 Hello, I'm sorry if you can hear me or not, but there is no audio for the stream, so we can't hear anything. We can hear you now. You can hear us now. Yes, thank you. Give us just one moment. We're having some technical difficulties. Please bear with us while we try to fix the issue. Test test. Thank you so much for your patience. You please raise your hand. Thank you so much. I didn't just move forward and we'll use my laptop as the best we can for audio. We were at the roll call, though, I believe. Board member right. Board member Walsh. I don't know. Chair Watts. Okay, let the record reflect that that passes unanimously. Thank you, chair Watson members of the subcommittee. Our next item will be the cash progress program changes and Thomas Hare, our sustainability technician will be presented. Hey, good afternoon, chair Watts and members of the board. Can everybody hear me? Great. I will forget. I'm here to talk to you about our cash progress program. We've had an incredible question of response during the, during the draft version of the program. But now that we're out of the route, we need to come out of emergency mode and establish a new normal for the green exchange. Try the arrow key. I can just stop. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Try the arrow key. I can just stop. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Technology is our friends. So. What is the greening program that I should be talking to about, cash for grass component, which involves removing the lawn, and the irrigation efficiency rebate component, where we help customers make their irrigation equipment in more efficient. What we're gonna be talking about today is just the cash for grass component. I will show you graphs, but I wanted to start by showing you pictures of some actual programs that have happened in the city of Santa Rosa. Customer response has been overwhelming, created, people here care a lot about saving water and then they act according to these examples. Just from the city of Santa Rosa, we see the history of grass on the ground. So if you wanna look at the numbers, this graph will show you the standard of response from our community. You can see in 2017 through 2020, we had relatively low participation in this program, but it jumped up significantly in 2021, 2022. What you're seeing here on this graph, is doing some technical... It's muted, it's muted, I'm unmuted. Thank you, go ahead. Please bear with us as we go through some technical difficulties. I'm gonna continue my presentation, but we're gonna continue to adjust the audio to try and make this sound a little better. So on this graph, you can see we're showing the square feet removed in each year and we show the total number on top of each of the bars. And again, you have that very large entrance. If you look at the program as a whole, there have been some pretty astonishing things that have been accomplished. Four million square feet have been removed in the last 15 years in the city of Santa Rosa. A lot of zeros to know what does that mean. 13 million facts is the 1.2 million gallons. Doing these out of the program saved a lot of money. So it's really good that we're investment in these programs. So how did we get here? Well, we started back in 2007, with the 50 cent first square foot rebate. Then when we had the last row, doubled that to a dollar, dropped that back down, came out of the row and then in July of 2020, we were able to increase that amount to 75 cents per square foot because primarily the cost was normal water had gone up. Then when we got to this current row, we doubled that again. And now here we are and I'm here to talk to you about potentially dropping that down. Now that it's coming out of emergency mode, I'll give more details about just exactly what we're recommending in the next few slides. So this route combines the last two graphs and I'll just orient us to it first. So we're looking at the total square feet of one room, both residential and commercial. On the X axis, we just have the year and the blue bars are the total square feet of turf removed. And that Y axis on the left-hand side shows the number standard here for total square feet. So you can see during that last route, 2014 through 2016, those numbers really going up and then dropping again. Then that red line that you see is that second Y axis, which is how much money we remain first square foot removed, what was that rebate? And so you can see again that that rebate amount went up during the last route and then dropped again, went up again during this current, most recent drought. And now we're here to talk about what for that. I knew that it will take care of the feedback from the last two slides. That's not safe. So the story to be able to do that, what I just said. Well, John, it's rebate how much we can pay and rebate on the cost of effectiveness and comparing the water savings between the problems on the water. And what you see on this graph, is on that red line right across, that's the cost of the pertinent water that's in the water. And it's in cost per acre foot. And then in the blue and the green bars, you see the cost of the rebate water savings. So how much are we paying per acre per acre? And you can compare the blue and the green bars to that red line across. And you can see that currently, with our drought special out of $1.50 per square foot. Sorry, with the diagonal striking, that will make us get to that cost of effectiveness. We want to keep it as high as we can, because we want to still incentivize customers to sort of just like any one of them. But we do have to pay them for our communities to do so in as cost effective way as we can. So that is what we're going to be proposing. We are currently at $1.50 per square foot, and we've proposed to drop that down to $1 per square foot. The justification for that is because our water supply is in good shape now with our reservoirs, and we no longer are required to save that 20% from 2020 levels. So it is recommended by the Water Department that the Board of Public Utilities, Water Conservation Self-Covid, approve the proposed cash for grass rebate amount returning to cost-effective levels. Thank you, and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you very much for your presentation. Do we have any important member questions or comments? Pretty straightforward. I just had one comment. I think that I understand the justification in this room is very clear. I just want to make sure that when we're publicly explaining this that it does seem that we are lowering the rebate because we have more access to water at the moment to kind of incentivize people from using it. So for whatever public messaging we can do to make sure that we explain that that's not the reason, I think that I would like to see that incorporated into like the marketing once we're doing these programs. Thanks, Director. First, I appreciate the presentation, especially about the savings amount and the correlation of what's paid. It looks like the correlation of what we paid for the programs and how much it used. It may have something also to do with the average estimate, right? So we changed something. What's changed? We'll tell people to change something that's new to the front of their face. I think the last 50 cents on the buck 50 were paid. That last 50 cents are more efficient than our other programs costs. And so I liked the presentation and the calculation and the work that went into this, but I won't be able to recommend or make a motion on this important. But I do appreciate the words and the thought, but I'll just keep it in the buck 50 and if it increases the amount of grass taken out, I go a buck 75. In relation to our total budgets, it's a drop in the bucket. Any other questions or comments? All right, with that, I will open it up for public comment on on important point two. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. And if you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. And if you were in the room, please go to the microphone. It looks like there's no one in the room who wishes to make a comment, no hands raised on Zoom. And we received another voicemail or even a public comment. Great. So I will entertain a motion for moving these. Approve the cash scratch rebate amount. So do they do this or not? Yes. Okay, I move that we approve the grass rebate amount to a $1 per square foot. What do we do now? I believe I can second the motion. So I will second the motion. And Secretary Montoya, we could do a roll call vote. Yes. Board Member Wright. Aye. Board Member Walsh. No. And Chair Walsh. Aye. And that passes with two affirmative votes with Board Member Walsh voting no. Thank you very much for your presentation. And we can move to item 4.3. Dr. Burke, if you could introduce the item. Thank you. Chair Watson, members of the subcommittee, our last item is our water use efficiency and drought campaign successes. And making the presentation will be Claire Nordley, our sustainability coordinator and Elise Miller, our communications coordinators. Just to wrap up a question, there we've been viewed as starting in time. That was when we launched the program, which was in November. And then quickly in the next year or in the next year, February 21, we've given it to the spring to drive another opportunity. And then we've worked into a voluntary 20% on this reduction in May of 2021. In the next year and in February for this reduction, which is really just to show, we've been doing this for three years now or so. And the drought actually just rescinded us from it. So that meant that we enacted our water free change agency plan, which made our reduction burden in the next 40 years. So we haven't had, oh, it went really well actually. So you can see in this graph here, the grade bars are between water usage and then the two bars are our recent water usage. And obviously our recent water usage has significantly lower than our recent water usage. And in fact, since July of 2021, as far as water resources seem to go, we've got 1.5 million gallons. So our resources have really responded to what we're doing with the conservation. So I'm going to talk about in fact, how they talk. So this is a graph of our water use rules that we must see. I should say from 2017 to 2019, we received at least 100 reports or so every year. Really once we started to call for conservation and number of reports that we received skyrocketed. So we received these reports both through our AMI agents of our allergy, what would you say which you can call us to predict? Which in this case, which we call a lot of these customers who have been letting them in for a week. These are also from our water resources. We actually have been out for really a few hours during the summer months and we've looked forward to some records and by all means, by all means. So this shows really that our resource definitely responding to water-based and we're very confident in fixing this too. This is one of the ones that we created the last couple of years. We found that creating water-based water and water, allowed our customers to report water-based and those requiring sufficient water. It also has helped for us in the administrative process in the US program. It's very likely that we'll be patient and we'll be in a good efficient way. So for this one, for example, we organized in and the rest of the person where the water-based was actually located in the type of heat. We had checked off since what kind of water-based case. Again, it's really helpful for the customers to report issues really readily as well as for us in the administrative. We've also attended the enormous number of events, shops, and estates for most of the years. You can see here in the picture, I thought we were still after the middle of COVID. We were looking outside and we found out some of the new things that were in parallel with all the guidelines that we had and we never stopped communicating and we get around to our customers. We also did an enormous number of events for our customers. We worked on our things so they did some of our children's events. We went to them. So for example, we went to the bar in a boat rider and we did a birthday, a pre-eat, and a land pass for our best people, large number of these. And actually in 2002, we went to about an event, about two, sorry, three events out of every four weeks. So we were asked then, since every single month during the entire event. So quite a large number of community gatherings. We also hosted quite a lot of large workshops. We hosted workshops virtually and in person. We hosted workshops in English, in Spanish, and the great thing about having our workshops virtual is that we recorded all the things so they're available on our website and we're going to ask you this question about a specific program or project that we recorded in the space for each of these. So we did two workshops on all sorts of different topics including for your daily basis, how she walked along, how she was talking about treating hair and climate change, gray water, et cetera. So this is really just showing that it's all about the significant risks for our community and the community. As you can see prior to the round, we're going to make a point. We've received about 100 calls very often and as soon as we call the word about the conservation effort in the market, we really got a large increase of calls. So during this time journey, we were talking about a lot of calls. And of course that's not even a number of emails that we also received, it had been a number of responses to the waterways, the waterways, before that should have been called off. So we've had a point in the meeting. And as you can see here, even though we can have a question, we need to send them to the driver's office. We still have a lot of calls that we should make. So our customers are still really engaged about conservation and the food program. Thank you. We also distributed lots of devices, lots of pre-tests. So we have distributed almost 9,000 shower beds and almost 9,000 clothes normables, 11,000 kitchen and bathroom aerators and 12,000 di-cats of the stricter boiler room. So these devices were distributed both in through our events that we went to or in-person events through our water smart check-outs. And anytime we were out in chocolate stick meetings, actually in early COVID, we actually needed to live as well, so we actually had customers to provide in. Of course, we always have our rebate programs. These are available year-round drought or no-drown. And I should encourage our customers to save water for these specific programs. So this is the same graph that Thomas showed as well, but I just wanted to highlight it. It is so significant number of swear-to-heat customers that were moved over the last couple of years. It's really being increased dramatically compared to the previous drought years. And just to touch on a couple more points of success, I think for our cash-for-grads program, so as Thomas mentioned, we haven't moved four million square feet of grass over the last 15 years. And when we do the comparison to other water-related means through one the same number of connections that we do throughout the state of California, we've removed 50 to 90% more than they have. So four million is not just significant in its number, it's also significant compared to other quality toilets of our same size. We've also been conducting regular phone calls to customers who was mandated about to expire, just reminding them that their expiration is approaching with it. They either need to request a dissention or a set of request inspection with us. And that has really increased the number of customers who have gone from one grant section to schedule another request inspection. Also, in July of 2012, we launched a survey to our customers. We've had about 120 participants. We emailed it to them after the end of their post-dissession and we've gone through the mandate program and we also give them a call and ask them to participate and we haven't seen their response yet. We emailed. So this survey was designed to help us understand how customers understand or like our program, how much they're spending on average so that we can tailor our marketing and our performance, depending on what people are looking for. So during that spring, just to discuss because at the beginning points are bargaining here, make sure that we're accessing the specific address that they see the design. We also found out that if we want an element and an element serve, it doesn't mean that we need customers. So that's great. We always continue to do a lot of business. And then we also learned that the average salary for us as a customer costs about $1 per square foot of a change in the time. So it's really important for you to keep it centered. We also got some really nice quotes from people, people really like our program. It's exciting. So this person said, everybody's craving about S job with him and they're gorgeous and into that community. So great for us. And a lot of people expressed that. They love their garden, they're showing it off. A lot of people commented, the name was walked by and commented on it. So it was exciting to see that it sort of generates the interest in the meeting. And then this person said, the communication from the water agency, and I assume that means us, was that after the paper was minimal, very weakly possible. So that was nice again, to hear that feedback about our program. So moving on to bring our first statement, we have had huge increase participation in this program as well. We installed it the last year, there's 35,000 in office, so we should be comparing that to the previous year, prior to the development of about 16,000 installments. So significant increase in our participation and that's about 25 different sites. We also developed over 760 hours per chance. So that's when we're actually getting to this home, we're testing with the shower head, that's air-reader for efficiency, for also reading our support for our system and providing recommendations for us to water. So that's a lot of this for the implementation. And then during COVID-19 right from home, that's about a job or a kid or a distance or something, test their performance for themselves. So in order to follow that program participation, obviously we need to devote resources to that. So when we're talking about staff, we are to say that the technicians are to be the majority of the people that we work with, those on the ground, actually our instructors. We also have to speak with the representatives for the energy team. And then during the development of the year, the temporary administrative system is instrumental in helping us see this that it's water quality. And then of course, we always have our students in terms as well. We also devote a great amount of funding to important piece of programs that you can see that are out of the budget, spending $2 million. That's primarily in our base, it's for our services for the kind of grass program. We also spend about $300,000 for an important program. And again, we make these things twice, buying them showers, twice as much as we need them now. And then the specific amount of ground that we're changing, that's seven to five final days, digital, print products, print mills, sort of the system. So we devote a lot of resources to achieve those also. So now I'm going to pass it on to this board. I just want to talk about different marketing. Thank you for the opportunity to chat with you about delivering the message. So I'm just going to jump in with the programs, they're really speaking for the third grade programs, right? So we need to communicate about these programs. And I just want to take a minute to give a little credit that I'd like to run to for the next year, so the presentation. It's been fantastic working with the board to see if they can bring great energy to their programs, which is one of the issues we're going to have. And I think we have all obviously the importance of timely and realistic communication. So I'm going to discuss how we connected this information to our customers, success, some of the metrics that we're using to measure whether or not we're successful. And so, you know, we lead with our, our life page, right? The sharing house for all of our information, all going to connect people to programs, what was happening with water supply, what restrictions were in place, all of that information was there. When we can drive them there, things like our safety, newsletter, smart mail, digital friend radio ads, earned media and social media. So we're just going to show you some examples of what we're able to accomplish. So really looking at this from the last page to the front, we'll go ahead and declare the trial report to the team. So our drive web page that we set up it had over 130,000 views over the last 18 months. Really impressive. It was one of the top hit web pages on our SRC.org website. And then this directed people to all sorts of information about all of our VR outreach programs. So to connect people to the web page, we also used tools like our city connection views that are 100,000 subscribers. It's really different. We have a 40% rate of excellence. And so every single week we had something related to water smart programs, drought, water supply. And we saw in the data that people were clicking groups and going to our website to get more information. And when they were on our web page, they were staying there for minutes at a time. I was clicking in and clicking out. So we know that the web page is a great forum for information. And we're going there. And this is one of the tools that we used to drive in there. We also have 54,000 customers. And a majority of those customers still see quills. As Clara mentioned, our bill inserts do work. We get a lot of our registration workshops. And during the period of drought, we had at least one bill in certain months that either have a water smart message or a drought related message in it. And then we're all tied in communication. For example, you know, it's time to turn off your irradiation and it'll go out of time frame. Here's an upcoming drought drive of a water smart pop-up of that month's company. So those were in the bills. One of the things that we're trying to do was create, it's going to be an audition. We have a person that needs to come in three times before they turn to pay attention to it. So the bills were great way to reinforce the message. We also did three mail letters. And I was very proud when we had our first drought drive over that, we had thousands of people show up for that event over the next decade or so many. A lot of people actually showed up with our letters. And the letter had information about drought, instructions, or something like that. So we know people are opening that and reading that anecdotally. We also have opportunities to get the land flow, to reinforce the branding and messaging, to develop a message, to actually put a message on the bill. And then we also reported some whole messages as well with the revenue information and for our customers. And then another thing that we did during this drought was a little bit different. COVID-19 kind of changed the landscape for us. We went to a ton of events around the world. It just could be, but it wasn't what we had done previously. So we really went heavy on targeted digital ads. And we had over eight million impressions. So impressions in the end, how many times something seems out of the box for me. And we know from the data behind those impressions that people were looking through, going around sending to find more information. I feel that was successful in the use of our funds to get the results like this first. We also did traditional advertising, modeling, radio ads, print advertising. We had our part that is number one, state-of-the-art partnerships. So they did a large ad purchase with the standard product of print and digital that complimented our campaign. That helped. And then we did grassroots marketing passed out a thousand of the archetypes that said, drought is here to save the water. You know, when I was out, what would my name look like? You know, in a lot of housings, it was just a great company that we need to take action. In addition to that, we had car magnets, well, just the vehicles. On the drought messaging, I've been creating this Google test with water on the fantastical ground as well as plenty of tablet cards for hotels and hotels. And then all of our employees had an annual signature drought is here to save the water. Another way to get the best edge to it. We had a lot of pressure from the last meeting. My favorite type of meeting, it's a great meeting. You know, I think it costs us our time. And we had over 20 media interviews, all positive, local friends, state-wide papers, such as around as long as it was a radio and a number of television interviews. And, you know, they were really interested in what did the drought mean? What restrictions are, like, it's what we had to first do, what resources to be would have it in. So this was the right way to get our message out to a very broad audience. We didn't have to make one. Another question we have is our social media. We had a very robust social media campaign on Facebook. Our reach was 146,000. We had 345 posts over the last 18 months. And all of those were directed to the Social Network website with resources for more information. We have 2,466 followers. We're working on drawing those numbers. We've solved the number of growth over the course of the drought campaign and we're continuing to grow those numbers. We also utilize networks of water, such as media, as well. We also have Instagram. I mean, we're interested in the report. We're trying to build it on the internet. We had a reach out of over 2,000 and 1,000 for 162 posts. So we've got all of these posts together, all of these impressions and the threat to change within a timely communication and building trust with our customers, but we are a legitimate source of information and we have resources of thinking. So I think we can say that we were very successful during this drought and it's been a mercy. And so now we have been reaching out to our customers and they need them for the work that they did. It's really important. They say it won't be a billion debt. We need billion gas for water, but a lot needs to be done and help just get through this drought. Sharing these graphics across all of our social media channels and we'll learn a thing or a partnership is sharing it as well. And I'm really glad that the drought is over. I'm sure it was talking about all the events and everything number 19. It's important. But it did have an impact and it's great when I say it's 18, it's not, I think their message, I don't know if we'll be done after by their message this fall. Let's back up. So what's next? We're not done with conservation. And just because the drought is over, does the earth stop our program? So that's another one thing that I think we want to do in the science and in the messaging that we're going to be teaching around there. Then just because the drought is especially over drought emergencies, so it just doesn't mean that it's time to switch to this water. All of our remade efforts are still in this where students are getting part of our use because of the letters, the calls. We're still reaching out to our customers and we encourage them to think forward. So that's the main thing. Why is fishing sincere to stay in this country? The why is fishing is between this fall so invariably involved with some of the reflection. So we're looking at a drought after rationing work. We think this will be able to help us understand our successes and the challenges that we experience so that we can document those and really have a great record of what we can do in the next drought. And so we know eventually we're going to have another drought, we're going to have those best practices documented for the next year and a half. And then of course, as I'm sure you all know, the water resources planer this week is exploring the program of our water future which expands or potentially expand the water supply. So that's basically what we're doing as well. But that's kind of what we start sharing and you know, you can answer any questions. Thank you both for the presentation. Do we have any board member questions or comments? Board member Wright? Just a couple of comments. First of all, it's amazing that the water use efficiency group, at least from my recollection that may not be that perfect, but I don't think it's gotten any bigger in the last 10 years. I think it's exactly as it was in 2013 when I retired. And so that's, what's that? Smaller. Well, it's smaller. And I guess my point is it's amazing how much outreach this little tiny group is able to accomplish. And you know, just feel like my own neighborhood and talking to neighbors that many of them have all been visited by the water use efficiency in one way or the other. And they are near the face of the Santa Rosa water. They think this is wonderful. It's, you know, the departments helping us and it's all this kind of stuff. And two of my neighbors were actually both on both sides of me were both contacted by phone because of the AMI. And we had to have Leak chased down and they're very grateful. And at least one of them now has learned how to use the portal and now as an avid watcher of the portal. So, you know, it's very effective. I'm very impressed. So few people can accomplish so many things. And so a great presentation. And thank you very much. Thank you very much, Brad. Remember, Lash? Thanks very much. I have one comment and then one very simple question. The question was, let's be a measure because hold a bag and put a shower head. Oh, it's a flow rate. It's a flow rate, okay. So that's good. Great. And then also, I'm very impressed. You're using six different methods or more communication. You've been successful with every one of them. And I think you sort of created a, it's normal to talk about and consider how much water to use to be something you really get excited about. And then it's also normal to be good to save water. It's abnormal to do that. So you change the tone of the conversation. You made it consistent. It's understandable. And if people have questions that come to you. So really appreciate that. You're doing a great job. Yeah, I echo everything that's been said. It's really incredible. Small team and then the mighty team of two I think for communication, the effectiveness that it's able to happen, especially over these last 18 months, but even before that as well. I think that the idea of putting this in a report is really helpful and I hope other water utilities could maybe even use this report to try to replicate some of the fantastic work that you guys have done. Not sure if that is an option later on, but I know that, I think that you guys show that there's comparing us to other agencies of similar size and the effectiveness that you guys have been able to have. So maybe we can spread it regionally and get some people to copy some of your best practices. I think that all of it was just, it's overwhelming to see all those numbers. And I think it's great to now shift that to a thank you. Like how much people worked. And I don't know if anyone have a record of those people who've had the long signs out or a way to target those as well, just with an email thank you or something. But that is, I think just shifting that to that communication is a really great way to close the loop and let everyone know that we appreciate the work that they've done in response to all of their conservation and just being able to continue that message that it's not really over. So yeah, great work. I think we don't have any motion on the floor, but we do have to open up a public comment on item 4.3. So if you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. And if you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. If you're in person, please go to the microphone. Secretary Motoya. And we have no one in the room wishing to make public comments. No hand raised on Zoom where we receive the voicemail or email public comments. Great, well, thank you very much. Thank you all for your presentations today. And with that, we can join them for joining the meeting. Thank you very much.