of the people, most of the ratepayers in the valley would rather see district money going to infrastructure upgrades, thank you. Thank you. I wanted to make a comment about something that was brought up in one of the coffee chats. There was concern about, we can't hear you. I'm sorry, there was concern about where everything is. You have an inventory in the computer and the question brought up is can there be like GPS or where the pipes are in the pumps and everything in the system? And you mentioned that there is a program that serves it. Now I'm having a brother send me an email and say I'm here. So I think there's technology out there where you can use what's already free on the internet if it has GPS locations, say I'm at the pump and send a text back to the public and get the location so we could have it. You might have to manually enter that but at least you would have financial GPS information. I don't know if it will work, but it's free for the shop. Hello, I'm Schneider, I'm Pico. I just wanted to, first of all, congratulate the people, the new members of the board. Also a question that has come up repeatedly that I'd like the board to look into is if it makes sense to have an attorney from Los Angeles for this district. Thank you. First I want to just say that I congratulate the three new board members and I hope that we can move forward in a positive way. And I want to just speak to what I think is one of the most, if not the most important issue that this board's going to face over the next several years which has to do with climate change and protecting our environment and the light of the changes that we're going to be facing. Changing, going from droughts to slip to very wet winters, protecting the aquifers and educating people the water board needs a very strong program to help repairs understand the challenges that you're going to be facing over the next several years. So I want to just speak about briefly that the education program that I know during the campaign there were questions about whether that should be continued or just want to speak up in strong support for that program because it's not just providing a little bit of money for folks who are out there doing good work, it also is the link for the board and the water district to the right page. It has enormous value way beyond the small amount of money that costs. Thank you. Anyone else want to speak? Thank you all of you that came up and talked to us. We appreciate hearing what you have to say. So I guess we'll go on to new business. First item is a resolution of appreciation for Chuck Faulkner. Is there any comments or questions? I would move approval of the resolution of appreciation for Chuck Faulkner. I'll second. Okay, I have a motion. Do we second all of these or not? Yes, they're separate. Okay, I'll second it. So we'll motion and a second. Do you want to call for a voice vote or a real call vote? Is it in your purpose? A voice vote? Do we want to give them a comment on it? I asked if anybody wanted to say anything about it. Maybe they didn't realize I meant public. What do you do? Why are you recognizing them? Scott Stam, do you want to say something about it? Okay. Could you please call the vote? I don't know. Do you want to recognize them? Oh, can I have a comment? Oh, sure, I just, I couldn't hear him. I didn't realize he was speaking. He's an S4 member. Church, I recommend that you read individual resolutions as they've done in the past. Yeah, this is a short paragraph on each. That's a short paragraph on the district secretary. I need you to read each resolution. I don't hear it. Oh, I think that's what you're going to ask. Actually, I don't have a copy of this. Madam Chair, I wouldn't mind. You wouldn't mind. Okay. Would it be okay with you if I read it? Oh, please. Okay. This is a resolution of appreciation for Director Boffman. Whereas on December 18th, 2014, Charles Boffman was sworn in after being elected to the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, and whereas Director Boffman faithfully and continuously served in his capacity as a board of director for a period of four years in 2018 as the president of the board, and whereas Director Boffman began working with the district as chair of the Community Outreach Citizens Advisory Committee where he was instrumental in the district earning a transparency certificate of excellence and improving outreach to the public, and whereas Director Boffman was instrumental in setting the district up for a financially viable future to fund capital improvements and to build reserves, and whereas Director Boffman was dedicated to the proper management and protection of the district's watershed property and the environmental health of the entire San Lorenzo River watershed, and whereas Director Boffman was deeply involved in the Santa Margarita Groundwater Management Agency and its formation, serving as one of the director, excuse me, district's representatives and vice chair. Now therefore be it resolved by the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District that Charles Boffman be commended and thanked for his years of dedicated service and that he has the respect of all who worked with him and that his efforts and dedication will be sorely missed. Passed and adopted by the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, County of Santa Cruz, California, on the 13th day of December, 2018, by the following vote of the members thereof. You want a roll call vote? Yeah, why don't you do a roll call vote? Director Smallman. Aye. Director Booth. Aye. President Henry. Oh, aye. Director Swan. Aye. Director Booth. Yes. The next item is a resolution of appreciation for Director Ratcliffe. Are there any public comments? Just have someone read it and listen to my water read the whole thing for her two days. Thank you. The resolution of appreciation for Director Ratcliffe. Whereas on December 18th, 2014, Jean-Elizabeth Ratcliffe was sworn in after being elected to the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District. And whereas Director Ratcliffe faithfully continuously served in her capacity as the board of director for a period of four years, in 2017 as the president of the board, and whereas Director Ratcliffe began working with the district as a member of the Community Outreach Citizens Advisory Committee, where she was instrumental in the district earning a transparency certificate of excellence in approving outreach to the public. And whereas Director Ratcliffe was instrumental in setting the district up for a financially viable future to fund capital improvements and to build reserves. And whereas Director Ratcliffe was dedicated to the proper management and protection of the district's watershed property and the environmental health of the entire San Lorenzo River watershed. Whereas Director Ratcliffe was deeply involved in the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency and its formation, serving as one of the district's representatives. Now therefore be it resolved by the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District that Jean Elizabeth Ratcliffe be commended and thanked for her years of dedicated service that she has the respect of all who have worked with her and that her efforts and dedication will be sorely missed. Passed and adopted by the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, county of Santa Cruz, state of California on the 13th day of December, 2018 by the following vote of the members thereof. Any other comments? Okay, could you please? Director Smallman. All right. Director Roos. Aye. President Henry. Aye. Director Swann. Aye. Director Colts. Yes. Our next item is a resolution of appreciation for Director Hayes. Is there any public comment? Same thing. It's fine with me, I don't need to be told there at the time. That's a joke. All right, should I read it? Would you like to read it? Good. Thank you. Resolution of appreciation for Director Hayes. Whereas on June 21st, 2018, John Hayes was sworn in after being appointed to the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District and whereas Director Hayes faithfully served in his capacity as a board member for a period of five months and whereas Director Hayes began working with the district as a public member of the Budget and Finance Committee where he was instrumental in ending the Latika Surcharge and whereas Director Hayes was involved in setting the district up for a financially viable fund or future to fund capital improvements and build reserves and whereas Director Hayes was dedicated to proper management and the fiscal viability of the district as well as the environmental health of the entire San Lorenzo River watershed and now therefore be it resolved by the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District to John Hayes be commended and thanked for his years of dedicated service, that he has the respect of all who have worked with him and that his efforts and dedication will be sorely missed. Passed and adopted by the board of directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, County of Santa Cruz, state of California on the 13th day of December, 2018 by the following vote of the members that are up. Any comments? Could you please call both of them? Director Swann. All right. Director Gruz. Aye. President Henry. Aye. Director Swann. Aye. Director Pulse. Yes. The next item is a discussion of the board of directors policy manual. Yes, sir. Chair Henry and the board, the board of directors policy manual is in front of you that is required for review. The policy manual is lengthy and I anticipate considerable discussion. You might want to consider moving this to committee for thorough review and recommendations by the committee. It's totally your, it's up to you but I think there's a lot of changes being requested and it needs to be thoroughly reviewed by committee and board. I'm something to that as well. There would be nothing to prevent the board from completing its annual review by adopting this version tonight and immediately proceeding to consider changes. There's nothing about adopting, reviewing and adopting the current version going forward that would prevent immediate review and ongoing changes throughout the year. Well, I know I spent hours looking at this until I was blind. How, can we have some comment? Do you want to comment? Yeah, let me, I mean, maybe I have a little background because this item actually came from me and I wanted to get a little bit of oversight into why it was being brought forward. What I attempted to do here was focus on the areas of the board policy manual that would support this organization meeting. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, this organization meeting falls immediately after an election and things may change at that point. I think that's what Rick was trying to get at is there's a lot of things that are going on. So the changes, basically there are seven changes. I'll go through these in a summary fashion and then we can decide if you want to look at any of them tonight, none of them tonight, send a committee, you won't have to. That's entirely up to the board, right? This is only a proposal. So I'll be moving to two meetings a month with meeting starting at six p.m., changing from Sturges to Roberts Rules of Order, which is really more of a cleanup item since the Jurassic Parliament, the previous board, followed was a Roberts Rule of Order-based system. Modifying the order of business section to reflect current practice. That is the current board policy manual doesn't match how the agenda is being organized right now and so it was just cleaning that up. Enhancing the sections on the policies for public engagement and interaction to address related items in the 2018 grand jury report and by extension the 2014 report. In that case, there is substantial changes and so I opted for a wholesale cut and replace even though if you look at the language there's still a lot of overlap between the old and new. The fifth item was changing to summary minutes instead of action minutes along with some guidelines of what that means. And then probably an important point given that we're already advertising for committee spots for the public restructuring and commit primarily combining finance and administration and all of the flow down changes then to take place because of that. And then lastly, clarified directors are indemnified if they're performing their duties within the scope of their duties. That's basically the overview and it is up to the pleasure of the board how we would like to do that going forward. Director Swan, you have any comments? No, I agree with a lot of the principles of Bob's discussing the changes to it but I do agree that I think it's a little presumptuous to vote on it. Now even though we do have the opportunity to change it as we're doing that I would agree with the RICS assess but then we put it into a committee and let them review it more thoroughly to make sure that we're all happy with the suggestions, suggested changes. Thank you. I would point out that the administration and policy committee had made additional comments as had I, which were not reflected in the comments provided to the public or to the board. Only Mr. Fultz's comments were provided to the public and the board and I think that that fails the public in the slate's purported desire for greater transparency. I would very much encourage this board to take this back to the committee for a complete and fulsome discussion and for the changes that are proposed whichever changes the committee ends up deciding on that we allow our council to provide her thoughtful input on their legality and advisability and leave the details to the committee and bring it back at the future time. Again, that doesn't prevent the board from reviewing and adopting the policy document that stands at the moment and then forwarding, remanding to the committee any further discussion and edits. I agree with Director Swan. I really read the whole thing and I agree with most of the changes but I know I did feel that there was a little bit premature in it. I also believe that should go to the committee on reviewing the document. Well, I have other things that I saw here that I would like to see changed. I also know we don't have to reinvent the wheel that California Special District Association has policies cost $225 to get their all ream of policies. They're all vetted by attorneys. They send quarterly updates if there's a change in the law. And I really, I don't have a major problem with what Director Fultz wrote. There are a few tweaks as far as I'm concerned but I also think maybe it ought to go back to committee but I don't want it to be in committee for months because this has been going on for months. So, did you want to say something else? Yeah, just have a couple of questions. So it would probably be funny. Again, this was to be presented and it's important to the board to decide how to proceed with it. But I do have to ask the questions which is will we then be governing meetings by Sturges, not Roberts? Will we be reorganizing our agenda per the current board policy manual? And will we go ahead and appoint committees because we then will have another committee that may in fact get folded later. So I just want to make sure we're clear on what all of that means because tonight we are supposed to appoint committees, board members to the standing committees. As of right now that means a separate finance and admin committees. So that's fine but what it means is that if we do in the future decide to combine committees there might be some dislocation for people appointed. So, something to think about. I spoke with council on that and Bob was correct on that. We would have to keep the standing committees that we have now and any changes to committees that start in the board policy manual. So that is, I think that we get the board policy manual with the top priority of the admin committee and try to turn it around in an expedient amount of time so we can have it, either the second meeting in January or very close to that. I think the ample time review depends on changes and so forth to the policy. We can get it once or twice in front of the committee and I think we could turn it around, I hope. I can certainly support that as long as there's time between the admin committee meeting and the time when the agenda needs to be published for the next meeting that I could provide comment on consideration of all concerns. Madam Chair, if I may just chime in and support of your comment that there are already fully vetted and we don't have to reinvent the wheel kinds of language out there and it is not the board's role to dive into the minutia. We can trust that others have done that like CSDA who have done that for us so I appreciate your comment on that. Any other board members? Community, I believe. Please come up, Lydia. Thank you. Please. This is back for the floor. Go ahead, I apologize. In regards to your policy, Hannah. Lydia, could you speak that please? Thank you. Lydia, Hannah, and Mom Pico I'm apologizing to Lois. I didn't mean to be disrespectful, I'm sorry. Anyway, in regards to the policy manual, is it not a living document where you can go back in and make changes anytime you choose? Getting the process moving forward faster, I think would be beneficial. I also see the other side that would be great to tweak it, as you say, but can't that be done after it's passed? And then have the new committees and standing committees that we put in place to do the final tweaks on it to make it more perfect. Thank you. Many, many, many meetings. This has been kicked around, I believe, about two years. The last time it was approved was 2016. And I really encourage the board to do as the attorney has suggested, is please adopt it tonight and then tweak it at your leisurely. Because this needs to really go forward and my other observation is you aren't really even following the policy manual. There's nothing that you're talking about in here by doing what you have. And I think that it's really cleaned it up. Absolutely. As you go back to the Romer School supporter, absolutely the committee should be reconsidered and you should be free to do that tonight. And the way that you'll do that is to enact this right now. So I encourage it to have it, please, by unanimous approval of this, so you can move forward. You have a lot of more important things to do than this four-parallel demand. Thank you. Well, I certainly agree that the board seems to have become wrapped around the axles of this one issue. I mean, it was all over this trip to Romer. Spending all this time on the policy manual. This was in the administration committee this year for months, I think. I have to agree with our president, Fultz, that this is a good reason for getting rid of the administration committee. The administration committee considered this for months and then brought it to the board and then the board said, wait a minute, we don't wanna do this because after all, the administration committee is only 40% of the board. And so you spend months figuring out how to make 40% of the board happen. Maybe bring it to the full board. I'm sorry, that's not a good method. That's not a good way to do it. Think about it. Suppose you wanted to go out for dinner after the meeting. Maybe I don't wanna have Mexican food because I had Mexican last night. That's all. I just wanna make that little bit of input first. If you go spend months on this and maybe come back and say, well, we decided we wanna have Mexican food. I mean, they're like, wait a minute. I would've told you right off the bat. I think I started with about one minute here. I'm sorry. So this has been in the committee for a long time. Now, what the board policy manual used to be for this board was it was a standalone document and it had small changes year by year. They did bring it up in December and they made small changes that they had accumulated during the year, just slight tweaks. And that was pretty much what they did. I guess with Brian Lee, it became part of the policies and procedures manual or something. And that chapter out of that whole big, huge book. I've lost track of it, frankly. Especially because it got brought to the board a few months ago and then nothing ever happened. I don't think the board adopted whatever the administration committee recommended. So my two favorite parts of the board policy manual are the two parts that included the word September. So one thing that's supposed to happen in September and then even number of year is the year of the conflict in Winterscote. And that was in the board policy manual. It was a nice compact document. A couple of pages of the nice square board remember to read that and figure out that by September we're supposed to, maybe if it's an even number of year, give a conflict in Winterscote. The second thing was there's a report that needs to be done, a state-required report of employee reimbursements or something. And that doesn't have anything in the law that says when it has to be done, but it makes sense to say that it should be done at some point. Just pick a time. And pick a time when you're not really, really busy like June or something like that where you're on vacation on December. So September seemed like a good time to make sure that that got done. Now, when Brian edited it, I guess he took out September, he wanted to put in some weasel words like, oh, whenever we get around to it, whenever we feel like it, whenever it's convenient or something like that. I mean, just put it in that one there. And, you know, the world's like a stop if the finance director doesn't get it done in September but it's not that hard to do. So it's gotta get done sometime. Anyway, September, those two places that say that, that's what I want to see in the board policy manual. If those have somehow gotten deleted, then I think something's been lost here that oughta come back. That's all I have to say. Thank you. This is Gawing and A. I'm Nancy Meese, I live in Boulder Creek and I also want to let you know about my confusion about what was going on with the board policy manual. Some of the things were being deleted and added and changes and it took a while to go through and I was really interested in that. And I also wondered about the fact that it had been under consideration for a whole year and what happened to all of that. I wanted to know if anybody else had actually had the time to thoughtfully assess the ramifications of some of the changes and I sure was trying to but it made me wonder why these changes are being made and what are their implications? Will it encourage members of the public to participate or will it discourage them? I really love changing world communications with public input, makes a lot of sense. There's one short phrase that gets removed in talking about complaints that might force every complaint to go directly to the director when they could be dealt with by someone in the office, the lower level of administration. Again, ramifications. Do we get to make, I love trying to make it friendly or by the procedures during oral communications or the public comment, do we get to have a normal conversation? Is that interpretation of the Brown Act correct? Has Ms. Nichols had the opportunity to go through and look at these changes and look at the Brown Act and are the ramifications, are the interpretations of the Brown Act correct? It really seems strange to me to prevent a board member from attending other committee members than those he's assigned to or she, since attending those meetings would enable each member to become way more informed on topics that they need to know about, to make decisions about if they're on the observers, as in the case now. So again, that's an interpretation of the Brown Act that I think needs to be looked at. What are the ramifications of putting the administration committee with the budget and finance committee? Is this an effort to cost by streamlining? It seems so obvious that something is gonna have to give. What will it be? Is there something that will be shortchanged? Will it, will it give one or another director more control over a broader range of issues depending upon who's on which board? Again, what are the ramifications? Well, obviously thought through at length and in depth by director Wolfs, modifying the board's policy manual impacts so many aspects and wondering if it shouldn't go through a more public process, give people a bigger chance to consider it, maybe even a workshop, because the public study session could look at what's proposed. Please finish your statement as well. No, you can finish. Well, thank you, I appreciate that one. It really does seem to be a perfect topic for a workshop because a public study could look at director Wolfs's ideas and what his changes are recommending and the changes are already under consideration by the administration committee since none of us really know what those are unless you've been at that committee. And that will help discern and define ramifications so that the public will be behind the changes and will all kind of be involved in the changes. So thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it. We'll be right back to you in a minute. Thank you. Hi, my name is Tony Norton and I'm also from Longpico. And I just wanted to make two comments. Tony Norton. Sure, sorry. My name's Tony Norton and I'm from Longpico. And one comment, someone was concerned about the cost involved in changing the meetings to twice a month. And I don't think it was explained the reason for the change. And it is for the benefit of the people of Salamence of Valley because for so many, I don't know how many meetings you've been to. I've been to Zephyr where one, we were there after midnight. And the reason why is because there's always so many different items on the agenda. So, and we all were probably involved in so much here in Salamence of Valley. So the reason why they changed it to two meetings a month was so they could allow us to not just wait all night and go to the meeting that we're interested in. So that's one thing. And now, oh, I forgot what the other one was. We'll be back the next time. Hi, I'm R.C. Congratulations, by the way, on being selected by the community for serving on our board. I reviewed the whole document at my home on the computer. And I agree that we should retain the existing committees as the Scott of Staten has written about. I think it actually increases public transfer to the public. I think it actually increases public transfer to the public. It actually increases public transparency. And I don't mind the condition about combining administration finance. That's probably a good way of expediting administrative issues. So if it saves money, I'm all for it. Regarding the bi-monthly meetings, I think it's a good idea, too, to increase public transparency. So I'm all in favor of keeping the committee structure in place and go for it. Thank you for being elected. And hopefully, we'll have good, improved relationships in the community. Thank you. I'm Jane Rackleback from Felton. And I had a couple of specifics. I had a couple of specifics. One of them was merging the admin and finance committee, having served on the finance committee. It's quite a bit of work. It's a core part of the director's role. But my concern is admin. The policy manual was in the admin committee for many, many months, and it never got out. And that indicates to me that there's more than enough work for that committee to do. And those two were few. Something, I'm afraid, would be shortchanged. And I'm also dismayed that, you know, we waited for many months for a policy manual. And while I was the director, we didn't get to see the fruits of that process. So I would like to say I like the idea that somebody had, I believe it was Nancy, about a workshop where different versions, not just director Paul since, but other people's input could be shown. And having never attended the admin committee meetings while I was on board, I would love to see some of the work that, because I know you all were working on it. I would love to see some of the work and some of the suggestions that were made during that process because it seems like it would be a wasted effort if we didn't get to, you know, far from the work that was put in during those many months. So that views committee I would be very concerned about because I don't think finance should be shortchanged. And I'm concerned that admin may have too much to do and just leaves it in without something suffering. Thank you. Any more comments? I'd like to second with extra director Radcliffe just said. I think the past chairperson of the admin committee has not had a lot of time to comment on this at this point. I think that venue would be an excellent one for that discussion, next on place for that discussion to take place. And this is a very, these are very substantive changes to a very important document and it should be done in a reasonably expeditious manner, but not a rushed manner. And the thing tonight feels rushed. I mean, there are even small details about this that nobody else has noticed, I think. I want to copy of both Robert's Rules of Order and his encourages. Robert's Rules of Order is a 700 page document and I don't believe, and the GSA for which I was a vice chair have used Rosenberg as something that new people to running meetings in the parliamentary style could digest and work with. Sturgis is a good compromise on that. I would keep that for a time being as the parliamentary guide for this. And I think in the admin committee, perhaps the admin committee discusses its own merger with the finance committee, but it should be done in a way that people that couldn't be here for tonight, for example, ex-director Hayes is not here this evening and could not be here. And I know two people who I know are very interested in what is going on with this district that could not be here coming publicly. So having a single meeting for which there's not discussed is a little bit. Thank you. Anyone else? Do we have any members of this admin committee here? So maybe you guys could answer why is it been laboring for, I don't know, a year, six months, 12 months how long it's been? Why haven't we got anything? We'll likely have a different perspective on it, but sure, I'd be happy about that. You need to talk collaboratively so everybody can hear what you're saying. We'll likely have a different perspective, but I'd be happy to talk about it. I think actually the three most recent members were former director Bachman and Barbara and myself. So we did spend a lot of time with this and I think the basic issue from my perspective was a very fundamentally different way of looking at how to engage with the public and some of the specifics around how to be more transparent, more interactive to the extent that we can within the confines of the Brown Act. And that's really what was trying to be reflected during the modifications I made, which modifications I had made in various forms over the last two years of my service on the admin committee. This has been discussed quite a bit and it was also discussed over the last three or four months and it was also discussed within the context of the last three or four months of the election and it was also discussed within the context of grand jury reports in 2018 and 2014. We have discussed this at quite some length. The issue was we were never able to reach a consensus within MIT and the committee and we did bring something forward to the board. There was a workshop on it I believe at the board level and that was December of 2017, January. That was when we had the consultant in and we went through the board manual and it just seemed to kind of drop and at that point I'm not really sure we got put on the benefit. So again, this is entirely up to the board's pleasure is how to deal with this, but I would echo let's not put it back through that multi-month process because it's had been discussed at some considerable length. I agree with that, but I'm just curious why it's what the reasons for it and obviously I don't think anybody wants to put it back into a committee where it's going to languish for months again. I mean I think as we've heard there are a lot of the changes are really valid and quite positive I think to the overall process but Margaret, did you have a comment? Yeah, I absolutely do, thank you. I hesitate to, for Brian under the bus because he's not here to defend himself but some of this had to do with staff capacity. There were comments that were provided by then committee member folks and as well by committee members Bachman and myself. I think my approach is very similar to what Madam Chair Henry said about there are already template documents, there are already policy documents that have been vetted, improved and tried and tested from other organizations and expertise that we can tap into and I don't want to spend my time as a governing member doing text editing, doing word smithing. If we can nibble around the edges and improve it for ourselves that's fine but spending a great deal of time wrangling over key words or specific phrases that won't matter very much and we can guide our interaction with the public based on sound judgment and good leadership I would rather leave the word smithing of a policy to our competent staff and have them bring to us their best recommendations from the resources that are available to us. Tinker with the edges and move on quickly. I think it should go back to committee after that committee is formed which may be a month or so but that committee should have this document ready for approval after that meeting and then have it for approval and discussion within two months basically and have some sort of time so like you said it doesn't just go back into this committee forever I think there should be some sort of discussion to keep it within maybe two committee meetings or one or two or whatever. I want to follow up a little bit with what Margaret said because she's actually right there are a template documents out there and in fact we even had a consultant who does a lot of work for the CSCA come out and talk to us about various things. What I found about the template documents is that they very much reflect the concept that we talked about a lot over the last three or four months which is the Brown Act being a ceiling for the board's interaction with the public rather than a floor. Everything that the CSCA does everything in the document today represents that philosophy. I fundamentally oppose that philosophy the interaction with the public as required by the Brown Act as a floor it is the minimum set of requirements and it is absolutely appropriate for the board itself to engage in deciding how the board wishes to interact with the community the rate payers, the public, the people that are supporting us and so that is why I recognize there is value in the CSCA document but it does not go nearly far enough as a construct of the engagement with the public and to me that was a real critical thing over the last three or four months and so that is why I invested my time in writing what I did. There are many other changes that we could do in the board policy document but what I am trying to focus on right here is the fundamental things that address the issues that we have talked about over the last few months. We can take it to a committee but I would support that only under some sort of deadline that it would get back to us very quickly we do not need this we have discussed this a very long time we don't need to spend a lot more time on it. Seems to me that maybe a workshop would be the way to take care of this not a committee but the whole board in a workshop gone through this because like I said there are some things they are major that I saw that Nancy Macy brought up one thing which was board members can't attend a committee meeting that's not a brown out file nation it's discouraged we shouldn't say they can't attend it's discouraged it's highly discouraged that board members when there's two board members on a committee and a third board member or even a fourth board member shows up they give information to those two board members on the committee by facial expressions maybe shaking their heads moving their hands that's why it's discouraged but it's not against the brown out so I have a little issue with that as did Nancy Macy I think that's an excellent idea because I think a workshop will it'll stop it from going into a committee for whatever involving the whole board and the public and everything will get it through I think it's an excellent idea so if the five of us can't get it together and can't come up with something we're never going to get it together come up with something so why don't we just all sit down together all five of us any members of the public who want to come and go at this and do it soon Madam Chair, I have a motion you have a motion yes you may I would move approval of the board policy manual as adopted December 9th, 2015 first part then I would further remand that board policy manual to one committee meeting to be followed up by a full board workshop on the result of that one committee meetings input any agreements on that with an amendment I would support that motion so the amendment would be it doesn't go to a committee it just goes to a workshop a friendly my feeling is I believe that I think the workshops are an excellent idea I approve that amendment so with the amendment that it goes to a workshop so my amended motion is that we adopt before you go through again to re-adopt the existing policy for 2019 so you could simply move to adopt that resolution and then add the additional commission about going to a workshop so be it then so I would amend my motion to adopt resolution number 22 of 1819 to adopt the current policy manual with the addition of a remand to a full board workshop at a date to be determined by staff and our calendars everybody happy now the earliest possible date the earliest possible date as implied by my motion Rick how early do you think that could happen I'm not sure I should speak until the motion is adopted it can be our first workshop it can be our first workshop but if it doesn't go to committee first I'd like a little more direction from the board on what they would like to see at the workshop do you want to see other agencies policies do you want to see the CSDA or their point of policy I'd like to look that would be the benefit of going to committee first to get a little more direction on what to have for the full board to see I can work with individual board members I personally I'd be fine with seeing the CSDA templates that's something that we had talked about committee but never really got into for us to review prior to that outside of that I don't know that I need to know we need a facilitator do we need to bring someone like Brent Ives again or do we want to CSDA you know what we'll be supportive I think we could do it without a facilitator if we can then maybe we'll have to get one let's keep going we'll have to give a little more practice what happens alright so we have a motion and we have a second no more comments no more comments from the public alright you want to call the vote please director Smallman director Bruce yes, president Henry hi director Swan yes next item board of directors meeting costs we have a series of chats we'll have a few months and one of the big questions and the questions we have and from the staff and from the board of directors was that the meetings are going lengthy and what would be the thought about going back to two months per month so staff develop a cost so the board could see what the costs were of the board meeting and if we did go back to two meetings a month with the cost we thought this information would be useful in helping you so the information in front of you is basically the cost of the board meeting going back over to you we have any comment from yes do you want to go to the public first or the board first I'd like to go to the board first ok let's do board first ok director Bruce so having seen both ways of doing this two a month one a month I'm in favor of two a month I appreciate how significant a burden this is on staff and I want to acknowledge that there's an awful lot of time and dedication that staff put into preparing for board agendas and making sure that the board members are prepared but having two board meetings a month enables us to move smartly through our work and I would appreciate having the opportunity for two meetings a month so one of the things I did was take a look at not only what the future costs were but what some of the historical costs might have been if we use the same model so I think we made the shift in 2016 2016 I think so it would have been interesting to know what it cost in 2015 but in 2016 it looked like we had a total of 26 board meetings between regular and special meetings and in 2017 I believe it was 21 total board meetings between regular and special and so if we use the same kind of cost structure more or less we actually were probably like we were having two board meetings a month just because of the fact that between 26 and 21 that's almost two meetings a month for two years so I didn't see that there was that much difference in what the cost would be though it would be interesting to take a look at that historical cost I think there were some great suggestions that staff made about perhaps our attorney participating remotely which at least one of those meetings maybe two that would reduce the cost since the bulk of the meeting cost is involved in the attorney cost and I think we might also want to look at the cost of how we are doing our video and dissemination of the meeting information that's here if there might be a way of being able to do that in a lower cost fashion so I do think that the board needs to look at costs very closely for its meetings but I think the advantage of two meetings a month just completely overwhelms the disadvantages as I think Martin very eloquently said and I think it will encourage people to come to meetings in a way that when the meeting can go until 11 or 12 o'clock at night it just gets to be a real grind and as a board member I'm not sure that I'm going to be at my best come 11 or 12 o'clock either that's the other part of it and I'm also very mindful of the impact of staff I'm hopeful that staff can work with us perhaps everybody doesn't have to be at every meeting if we do workshops one of the meetings versus business on another maybe there's a way of being able to mix it up I think there's a lot of options here that are available and I would encourage us to be as creative as possible about how they are done work them quickly but also make sure we're engaging the public more right there do you want to comment? no I'm in favor of the idea of going to two meetings and figure out a way to reduce costs along the way if there's somebody to structure the meetings a little differently than the full-blown costs that we're enjoying for one I would certainly like to explore those options Director? I really either way is really okay with me I'm kind of leaning towards perhaps maybe the two meetings might be a little more efficient and worth the cost because we're not I don't believe we're really talking I know it may look like a lot of money but you know that expense might be worth it but I really have no problem with either one or two meetings a month well I'm in favor of two meetings a month but I'm also in favor of cutting the costs of those meetings the problem with only one meeting is they go and I think people tend to get a little crappy and I would like to see everybody just smiling and being happy not crappy so I support two meetings a month as long as we cut costs and we don't let any of those I would like to see a cutoff time okay we're going to have two meetings a month they're going to be done by 9 they're going to be done by 9.30 or no later than 10 whatever and I really think sometimes when you put a cutoff time people don't talk so much and let's face it isn't necessarily the public so much can be us on the board you know chattering away so I really am in favor of two meetings a month if we're careful so now I would like to open it up to all of you I have your say my question for all of you and for you is do you think that lawyer present at every meeting is it more important she's there for the closed session when you might be dealing with more precisely different issues do you need a lawyer to tell you getting off the agenda I don't know so I ask all of you to think on that I it's a good question I personally don't necessarily think we need to have every meeting as long as the board is well educated understands the Brown Act and is careful exactly and I expect all of you to be current and do your job and do it not to diminish what you do but I think it's more important that you're there or any of the attorneys there for the closed session because that's when thank you did you want to can you walk over there or do you want to stay I think I can I particularly like the way that Lois said that she would like it's not to be crabby and be happy and I would be much happier unless crabby if I could hear I wish I've invested a lot of my time and energy into this and I would like to continue but if I cannot hear I I'm very frustrated can we not use a mic in the future is there a problem we're getting a yes from staff over there from the bottom I could only have here the majority of people you speak beautifully you're always easy to hear and you are but I could not hear thank you thank you please I agree with president Henry's observation and recommendation they have at least two meetings maybe only for the cutoff point to reduce these long meetings and make it costly I also agree with the caveat that we don't there's not really a need for having legal counsel fly all the way up here for every meeting unless it's a special closed session for legal purposes very costly for existing legal representation so that would be an excellent way of cutting off I agree with that thank you my name is Suzanne Schetler and I agree with the direction we seem to be heading which is to segregate the closed session and legal matters into a separate meeting looking at the agendas they tend to be quite long are there some items that could be handled every other meeting committee reports legal stuff maybe some other items that don't have to be handled every single meeting see how we can how we can rotate every other probably not every third meeting but every other meeting likely confusing for some people who are used to the current format but we don't have to tackle every topic at every meeting I happen to agree with you and on that little note of what she was saying would anybody shoot me if I suggest that we don't discuss the personnel system rules and regulations of this meeting that we have them at another meeting and not to put you down or anything Director Smallman but both of your items could be done at another meeting we can do that when we let's finish this item and then we get to those items and we can make recommendations to finish oral communications Jim Moser from Belton we're tired now I just want to caution the board about not having an attorney present at least on the phone for these meetings you may have noticed that we have a rather litigious tendency in this district at least among one person mistakes can be made inadvertently as was made before that's led to some very difficult litigation having an attorney present I think is important at least to be familiar I personally would not want to be the attorney for this board if I was going to miss half the board meeting even if you think you have something going on that doesn't require legal review it may inadvertently something could come up and it can come back to binding perhaps having an attorney on the telephone you could save some money but I just think you want legal review of your meetings and advice when unexpected things can come up otherwise you may find yourself having your legal costs go way up even with this trying a small savings leading to a large cost just a caution thank you I wouldn't say anything but attorney Moser was library board member and I attended library board meetings for years and library uses a law firm I think they still did and I still use a law firm called ABC law down to Santa Cruz and ABC law is the city attorney it's a whole law firm but it's the city attorney for the city of Santa Cruz and the city of Santa Cruz has a tradition of having difficulty with members of the public who want to speak they they abridge the Brown Act in many ways and unfortunately the traditions of the Santa Cruz city council spilled over into the library board because they used that law firm so I did sue the library board for Brown Act violations and they settled with me and they paid all my attorney's costs so they were violating the Brown Act but the interesting thing I want to point out is that the attorney didn't come to the board meetings so I'm quite surprised here Mr. Moser suggests this this was the standard practice of the library board was that the attorney was never there and for me that was a problem because you know there were granted violations going on in the meeting and I really wanted to have the attorney there saying hey this is what I'm talking about right you understand me right but the attorney wasn't even in the room so this all got handled through litigation because the attorney wouldn't show up and that was fine with Mr. Moser I'm really surprised that you're going to say that there must be an attorney present for this board and you certainly didn't insist on that when he was on the board Any other comments on this item? Kay how back to the board Stephanie has a comment Oh Stephanie What a joke I just wanted to bring up you know on the calculations you know the fact that it does take a significant amount of time to come and set up meetings at different locations the different locations all have different acousticals all of that type of stuff so having the ops building they did spend a lot of money getting the acoustics up and running there if we were to do a route of you know streaming or doing our own type of stuff I think that those are all valid ways of being able to reduce costs and guarantee the quality of sound and everything for the meetings and so I am a single patient Well on that note I also would like to perhaps take a look at a new facility that might become the permanent meeting room you know Mr. Moser was very kind and explained to me what the new library might be to offer us for example and so I think for right now absolutely agree with that single location approach it is small and I am hopeful that the excitement and energy that we are seeing here tonight continues for the long term and we get a really nice turnout every time and if that is the case a little on the small side but yeah I think that is a great idea If I can quickly eject your, our next item is gates and locations I think I would move an head off of this item this item is just to tell the board about the board being cost and we move to the next item which talks about gates and locations top of the council I disagree No absolutely not the board is ready to move to the next item there is no need for an actual this item I know what are comments from the board then on this yes so let's go to the meeting dates on 2000 each year the board selects meeting dates and time for the council before the meeting I would just be more on it that she feels that we can go ahead and do additional meetings without changing the board policy manual on this item so if you have a calendar in front of you and this item is prepared for the current board policy manual that states that the meeting will be on 30 each month if the board wants to select this appropriate in order for the council on that I agree with that the resolution that's before you reiterates the board meeting schedule that's in the board policy manual this is an item of housekeeping that needs to be done to set at least a baseline schedule for next year however approving this does not preclude any further action by the board either by motion or resolution or otherwise to the meetings I have a question for can we amend the resolution yes so we could insert into the resolution first and third that it would be the first and insert before third first and third I become concerned about those kinds of changes only when they're so complicated that we can't understand what was done but that's no problem in the calendar you have in your packet shows the current third, Thursday month and then we would add that the first there is a conflict in July before July being on the first Thursday of month I think the rest of them are all on the four days you may you could always opt not to have only one meeting in July there's nothing to say that you can't have less meetings it's up to the question before I would move approval of resolution 2318 19 ending public comment and further board discussion to read for 2019 as the first and third Thursday of every month unless holidays forces a change second was can I already public comment on this item has more considered looking at the second fourth Thursday of the month for more flexibility we're not really locked into the first and third thank you Christmas yeah Thanksgiving Christmas oh yeah Santa Margarita yeah there's a bunch of conflicts with second and fourth so we have any other comments okay we have a motion and a second would you like to call the vote directors moment yes yes hi hi yes so can I ask about eliminating those two items now or do I have to wait until I get there well I'm not sure you may want to have each item and ask the board if they have any changes if they don't we can move right through and be done with them if they have something that they want to discuss you might want to consider that depending on a lot of these I think the league council has reviewed staff has no requested changes okay alright so the next item is respectful workplaces and staff has no request to changes discussion and possible action changes in respect of work place policy in front of you maybe it's worth clarifying these are policies and specifically that SDRMA encourages get review and re-adoption each year we're not specified for the board of policy yeah I'm just going to say I've reviewed and also have no recommended changes okay director small but no changes same alright I don't have any changes either I restrain myself I'm making a change I'm just kidding it's on any of the remaining and then forbid your restrain I know so we got a motion public comment public comment I just said that so many times today sorry I just want to say I wish we didn't have to have a policy like this I wish it was just concrete but I appreciate that you expect this of each other and we'll proceed with proper respect with kindness to everyone thank you any other comments from the public seeing none may I interject very briefly thank you Ruth very recently I had a conversation with a colleague who is my office's safety representative in the building and it was an active shooter training that he was reporting on he shared anecdotes about how he as a child had been involved in a school shooting where his school had been a school shooting and in prior careers I'd been an environmental health and safety manager where workplace violence by statistics was the most dangerous thing my colleagues and employees were likely to face and I've known personally who were shooting victims workplace violence victims and it's so uncommon it's so rare but this respectful workplace policy is not just as Ruth suggested can y'all just be nice to each other it's also for us to take care of our employees recognizing that they work outside they work with heavy equipment they work in the rain they work with people who are sometimes very frustrated or angry or sometimes just not like all there and it's important that we empower them and protect them to be safe and that we provide the tools and resources necessary to keep them safe even when there are you know especially when there are untoward things unexpected things that can happen so yes this is a perfunctory thing but we have this in place for a really good reason I feel very strongly about protecting and powering our staff so I'm glad we have it and I would move a approval of the policy you're making a motion to approve second I think we're ready for you to ask for a vote direct for small men direct for groups yes I direct for small men yes okay so I wanted to perhaps say we could talk about this personnel system rules and regulations later but if you've all read it and you don't have issues then maybe we can just go ahead and approve it The resolution number 17-15-17-18 establishes the personnel system regulations for 2018 the district legal council has reviewed the district personnel system rules and regulations there are no recommendations or revisions to the existing personnel system rules and regulations recommended the board review and adopt the resolution and again this is some other recommendations from the district's And by having these policies, we do receive incentive credits with lower summer insurance rates, our spending rate. And all board members have a comment on this that must be? I'd like to move adoption of resolution number 21-18-19. Personnel system rules and regulations, please. I'll second. Any comments from the audience? Yes. Sorry. Let me sit down. Lou Ferris-Kelton. I understand the value of reviewing control documents on a periodic basis. And I understand that this is probably why we're improving a lot of these resolutions. But I question whether that's the effective use of this board's time for something that hasn't changed. And in this particular case, is there another way we can handle it at a lower level? Maybe staff could do the review and then do some touchstones with the public and then get back without having it brought up, discussed, and take up time in board meetings to approve something that's not changing. I just question the validity of that use of time at this level. Secondly, I see that the staff and the current district council has reviewed this procedure and doesn't recommend any changes. This is the second year in the row. This procedure has not changed. And owing to the fact that, from my reading, case law on employment is an ever-changing landscape. I believe, for example, in the last couple of years, since there have been no changes, there have been at least two definition changes about exempt versus non-accept employees that may or may not impact this. But I just wonder, we've had staff review. We've had legal counsel review. Have we had a professional HR person review this? And would that be value added? I agree with you. Just a question to think about. Thank you. I would just like to say that this is generally something that we put on the consent agenda. But because we have so many new board members, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to have something to say about it. So that's the only reason it is not put on the consent agenda, which would be no comment. It would just be, OK. Right. Do you want to say something, Rick? Very thank you. What? Thank you for doing it. No, I mean, I can answer to his question. It's required to the board by a professional district for management. It's required by the board to review these and to adopt. And that's to give the highest level of the district to buy off on the policies and procedures. So it is required that this board would do it. And it's also, it sure is our incentive. As far as HR, it hasn't been reviewed by, it's been reviewed by the legal counsel, but not by HR, by the firm. And I'm sure if it was, we've worked out of it now, and we haven't had any difficulties, but that's not saying that there would not be change. So we have a motion and a second. So would you like to call the vote on this? Director Smallman. Aye. Director Gruz. Yes. President Henry. Aye. Director Swann. Aye. Director Coles. Yes. OK. Next one, sexual harassment. So has anybody, has anybody got a problem with how this is written at all? You know the board members? Do you have a comment? No, both state and federal law prohibit sexual harassment. On December 23, 2017, the board adopted number 14-17-18, which established the Center of the Valley Sexual Harassment Policy for 2018. District legal counsel had reviewed the district sexual harassment policy. There are no recommendations, revisions to the significance of the existing sexual harassment policy for 2019. Recommend that you adopt that resolution. I move adoption of the board adopt resolution number 19, 18-19, Center of the Valley Water District Sexual Harassment Policy 2019. Second. Public comment. No public comment. Would you like to call the question, please? Director Smallman. Aye. Director Gruz. Yes. President Henry. Aye. Director Swann. Aye. Director Coles. Yes. Oh, so the next item is Board of Directors District D, ma'am. That's a good one. Yes, with the current election, the three new board members district is moving forward, updating our contact information for the general public on our website. There are several ways that we can list contact with board of directors. We have in the past had more general mailbox that was used by all board that came through the district. And then we forwarded out, or we had to reuse some personal emails. We now have the capabilities of doing a direct district domain for each director if so desired, where you have your own email address, just like a district employee where you would log on to the district server, retrieve your email, and then use that for sending email. Those emails did not come to the district able to go straight to the individual director. Or you could use your own personal emails or the common VOE emails that we forwarded to you. There are some issues with record retention about emails that let the district council kind of take over and explain that to you. We are recommending that you think about considering using the district domain server, using the district domain email address as we would be able to maintain those records. And I'll turn that to the district legal council. Well, it's not required by law to use an email address with a district domain name that's maintained on a district server. It is something of a best practice that has good legal reasons for doing it. It's also a cost-effective way to manage document retention. So I personally would recommend that approach, but it's not legally required. There are other ways you can do this. The reasons why that is advisable is because if we get Discovery or Public Records Act requests, having the emails on the district domain server allows us to search as needed to make sure we're doing a comprehensive review and providing required documents to the requester. It helps preserve and protect and ensure that we are responding adequately to public requests or discovery requests. That helps protect both the district and you as individuals because legal and staff can manage that process and take responsibility for producing the right documents. It's more cost-effective. It's more accurate. It also helps protect your privacy because the situation doesn't arise where we have to sort through your personal emails or something to try to figure out what has to get produced in certain situations. But again, that said, there are reasons why directors may prefer other approaches. And I'm not saying that it has to be this way, but please consider it as a way to proceed because it does save costs when legal matters arise. It kind of balances your privacy. Nobody at the district is going to routinely look at these emails unless we need to go in there and produce them for some legal reason. And under those circumstances, staff and district counselors take responsibility for doing that correctly instead of it being on you to do that. So can we each do whatever we want or do we all have to decide on the same thing? I would defer to the district counselor. Well, I think you should think about it. You don't have to make decisions with no vote. Tonight, I think you should think about it because as we're moving ahead with setting up contacts. Well, I really like what you have. There are some drawbacks by having you have to log on to our server to retrieve your emails and you have to log on or sort of send an email. Versa if you're getting your own personal email, it comes in, but then there's the drawbacks that Dina says you're co-manually district emails with your private emails. It's totally up to each director on how they would like to. So we can each do whatever we want. That is correct. I do believe as we move ahead with the policy manual, I think Dina's going to want to see us have some reference to record retention in the policy manual, whichever way you go. So if the board does not universally adopt the practice of using San Lorenzo Valley District domain name server to manage email, then I would like to propose amendment to the board policy manual to better address record retention issues when we're doing it through your private email. And you know what, Lori? I want to do what she said. Director Volts. A couple of comments and questions. This came up during the last year at the Admin Committee meeting because the board of directors, the BOD at SLVWD was not actually forwarding off to an SLVWD.com domain for each board member who was going to the personal domain. So when you tried to respond, it got a little bit clumsy. That is the email would come back on a different address than when it was sent on. And I didn't think as one of the public members, that was a great practice. So I fully support each board member of getting an SLVWD.com email address assuming we're going to retain that BOD at because then they can just all forward directly to each of us at the same time. And we can respond back and that will be great. How much does it cost per email address? I think it was $4.20, or $4.25 per month per employee or director. Right. So about $50 a year per director, $250 a year. I do believe that would be a great use of funds. So that doesn't make sense. And your emails are kept on a server. If you're at our domain, it's something that I even have access to. We take an IT guy to mine those emails off our server. It's an exchange server. It's an exchange server, that's correct. So director Sloan, what do you think? Well, I like that idea. Look for that. Just give them up for Hillary. Hey. He's the funny guy. Director Bruce, long awaited. I think it's a great idea. Director Sloan. I have no comment. I can go either way. It makes sense to me. I really like it. OK, comment from the public. Hi, Lydia Hannah-Clumpico. Speaking from experience, if you use your personal email, it's out there. The world will use it even after you're no longer a board member. I still get email from bookkeeping jobs, from a wildlife organization I ran, high-end commission stuff. I had my emails that I was required, and it bounced to my private email site. I didn't have to dig through all the various different email accounts that I was responsible for. And I made the mistake of answering off my personal email instead of logging in and answering off the email that I was responding to. So my suggestion would be this is a great idea. And you possibly have it bounced to your private email. Just don't answer from the private email unless you want the world to have that. So thank you. Look what happened to you. Yeah. I'm Tony Norton and Longico. And I just really appreciate it. I've been disturbed for a long time that the board members did not have an email address so we could reach that. So I think this is a great change if you go for that. That's not the end of it. Any other comments out there? Such a quiet room. All right. Committee appointments for 2019. Point of appointment for the evening. Is there a directive we're giving staff? Or the staff doesn't know what we want? It's not like I ever think you're all in favor of moving forward to the district domain email. So that's the way we're going to move forward. I just want to make that explicit. Thank you. So you don't need a directive, right? Not yet. It's OK. OK. Committee appointments for 2019. OK. Here we go. So we have, right now, we have six standing committees and a multi-agency body, Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency, ad hoc committee. I think that's probably done. Well, I don't think so. We should talk about it. I'm not really in favor of ad hoc committees. OK. Beside the point. So evidently, I can appoint people to these committees as board president. I can appoint. The board president can recommend appointments for the board's approval. OK. OK. So the admin committee, I would like to recommend Director Coles and myself. And do I need to ask each now, does the rest of the board OK with that? Just a suggestion, because there aren't specific appointments listed in the board packet, my suggestion would be for each committee that you're considering to go out for public comment while you're discussing that particular committee. OK. And before I make a suggestion. Either way, you can either make a suggestion and they go out for public comment or you go out for public comment first. I think as long as there's public comment for each of the committees, that should be sufficient. OK. One more. So. Will it be one vote or a vote for committee? I would leave that to the chair, but just a suggestion. That's my point of order. With what would you like to do? Well, what I'd like to do, I think it's up to you. You want one vote for all committees or one vote for each committee? I think each committee. Let's hear what the public has to say. I did recommend Director Folsom, myself, or the admin committees. Is there any public comment out there? Chuck, I'll move the board. My suggestion is for some continuity that all the remaining directors who are sitting on a committee remain on that committee for the time being. There will be plenty of openings, OK, on all those committees for appointments from the newly elected. And that would be a good way of doing it. I think I will make a comment for yourself, Ms. Henry. I think you would be a good person to be on the GSA, for example. And that Margaret will be somebody who, this is going on to the next one, but Margaret will be a good person for that, because she's been an ultimate on that. So I would leave people in their positions for the time being, and then fill those out here for the new electives, and then if need be, I'll revisit it. Elections have consequences. Who cares who the old committee members were? Who cares? You've got to clean slate. Do whatever you think you can best. But what I would, this is where previous boards had a whiteboard, and they would start jotting on the whiteboard, because I think you should make all the committee assignments at once. Don't just make one committee assignment and go to the next and next, because at the end, then maybe something's out of order and you want to rejigger it or something. So I think you ought to do them all and talk it through until you can get everybody satisfied and then go about it. Might be faster, if I did it that way. By marking the memo, I would agree with Mr. Collins. Always, comments that we should start from scratch. Assign all the committees and then have each committee have its own individual meeting and make, essentially, one for new members of those committees is candidates and future meetings beginning in 2019. So I think I'll just say all the committees and be done with it. OK? Make it easier. Onstanding committees. So budget and finance committee, I would like it to be Director Faltz and myself. Engineering and planning committee, I'm thinking Director Smallman. And I don't know that you can come, right? So would you like to be on the engineering committee, Marla, first? I would very much like to be on the engineering and planning committee, and I would also like to be on the environmental committee. OK. All right. So Director Smallman and Director Bruce, on engineering, Director Bruce, on the environmental. And why? Bill is really interested in the environment. I know that. Yeah, I want to be on the environmental, and I also want to be on the Santa Margarine water agency. OK. So I need, I guess, as do I, Director. One, as would I, I would like to be on the Santa Margarine. The, OK, so I could be on the environmental committee with Director Bruce. The Long Pico Assessment Oversight Committee. There are no directors on the Long Pico Oversight Committee. They've gone before, but they're just, OK. That's as it is here. Education Grant Committee we're not going to deal with tonight. I was planning on bringing that to a January meeting by staff report with all the background on that committee for the board for three years. So with the standing committees, wait a minute, I'm on three things, three committees. I don't want to be on three committees. Well, I was going to suggest that on the Santa Margarita that that would be yourself and Steve. Well, I haven't even got there. But if I'm on the admin committee and the budget and finance and then on environment, that makes me. And then Santa Margarita, that makes me on everything. Almost. So how about you want to be on the environmental committee? No. How about you, Director Fultz? I've already on two. I think that's, I'd have to go off one, two, three, four. So Mr. Smaller could be on it. Mr. Smaller could be on it. Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll. So are you agreeing to the environmental committee? No. I thought you said no. But I can't agree with you. Fine, then we have the dinner. Oh, you said yes. I've been here. Sorry. Sorry, sorry. We're on the microphones. Yeah, I just, I just wanted to open it up. So. You want to get on the Santa Margarita? Well, with the Santa Margarita, I've been interviewed three hours by the facilitators, facilitator. I've been going to meetings for months. Steve Swan has gone to some meetings and you were interviewed also, right? Scheduled. Oh, you're still scheduled. Okay. Madam Henry, I've also been the alternate for the district since Director Hammer's just. Right. I would suggest that Bargay continue on the alternate position. So, it's okay. So that, that was, I, ad hoc committee. I'll go back to Santa Margarita. Who's your, who's your. Okay. Director Swan, myself. And Director Bruce as an alternate. Thank you. Okay. So the ad hoc committee. It's up to you. Do you want to fill that out? Yes. I think there's still work to be done on that. At least review where we're at on all of that. And then you can make a decision. On the grand jury? On the grand jury. On the tasks of the grand jury. The district said that they were going to do the response. I think there's still that. I thought they had to do a response already. The execution of the action items. May I ask a question? Do you change our grand jury response? I do not believe that it's possible. It may be possible to a supplement. I would, I'd very much like to know if we can do a supplement. If we can, I would like to continue with this being discussed somewhere. I don't know if it needs to be an ad hoc committee or another place, but I think we need a supplement to the grand jury report. For information, the ad hoc, it was contemplated when the ad hoc committee was formed that at some point it would be replaced by the liaisons that's district award liaisons with the latter that the response to the grand jury report said that the district would move to at some point. So the process could be overseen by those liaisons rather than the ad hoc committee if the district chooses to appoint a supplement. So, have we seen any of those? I mean, are the reports out there? They are all publicly available on the Santa Cruz County website. At the website? Okay. Would it be possible to bring this back after you've determined whether we can do a supplement? I mean, there's no need to take action tonight on the ad hoc committee. I'd like to find that out first. So, if we... So, you're... Go ahead. So... I just want to make sure that staff is going to provide the board. When staff is... What board would like staff to provide? On the ad hoc committee? Yes. Specifically, I would like to know if we can either amend or supplement the grand jury response. And based on that answer, we may choose to take further action either with an ad hoc committee or perhaps another committee. That would still be a discussion item at the next meeting. Thank you. Okay. Public comment? I'd like to turn to you, Justice Nesca, Juan Pico, on the ad hoc committee. And at our last ad hoc meeting, we discussed the possibility of you assigning the fifth member to our ad hoc committee this evening. Would that be part of this discussion? No. It will be in January. And the reason why I'm concerned about that is we have a workshop meeting on the 28th to discuss our new charter. And the board can show up... January 28th. So if you don't appoint someone until... When would you plan on... January 3rd? January 3rd. Okay. Or the third meeting of the month, which is the 17th. May I just point out that the applications are open until the 9th. Okay. Although we talked at that meeting also that you already have a candidate that is... I think there's two candidates. Two candidates already. So you don't really have to. You can keep those. We need to have somebody. We need to have a meeting before our... It'd be the charter meeting. That won't give us enough time for us to get together to decide how we're going to run that meeting. Because we're going to be having a workshop with the public to discuss our charter. So we need to have a meeting so we can discuss how that is going to be organized. And I understand that, but... We should wait till the application. The application period hasn't ended. And the next for sure board meeting would be the 17th after that time period. That's a good suggestion. To me this is an incredibly critical appointment that needs to be made as soon as possible. Would it be possible to have a special meeting in one agenda item only to appoint someone to the lab on the 10th? That would be great. My only concern is that we're out. We follow the procedures that we've established and as we meet that deadline, that deadline we're asking for applications. It's up to the board. I don't see any reason why we couldn't. That was counsel without a reason. And if we had a special meeting we'd still have time if you have it on the 10th to schedule it and keep posted. It means we're all in the public that doesn't preclude anything from attending the lab meeting and participating. I'd like to close the meeting. So if we don't do it, I'm sure everybody will attend and comment on the charges and so forth. They do only down to one member. It's applicable. I don't like this. So your meeting is the 28th which would be 11 days after the 17th. So what meeting do you want to have before the 28th? This is going to be a workshop meaning for the public. So the 28th is a regular LADAC meeting. It's not a regular LADAC meeting. We decided that that's going to be a workshop. Okay, that's going to be a workshop. But there's 11 days after the 17th where we could still, will that give us enough time to set a meeting? Well, I guess we can... You borrowed out of meetings. But we have to have a meeting before that to work out the details of this workshop. So we don't have to. We can set it before that. We don't have to have this fifth member just to set the meeting. Could I ask what kind of meeting do you want to have to work out the workshop? Chair Henry, just a caution. This is going a little bit far off the committee report list. I get that. Okay. This is just to talk about how we're going to be... It was a last-minute decision that they decided to make it a workshop meaning. So we need to decide how we're going to engage the public to help us with this charter. That's what was decided at that meeting. Okay. So, okay. Thank you. Thank you, Lydia. Yeah, hi. Sorry. Lydia has a long pico. Is there any reason why a board member who lives in Long Pico can't be placed as a board member person a lot up, or does it have to be a non-board member? I don't know if he's interested. I don't want it to be on a lot up, but I see that as a possible solution to the missing fifth member. You always seem to have a missing person on there. Sorry, I'm in this... I had to get off of that one. Anyway, my suggestion would be to just put a board member on there if the board member wishes to be in there sitting on Pico. I think he would be a good odd-up member. I'll say again during that moment quickly. There's a little bit of homework here. Before we make the voice of the folks on this motion, I'd like to have all the assignments, all the committees, named out loud so we have a public record. Clearly, for the public. I think you're a little confused. Okay. All right. What's the admin committee? I said director Fultz and director Henry. Budget and finance. Director Fultz and director Henry. Engineering planning committee. Director Bruce and director Smallman. Environmental committee. Director Smallman and director Bruce. And then Santa Marta Rita Groundwater basin. Director Swan. Director Henry. Alternate director Bruce. Could everybody hear me? Is that what you wrote, Rick? That's what I got. So, the board want to discuss this. I know that we still need the ad hoc committee that's going to be on that. We don't have to do that tonight. We're not going to kill that. We're not going to kill that. Not tonight. Correct. Any other questions or discussion about those committees? Okay. I assume we're all in agreement. So, is it just consensus or vote or how do we do this? I recommend a motion. A motion. Okay. We got it. We got it. A motion. I'll make a motion. Director Fultz and director Henry are on the admin committee. That director Fultz and director Henry on the budget and finance committee. Director Bruce and director Smallman are engineering planning committee. Environmental committee director Bruce and director Smallman. Santa Margarita groundwater agency director Swan director Henry as voting members and one alternate Margaret Bruce. Second. Director Smallman. No. Director Bruce. Yes. President Henry. Director Swan. Director Fultz. Alright. So, the next items are director Smallman's items on field trips. They're I, L and M field trips for new and existing board directors and then board members senior staff and public committee members training. So, L do you want to talk about that now or should we talk about it another time? Sure. Yeah. We wouldn't be making any decisions tonight on this and it won't take very long actually. It will probably move into the next meeting but I'm looking for a board consensus to develop I've had just a little bit of background I think as board members we would serve the public better if we got some sort of like field trips particularly with me with the being on the engineering committee there was a couple things that you know I basically really didn't even know about the district already had that we've been trying to you know I'm trying to be helpful on that and then I think it would not only include you know just going field tripping the facilities but some of the inner workings software programs etc that were on that. The basic structure of how this would work you know it could be one big special meeting with the presentation with the staff or it could be maybe running a van and driving around the touring the thing. None of this is definitely not a high urgent problem but in the beginning of the year I think it would be really helpful to somehow structure so I guess what I'm sort of asking with is that perhaps that I got with staff to develop some sort of schedule based on what you comments that you would have to say on how this would exactly work but it's just basically and then obviously some of the directors already really you know like directors Bruce then on the board some of the which might not be quite as necessary as the new board members and myself to do it but anyway obviously we would have some sort of fiscal impact because staff would have to do that so anyway I just wanted to have some sort of put together the package for the meeting in January on some sort of structure how this would work exactly and then go at that time. So when I first started on the board staff was kind enough to offer and I reached out and availed myself of several opportunities to do ride-alongs if you will to have orientations to the different sections of the district to see how the inner you know the pumps, the pipes, the tanks, the software the maps, the charts the files, how everything worked it is burdensome on staff and it's an awful lot to remember so I would just encourage the new board members to coordinate with staff for what Bill's suggesting and to go along with one of I think it's important to note from Bill's recommendation is there's an awful lot to dive into if the district staff could compile some kind of orientation binder with key charts, references maps, statistics kind of the background of the district in thumbnail to go along with those tours whenever we might avail ourselves of them would also be helpful That's a good idea I actually got a little bit of tour of the district years ago when we were talking Merger and Longpico and got to go through some of the things and I know that Rick has some ideas about this and I think leaving it to staff would be a good idea to get it back to us about what they think It's a great idea to be able to spend some time with the staff and get some presentations from the staff on what they're doing how they're doing it, what's working what's not working and a little more detailed understanding of the tanks as we know we've got some direct contacts with some customers with tanks sitting above their house they're apparently leak and flood them out and I'd like to get a little better understanding of those types of issues interfacing this in more detail During the election season in 2014 the candidates actually all got a tour by the esteemed tour guide it was great to me one of the things that we talked about over the last few months is a series of workshops and as president I'm hoping to be able to work with Rick on that where each is functioning basically we started out with a presentation of the virtual tour of operations engineering environmental finance of what's happening and I absolutely think it would be great to do the field trip portion of that too particularly on the operations and potentially engineering side when we did that in 2014 it was incredibly helpful to be able to see all that and we didn't even really scratch the surface as I recall we went to a handful of locations but it was great and everybody walked away with a great appreciation of what we have and what staff have to retain so any comments from the public Lydia what do you have people I think it's a great idea that everybody to come familiar with everything they're overseeing a lot of it was supposed to have we see this same thing and that never happened in two years I served on a lot of it and I think it's a great idea to have a public tour as a need if it's publicly noticed will the public be allowed to tag along and maybe avail themselves of the tour I'd like to see it all thank you we're just a good one there are several ways we can do it and we invite you to the board full board goes that is one of the complications we get a handful of public on those tours you can go individually the staff can set it up it is a public meeting you have a particular site that you want to you have to see the complaint about a leaky tank if you want to go look at that leaky tank the director of operations is more happy to take individual directors out and we don't have to know the status of it but the staff does agree because you're going to be seeing bills coming through million dollars here half a million dollars there for projects and it's always good if you can put a vision to that bill and see what we're spending the money on and look at that it is very time consuming and as Bill said you'll take a long time to see a lot but we'll pick the key areas and then we always ask directors is there something on your mind that you want to see that you haven't interested I like to wait till the weather is a little better it's not cold wet and muddy most of the sites are gravel roads of course the treatment plants are but I definitely want to get you up and look at the lion's slide that's going to price kind of guesstimate to be up to as much as five million dollars to repair it so it's really good to get the board out it helps and it makes that job a lot easier when we come to the board to tell you about these issues and problems so yeah that's a great idea any more public comment out there okay well just I mean we can just say we want some information on this right we have to have a vote we'll get a schedule and get it back to the board so at least the board knows roughly that we haven't forgot about it we have a schedule I would like to wait and make sure it's decent weather because it's raining yeah it's going to mess up our hair James we could say across to I do have a five-seat seated truck so an outrunning van I could take out small groups at the time as well yeah they could be different days because maybe everybody you know there's a lot of feedback on public meeting and those type of things we'll work that out great I think maybe we could put some scenarios I think we can probably divide it up because there's different things there's driving around but I think there's also directors that are interested in seeing other parts of the district in the office and those sorts of things strategy that's cost effective and can bring it back to the board at a later date yeah perfect okay alright your next item was brown act training I know that Rick is contacting a lot of places about getting training and he's going to be presenting that to us at some point yeah district secretary is working reaching out to a lot of different agencies to see what type of schedules and costs are available there's a lot out on the internet for webinar type things but I do believe the board is more interested and plus we have committees that we want to supply training to we have more of a workshop type training where everybody is together so it's a little more difficult but it's out there to bring somebody in in different ways we're trying to get back to schedule for some time in January and we will bring that back to we understand that that's very important yeah I think there might have been some confusion because I think you're both trying to put something on the agenda that are similar the one my thought was it goes directly to one of the recommendations on the grand jury report which I have on the menu on the on the agenda I'm at the memo that I created there and it was one of the I think it was one of the recommendations that I think might have been kind of overlooked I know that we mainly focused on Ladov and responding to the grand jury but a member of the public made a learning to that there was that one specific recommendation I don't have it right currently it was basically the public to have a better communication I mean members of the not just directors but committee members and then the committee members including Ladov and everybody that their interaction with the public smoothed that over basically and there's on the packet there is a firm so I think what I'm sort of asking in this regard is perhaps to contact that one particular firm and then come back with the meeting in January with a proposal what they and give them all the information on what they think their training could offer to help with that one particular grand jury recommendation and what from reading the information on their website they looked like they were like one-on-one sessions they were one hour and all that I can also ask them if they also have just basically come and have a big presentation to the full board on what they recommend on how to improve that relationship so but anyway so I'm just asking for your comments on whether you think this is something that the board would like to find more information on about bringing to the meeting in January I think but I think this is kind of mixed up with some of the other ground but I think I know what you're talking about I saw it but we're trying to avoid spending way too much money and they look like I mean I haven't talked to them I don't know what they're going to cost but they're like we have so many consultants and so many this and so many that that we're paying for that I don't know that I mean we need Brown Act training we need how to avoid the kind of problems that happened before because of conflict of interest we need that kind of basic training the training you're talking about that you show there that sounds great and fun but is it going to help us I mean it might help us to be better people I won't argue with that hopefully we're pretty nice people anyway but I mean we could check and see how much it cost well that's what I think asking for is to bring it back to the board for consideration in January a lot of money I mean I'd be fine to find out more about it and specifically what it costs the training does look valuable if it costs $10,000 I'd say no if it costs $1,000 I'll just talk about it so let's find out okay excuse me is staff supposed to fight that or is Mr. Snellman going to do that staff will look into that so I think we're to end guess who's on can I comment on what you just talked about can I comment on what you just talked about sure did I miss it already or did I I thought we talked but go ahead and talk so I've always found that the a really good reference on the Brown Act is the League of Cities they have a handbook it's written for high school graduates basically but it is footnoted so if you are curious about one particular point or something it'll tell you where to look it up it may be in a state law it may be in some kind of court case or court so that's a really good handbook on the Brown Act so I got a little confused here are you just talking about what are you talking about we're talking about everybody everybody can in the training staff also there is AB-1234 required so I assume that this is going to cover that AB-1234 something that elected officials are required to do and there's a bunch of courses online many years ago I took one of these courses for free and I said I was Ryan Coonerty and then when it was all done it printed out a nice certificate form that said I was Ryan Coonerty so I wanted to know what the training was myself and actually that's one of the things I wanted to mention is that with the last board I heard at some point that board members maybe some but some of them were taking some CSGA training so CSGA's got an AB-1234 thing and I think it was 25 bucks or something online course for 25 bucks I didn't want to pay 25 bucks to take that course myself but I really was curious I wanted to take the course and find out how to know this how can somebody take that course I mean maybe it's not a good course but I really wanted to be able to take the exact same course so that I could go talk to the board member and say how can you not know this when it's right in the course that you took but the 25 bucks was enough of a hurdle that I was for your opinion I know I'm right and they're wrong I did take I did go to Sacramento California Special District Association training it cost a whole lot more 25 bucks it was great I would recommend it for everybody ok so now I'm going to give the attorney the floor I'm going to see a slide show everyone I'm going to see ok bye yes it is this is a little outside the box you may have noticed we don't typically talk about litigation in open session you will see that this is entitled procedural history an emphasis on history and procedure I'm going to be talking about events that are publicly known part of public court records etc of course I'm a lawyer so I have to have a disclaimer I just started a moment ago we're only going to discuss information with the matter public record all of this comes from various public files I'm not warranting the truth of this all I'm saying is this is the best history I just put together that I've seen in the court record I don't personally know what happened in the events leading up to this the present state of the Holloway and the Vieira cases my involvement in these matters was pretty limited until about the middle of 2018 so I'm lying on the records you are going to piece this together of course privilege and confidentiality legal advice and work product you have to be kept confidential that limits this presentation to essentially factual issues I would do my best to answer questions and certainly there will be an opportunity for public comment but I may and I apologize if I have to do this if you ask me a question that gets into strategy you know estimates about the litigation those kinds of things I'm not going to be able to answer those kinds of questions but I'll do my best okay so we've got to rewind we've got to go back to the beginning of how all this started the events leading to the Vieira and Holloway litigation it goes back to 2010 former board member Terry Vieira's wife was a real estate agent was the listing agent for a residential property at 1130 Rebecca Drive it's at this point a matter of public record Mr. Vieira had a stake in the real estate agency and ultimately as we'll go through the process of this discussion his wife earns a commission from the transaction that the district's involved in so his wife earns a commission the agency earns a commission he has an ownership stake in the agency so September to November of 2010 this is really where the events leading to these allegations started the district is interested in purchasing this Rebecca Drive property to expand the neighborhood for more tanks in need of rehab and Rick probably would know more about the specifics of this on September 2nd of that year then district manager Jim Mueller asked a former board member Vieira for information about the property which Mr. Vieira provided to Mr. Mueller Mr. Mueller the district manager then proceeded to negotiate the purchase of that property for the district and executed the transaction documents on behalf of the district right after Mr. Vieira is contacted on September 2nd this closed session item appears on the board agenda related to the negotiation of this property transaction where Mr. Mueller is identified as the property negotiator Mr. Vieira informs Mr. Mueller and the former district council Mr. Mark Hines of his financial interest in the sale through his wife's commission potentially his ownership in the real estate agency again I know exactly how this disclosure occurred but I know from the meeting minutes that it did occur the meeting minutes reflect that Mr. Vieira publicly announced an income conflict and he recuses himself and that he doesn't participate in the board discussions about the property negotiation later towards the end of this time period Mr. Vieira ultimately does vote to approve district bill lists which included expenditures related to the property purchase such as inspection and pest control fees and other things that typically go with the property purchase and I'm not no pining again on the legal import of these things I'm just giving you sort of a recitation of some of the key facts that come up later in the cases so now you got to fast forward several years it's about four years later November to December 2014 Mr. Vieira is coming off the board Mr. Holloway commences his lawsuit alleging violations of these government code provisions in connection with all the facts related to the sale the lawsuit names several defendants including Mr. Vieira showcase realty in his wife's real estate agency the San Lorenzo Valley Water District and Mr. and Mrs. Dill Dean the homeowners who sold their residential property to the district excuse me were there was it one lawsuit or one lawsuit with multiple sort of actions and was the district named as a defendant in all actions the original complaint wasn't really clearly pled in terms of specific claims but it did mention political reform act violations and the conflict of interest violation and it named all of those defendants so it wasn't it didn't clearly at that time connect specific defendants to specific claims so the lawsuit does seek specific remedies or damages these things give you some sense of which of the causes of action are pled against which defendant and I apologize that's getting a little bit technical but sort of going back to more general terms the complaint sought to have Mr. Vieira in more layman's terms pay back the $13,050 commission that went to the real estate agency in his wife it sought to have Mr. Vieira pay treble penalties under the political reform act sought a court declaration voiding the property transaction so essentially undoing or unwinding the 1130 rebecca drive property sale to the dildines and it sought to have the dildines repay all the money they received from the district for the property which would be in the order of and I haven't done a fine analysis of this amount but it would be in order of about $500,000 maybe up to $550 and it seeks to have the defendants pay the plaintiff's attorney's fees and costs alright so we're still in December 2014 this is the very beginning of the lawsuit Mr. Vieira the district and Mr. Vieira presumably the other defendants were served with copies of the complaint Mr. Vieira contacts district council we have an email chain that was made public last year regarding this discussion so what the quote here comes right out of the publicly released email Mr. Vieira asks for legal representation in this case and Mr. Heinz then district council responds to that email stating title to defense and recommend that this be done again Mr. Fultz was Mr. Heinz email authorized by the board before December that I would prefer not to get into in a public setting but I'm happy to address it in a closed session okay and what is the basis upon which Mr. Heinz made that recommendation legal basis what what law what code there again I think we should get into that closed session well actually that's the government claims act that's it's like section 820 or something in the government but the government claims act is when a director sues the agency you know it invokes the government claims act and the agency makes all these determinations about what they're doing in the fact well I agree that it's fair to infer this is an invocation of government code section 995 but when we're talking about really getting to the specifics of who communicated to whom about what related to this it does start to get into a privileged area so I'm not going to go much further than that I think it's an answer to this question about the Heinz's communication with the era occurred before the board had decided it was never agendaed until after that the board had what yes that's correct that's all a matter of public record and if you want to know more about that I would refer you to the district's cross complaint against Mr. Heinz and his law firm which gets into this in a little more detail so there are public records they answer my questions is that I'm a little confused well so I'm completely ignorant I'm like a member of the public at this point this is pretty far outside the box and I have to be really careful here to avoid privileged waiver issues I wasn't there for me to start saying to start getting into anything that's beyond what's written in the public record involves a certain amount of speculation and maybe also calling upon knowledge that's why I'm being careful I understand I understand the question so you want to okay thank you I was once like the lawsuit was filed well okay but sir are we going to keep this to question after from the public or are we going to cost on that point I would leave it to the chair's discretion we just want to come out of hand yeah I just want to have a quick conversation across the hall if it gets out of hand if it gets out of hand okay we'll stop so the the board yes the emails between Mr. Heinz and Mr. Dierre were before this was on the board's agenda when this was before the board the board voted and this is a quote from the agenda item or from the minutes to defend the board and former board Mr. Dierre that was the board's decision going forward just a little bit by month to January 2015 the district agrees to sell Rebecca Drive property now that it's gotten what it needs in terms of the water tank to new homeowners for approximately $6,000 question is it appropriate to be selling a piece of property that's in litigation that was part of the litigation at Barclay yeah that I apologize but I'm I'm not going to get into it in this context because it's an opinion that's really not part of the procedural history of the case it just seems inappropriate to be selling a piece of property that's part of the case that's ongoing right okay so we're going to get hit a couple years at once here in the early stages of the case in 2015 and 16 the district and showcase the realty firm successfully challenged the validity of the complaint as against them the trial court and we'll get to the appeal later but the trial court determined at that time that a non-governmental plaintiff lacked standing to bring this type of action against these defendants then because only the government code 1090 cause of action applied to these defendants the lawsuit was dismissed as to them Mr. Halloween his attorney appeals from the dismissals and of course there's more to be said about this okay so 2016 the case keeps proceeding against Mr. Vieira because he was not dismissed from the case his case is still pending in the trial court he's still being represented at that time by then district council Mr. Heinz pursuant to the board's approval of his defense there's a mediation which is unsuccessful and the case goes to trial at the end of 2016 so December 2016 there's a bench trial in front of the judge the trial court rules for Mr. Holloway fighting and these are things that essentially come right out of the court statement of decision that Mr. Vieira violated the political reform act that he had a financial interest in the decision to purchase the property that he provided information about the property to Mr. Mueller and voted on expenditures for the purpose of for the purchase of the property and the court in this is a quote out of the state of decision he did not have an evil intent in violating this section of the political reform act what's the significance of no evil intent that would again involve a legal opinion that goes a little beyond what's in the document so I apologize I'll defer that to court session next okay now we're on to early 2017 the trial court enters judgment for those of you who aren't familiar with court proceedings in any level of detail it's typical for there to be a decision and then judgment gets entered subsequently with the specifics of what that decision means for the parties the judgment orders Mr. Vieira to pay the amount of his wife's commission plus an amount of 11.4% represents his ownership interest in showcases portion of the commission for a total of let's just say roughly $9,500 happens to be paid to Mr. Holloway half to the state's general fund and it also orders Mr. Vieira to pay 116,000 some of the attorney's fees now this is a judgment against Mr. Vieira appeals so now there's two appeals going on at this time there's Mr. Holloway's appeal from the dismissal of the 1090 case against several defendants and there's also now this appeal by Mr. Vieira from the judgment that was entered against him these are not the same, they're proceeding on separate tracks few months later the board votes to stop all financial commitments to the political reform this is a quote from the report out of closed session at this point the district stops paying Mr. Vieira's legal bills he still has the appeal pending September 2017 Mr. Vieira submits a claim to the district the claim demands that the district fulfill its duty under Mr. Holloway's point earlier this is government code sections 995 and 825 demand that they fulfill their duty to represent, defend, and indemnify him against any judgment or attorney's fees awarded etc. Essentially he is invoking code sections that he says require the district to continue to defend him and pay his judgment those are one of those codes saying that the district can stop paying anytime for no reason whatsoever and there again I'll defer it to closed session Mr. Fultz and we will get into that there's three reasons yeah I'm really trying to stay away from the reasons why the district did what it did and stick to what happened and I know a lot of you would like more information about the reasons why I just can't get into in this context so now we're getting you know this is getting pretty close to recent history spring to summer of last year this is the 1090 appeal that Mr. Holloway's attorney took from the dismissal of several of the defendants including showcase Dill Deans and the district the court of appeal reverses the trial court saying Mr. Holloway does have standing to sue under government code section 1090 that sends the case nobody appeals to the supreme court that sends the case back to the trial court for the proceedings that was roughly July of this past year so now the case is back in the trial court under government code section 1090 against the previously dismissed defendants and now you know separate proceedings all part of the same big umbrella but these are different sort of procedures this is actually a different case Mr. Vieira now sues the district on his claim that he submitted in September alleging that the district wrongfully terminated its defense of him its legal obligations to defend and indemnify him under those code sections we just mentioned it also alleges that Mr. Heinz in his law firm at Consin violated fiduciary duties owed to him as his attorney and that they were negligent in their representation of him this complaint seeks damages and junked of relief and attorney's fees I think it's fair to say that in really gentle terms that this is an attempt to move all the costs of the litigation over to the district and the district's former attorney May 2018 SDRMA finally appointed counsel to help defend the district against Mr. Vieira's lawsuit not Mr. Halloway's lawsuit what about the 1090 the 1090 is part of Mr. Halloway's lawsuit and there's no there's no insurance covering that at all we don't have insurance appointed counsel in the Halloway case okay the district files a court now that Mr. Vieira has sued Mr. Heinz the district files a cross complaint against Mr. Heinz at Consin alleging a variety of things including professional negligence breach of fiduciary duty fraudulent concealment breach of contract and equitable indefinite question can you elaborate on what fraudulent concealment and what was concealed is that part of the yeah it's in the cross complaint let me try to sum it up in a way that's not too technical and lawyer speak it's I believe be careful because I'm not sure exactly what we said in the complaint off the top of my head but it's along the lines that um Mr. Heinz was perhaps not providing the best legal representation to the district at the time the case was filed because he was trying to cover up mistakes made in connection with the underlying transaction in 2010 discovery discovery of the lawsuit I mean fraudulent concealment sometimes oh no it doesn't relate to anything that was done in the lawsuit if you look at the cross complaint it has to do with essentially the actions that were taken in 2010 that led to all these proceedings and then what the attorney did when the lawsuit was initiated in 2014 so the old board which next president Bruce was a member of our QCM so concealment from the old board from themselves I'll refer you back to the cross complaint for any further details about what's alleged in there um okay summer of 2018 and maybe I may have left out some details so keep in mind the 1090 cause of action against showcased the Dildines and San Lorenzo Valley Water District is back in the trial court we get our first case management conference in that part of the case because the political reformat case against Mr. Vieira has now gone all the way to trial and is up on appeal so now we're back in the 1090 case in the trial court we've got a case management conference Mr. Holloway's attorney represents to the court as part of their CMC statement that is presently opposed to mediation that's a court out of the CMC statement the San Cruz Superior Court takes it upon themselves, himself, the judge to coordinate the Holloway and Vieira cases that they'll proceed together which largely means that we go to court on one of these cases we're going to court on both um they're not actually combined with each other so the proceedings are still sort of technically separate but we go into court at the same time on both cases so there's different attorneys on both cases we go see the judge at the same time sort of a simple way to say that um we very recently just within the past month or so um there were a couple of disqualifications and the case is now in front of judge Timothy Volkman at our last case management conference on December third judge Volkman confirmed that he intends to continue to preside over both cases so we weren't sure we were getting sort of bounced around from courtroom to courtroom and judge to judge and now it looks like we're going to stay in front of judge Volkman for both cases uh Mr. Holloway's attorney on December 12th represented to the court that he'll be filing a summary judgment motion regarding the 1090 uh case which he said would be heard in February uh I don't know if that's really going to happen or not but to be seen in the meantime the political reformat case against Mr. Vieira remains pending on appeal and actually when I wrote this um there was no hearing date set just yesterday uh we saw the filings indicating that both Mr. Vieira's attorney and Mr. Holloway's attorney have waived oral argument so that means there won't be any hearing date set the court will simply decide the appeal on the papers and presumably issue a written decision um let me think if there's anything else that's happened the last couple days to monitor public record I can update you on I think that is it I apologize that there was like a day out of date in this uh this presentation so again you know Q&A will be limited I've done my best answer questions I'm happy to take comments and answer any more questions in our court I'm just curious I mean uh for years this has been it has been in effect very close to the best and now I'm wondering what the motivation is for this open kimono well my understanding is that it was requested by the agenda for that reason this this is unconventional to be sure um but it can be done to the extent it focuses on public records this is all public this is all public so why wasn't this done earlier why wasn't this done when there were outcries and they pressed banner for this information to be made public let's ask public public sense let's take this into the court it's public but to provide transparency to the public I would summarize it like this that could have eliminated all of those problems in the past few years could have been made this could have been done well on the website I mean I don't think this really eliminates any of the problems but to the extent the board and the district are comfortable doing this and certainly this would have been a much harder thing for me to do a year ago or six months ago than it is now now that I'm essentially handling the district's representation in the Holloway case we don't have special counsel anymore I've had to become more familiar with the cases so it didn't take a lot of work for me to put this together and I'm much more comfortable sort of knowing what's public and what isn't I mean this is a tough and unusual thing to do and I guess if this would have been helpful earlier it would have been a very difficult thing for me to do earlier I appreciate it thank you I do but it would have been I think it would have eliminated many many more problems if it had made a problem earlier I'm not sure if it would have eliminated the problem it was very well done and it clarified a lot of confusion and sometimes just eliminating confusion is a good trend so could you explain if the complaint against the people with sole property is successful and they have to give the money back to the district what happens to us to the district I don't understand how they give the money back but the district can't give the land back well sir you're you're in someone uncharted territory there and I suspect that we would have different views than Mr. Halloway and his attorney for that reason okay I feel like I want to say something but I guess I'm not exactly sure what to say so first of all I want to say I discovered 1090 violations at two local agencies pretty much at the same time one was the library board that attorney Mosher was on and the other was the SLB water board I found both of them at the same time what was going on at the library was that Mike Termini who just ended his term as mayor of Capitola he was the Capitola representative on the library board and he was doing business with the library which is I guess the law section 1090 says a board cannot make a contract in which a board member has a financial interest can't make a contract at all it doesn't matter whether the board member recuses himself the board can't make the contract he walks out of the room the board still can't make the contract that's what section 1090 says and it's been the law in this state almost since statehood in one form or another the reason that I know this is because back when I was researching this before the case was ever filed I found the Attorney General has a book on conflict of interest and there's a chapter on section 1090 so if you look at the book online you find the chapter on 1090 you only have to read a couple of pages and you will find that you will realize I do not want to get close to this this is like the third rail and you get electrocuted if you use this now there's a phenomenon in local government where if you find a law violation and frankly I have found several law violations by this district when you do and you go to the attorney or you go to a board member and they say, oh our attorney says it's all good like at the library board the attorney didn't come to the meetings and you say, oh the attorney says it's all good everything's good, it's all good we're not doing anything wrong so what do you do when you face that kind of a situation where the attorney just flies out his room on the lawn and I guess what I've discovered is one thing you can do is you sue the agency when I sued the library board well I didn't even sue I didn't even sue the library board on the conflict of interest so I went to the board and within a couple of months terminated all the money back it was $30,000 and the attorney retired and the library director retired so I felt that's a job well done I brought the evidence I brought it to the board and within a couple of months the library director was gone the attorney was gone and the board member paid back $30,000 to the public I wish that this district had handled this thing the same way because at this point the district has spent $4 million defending the indefensible this is indefensible board members not supposed to be doing business with their agency and it's just flat on it and what I wish would have happened what I always thought is what if this were a school board I just have to believe that if this were a school board eventually one of the trustees said before you got to $250,000 and I think it's probably heading over that now but before you got to $250,000 to defend a board member's financial transaction some board member would speak up and say we've been entrusted with this money to educate children why are we going down this route on this I mean I think you ought to relax a little bit I don't know what exactly so I have to tell you that the main purposes of my lawsuit was to object Mark Hines I came to the board in early 2015 when there was a new board almost four years ago and I had a piece of paper that had a dozen code sections on it and every one of those code sections was a story about something Mark Hines was wrong about there were a dozen of them and I mean I gave up at a dozen they went on beyond that and it would have been a story that I could talk for five minutes about what that was all about and how he was wrong about it and that would have taken an hour but I just said this guy's made so many mistakes I was really hoping and I had to plead it with him get a second opinion because Hines was the one who caused this problem in the first place the district never should have bought my house now I talked to a great group at the time the first time I ever heard about this why would your district buy a house didn't make any sense and I asked board members and I asked staff members and I got consistent answers there were two reasons that I was told can you wrap this up quickly you know what you don't have to make any decisions and I know you're running into a closed session later I don't think there's anything you have to decide tonight I'm always available I know I'm not trying to shut you down and the fact that at this point the district is suing Hines again it's kind of like the library board situation I feel like well I've done my job here this was what it took to get that guy out of his district and Bob and I followed the whole process by which the current district council was highlighted Bob and I spoke in favor of the current district council so that was an important thing that needed to happen at this district but if I had not done this Hines would still be here he would still be here and people would still be saying oh it's all good so that was one of the things that was necessary now the other thing is there were lots of different lawsuits that I could have picked and the reason I picked this one I'm trying to get people private parties to pay back I'm not trying to hit up the agency and I'm not trying to get to spend a lot of attorney's fees and it pains me to have your attorney talking to my attorney I mean we're just chewing up attorney fees and the mediation thing so you know ex-president brought up the mediation thing a couple months ago well first of all I don't want to see Gina Nichols in mediation I don't think I can get anything out of her I mean if you've got anything to say to me to educate me about this go ahead if you want to get the mediation and grab me and try to trash talk me and tell me this case is important I'm not interested in hearing it at this point I bought a master's degree in this subject and I'm going to see it through I mean I have to see the answer in the contract void from inception you know in the oral argument in the spring Shannon Jones was the attorney for the showcase and the Justice Elia asked her directly did the board member have a financial interest in the contract and she started the answer and said hey if you're going to make an argument just say no and he's asked her again I'm amazed because I think this is the kind of thing we usually have to prove important but she admitted a lot out to the court in the deal yes she had a financial interest in the contract there's nothing else for me to prove that's why my attorney is going to go for summary judgment if you have a financial interest in the contract it's void so I guess in your way that's the answer to Mr. Mosher yeah it's void and I want that half million for this district from private parties we have a board member his partners and his clients you know and I hope there's some insurance to cover it but I don't really care I'm trying to get half million dollars for this district I understand that but I need you to to buy that equipment directly and that he would install it for free and what he paid back on his own is the right thing to do because Mr. Holloway was right technically we understood that the library director made a mistake he gave an additional $30 donation because the library he did not pay back money but the library paid him for his work it was an additional donation okay it's getting out of hand there let's stop he spoke twice no come on he spoke twice I know that but you spoke twice as long I think what's going to happen is you're going to spend a little over a year with another quarter million but I would like to answer Mosher go ahead he's gone so don't bother before I ever brought it up to the library board I called my terminating on the phone and I told him what I knew and he told me that he had talked with John Barassani the attorney a year before and that John Barassani told him at the time he was only in for $11,000 and at that time Barassani told him the worst that's going to happen you should have to pay back $11,000 that was in terminating this is what he got from the attorney so the attorney reached his duty to the board kind of like you're this attorney reached his duty to the board by not informing them hey there's a library board member doing business with the library he didn't tell them that but it was 11,000 and a year later it was 30,000 so he was doing business with the library first thank you thank you both okay next agenda item are we done? can I ask one more question who are you asking the question of of the attorney of the district attorney of Gina you probably won't be able to answer this but I know this is a question that's on a lot of great payers minds and that is how much longer is this going to go on how much more are we going to have to pay and is there any way of short cutting or reducing that do you have any answers to all those questions to the extent I can try to work on those issues it'll have to be a close session but you understand the concern I think she'd have to be F. Lee Bailey or something like that okay can we move on minutes from the board of directors meeting November 15th 2018 consent this is a consent oh it is consent so we don't have to do anything right we vote on the consent agenda we don't actually you don't actually it's just okay alright so then we're going to go to district reports right okay thank you okay administration and engineering are there any reports are there any department James your department right you have the performance status reports in front of you administration, finance, environmental operations and legal full management well I totally lost my place in my mind they'd be more happy to answer any questions so administration and engineering is there something you can answer for me I have to look and see if I highlighted no I didn't highlight anything on that because I had orange so if you want to talk about this or James no yes one quick question what? where's the question if I cannot one quick question for James you can ask James a quick question James on the inflows and outflows where water is going between systems on your report there was 129,000 by the way what are the units on that report is it gallons or is it gallons or is that 129,000 going it was sort of going to a fall tree the version being downed to a search protected so we had to supplement the system of water from the water system and then the system is also shipping most of the water to the pico all the water is that going through any other system or is that direct any other comments to James okay next item is finance put Stephanie up I've got questions on bill pay Chair Henry just because this is the first time we're going through this I just want to point out that this is all grouped under one when you say a different item that works but it's all grouped under one agenda item so for purposes of Brown Act and so on it's one item but I understand you're stepping through it part of the time it's just sort of a question okay so I think on the bill pay some of these that you probably won't answer some what's the matter okay there's a continuing litigation in the parking lot do we got a knife okay so I think this might be a question for about the Olympia Patrol service there's a bill in here for $650 is that a monthly bill is that and what exactly did they do they they lived in the past the Olympia watershed has had problems with a lot of motorcycle and vehicle trespass outside of the trail areas and it causes a lot of disruption to the environment there it's a sensitive habitat area and so they hired the land trust a number of years ago to go and patrol the area and send us a report of illegal abuses that are happening on the property and so that's what that $600 was for so do you look at that on a regular basis to see if that's money that's being spent wisely or yeah, we're always keeping track of the reports and if there's wires of fences we go out and fix the fences and they maintain if there's safety or hazard areas where a tree falls down or a tree is partially falling down and it might cause some kind of risk for users on the property if open to the public access there so we use those reports we don't have enough staff time to go out there and be monitoring on a regular basis ourselves so we have to do that it's a great cost thank you I don't mean to totally hog this item if you guys want to say something but I'm looking at some of these stream flows they really add up there's about three different bills and I realize we need to do stream flow I guess I'm always at my question is are we putting RFPs out for some of this stuff or are we just saying hey we've been conducting a stream flow and temperature monitoring program for the last four years the San Lorenzo river with regard to our surface water diversions and how they impact total flow on the San Lorenzo river and temperature on the San Lorenzo river which is a critical aspect of stream health for fish for fish health for fish success mostly salmon so I think I'm hoping that when we have these workshops that we've been talking about tonight that would be one of the key aspects that we're discussing what we've learned from that monitoring program and how that informs the next phase of what our program is moving towards is more conductive use making sure that we're enhancing stream flow and making sure fish habitat is taken care of while we sustainably manage our water supply in the groundwater areas thank you so Stephanie this LAIF local agency investment fund can you tell us about that yeah on the cash section so late is a common area that a lot of government agencies will invest their money in their pool the district used to have a lot more money sitting in late a couple years ago the Santa Cruz County fund similarly operated was generating better returns and so we started to keep more of our money with the county there's pros and cons to each outside of just the interest that it earns alone currently though LAIF has started to now outcrawl Santa Cruz County fund and so this past month in November we actually transferred $500,000 into the late fund to start to gain some of the better interest there LAIF only allows you to hold one account with them so there's no possibilities of being able to have sub accounts for different things for example we did just recently close on the $2 million probation take loan one of the lender's requirements was that the money they sent sit in its own separate fund so that money we had wired to the county and the county created a sub fund for us to be able to hold that $2 million separately as we draw down the new payments so each of them have some flexibilities but right now since there is what I do a more significant increase in the interest rates for LAIF we are going to start to migrate some of our money over there I didn't mean to hog this so does anybody else have like there's more finance in here, more bills there's environmental, there's operations and legal yes you want to say something so on the environmental report I wasn't exactly sure what the context was it looked like there was a mix in the report of potentially historical things and current things and I was a little confused so for example under climate adaptation there's an inventory of 2017 the report is providing the additional items of October 18th board's agenda so I wasn't sure if the report is talking about what you've done what's happening currently or whether it's a full historical retrospective of the two current it's mostly current it's mostly all the things that you're working on currently so with climate adaptation there's several efforts that we're working for writing a climate action plan as part of that inventory and we recently received the report from like a month ago we received the report from a verification their party verification on our inventory so that is disgusting there okay so on public outreach there's interviews Rick Rogers interviewing several times two weeks in mid October I'm trying to just make sure when I'm reading this am I reading this from the point of view of everything that's happened up to this point over some period of time or is it specifically about last month or last quarter or last week well some things are ongoing right so that one looks like something I must have missed I didn't pull it out but usually we have I have the most current efforts that are going on with regard to that we haven't done another interview with KBCZ since that one so I didn't remove it but if we were to do another one because we have a contract with them I'll put the most recent one there and who's responsible for all our Facebook and social media postings who in staff handles that we do that okay thank you any other questions oh Tony you have a question actually I have a question question and I'm sorry that I don't understand this I just want to try to understand when you were talking about those the studies the care of the fish and everything and you know I think here sounds a value we really care about the environment I just want to understand is that pay for those kind of studies is that something that all water districts do do they all I would think that would be like the responsibility of the state or something is that normal well not all water districts get water from surface water and so not all water districts have an environmental department and this water district gets about 50% of their water supply from surface water and that does have in fact on a dangerous species we are in a bio-diverse area where we have a lot of species that are impacted by human activities more so than other areas where there are less bio-diverse species does that mean that we want to ensure that we're not going to be overfusing the water and not going to be endangering them so therefore the mistake or whoever the federal government won't come after us it's okay you have to stop using that water so this is kind of a way to prevent that from happening yeah and it's been affected okay the city of Santa Cruz has been in this for 10 years to the same extent of what we're doing now what the stream of flow is on there I just want to make sure that we that rate cares that it's appropriate that we should be paying for that yeah the city of Santa Cruz does have a much more robust environmental department than we do many people on staff hydrologists and their environmental compliance department has got four people or five people their water conservation department has four or five people they have a public relations department they have they do all those things and their way they've been in this and their way they're much more customer based but they also get their water from a similar situation okay well thank you very much I appreciate it Lou you had your hand up Dr. Bruce do you see any benefit in integrating some of the things that we've learned on Monday at this symposium into the environmental thing absolutely thank you we're sort of like channel each I was waiting for the directors reports and directors communications to point out that the thing that we got to enjoy on Monday but absolutely and that's why Jen and Carly were both in attendance and there's I think a great great opportunity she was there I saw her I said hello to her miss that sorry short answer yes particularly the precipitation studies are in great interest great lady on the financial side of it we said it was $650 a month to invest it's a valuable resource I'm lost for it whoever's doing they are they have authority they'll call in help if they see no they're not in enforcement it's just a monitoring so if they see something and then let us know right Mark can you say something a few questions one's addressed to seven questions to Jen regarding before the previous general manager vacated his position and there was a discussion of a pending loan application for capital facilities and I'd like to know what the amount was and what's the status of that no that's happening so that's still the USDA loan so we still haven't that's still in the submittal phase we still haven't even gotten official word back from USDA what was the total amount estimated 8.2 it started like 6.5 8.3 so we're going to hear back from them I was on the phone with them today and they were hoping to get us answers back by 12.31 that's coming up pretty soon the second question is seems like we're entering into a regional sharing water agreement relationship conjective use essentially benefiting mostly Scott's Valley I'm hoping that the future board will be through their membership will be involved in how that sharing of water through conjective use will affect our current demand here within the Valley in terms of its rate payers and the cost the potential cost changes or cost increases that affect rates I want to keep that on our radar thank you anybody else have questions in these department status reports like operations James would love to answer questions I can't just want to fail okay so I guess we kind of skipped right to committee reports we can there haven't been very many committee meetings so just engineering and lead on so you don't have anything to say I'm not on either of those committees so no that's true you're not although you're soon going to be an engineer but I'm not psychic really I would have thought by now you wouldn't have don't know what we would have said okay alright directors reports directors communications have you got a communication Lou kind of did the preview of whatever I was going to say on Monday I was able to play a hostess to the California's fourth climate change adaptation assessment and there was a dual location presentation and UC Santa Cruz was attended by about 60 people we had a series of speakers who were presenting research and findings about the status of climate change impacts California's Central Coast and the attendees were able to hear as we pointed out studies that indicated variability in temperature variability in precipitation sea level rise impacts and its consequential impacts saltwater intrusion into aquifers and cliff erosion estuary impacts for us here it's more likely that we're going to have impacts in precipitation changes a lot more and a lot less and because of higher temperatures and higher evapotranspiration and ever increasing risk of fire so I'm sure Jen and Carly also took away from the event and are going to be integrating into the work of the environmental committee and all of our Associated Watershed Management and Planning and I've back in the day when I was on another water board and that used to be the San Marloreta base and remember people from UCSC coming out and talking about all we're going to get more rain more droughts the rain is going to be worse the droughts are going to be worse pretty scary stuff anybody else on director communications we haven't been directors too long to communicate but I think I've been talking a lot anyway Ed once paid me a dollar to be quiet for one hour so if I get too bad maybe somebody will offer to pay me oh Bill you're engineering but you didn't have a meeting we went over the basic stuff but I did got interested in asset management and computer modeling etc and that was what I was talking about I didn't really know some of the stuff that we already have but I did reach out to an expert in the field he's the guy that I used to work for and I said at the meeting Rick and some of the staff are going to go there on Wednesday and he's just going to give like an hour an hour and a half for our speech and I'm sure it should be helpful to hear from that expert on that and then possibly we can discuss that more in engineering committee meetings alright so board of directors meeting agenda items there was a list here and I would like to see Santa Margarita listed in this group because there's been all those meetings every month but I never heard anybody come back from the meeting and really say much of anything of what was going on I do know from talking to the facilitator starting in January there are going to be public meetings on Saturdays in various locations Scotts Valley San Lorenzo sorry they'll all be at the Felton community hall all of them will be the second Saturday of the month they've been scheduled and they went out this week we did do a notice there'll be other venues it will be in the paper and things like that will be coming up but we just did the social media blast this week it'll be the second Saturday of the month, January, February and March the second Saturday of the month I believe the first one is on January 12th it will be on Land, Houston Water Supply and it will be at the Felton Town Hall to get the hands at nine so even Scotts Valley is going to come over to Felton everyone should be coming to Felton we're only doing that in one place we'll get there we'll get you there the parking is so terrible and the sound is so bad from the traffic I don't know why they didn't try Zion anyway so I'd like that at least to be on the agendas so that those of us who are on that committee can come back and give a report so people know what's going on because I think that's an issue that people really don't know what's going on and so they can get a lot of wild ideas or maybe they'll get the right ideas this list is just a partial list and now that there's a chair a chair we'll sit down and start developing a schedule with these lists and get more input because there's a bunch of other things that, you know, the website there's different things that staff is ready to move ahead on but the plan is to bring the stuff in front of you I know there's a lot of these issues I was just specially concerned about right and we'll we need to update this strategic plan sooner than later because then that for a lot of us will fall in and then we'll get on a schedule and so staff can prepare the necessary app reports and so forth and get a schedule so we're not chasing up jail for us and we've got to work that for workshops workshops looking forward to does this mean we're about done here we're all done so we can go we can adjourn for closed session agenda the public comment for closed session okay, public comment I think we should we'll shut down this litigation as quickly as possible and join Mr. Holloway's suit against the other adversaries let's stop wasting our money since you're going on long enough let's go to the court and vacate that case if we can the case of not defending Terry Beer on the vlog that'd be great if we could do it we've got to hire Bruce to go suit somebody Bruce you know I could suit this district so many times and we'll suit a different district well you know every time we're back and forth there's going to be more than I'm going to tell you there was a granite violation that this district was doing that I did not want this district to have to pay to defend I sued Santa Clara County Santa Clara County they're ten times bigger than Santa Cruz County they're a thousand times bigger than this district Santa Clara County I sued them to make the same point so I didn't hurt them much but I made my point I won that case so I could have sued this district many times and the reason I picked this particular case was because this is a way to get private people to pay the district to get money into the district from outsiders that broke the law it's not where you just hit up the district you go sue the district for being a bad actor and they have to pay your attorney and they pay your attorney and all all you do is it's a sting that's a sting that's no fun so I thought this would be a little bit better some of the bad actors to pay so we got about four different cases here you got me versus showcase you got the era versus the district the era versus Heinz and district versus Heinz out of these four cases I think I got the best one because all I have to prove is financial interest in a contract and he admitted it he admitted it in board meeting he admitted it in deposition and he admitted it at trial so it's well established and he owes a financial interest so that's all I have to prove and that's easy now the era suing the district to me this is a terrible thing he's the one that everybody should be focused on he's the one trying to get money out of the district I'm trying to get money into the district and he's trying to take money out the other two suing the attorney how often does that work I mean you read the paper how often do people sue their attorneys and it actually works and I think the district has a much better case than the era because at least the district paid for the attorney that didn't represent them well but the era got free legal defense and accepted it and anyway of these four cases I think mine's the easiest to prove so I'm frustrated it takes four years to do these things or eight or whatever it's going to be okay so any other public comment on closed session I think before we close we'll take a 10 minute recess before we go into closed session a recess okay we're having a recess 10 minutes and it's not okay