 Okay. I have 530. So I would like to convene this meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District on April 1st, 2021. Would you call the roll, Holly? President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Henry. Here. Director Falls. Here. And Director Smalley. Here. Are there any additions or deletions to the closed session agenda? Then we move to that part of the agenda that is for oral communications from the public regarding items that are in the closed session. Do we have any members of the public here? I do not. I don't see any. Okay. All right. If that's the case, then we will now adjourn to closed session and I'll see you in a minute or two. Okay. I have 630. So let's convene to the open session. There are no actions to be reported from the closed session. So reconvening this meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District of April 1st, 2021. Holly, would you call the roll please? Director Mayhood. Here. Vice President Henry. Here. Director Falls. Here. Director Smalley. Here. Thank you. Okay. Are there any additions or deletions to the agenda for tonight? Staff have none. We go on to oral communications from the public. This is your chance to talk about anything that is within the purview of the district but is not on the agenda tonight. And let's see. I see Jim Mosher. Can we go ahead and allow Jim Mosher to speak? Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Hi. My name is Jim Mosher from Felton and I just want to commend the water district. I walked in the Felton Library Park today and the work under the solar panels with the chip. It looks so great. So I really appreciate the district. I know AmeriCorps worked on that, but a great improvement for the community and appreciate the districts collaborating with the library and the park department to turn that space into something special. Thanks. Great. Great. Thanks for that. Anyone else? Seeing none, hearing none. We will go ahead and go on to new business, which is about board member resignation and filling that vacancy. Rick, did you want to start? Yes, the board member resignation board director's vacancy. District council Nichols will present that item to the board. Thank you, district manager Rogers, chair Mayhood. On just before the last regular board meeting on March 18, the district early that day, the district received an email written resignation from director too, stating that she was resigning for personal reasons and that resignation is provided in the board packet for reference. The process going forward, so that as a result of that resignation, the board now has a vacancy on the board of directors and the government code provides a process to fill the vacant board seat. The options available to the board include filling the vacancy by an appointment made by the board. Alternatively, the board could decide to fill the vacancy by an election or the board could take no action. However, the deadline to either make an appointment or call for an election is May 17. And if the district were to exercise neither of those options by that time, the matter would go to the county board of supervisors to fill the vacancy. The staff is recommending that the district follow an appointment process, which is that the district has to post the notice of vacancy within the district for at least 15 days prior to the appointment. The district, when this has occurred in the past, has typically provided more than 15 days to give interested individuals an opportunity to decide that they want to apply and to put together materials here. The proposed timeline, if the board decides to follow the staff's recommendation and make an appointment, the proposed timeline is set forth in the board packet and it would be that the notice of vacancy would get posted tomorrow. And then the last date for the receipt of applications would be Wednesday, April 28th, so it would be almost a month to respond. And that would give staff enough time to compile the applications into the board packet for the first regular meeting in May, which is May 6th. And then the last date to make an appointment, as I said, is May 17th. So if the district failed to make an appointment on May 6th, there may be a need to call for a special meeting to further consider the applications. And with that, I would ask the board to direct staff how they wish to proceed. And there is a proposed motion. Should the board decide to follow the staff's recommendation? Okay. Director Henry, would you like to start off our discussion? I would. I believe that we need to appoint. If we go to election, there'd only be a four-member board and we could have a problem doing anything if votes became two-two. And besides going to election costs a lot of money and it costs the people who are interested in being on the board but maybe don't have the money that it would cost if you go to election. So I support appointing someone as soon as possible. Thank you. Director Smalley? Yes. I wasn't part of this process prior to my being appointed to the board. So I'd like to ask a couple of general questions first and then make a comment or so. Gina, if we go the route of appointment, is it okay for us as board members to reach out to individuals within the community to one, let them know about this and to sound out potential interest in individuals? That's a tough one for me to respond to. I'm not aware of any rules that prevent that. But I guess I'll leave it at that. Okay. After the applications are in front of us as board members, but prior to the interview process, which I went through, is it okay for me as a board member to contact any of these applicants just to sound them out ahead of time? Legally, that's where it starts to get a little trickier. Once you have a pool of applicants, let me say this, the issue from a legal perspective is Brown Act. And so, for example, when new board members are elected to the board before they're seated, you have to assume that the Brown Act applies because you know who the directors are going to be. So you could apply that logic by analogy to the appointment process and say that if there's a chance that you can tell who's likely to be appointed as a result of the process, then you potentially have a Brown Act problem with multiple directors contacting them and talking to them. So that's a legal issue from my perspective. I see. Okay. Comment that I have is I'm aware that the board has received three emails from members of the public and all three of them supporting the process of appointing somebody to the board. Having been appointed, I am in favor of the process also. Given that, I'd like to make the motion to proceed with filling the vacancy of Director Too's seat on the board by an appointment. The applicant that he interviewed during the first board meeting in May, which is scheduled for May 6th, the appointments would serve until the seat is filled in connection with the November 2022 general election. Second, here from Director Falls before we go out to the public, but let's and find our remarks to the motion that's on the table, please. I'll reserve my question and comment until after we hear from the public. Okay. Do we have any questions or comments? We do. Okay. Rick Moran. Good evening. Rick Moran from Ben Lohman. I've been on both sides of this process. I was appointed and I participated in the when Steve Swan resigned. So there's a and one of the things that concerns me is that this seat is being held only for two years, although their position would have been held to 2024. You're cutting it in half. And in 2022, there's going to be four members, four open seats. That's not the way the board was set up. And I think there is a problem in doing that. And, you know, maybe obvious to other people, but, you know, there's going to be four new people, possibly new people. It helps with some stability if we have some people that stay on. And I think that's the reason why the two, three split was initially set up that way. So I see there's a problem for you going to have four people elected in 2022. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. I'll just comment that I totally understand your concern, especially since I'll be the one person there that is holding down the fort. But we're doing exactly what the California state law requires, that if somebody resigns in the first half of their term, then basically it can only be filled until the next general election. So this was not something that was our option. It was what the state law says. Larry Ford. Thank you. This is Larry Ford from Felton. I too am in favor of an appointment. I think it's really important to get a fifth board member on the board without delay. I think that good candidates can be found and that you'll have a good, an opportunity to select among other good candidates. So I don't see any reason to cause a delay or expense, as Director Henry said. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Nancy Macy. Thank you. Nancy Macy from Boulder Creek. Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to give our voices in on this. I do concur that it's far too expensive and too time consuming to do a campaign. And I do hope that you will be willing to deal with the four and one as it comes up in two years. I'm certainly hoping that there will be people on the board now who will want to run again and get reelected and have so much respect for everyone there. So that's just, I just want to add my voice. I agree that it should be an appointment. Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. Karen Hall. Yeah, it feels like we had, or the board had this discussion just two months ago and came to a decision that the appointment made the most of, as everybody said, and there were, as we know, quite a number of excellent candidates so applied. And we chose one, but there are, I think, were a couple of others that had also had important, useful, helpful qualifications. And so it seems like kind of a no-brainer now to go ahead and follow that same process again, rather than spending a lot of time rediscussing the same issue. Thank you, Karen. Jim Mosher? Yes, Jim Mosher from Felton. First, I agree with the other speakers that we should go with the appointment process, but I just want to say that I also agree with Rick Moran that I think it is an issue that we're going to have four people up for election. And I wondered if the board could explain to rate payers how that election would work. Since three of those terms would be four-year terms and one would be a two-year term, would people have to apply specifically for the two-year term? Would that be a separate election from the four-year term? Or would it just be one election with everybody running for the seats and the one who got the fourth most votes would get the two-year term? I'm just curious how that would work, because I couldn't figure it out from looking at the code. Gina, you want to try to answer that one? I wish I could. I haven't worked out the answer to that question, but I will do that. Hi, yeah. Alina, laying from Boulder Creek, and I just wanted to say that I support the appointment process as well. I think you've kind of gone over it, but the cost just seems like a lot on our rate payers. So I definitely support the appointment process. Thank you. Thank you, Alina. Anybody else? We'll go back to the board. And Director Fultz, did you want to go ahead and make a comment now? Yeah, a couple of things regarding Jim's question about the seats. Based on what I've seen before, yes, it is a sort of separate application for the two-year seat, but Gina can confirm that. Gina, a couple of questions for you. When would the next election be? Director Fultz, do you mean the next election if the district were to call for an election to fill this vacant board seat? Yes, correct. That would be November of this year. And on your concern about the Brown Act violations, I'm not sure I understand the concern. So a director independently contacting the candidates, how does that violate the Brown Act again? Well, consider the situation if you have five board members, two of them outgoing, three incoming, and right before they take the board, one of them meets with the two remaining directors to kind of work out what they're going to do with district business once they take office. That would be a Brown Act problem. Here, just for an extreme example, imagine if there's only one applicant, only one person applies, and it seems likely that they're going to be appointed, then there's potentially a Brown Act, there's a Brown Act issue if, for example, two existing directors sit down and meet with that person to plot out what they're going to do, assuming that person is appointed. All right. So let me make sure I understand that. So the issue is if there's just a single applicant, in which case at that point it's effectively the same situation after an election in that the people know who's going to be on the board, and so you're all subject to the Brown Act. Right. It turns on the degree to which you know who the board members are going to be, and you're coordinating with them about district business. Right. But if there's, like last time, if there's five applicants, how does talking to each of those applicants violate the Brown Act? Well, I'm not sure that it does. It's in a gray area. Right. I'm not sure I understand where even the gray area would be. Well, like, you know, a lot of things under the Brown Act kind of turn on facts and circumstances. So if somebody could show that, you know, it's understood that one of those people is definitely going to get appointed for some reason, and I can't predict why that would be the case. But that would that would require sort of violations of the Brown Act on the existing sitting board members, if that was clear, because at that point, you know, presumably they're giving the person their assurance are going to vote for them. I mean, effectively that that almost becomes sort of a serial type of meeting, particularly if that person were to inform the other board members about them. I don't see where it's gray. And maybe this is something we can talk about offline, because it seems relatively black and white to me. It's sort of like having, you know, five candidates for two seats in an election process, and you're talking to people. I don't I don't know that you get into Brown Act violation during your regular campaign. But yeah, maybe we can talk about that. So I did want to address the issue of elections versus appointments. So my preference is still for elections as a means to fill vacancies. The issue we have here is the extreme lack of flexibility in current California government code to facilitate that. There's only a certain number of election dates that are currently set up. And that's a different number for odd versus even years. And we have no ability to do vote by mail as a special election for replacing directors. So these are things that need to be addressed by the state legislature, particularly in light of the sort of modern world that we live in, where these things appear to be a lot more common than they used to be. And that is unfortunately nothing that we can take care of tonight. But hopefully that will be something we can continue to work with our state legislators on to bring more flexibility into this process than currently exists. I am not persuaded by this focus on quote unquote cost control. Since we seem to be focused on cost control only in the one area where the people have their make their ability their voices known in a direct fashion on the selection of who's going to represent them. We don't do we don't do a lot of cost control anywhere else. So if cost control really is an issue for folks, then I hope everybody will join with join together as we start addressing things like the budget and other spending that we do that in my opinion goes well above and beyond what we should be doing. To me the top priority for spending on any kind of government agency is in fact the ability of the people to select directly select who their representatives are going to be. I'm also concerned about the fact that we should we have one more vacancy than if we continue this approach we would have a majority of people appointed to the board. I believe our local school district ran into this issue and and found out a bridge too far. So yeah this is this isn't something that we should just dismiss out of hand but unfortunately again given the current government code we simply don't have a lot of flexibility at this point. We have a motion that has been made and seconded. Holly could you take the roll call vote please. President Mayhood? Aye. Vice President Henry? Aye. Director Fouls? Yes. Director Smalley? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. So we will proceed on the process of announcing this tomorrow and hopefully we'll have it back to us by May 6th. The next item on the agenda is a discussion of the preliminary budget roll-up. Yes the director of finance and business manager will start this presentation to the board. Hello so this is a high level roll-up of kind of the budget process for where we are right now which is the majority being operating expenses and operating revenues and then some of the other non-operating expenses and revenues. This was visited in great detail at the budget and finance committee so we provided the link in there to where people want to go see kind of the line by line detail that's going into each department. You're able to kind of go back and see that but overall revenue is tracking as expected given the slated rate increases. We are factoring in slight reductions in consumption so 20 this current fiscal year 2021 we're projecting to finish at around 675,000 units of water and then we're tailoring 2% off of each year going down from that. There is only the one slated increase in this coming November that's in the budget since there is no other rate studies we did not put any others in the future year. This budget does include the proposed fire recovery surcharge of five million over the five-year period so that is a million dollars in each year. High level from the expenses is there is one new hire in the budget for an assistant to the district manager. There's two promotions for the water treatment supervisor and environmental planner. There's 100k in there for a new rate study. There's 40,000 for going digital and then in the capital budget which factors in a little bit to the operating expenses is we're budgeting for a thousand new badger meters to go into the ground. There is the monthly fee associated with those transmitting and so that has 11,000 in each year going up as well. We are in the thick of the capital process right now. The other side of it is we are also busy reconciling the FEMA projects and projecting how much capital contributions we're going to be getting reimbursed from FEMA. So the capital piece is going to kind of be the the bit coming next. There are you know this is a fluid situation. District staff have been great at adapting to the biennial budget process and so we'll still have different things coming in that will have changes. Ones that we know of right now is a quote for the next fiscal year from our insurance provider. It came in 30 grand more than what we were originally budgeting so right off the bat I'll be adding 30,000 dollars to the next fiscal year which will increase the following one as well. Additionally the past conversation that we just had an election will be happening year regardless in fiscal year 2022 so there's actually about another 30,000 dollars that needs to get added to that 22 or 23 year budget. We then provided some of the high level summaries and similar to next last year some of the next steps that we'll be doing at the budget and finance committee is bridging kind of the exact amounts for each of the different categories for what caused the increases or decreases in the different areas. It also does since we went biennial it is flowing a little bit more left to right to where you're seeing the proposed budgets in the further columns to the right where prior budgets it was showing up in the left. So I just want to make sure everyone kind of pays attention to the the titles of the different columns but it's showing overall operating revenues being around kind of what we adopted in this year's budget the 11.3 it's going to be kicking up to the 12.9 in fiscal year 2021-22 and then going up to you know just a little bit more 13 million you're not seeing that increase because there isn't any slated rate increases in there. Operating expenses you can see the fluctuations going from a projected 8.5 up to 8.8 and then up to 9.2 in the future years. Interest expense and debt payments is factoring and all of our new debt is not factoring in anything new. I'm not quite sure if we'll be getting another loan by fiscal year 2023 it may be the year after that but it shows what the total income is for each of the different years we're projecting this year to be around 2.4 and then next year it's the first year in the biannual at 3.3 and then 3.1 for that final year and then the subsequent slides are just going into a little bit more detail in each of those categories so this is probably a good point for us to to stop and see if any of the board members have specific questions to the budget. Director Smalley would you like to start? Certainly I have several. On the expenses that you were showing us on page 22 Stephanie are those just to make us aware of this point or are we being asked to approve those at this point in this discussion? No one's being asked to approve anything yet you know it's very important you know we like to get you all involved early on so that if there's major issues that people see or want to discuss we have time to update them once we get the capital piece and see how it all rolls up that's really when we're going to be able to have a meaningful conversation to see what it's doing to reserves are we pooling from reserves are we adding to reserves that's where we can kind of have the the more detailed question so no approval is being desired tonight. Okay on page 20c on page 23 sorry I see that water usage revenue is up by 550k but usage is down by 2% so we should sell less water to make more money. There's a rate increase. Well that's part that's the rate increase I okay I understand okay and on also on page 23 I see contract and professional services up by 150k over prior year what's that related to? So a lot of that is going to be coming from the amounts that we kind of called out up above we have 100 grand in there for a new rate study there also is additional 40 grand in there for going digital campaign the offsetting negative okay so legal striking higher this year projecting it'll go down next year. Okay and then likewise operating expenses being up by 90k over last year have we brought on new systems or do we have new things that we're operating? So James can probably speak a little bit to that we do have some increased run rates from the CZU fires that are being factored in to some of these as well. Yeah and there is a we run a 7% increase on telecommunications and power utilities every year due to the rate increases of those and so those are 7% which are spelled out in the budget that we submitted and then there's other things like contract services that have increased due to natural disasters so we're trying to we're trying to forecast for PG&E power shutoffs natural disaster we're trying to be have some money in there to back up those kind of things and there's okay there's also an increase in power cost and chemical costs due to the CZU fire switching from surface water to well water because of what we do not have those surface waters until the the pipelines are repaired so there'll be an increased cost in that as well. Okay okay and then on page 25 I see admin expenses increasing by 371k and so that admin is where the rate study will hit that's where the going digital campaign will be hitting we did put in more we put in money for PR firm but that's where those are kind of coming from and so okay if you ever want to go back and look they're very decent but if that budget link it shows each department and depending on the department I mean 100 is broken down pretty much line by line for what's making that right okay uh so if those are admin expenses and one specific one that you mentioned there was the rate study that we're going to have to do I thought I heard that as part of the 115k in contract professional services is that so this is so the contract profession so each department has a contract professional service has each of those different categories so the page that you're looking at is just a different way to look at it the one that we were talking about before goes by category and then the one that you're looking at shows another perspective by each department overall okay okay so it's not putting the same fees in two different buckets to no no okay okay all right that's all of my questions thank you Dr. Fox yes um I have a number of questions um let me start at the top here um what is the approved head count for budget year 2020-2021 the one that we're in now 35 35 what is the projected ending actual head count for 20-21 35 and what is the requested head count going to be for 21-22 36 it's just that one position and what is I'm not sure I understand the function of this position what will this person be doing okay um this will um I know I know this will get a lot of attention tonight um but I needed to bring this to the board's attention this would be a high level management position it would be very similar to what Soquel Creek has as a special projects manager the position would work closely with myself and department heads on completing objectives and and getting a lot of the goals and objectives over the finish line a lot of it would be this this individual would work closely with the department heads and managers um on the paperless operations of the full district file storage um reorganization of our administrative functions and customer service for the post pandemic um moving in that direction of electronics and digital um we would uh also this position would work on outreach uh continue with the website that we've stalled on and haven't been able to to get the website to where I would consider completed with the engineering section additional customer service for the post pandemic historical documentation and historical library the cip program needs to be updated and brought to the website the district engineers plate is very full with all of the cz u fires and all of the capital improvement projects needs uh help on getting this up and running on the internet and then once this is developed um he will be able to continue to update it um scheduling of the many capital improvement projects it would be a high level position that would work with the existing department heads to bring so many of these programs that are just get stalled we get them 75 80 percent of the way and then we don't get them completed because we just don't have the time um we would also be in involved uh in putting together uh manuals and and and and procedure manuals for different things an onboarding manual there's so many things that we need to get completed that aren't getting completed and won't get completed um not unless we get some additional uh high level help I do believe over time over the first year there will be reductions and other expenses in outreach um there will be uh could be potential reductions in in legal costs due to the fact that we use legal counsel to prepare a lot of documents that really a high level staff person uh could prepare and she could just do the high level review um we could do a lot more in-house I believe with the outreach and and reduce the cost of consulting on outreach I don't have what those numbers would look like right now that would be the direction I'd be going in um yeah right thanks for thanks for going through that I guess from the description and the agenda that I didn't walk away with that what you described sounds more like a assistant district manager as opposed to a district secretary or an executive assistant well I you know Bob I've been putting this together bouncing around looking at other agencies and I you know I've talked with a couple of the directors to to get a impression of their thinking I've been massaging this position um and uh I'm not quite fine-tuned yet you know we're still draft still the draft stages it's kind of a placeholder we're getting I'm getting very close but I haven't fine-tuned it I do not want it supervisory I don't believe it needs to be a supervisory position it just needs to be a high level person to work with department heads to give them the extra support and the long-range support Rick is this a over the yeah I get that and and the number of the projects that you you listed would probably reach conclusion within a year are you envisioning this being just a one-year thing or a multi-year two years and then reassess two years then reassess to see if I've met my goals of reduction in consultants and and a notable increase in work product okay interesting um as you know when you when you start adding additional headcount that typically is a very very long-term commitment to that person to their expense to their retirement for the whole package and so adding headcount is is um in this sector something that needs to be approached with caution because of it I agree I certainly like the notion of going digital or going green or whichever but uh yeah I mean we're well I'll get to it here in a bit but one other question about the badger meters we had a number of badger meters in the budget for this year are are those going to be able to be done given the other things that we had to do as a result of I'll let James and Stephanie be able to give you an update on the on on this year's progress yeah so um right now we are pretty close to get we got five we had 500 meters in the budget I do believe Stephanie is that right yep I believe it was a thousand as well oh it was a it was it was cut to 500 yeah oh that's right yes so one of the things that we've run into is we have had excessive amounts of dead meters out there so my team has really been chasing a lot of dead meters out there this year um we have been working on the Felton COP program as well we have not gotten far as far along with that as we wish to um as we've been actually having to borrow meters from that program to do the dead meter change out because there's been so many of them over this last year well you know this is something this is something that we might want to dive into a little bit deeper at a future meeting as I've expressed before I have serious concerns about spiking meter replacements in a small number of years as opposed to doing them more over a period of um you know a period of time so that it just it's flat basically you're just replaced x number of meters every year and over 15 years you replace the whole thing right that's where so to hear about the dead meters and all that that's definitely I have not heard that and that's definitely something you should dive into later and well Bob can I just speak to that real quick is and that's where we're really getting a lot of stuff is that's where we're trying to catch up on the meters is a lot of the meters are starting to go dead and so that's why we've been trying to do a higher level of a change out in order to catch up on and get ahead of those dead meters well the reason the reason probably that a lot of them are going dead is about 12 years ago we did a similar spike in the meter replacement where we replace something like I think it was 6 000 meters in three years so of course what happens if everything goes out at that time and if you're not setting aside money to be able to do that it it then tends to distort your capital spending when those spikes occur again which is why you don't want to get into spikes in the service so anyway that we can cover that later in more detail still to come Stephanie on the capital obligations that we have so is that something that will then be coming back to the board with a more detailed breakdown of all of our capital obligations including capital spending both forward and hedge up the Long Pico project the unfunded liabilities in terms of pensions reserves basically all the categories that we paint maintenance all the categories we can think of relative to what our capital obligations are going to be so capital obligations yes we will have the detailed capital plans for the next two years as far as pension and OPEB that is a discussion that we did start to have at the budget and finance committee is earmarking money to go towards funding those liabilities those are not factored into this budget um yeah the next meeting once we have the roll that package we'll have some of the different proposals or ideas around you know depending on where we you know we need to see kind of what the bottom line is shaking out to be if there is extra money you know do we want to have it go towards paying down some of that pension liability so that's going to be the next piece that the budget and finance committee is taking on in april and then we'll be bringing kind of that full roll-up package to that first board meeting in may well there there's no extra money here unfortunately but i had shared with you and rick before the capital obligations spreadsheet that i think has a list of all of the things that we could spend our capital on capital meaning operating revenues or excuse me revenues less expenses that is our margin what's left over and that includes a lot of things including you know roughly 10 million dollars in tanking instead has not been um you know taken care of in the past so i think it's really important this year that we get a full picture of what our true financial and capital obligations are going forward next question had to do with how are we accounting for the three million plus that we've spent so far on the fire recovery it didn't seem like it was in these numbers though i could be wrong about them it is not the capital piece you know we haven't looked at the capital piece for the the fires so that's going to be coming as part of the capital part of that also what you'll see then is we'll be then projecting what the capital contributions are that we're receiving back from FEMA so that's all going to be coming in the capital piece so i i guess then the question is on the operating expense side is the difference of roughly four hundred thousand dollars then due to increased operating expenses associated with the season new fire recovery and when you're saying four hundred are you looking at overall operating expenses i'm looking at the uh on page um 23 i'm looking at the total operating expensive line i'm seeing the estimated actuals of eight point five million and the budget was a point one so you'll be seeing more of the cz u related stuff in the the specific categories of operating expense maintenance and facilities um you know salaries is going up obviously because there's the head count in there um from the discussion we just had that's going to be going up even more i did i'm talking i'm not talking about going forward i'm talking about this year there's a variance here in the operating expenses of four hundred thousand so are we um is that four hundred thousand dollars associated totally with the season new fire recovery a vast majority of it definitely is i mean because you know you figure legal bills are you know that's impacting it there is a lot more going on with legal right now you know part of it's going to be cz u part of it some of the other stuff so legal was about a hundred grand um and then the majority of the other stuff was tracking pretty close to budget so it's you know that that other three hundred is going to be the cz u or covid related you know we did have to buy you know a chunk of you know laptops and different stuff like that and um on the items that are related to the scenes you fire are any of those recoverable yes they are so a lot of our a lot of the expense on my department of the sampling and pumping costs due to losing the surface water sources a lot of that's going to be recoverable okay so there will be an offset of some amount of that four hundred thousand dollar variants that will come back to this adventure yes okay um let's see next one as i was going through the operating revenues it seemed to me that we might want to account for the fire recovery surcharge a little bit differently i guess i don't view those necessarily as operating revenues since um you know they're really going that that money as i understand it is really intended to cover our part of the capital uh obligations associated with season your fire recovery when all of that is recovered back from FEMA assuming that we only have to spend five million dollars then our reserve accounts will be back to three million what they were before the fire was was completed so the adding to one million in there um makes it a little bit i think it skews the numbers a little bit it gets it gets a little tricky and one of the reasons why i at least initially put it there is one so that we could see it now but second we did finance you know part of that 15 million was as financing part of it's going to go towards paying down that debt in the future as well so i'm totally open to ways of you know if we want to just consider it all more of a capital contribution we can we i can talk to the auditors and see if we can categorize it as a capital contribution right so what i did is i basically backed that out in terms of the numbers i went through you know unfortunately i think we have another year here where our rate increase is basically almost completely consumed by operating the expense increases it's only in the year following that that we see a about a three hundred thousand dollar reduction in operating expenses that's also happens to be the year we don't have a rate increase having another year beyond that i think would have been instructive to be able to see where that operating expense number would ultimately go and this is one of the reasons for having a multi-year budget i'm glad we're starting with two it's definitely an improvement over one but ultimately i think we're going to need to get to at least three to five years with respect to these high level numbers if not detailed so you know what's happening then is our operating margin when we back out that five million dollars is really starting to go down meaning that we have less margin available to apply to our capital obligation because our operating expenses continue to chew up 100 percent or virtually 100 percent of our rating so that means then that we will start eating into our reserves if we keep increasing operating costs at the level that they have been increasing historically which as i mentioned before has been skyrocketing so um this is sort of not a great model for um a capital intensive organization really it just keeps us on the hamster wheel um and we aren't really making significant progress towards um paying down when addressing those capital obligations in a fashion that we absolutely need to be doing so um i i'm i i like what we're doing from a format point of view i like what we're doing from the multi-year point of view but we're still not addressing the fundamental financial issue with this district is facing and which continues to be an unsustainable um process here if if every year we're going to be chewing up 100 percent of our rating increasing with operating expenses we'll never get ahead on the capital obligation let's see thank you thank you thank you director Henry did you have a comment or question uh well since i'm on the budget finance committee meeting i've been over this on not really um i appreciate all the work that Stephanie has put into this she tries to listen to the board and and what their desires are some things right now are pretty difficult and it seems that the whole world has problems with infrastructure and and um with uh what they owe to cow pervs or cow stars or or if the list is endless and we try to move along as best we can uh budgets are our best guesstimate based on history and our current financial situation what's going to happen in the next couple of years things could change they could get better they could get worse um so i i think that we're trying to look at things in a two-year span and things can change a lot of money and we're making every effort to keep slv wd moving along smoothly that's all thank you unless you have uh any comments you want to make to finish up Stephanie um did you i think that should pretty much cover it i'll work with rick on kind of the new definition of the of the position that we're talking about so that we can make sure we're factoring um any increases for that as well in the next budget the next budget round all right and i just want to add to what uh director henry was saying is i was really glad at our last meeting that you had already started planning on making you know how we could go about having a strategy for making regular uh contributions to our pension and opep requirements and i think that's a that's a big step forward so thank you for doing that i look forward to seeing seeing what what you come up with okay all right with that let's go on to our next uh has there been public comment on this item oh i'm sorry there's uh yes i um are there any public comments out there seeing none hearing none um we will go onto the next agenda item um which is to uh take a look at the revised uh p letter to p g and e uh rick did you want to or carly carly we will uh present this to the this revised letter to the board okay great thank you guys so last board meeting we brought a letter to p g and e addressing road mitigation filled trees on district property as well as their infrastructure um this originated in 2020 of last year of in may we sent a letter to p genie asking for more information about their clearing on district property from empire grade to boulder creek we did receive a spot response on june ninth of 2020 and this is our follow-up as requested at the environmental committee back in january so on march 18 the board of directors reviewed the final draft and decided revisions were needed to ensure clear direction to p genie including response time clear objectives and edits to the cc contact list staff revised as directed and created the final letter attached it is recommended that the board of directors review the letter approve the letter for distribution to the recommended recipients and approve the board president to sign the letter on behalf of the district okay all right um since uh you weren't here at the last meeting when we discussed this uh director um both you want to make any comments well i i didn't have a lot i think it looked like there was only one paragraph added yes at the end that's correct yeah um i thought the letter was fine before it's i think it's fine now and you know they responded quickly before i don't i mean i don't expect that they won't respond quickly this time so all right um anybody else have a comment about this director henry or direct director smally yes yes director smally um i reviewed the revised letter um staff has addressed the comments that i made into it uh pointing out with that concluding paragraph what we were asking p genie to do and they included a time frame when we were asking them to get back to us so uh yes i believe that the letter is a better product right now and uh without any other objections i'd like to make the emotion that the board approve the distribution the uh of the letter to the recommended recipients and approve the board president to sign on behalf of the district okay moved and seconded holly would you like to go ahead and we need to go to the public yeah the public public please hi there alina laying boulder creek i just uh quick grammical things um as far as using the oxford comma in there just stay consistent um one of the parts there there was an oxford comma and then on the first page on the second page there wasn't um there's kind of some incorrectly placed commas mainly just kind of like a overuse and then just a suggested edit on the fuel versus fuels i would take the s off and um there's kind of there's the area where you start with an and and then a comma maybe something just like additionally um but that's it everything looks look good but i know it was really important to bob this look professional so as far as uh the grammatical side of it that's uh that's all i had to say thank you nasi macy this this letter is really important and i'm very grateful that you are are following through with it so beautifully um i appreciate the hard work that was done by the environmental committee um and bob i understand you did a bunch of editing and added some good language i'm grateful for that um uh it i wanted to point out to you that the um san santa cruz board of school supervisors sent a letter of complaint a formal complaint to the cpu c this is this is quite a process to to do and um they are being responded to and they are following up with it and um part of the complaint was that so much uh so many logs and things were left around and it's a fire hazard that the people did not expect this to be happening and i'm grateful that you're bringing that up and the other piece that to it is that we're not alone uh the counties of sonoma and napa and mendicino and uh the the city of san aroza have all sent in letters of concern and complaint uh to the cpu c saying that they have been left with mountains of of of trees that are both a fire hazard and the people who are trying to rebuild are having trouble rebuilding they're considered a real problem so i'm hoping that by adding your voice as a public agency a water agency that that will make a a wonderful big difference and we can hope that there will be some changes made um because i wasn't at all optimistic there was going to be any changes um short of of you know uh civil action or or criminal action against PG&E so we we might we might get by without that um although the criminal part is still up in the air i understand the information is from the uh uh cal fire notices of violation and the other two are being um considered by the higher levels of uh the state of california so this should be interesting to see what happens there but thank you very much for following through our our water our watershed is so valuable and so important and you have uh you take such good care of it that now that we've had a bad fire um it's real important that that uh continue and so i wish you luck with it and i am very excited about it and grateful that you're doing it and um anyway good job you guys and it was a it took everybody it was a real teamwork so thank you thank you nancy anybody else have a comment hearing none seeing none can we now try the roll call vote president mayhem vice president henry yes director foals yes and director smally yes motion passes uh the consent agenda um which has the one item on it the board of directors meeting minutes for the fourth of march are excuse me pardon me are we going to talk about 13 we haven't gotten there yet lois oh the consent agenda sorry i carried away with myself director foals yes i have a small number of recommendations for this that i'd like to propose okay go ahead on page 40 you know this is um not the easiest thing to do especially with this format but on page 41 fourth comment from the bottom of the page um i'd like to change the word question to requested on the second um from the bottom of the page did you catch that or are you going to go back to the uh tape to find these well i think this is summary minutes and so yeah i just want to make sure she's getting your comments or well i can share them with her uh later this is what makes this thing a little bit clumsy yeah i know i understand that we have to do it here so i that's great you'll share them with her later but let's go through them now so we can all vote on them yep so second from the bottom i'd like to replace the word questioned with asked about and replace the word possibility with options so that line would read he asked about our prepayment options on page 42 in the middle of the page it says default said that due to the cz u fire da da da i would like to change that to read defaults read a statement period he said that due to the cz u fire da da da is facing replacement costs i'd like to insert the word uncertain in front of replacement are there any others one more on page 45 the third paragraph from the top it currently reads defaults said that nothing heard tonight changed his mind i'd like to have that read defaults read a statement period he said that nothing he heard tonight changed his mind and that is it does anybody else have a change to the minutes can i ask what that was all about i i mean when do we ever go through the minutes item by item and say let's change it but director director henry we we talked about this last time and we said that if bob had things that he wanted changed and he didn't make them substantially larger that we would do it in real time during the meeting so he's doing exactly what i think we asked him to do i'm doing exactly what the board agreed yeah so i i don't have any i don't have any problem with what he just did any other changes all right then what do we need to to vote to adopt the uh minutes as revised i'm sorry and there should be an opportunity for public comments oh my gosh i've is there i i just never think they would care about the minutes but go ahead are there any members of the public that would like to comment about the minutes or make changes to the minutes hearing them seeing them um we'll go ahead and ask holly to take a vote on i do we have a we do we have a motion i'd like to move that the board adopt the minutes as revised for uh march 4th 2021 second yes we'll second that president mayhood hi vice president henry abstain director fools yes director smally yes next we'll go to item 13 which is uh the district report we had the one that uh got to put in last time on the operations um group and james is here if anybody had any questions lois did you have something on this one that you wanted to ask on district's reports yes well i i have some thoughts on this some that i like it and some worries me one of the things that bothers me when a board member asks uh say james or um or our our um engineer or some or stephanie a question and they don't have an answer right off the top of their head and they will say to whoever is asking the question uh i i don't have an answer right now i'll get back to you but the rest of us never see those answers so to me if the questions were put in writing uh and then the members of staff who would answer the questions would respond to all of us then we would all know the answers but we don't ever hear them and i for all i know maybe the question never even got answered um the other problem i have with some of these the questions being asked rather than being sent in writing to staff is that it prolongs the meeting and we have staff who are at the meeting who've been at work since six a.m. or seven a.m. and we're having this very long meeting we also have members of the public that we have no idea how long they've been up and i i think that we need to care about staff and we need to care about the public um but then i do have a concern part of my concern is um if we start sending everything in writing and 2022 is an election year and the fppc or the fair political practice commission has real concerns about board members' names um and uh pictures of photos of board members so if we start sending things in to staff and and if they respond to everybody uh and not respond necessarily just to the person who asked the question i don't think there'd be an issue but if they respond naming the person who asked the question i i don't know if there could possibly be an issue um and so that's that's kind of a concern i have that come 2022 this could be an issue so i really don't know how to go with this one um i mean i could i could bill are we are we on an agenda item i'm not following while we're on district reports and and she's making item 13 let let me just answer one of the things here at lowest is is it says under district reports that there's a preference that items be sent in writing to the staff uh person and that that person the staff person will provide answers and they will appear along with the question in the next agenda packet now that should take care of making sure that everybody gets them um and it should certainly make sure that we don't have any brown act issues or anything you know getting crosswise with elections related things so um i don't you know see that as a problem i i do agree with you that we don't want gratuitous questions or things that are kind of gotcha questions at the staff and so it's it's uh and we don't want to make the meetings longer than they need to be so that's in part why this says in writing that are encouraged that the questions be submitted in writing to the staff member and i would encourage board members to do that for the reasons that loa said to to respect our staff and respect our the public that that's watching director false yeah i so there are a number of issues related here that were raised by loas that i think were probably worthy of additional discussion but but perhaps on a more explicitly agendized topic since what i thought we were doing was talking about the operation status report not status reports in general or uh board behavior or what or what happened um so i i think we got kind of far afield here and actually probably ended up extending the meeting even longer um so um is this something that we can bring back to uh the board as a agendized topic or do we want to send it to committee or or what are and are we saying specifically that no questions shall be asked during board meetings of the senior staff that are present that's not what the rules say here the rules say it's preferred that you send them in emails and i think that in most cases that we should respect that um there might be some issues that are you know more pressing or whatever but um i guess don't see this as a huge big deal and i don't i don't want to spend any more time on it tonight but lois is but lois has made it a big deal i think she raises some legitimate questions so i do have a question for james uh about the report it should be a fairly short one and i some and i believe actually that uh questions about the district um reports actually can be very valuable to the community not being a burden um but that's my philosophy and lois may have a different one um james i did want to ask you what is involved in abandoning the pipeline on california drive so we have multiple connection well we have a single connection point but that main line that we put in is abandoning a portion of that two inch line so that two inch line continues down riverside avenue to the cul-de-sac at the end it still serves some people off that so we gotta disconnect there reattach to the pipe further down making it a shorter section of two inch feeding a few less homes so and then there's a couple meters that also have to be moved over that we're on the riverside side that weren't accounted for with the new main line with that main line going dead so we have to tie them over to the old main line on riverside avenue which is the hud line which is the newer line gotcha for the way it was worded i thought maybe you were doing something to the two inch pipe not just leaving it in place but you're just leaving the two inch piping point yeah so the two inch pipe portion of it is going to be abandoned in place dead and then filled with mortar so it doesn't pipe water anywhere and a portion is being reconnected to continue to serve the customer better off okay the the key was the mortar great thank you very much are there any questions from the public i think mark has a question i i'm gonna did you have a question on the operations report yes i do okay go ahead okay um james we briefly touched on meter replacements before in future operations reports could you include status of meter replacements on a i don't know if it's on a percentage basis of here's what we completed versus here's what's still outstanding something like that to give us an an assessment of that so my only question would be do you want to see a annual installation changeover report or do you want to see something like a age percentage report um maybe maybe quarterly then since i don't know that monthly is a good um assessing this but annual seems like a bit long period of time yeah no i mean i'm i mean just a number of what's been changed like that fiscal year thus far and yeah quarterly whatever what or or an age two percentage report so i mean there's two different ways of really presenting that uh okay i'd like to know how we're doing uh versus whatever the the the goal or what we were trying to achieve this year okay i got you that works okay Stephanie's monthly report may include that information already on changeover oh okay maybe that would be the quarterly financial report does highlight the fixed assets so i mean they can go hand and it can go okay much with either one of us you know i kind of find out on the back end kind of knows on the front end and what he has coming up so we could probably work okay to get something okay we okay that's that's fine any other i'll look there um in in in an effort to possibly shorten the agendas that we get um the uh from pages 55 to 65 the hydrographs the data all of the numbers um i've seen these several times and uh i just page right by this so this is this is all hold over from past request uh passport members oh okay all right if you if you all want to make a recommendation that you don't need to see this information but once a year that's fine with me you just make the recommendation okay i i would be okay with that but okay director false did you have your hand up um you know in general i i agree with mark about what i would consider to be the level of detail that's in there however i think seeing the summary information about the water that we are producing and the a summary of what's happening at fall creek is very helpful yeah i think i think we're just talking about like the photographs right yeah so i i would you know james if you wanted to you know make it i think it was certainly more meaningful to me i don't know if it worked for everybody else but moving to more of a graphical um uh presentation like you have for your your well broad down reports um which i do look at and i do think are very important to see uh would be would be helpful but but that's just a suggestion it's not a recommendation and like i said i could just put those in once a year you know i could put it in a schedule to where i put the well grass in once a year you guys get a high level look at them and if you don't want to see them monthly that's all of on their heads is right i'm not sure i'm comfortable i'm comfortable with annual but um i certainly think you could um simplify the information while still communicating the important item okay okay i'd just like to make a comment that i i found looking at the graph for fall creek was really interesting because if they adopted the what uh city of santa cruz wants to apply as by-class flows the big trees of 40 cfs we would not have been able to take water out of uh fall creek 22 days out of february you're you're absolutely you're absolutely right are there okay now can i go to the public and see if there's any questions on the operations report beth thomas thank you uh president mohoode um i just wanted to say uh as a member of the community that while i also you know i've attended millions of meetings in my work life over the years but i do think that uh in a public institution these meetings are really helpful for the community to learn about the water district and to learn in as much detail as they're willing to they can always tune out when they need to so i um i think it's an important educational community benefit thank you sentient donzel i appreciate seeing the graphs and some of the data and my concern is if we really need fall creek to support the rest of the district during emergencies then we really need to rewrite the limits on when we can take that water out and i don't think fall creek should be the only contribution to that flow that's considered maybe what we need to do is consider how much flow is needed in fall creek to maintain the fish but we shouldn't be responsible for the total san lorenzo river flow seems like city of santa cruz should have to release water from lachloman you know there should be other factors besides just fall creek in getting that cfs and i just want to say i really appreciate everything you guys do as far as all the time that you put in to educate the public so thank you thank you so dear okay um anything else go ahead mark um president mayhood if i may i'd like to give a brief uh summary of what we discussed at the last santa margarita ground water association meeting i know it's not on the agenda but i think it's important for other directors to hear informational and brief okay that's fine but because it's not on the agenda we cannot have a discussion because of the brown act so as long as okay brief and i understand i'll keep it brief um at our last meeting the consultant that the agency is using lungumbria associates uh proposed setting target levels for where we would like the aquifers to recover to um at a what i consider a stretch goal in an ideal world this is what we would like it to be however um they wanted the directors to approve that however they were not able to provide us what the costs would be to approve that at the same time because of that the board rejected their proposal and said they needed to come back with costs so that we could begin to assess that so simply that thank you yes um i just have a request maybe for the next few months we should have um a santa margarita report on the agenda as we're referring to yes uh in fact i we mark and i have discussed actually having a sort of a presentation um in the next month or two that would be a greater detail as a regular agenda item but but your suggestion of just having a quick update like like this is like this is is not it is is probably a good one both would be good okay let's see anything else from the public and if not i think are we done just just a quick you do have a something in the back from the boulder creek wreck on their radio station they're up and running and they are fantastically uh statically and just having the greatest time of their life and they thank the district and rob menzies who was a district employee that started working with them who's passed away it's a great success story and a great partnership thank you very much okay then um we'll go ahead and adjourn so thank you all good night okay thank you