 My computer is showing 630. We all set. Okay, let's get it rolling then. Okay, that's we're going to convene the meeting the word of directors meeting for the Sanderin's Valley Water District. Holly, would you please take the roll? Director Henry Director Moran President Director Falls President Swan Here Director Ferris Thank you, Holly Rick, do we have any additions or deletions to the agenda a staff does not have any additions or deletions Okay So move on to the oral communications piece. This is for any of the any of the visitors Joining to Make any comments that they have on any item that's not on the agenda tonight So We've got about four attendees so far Does anyone have any comments they'd like to make and it doesn't look like anyone has anything to say so we'll We'll move on To unfinished business Rick you want to introduce our First topic the the past due process the the finance manager will present this report Hello everyone so the budget and finance committee has been monitoring the past due balances Pretty much since it was suspended due to COVID-19 The last board meeting We did bring update to the to the board as well At the last budget and finance committee meeting it was recommended that we bring it to the board to consider Starting up the late fees again Some of the other agencies have been talking more more about this Rick may be able to give us an update Based on his management call that he had I believe this week with more managers, but in general the state still has a Order in place to where you know water cannot be shut off, but there's nothing precluding the district from being able to still do late fees It gets to a point where bills Accumulate to a point where people can't then dig themselves back out So we think we have some that are able to put to pay But are choosing not to since there really isn't no Penalties and then there's obviously people that are you know impacted and are not able to pay the district does offer payment plan Going up to 12 months. So essentially You know what we really would like to do is to start to get some of these people Contacting us those that can pay encourage them to pay those that can't at least start the communication so that We can get a payment plan on the books for them and they can you know slowly start to chip away at some of that So if the board did choose to move forward with this we did kind of lay out what the process would be To where we would start to change the messaging everywhere that late fees will be starting soon And then it shows you know for cycle two bills that go on the fifth They're eight five bill will have the message alerting them that late fees are starting back up Those bills are due eight twenty six the courtesy reminder would go out eight twenty seven With the due date of nine four and then if people don't pay So those bills by nine five or don't contact us at all They would get the ten dollar wait fee applied and then similarly similar cycle for Cycle one whose bills go out on the twenty So we kind of can open it up for discussion Rick may be able to chime in and let us know what some of the other agencies are Discussing right now as well Yes, thanks Stephanie. I we had our by weekly managers What they call a brown brown bag virtual lunch today Which all the managers accept? Santa Cruz water attended all of the agencies are moving back to All forms of their collection process up to turn offs I do believe Watsonville is even going as far out as putting a door hanger Informing customers that they are late and will have a penalty Obviously everybody is following the governor's Requirement not to turn off disconnect services. No one is proposing that but they are all moving with late notices most the agencies feel that Folks in the past didn't pay their bills until they got those courtesy reminders and late noses So they think it's imperative to move back and they're all moving in that direction and they're really extending out trying to do payment arrangements and emphasizing that They'll work with the different different folks on payment arrangements. So that's what the other agencies are doing. Okay Thank You Rick Okay, open it up for board discussion comments anybody have a comment question on the board No, okay Uh So it sounds like a reasonable approach given the circumstances and what everybody else is beginning to do as well and I Can appreciate the fact that a lot of people don't pay attention to the bill until they get their late notice if they're typically slow pays And we're still not going to be turning anybody off the worst that'll happen is they'll get assessed a late fee And have the opportunity to work out a payment plan. So it sounds like a reasonable approach to me on the So where do I forget where I saw it on the bill or the statement or something about If you sign up for autopay You get a Yeti up Whose idea was that? That that was mine We have a promotion we have it going right now It's if you sign up for the key that you have to sign up for electronic billing meaning you have to turn off your paper bills To be able to get entered if you are also signed up for autopay You'll get a secondary entry and so at the end. I think it's open for the next like three weeks We'll then go in and see everyone That qualifies for that and then we have 25 Yeti cuts that will will do a random number Query to decide which accounts Windows as a way to try and get people to sign up for that So essentially it more than pays for itself the district You know does pose to save a significant amount of money when we get people signing up for paperless billing Yeah, no, I think premium incentives are a fabulous way to go and are very effective. That's a great idea Congratulations on that. That's wonderful Okay, so the big thing back to the question. I'm sorry quick Steve I haven't had a real chance to discuss the the late fee With the finance manager But I think the board even should consider if people start paying their bills and get a late fee if they're starting To back pay their bills would be to waive that late fee I have issues with late fees this time with COVID and Unemployment that the whole idea is to get people to get back on track on paying their bills So maybe something we want to think about, you know, once they start paying back. We can waive that $10 late fee We do we I mean we do have a one-time late fee waiver that people can get when we started because the late fee is Relatively newer in general. And so any of these people that call and make their payment, you know, if they were assessed a late fee You know assuming they didn't already have one waived or you know, we could choose to give everyone a Grief on this one You know, we we is typical for us to waive the wait fee A lot of times it gives them incentive to go ahead and pay the whole thing or to do something So we do typically waive one late fee Steve if I could make comment, please. Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead, Rick This is a question for Stephanie Stephanie is the number of people That are not paying their bills or late with their bills. Has that dramatically increased from normal? Yes, we're over. Yeah, we're about over double So I mean as of right now if we were to turn around and assess a late fee there would be 999 late fees as of today The caveat with that is there's a lot of people that pay Based off of getting the courtesy IVR notice We typically see about over half the people pay if I were to expand it to be the one prior billing cycle We would have had 382 people Getting it where normally when we were doing, you know, the tags regularly We were at about a hundred and sixty. So we are over double the amount of people that are sitting on this You know, and there's really no way for us to know the breakdown of to How many fit into which category, you know, we have heard people state that, you know, cool Yeah, I see it. I know it. There's no penalties. So I'm just not going to pay it until, you know You guys are Implementing a penalty and there's obviously people that are having a hard time paying and even now You know, we still have some customers that are staying in communication calling us and saying hey I know I'm behind can I set up a payment plan? So we have some doing it now We definitely get a very high volume of Contact after we send up these courtesy notifications, you know, typically there's 80% plus of the people that our past do Are signed up for these courtesy notices. So we really do get a Pretty significant amount of people making contact with us based off of these Okay. Thank you. So I support this Recommendation It seems that we have to be as Rick was expressing earlier that, you know, maybe we could You know, wave the late fee people start paying again. It seems that, you know Minus the worst case scenario, you know, I think we're in uncharted territory here You know, my parents lived through the depression and where there was massive unemployment and things were dramatically different Hopefully we're not in that scenario, but I think, you know, we're trying to be considerate of people's position and We also have to pay our bills as well as the water district. So we need their money as well. So I I support this recommendation at this time and I think if the situation got better or worse We can adjust to it Sure Thanks, Rick. Bob, you have a comment question But there be a late fee assessed on every bill that goes out then from this point forward Yeah, sorry Stephanie For people who are late on paying Would there be a late fee assessed on every bill that goes out to them from this point forward? So the one that goes out in August, there's a late fee if they don't pay that the one that goes out in September There's a late fee Is that is that correct? Correct. So they would continue to incur late fees if they are not paying the bill Well, and if they are not contacting us to set up a payment plan So if they contact us to set up a payment plan Bob you appear frozen You're froze Bob Well, well Bob thoughts out Gina you have your hand up. You have a question or comment Yeah, just thank you just to comment. I Recommend that if part of the board's direction is to provide an additional waiver beyond the one waiver of a late fee that is currently allowed under district policy that that be an explicit part of the motion and the board's approval For Matt, I mean given we had just started the late fee process I'd say the vast majority of our customers have not ever had their one-time fee wave You know for now, I would personally recommend that we stick with the one time And at the next board, you know future board meetings we could discuss doing Another wave of them It all kind of gets to the point of if we say that we're going to continue to wave them then essentially there's no Incentive and I think what Bob was trying to ask about was the payment plan So for example, we have bills that are about to go out on Monday the 20th if someone were to call us Today tomorrow and say I needed you know, I wasn't able to pay my prior month bill. Can I set up a payment plan? To avoid the penalty they would be able they would be able to do that I think what's going to happen is we're going to go from people would just sit here and say oh, I need just two more weeks I think we're going to have people that have higher balances and will even encourage, you know Them to let them know that you know, you can spread this out up to 12 months So, you know those people that maybe would have selected two weeks They may go ahead and turn around and select spread it out over two months to give themselves a safe buffer To Gina's point then the the the ability to wave the one-time late fee that's existing policy, right? Correct the one the one-time wave is is allowed So we wouldn't be needing to recreate anything for for that it would be if the board wanted to you know Continue to allow multiple late fees to be waived, right? Okay, Bob. Are you Are you in better technical shape now? Well, I don't know it might be a bad broadband night So some nights are better than others Yeah, so Stephanie the question I had was what you've answered part of it. Thank you The question I had was if someone had accrued two late fees, would the waiver apply to both or is it just to a single late fee? It would be just a single late fee. Okay Just want to make sure that that was clear on that. I mean ultimately what I'd like to do is is get to a point where we're A groove but I thought you're breaking up Pretty bad particularly as we are Going back into In some places obviously not Santa Cruz, but who knows what will happen Going back into sort of a more aggressive shutdown. So I would want to Tread on this very very lightly if we're going to do this and I think we might want to reexamine it in a month once it's a little bit clearer where the Governor is going to be taking the state and ultimately what that means is taking employment or unemployment Because if we're starting to see Severe distress with people because they're losing their jobs again, then we may need to revisit this Totally agreeing anybody else on the board have a question or comment that we'll go to the public and At the top of the list we have Tina Toe to Hi, this is Tina Please go right ahead. Okay. I just wanted to make a comment that I received an email from my daughter's school today saying that they're not going to be starting school in the fall because the COVID numbers have increased so much Even overnight that they already predict that it's not going to happen So that's to me an indication that this is going to continue and going to be difficult for a select number of people especially those 15% that are that are on unemployment right now and I'm just wondering if there's I mean, we're doing the lira program, which I think is great And I'm wondering if there's a way for Others to you know to signify that maybe they're out of work and That that having that extra late fee would be really difficult for them and Outside of the lira program, right? So that's that's just my question And I'm just I am I agree that we should start collecting money and that you should You know not let everyone get so far behind that they can't pay it But at the same time just be aware that that that is happening for the as far as the pandemic goes That's all okay. Thank you Tina Jim Moser you have a your hand up You're on mute. There you go. I just wanted to echo what Tina said and I'm wondering if we send out notices about About the late fees that we could also publicize the lira program as a Way for people to help help people who are who qualify so we can get that information out That's it. Thank you Jim Okay, I'm gonna go back here Stephanie. Do we have any are we promoting the lira program? I Saw something in email the other day Or was it on the website? Yes, it came out. Yeah, it's on the website came out in our e-newsletter As well that you know it started on Yesterday on the 15th And so we'll do something as well in the bill in the upcoming bill messages as well Now that now that it's in there, but mainly it's gonna be You know social media the e-newsletter does reach a lot of people And then the message on the bill Okay Yeah, so if I can summarize what we're trying to do at this point is see if we can sweep in Payments from people who can't afford to pay but maybe Not paying because there's no penalty not to pay Gina there wouldn't be anything That wouldn't allow us to Increase the number of waivers for people who really are in extremists with their Going forward if let's say we did the suite to get people in hopefully a couple months from now Maybe if the shutdowns are more intense we and you know and we have some people to get waived Some shutdowns get more intense people fall behind again. Is that possible for us to do additional waivers? Well, it's a little bit problematic under proposition 26 where Which requires that any type of fee be justified in terms of It be reasonably allocated among the payors and it be justified in terms of the burdens or benefits Per pay or so Under 26 the late fee should be related to and at least an estimate of the district's costs of Administratively, you know the administrative costs related to collecting from customers who become past due Which means that if you start having kind of unlimited waivers you're Potentially setting the prop 26 Analysis so I think that you know a one waiver a couple waivers can pretty easily be justified without you know Rocking the vote on 26 to 2 grade a degree, but if it becomes an ongoing thing We may need to revisit the fee entirely and how it's structured. Well, yeah, I mean I wasn't talking about unlimited Didn't come up at all in my comment, but I was talking about doing more than one So possibly to maybe maybe more, but then things might get a little bit dicey All right, well, I would I would be in support of this, but I would like to make sure that If this is all possible Rick that we have Kind of a regular You know monthly or bimonthly report on this so that we contract this closely make sure that we're not putting undue burdens on Our community either those particularly that are hard hit by the by the COVID virus. I know that the Impact some people is not uniform. Some people are perfectly capable of working from home, but there are a lot of folks in Hospitality restaurant services that sort of thing that are being impacted just severely We can we can keep the finance committee updated and the full board updated That would be great. Thanks. It's a you know, very serious issue and we want to make sure we handle it Responsibly Thank you, Rick great Bob. Would you like to put that in the form of a motion and we can move along I guess I'm A little I'm sure of what the motion would be at one waiver is already in the policy. So Are we do we need them do we need a motion? No, well, we need a motion to recommend that the board start up or that with the Finance start up with the late fees again to provide that incentive that we're talking about to customers Yeah, to get the people that can pay to to come in. Okay. Why? We have a motion language here. We don't I think you just said that's perfect. Yeah, it All you need to do is to Direct staff to Reimplement late fees and if you want to add something to it you could I mean the the part of it where the Staff will keep the board and budget committee updated. I don't think that needs a motion That's just should be normal course of business, but I move that the Board direct the district staff to Reimplement the late fees starting with the was it the August bills Stephanie Yes bills going out from August on Starting with the bills going out from August on great. Thank you Bob. I'll second that Holly. Would you like to take a vote? record the vote Director Henry Yes Director Moran. Yes Director Pauls Yes Yes director Ferris Thank you. All right Rick, what's our next item? Yes item 5b is the district board policy manual and The district council and Nichols will present this report to the board. Thank you, Rick As I'm sure everybody here recalls this board policy manual item is returning to the board It was Initially it came to the board on June 4th based on my recommendation To deal with an issue that has come up in the context of these remote meetings that we're doing in light of COVID-19 and my concern that was Driving the presentation on June 4th was that in the past At district meetings when materials have not been available at the time the board packet is published Those materials have been brought in hard copy and handed out to board members and to members of the public there to comply with Brown Act requirements and Good governance procedures However, it's very difficult to do that with these remote meetings the only way to really make Materials easily accessible to Board members and members of the public who may wish to review them is to You know either include them in the board packet or post them to the website And so that was the initial driver of the policy. There was quite a bit of board discussion on June 4th about The policy recommendation and other Potential issues and aspects that should be included in the policy and the board referred the matter to the administration committee for further discussion I Participated in the administration committee meeting a couple of weeks ago where this issue was discussed at some length And I've attempted to summarize The recommendations from the administration committee Which included that You know in the usual course of business meeting material should be available when the agenda is posted and should be included in the packet And There was also a concern that The policy would be helpful for all board meetings At least regular board meetings not just remote meetings and there was a desire to broaden it to all Regular board meetings. There was also some discussion of potentially broadening broadening it to Committee meetings so that was not part of the the recommendation from the administration committee Part of what the administration committee recommended was that we're meeting they changed the Deadline that we had originally proposed of noon the day before the meeting and they suggested that for meetings that couldn't be available In time for the regular board agenda packet the deadline would be 5 p.m Two days before the meeting and the idea there is that staff needs enough time with all the competing Matters they have to attend to to be able to post those to the website before the meeting And in those rare instances where they can't be posted before the meeting They would be made available on the website after the meeting and that rule would apply to Committee meetings as well There was also discussion of public comment letters and the recommendation there was that Public comment letters that missed the 5 p.m Deadline two days before regular board meeting would be included as written communications in a subsequent agenda packet If they make it by the deadline then staff would endeavor to post them to the website before the meeting What I've provided for you here in the board packet is a resolution number one 20-21 Which would adopt changes to the board policy manual that are based on the recommendations that came out of the Administration committee discussion Copy of the board policy manual with the proposed revisions to policy is attached To the resolution and if you want to see a red line of The policy so you can see exactly the language that's being recommended you could go to pages 51 and 56 of The agenda packet and you'll see the exact red lines that are being suggested to sections Section 9 of the board policy manual on a page 56 you can see the red line suggested to Section 10 of the board policy manual with that I'm I welcome especially comments from the administration committee members as to whether this Appropriately captured their recommendations and comments from the board as a whole Thank you Gina Bob. You're one of those committee members. I think You know, I think I think we had a really robust conversation about this. We explored a number of different possibilities and really Dug into the pros and cons of all that and Gina did a great job and I'm helping guide the guide the discussion from my perspective. This does Meet the recommendations that were made by the committee. I think there are some things that, you know, going forward, we probably need to consider as a board, not directly related to this, but You know, in terms of how we manage our agenda is given that these remote meetings. I think as Gina indicated look like there's no end in sight on them. On them that there are tools available that would make all of this much more compatible with remote meetings and which would even work for meetings in person when we get back together. But in the meantime, I think this is an appropriate Step to take to maximize transparency with our community as well as Give staff as much time as possible to be able to deal with things that come in and Lois I you remember that committee too. So if you have some comments, please do weigh in. Okay. Yes, you're recognized. Thank you. Yes, Gina, you you got what we talked about. And it was the deadline was pushed back a little bit, or forward or whatever way to five o'clock, because if it was noon on the day before the meeting that would only give a few hours for the district secretary to Get it out there. And if there was any complications, but we just thought would be more time should have all day to get anything that might come up on the day before the meeting. Great. Thank you, Lois. Anybody else have a comment or question. I Have another question. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Rick. I was just gonna say I support this in the policy trying to get equal access of information to the public and the board. I support that. That's what I see is trying to happen here also to relieve any undue stress on the staff trying to get things done in the last minute. We don't need to increase this the stress of trying to get this adjusted. Together. I think this speaks to that and I support it. Thank you, Rick. Bob, you had something else to add Bob. Sorry, sorry, just one really quick thing that's on page 56. We did also want to make sure that the committees were a little bit more flexible. So if you look at item number 10, which I think is 56. Yeah, 56. It says for telephonic or other remote or virtual regular board meetings, meeting materials not posted the district's website before the meeting should not be shown to board members during the meeting. We excluded committees on that specifically to give staff a lot more flexibility on being able to do that. Obviously, we'd want to get as much out in advance as possible, but we do have a little bit more of a, you know, a lighter touch and committee meetings and we do in the board meetings. We didn't want to hem that in. Thank you, Bob. Any comments from the our public regarding this going once. Going twice. Okay, back to the board. Yeah, so I'll go ahead and make a motion. I'm sorry, I'd like to make a motion Steve. Oh, please go ahead, Lois. Okay. I'd like to make a motion that we approve number one, 20 dash 21 to the board policy manual. And that's all I have to say, right? I don't have to read. And all second. Okay, terrific. Okay, Holly, would you like to record the vote. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Director Ferris. Hi. Motion passes. Thank you. Gina, you have a comment that I missed you. Well, I just wanted to make one comment, which is that we have an unusual circumstance related to an item that later at today's meeting where a spreadsheet that was included in the board packet wasn't fully reproduced. It is possible that the district manager may want to show that during the meeting for reference. And I would anticipate that this would be an exceptionally rare sort of exception to the rule that that shouldn't be done. And that I'm going forward, we would try to avoid a circumstance where a spreadsheet gets like this reproduced in that manner. Okay. Thanks, Gina. Okay. Rick, moving along. Yes. Moving along to item six a is the item, the chatter box, which is the district's outreach consultant contract extension and the environmental planner is with us tonight and we'll be presenting that report. Thank you, Rick. So back in March, we did enter into a contract with chatter box PR to begin establishing an outreach and communications plan along with implementation of that plan. Since March, chatter box has assessed both the weaknesses and strengths of our former outreach. They also determine recommendations and goals for us and put together a three month outreach plan. Along with being much more active on social media sites and creating some new social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. So when we entered into this contract in March, we actually split up their proposal from phase one and phase two, separating out phase three. And that was about half of what the proposal was and that was initially $20,000. Since then, we've used up that amount and are ready to enter into phase three. And that would be approximately $23,000. Right now in our budget, we have $25,000 allocated for this fiscal year. And that amount would cover about 265 hours of work and the phase three implementation, which would be actually going out in three month increments of plans, working with staff to put together outreach. And we are recommending that we move forward and enter into the second phase of the contract with chatter box and then Rick and I are here to answer any questions. If I could just add to what Carly said, since we've got chatter box on, we have been, we've improved our social media and our outreach. We have done several interviews with papers and local organizations, business associations. I'm hearing from other water district managers that they've seen a, a large increase in our outreach program and have asked about how we were doing it in our, are interested in following in our footsteps. I'm hoping that the members of the board are seeing and hearing the same and have a positive chatter box and I'll turn it back over to you Steve. Thank you, Rick, for that input. Any, any board members with any questions or comments regarding this? I see a hand from Lou. Lou, you have the floor. Thank you Steve. Carly, the last time this was brought up to the board, I had made a suggestion that we look at all the comments, specifically towards anything that was actionable that we would want to break out and take some, some considered action towards in terms of improving our outreach program. Has that been done? Yeah, so with these three month outreach plans that we've put together, these initial three months, Marcy from chatter box actually believed that all the comments that she had gone through and reviewed would be answered through this outreach plan. And what we're doing through our different social media platforms, the e-newsletters were addressing those questions, maybe not directly to the person that the survey was completed by, but more broadly to the general public. So how would I know what comments were considered actionable and what actions were taken? Right, I don't believe we actually shared the direct comments. Maybe we did with just the board. I'm not sure what happened with that. Maybe Rick has a better information. Did we share the actual comments from the survey? To some of board members, some, not all board members, but a couple who requested we did share comments. So if Lou, if you haven't received that, we'd be more than happy to share that with you. If I understand you're right, Lou, you're, you're, Lou was one of the directors that received the comments. And I think Lou was asking, are we addressing some of those comments that were asked in this. Which ones that we're going to, are we going to address? And I believe we are. And that is our process moving forward with Chatterbox. I'm sorry, I still want to understand how we're addressing the actionable comment. And where can I go to find that information? We can reach out to Marcy. I'm not sure which exact comments you're referring to. Maybe we can have a conversation offline if you want to address those, but it sounds like from my understanding with what Marcy found and within the comments, she felt that we were going to address them throughout our outreach. Yeah, I don't think you're going to see Lou, a Pacific question and answer, but each of the outreaches and, you know, the different social media and outreach will be addressing those comments, you know, in kind of a subtle way and not a list of Q&A. Does that make sense to you? Well, I would still like to see not all comments addressed, but those that we consider actionable. I mean, people took the time to give us not only survey responses, but also comments. And I think to the extent that some of those are really good comments that we want to do something about. I think we need to not only do something about it, but then respond to the community saying, hey, we're doing these things because of comments we got from the public. In other words, showing that we're really are reaching out and being transparent. Okay, let's get back to you on that. Okay. Thank you, Lou. Bob, you have the floor. Yeah, thanks. You know, I guess the thing that I'm still struggling with here is, you know, what's the goal and objective that we're trying to get to? What is the metrics by which we are going to determine that we have successfully engaged with the community? We're not a private for-profit organization. We're not even a nonprofit organization that depends on donations and attendance at events and that sort of thing. We're a public agency that is effectively a monopoly within the sphere of what we sell. And I just, when I look through some of the postings, it's almost like we're trying to build a brand in the way that an Apple would or some other private company. And I really think what, at least from my perspective, what the objective is, is how we build trust and start engaging the community in some very frank conversations about some of the items that are facing the district, the major challenges that are facing the district. And being able to put together a set of information that goes beyond, you know, 280 characters or a cross-post between Facebook and Twitter. I think the opportunity that we have here is to do something that's much deeper than at least what I've seen so far, which is good as far as it goes. But I don't know that it's really getting to the heart of what our issues are. I was having a little trouble in the reports also determining the exact number of posts that were done and what sort of metrics we were looking at in terms of engagement, in terms of people responding to those. So I did just a quick check. I know that we've just started up Twitter, so I get that the number of people is going to be low. But what is the objective for the number of people following us? With Facebook, I think we might have gone up 50. You know, we also aren't saying in the posts that we do, you know, sort of really call to action. You know, what is it that we want them to do? Do we want them to follow us? Because, you know, a lot of the neighborhood groups on Facebook have thousands of people and you would think that essential service like ours would have more than 1500. I think we need to be looking at those kinds of things at a more fundamental level than what we currently are. I also think that part of the things that Lou was talking about in terms of addressing the issues that the community has expressed through the comments really need to be taken for further discussion into the committee, which includes board members, of course, because a lot of what the communication needs to happen here needs to have a lot of board focus on it. And through the, for example, the administration committee whose primary role is engagement with the community. Right now we're not involved in that at all. We actually have resources on that committee that have some background in this as well. So I'm just very troubled by how we're approaching this. And I think the last comment before I turn the floor back to Steve is we have an election season coming up. And I'm also very sensitive to the nature of the information that gets published over the next four months. In the 2018 election, there was sort of a promo piece that was put out that was for the context inappropriate for for that time period. And I guess I want to be really careful about what is being put out here over the next few months. This actually might be a good opportunity for us because of that. So we're going to sort of take the information that we've received over this current three or four month period and put it back into a review process where we can actually see what the goal should be what our objectives are what's the ROI that we're looking for. And is this money going to be well spent. Given all of the other things that we have to spend money on for which we are still not well funded on those items either. Carly or do you want to address any of Bob's comments or concerns or Rick. Yeah, I think there's a lot in that but I think starting out with right now in this phase I do believe we are building that audience and all these different platforms to then be able to have the audience to to give this more engaging content to Just looking right now we do use a platform known as Sprout social. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it Bob. But what it does is actually analyzes each social media platform and the engagement we're receiving and just quickly looking at it from logging in in the last 28 days we've gone up a 200 likes on Facebook. Which I think is pretty significant at least from what we had in the past. And there's a lot of data in this Sprout social that we can bring to the board if that's something that we want to get into that or maybe we bring it to one of our committees to just bring it. Yeah, I think we could bring that to the admin committee for sure I mean those kinds of numbers that we really need to be. All right, go ahead, Carly if you're unless you were finished. Yeah, I mean it looks did blow us did you have a comment. Yeah, I've got an issue though all of a sudden I'm huge here. And I also don't know how to raise my hand how do I get myself back to normal here just just scream well just scream we'll we'll catch you just scream. But all I can see is myself. Well that's the view that you must have hit the view you want to go, you want to read do your view and where's your cursor down to the bottom of your screen and bar should pop up that shows participants chat screen share record you see all that. Yeah. Okay where it says participants click on that. Okay. Now, to the right side of the screen do you see a list of names. Oh, and it says raise hand to. Yeah, there you go. Okay, but how do I get myself back to normal here. You that's as normal as you need to be lowest keep the keep the pain on the right listing the names and there's plenty of you on the screen for me. I don't want to be the big thing on the screen. Well you're not go go to the upper right hand corner and click on the the tick tack. You see the tick tack to board up top there, like, you know, all the little boxes, like a cube and pin video. Click on that and it'll get that you you you've changed your view. Just click on that. Wow, now I you're now you're huge Rick. The other Rick. Never mind. You know, close did you have a comment on the item we're talking about here, or did you just want to. No, I don't want to heckle you. I just had a couple of issues. I guess I'm, I'm not a good one on this social media. Because I don't do Facebook, I don't do Twitter. I don't do next door. I know there's a lot of people in Long Pico that computers don't work too well even they have to go to the library or somewhere. Of course that's not happening now. So I don't know how. If we're going to put all our emphasis on social media might be missing some people. I mean, I'm not going to miss anything because I'm on the board, but. Right. Well, we have the website and then we do have the news. I hear things from people who say members of the public who say to me, I hate this website. It's harder to use than the one before. And I actually have the same issue with the new website. Okay. And I'm not trying to be negative for a different meeting loss. I know that and I'm not trying to be negative here. I'm just saying that there, you know, there are a lot of things we can do besides social media to get to people, I think, but maybe I think wrong, maybe I'm just too old fashioned or something. And I think with respect to chatter box, are they exclusively only looking at social media vehicles. No, not at all. So we have been active with the press banner, along with some other local media sources. And I think they've we've actually had the last few press releases that we put out, published for free in the press banner. And I know that Marcy, every time we do do a press release sends it out to all her contacts and whoever picks it up, that's what we have it put in unless we want to pay to have that as an ad. Okay, great. Okay, any other questions or comments from any board members at this time. It's Steve, if I could go Rick Moran. Yes. Thank you for your time, Rick. Lou's got his pop and he beat you to it. So, go ahead. Lou. Now that Rick, you go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Well, I agree with Lois. I think there's more than just social media. I'm a fan of old style paper inserts into the billing. You know, that form of communication. So that being said, So I think we need to broaden our aspect so that it's not just totally focused on social media. The other question I had, and I don't know if this is going backwards a little bit, but I was, you know, in the survey, I didn't know whether one thing that I would have liked to found out is how many people read the reports and how many people attend or review the recorded version of our meetings. So what's the feedback on that? I didn't get that. Maybe somebody has that information. That's information that I would like to see. And as far as a specific thing that I want to make sure gets addressed here shortly is the reach outreach to the neighborhoods that are having pipe replacement and the tank replacement that they are specifically targeted to let them know what's about road closures about anything that, you know, Rick has that people would be concerned about. So I want to make sure that gets out as soon as possible. And I know earlier in the day at the environmental committee meeting, we were concerned about fire management information getting out there as soon as it can. Those are, otherwise I, you know, support this we, we've got the money in the budget, you know, I'm not going to stop that from proceeding here but I just had a few little things that I just wanted to include in the conversation. Thank you. Yeah, thanks Carly are those types of notifications included in the scope for chatterbox or is that some other group within the water district that handles those types of notifications. The chat box will be doing some of that outreach as soon as it's received from operations, it'll probably go through me and then I'll bring it to chatterbox to get out to everyone. Okay. And then Rick just to let you know as far as the numbers for agendas and recordings that should be something we can pull off our website. I'm not aware, exactly what those numbers are, but I could probably get that information from the website. Yeah, chatterbox would be handling any of the outreach that is regarding projects as well. If I could, if I could add to answer Rick's question about projects that'll come out of the out of the districts admin we just issued the notice of the proceeds and once we get project schedules. For instance, we have the two mainline products I'm not sure where they're going to start the contractor will tell us if they're going to start at North Boulder Creek or they're going to start at California Drive. And once we have that information, then we target the neighborhoods. We don't want to put information out too early or information we don't know when they're going to start, because it will be specific about telling them about possible road closures and different things. So we're very close, but we don't have the the actual schedule from the contractor. Glad to hear that Rick. Thank you. And just to comment on the inserts that you were talking about Rick, that's, I don't know how many inserts we do now but they cost money. I think the last time. It's fairly expensive. So if we can promote more of this, you know, social media means which is far more, you know, cost beneficial to us. We should really explore that more. I think some of the issues Bob was relating to also with that coming up on election season and the previous activities where inserts were used I think inappropriately or mailing was done inappropriately, really, that caused us some concern. So we don't want to repeat anything like that. Lois your hand is up. Congratulations on finding the button. Thank you. Rick Moran I appreciate all your remarks and Bob's and Steve's and I think we're moving ahead here and Yeah, there was an issue in 2018 with what went out. But I don't think that's going to happen this time. And I, I know that I hate to say this, Carly, but people in Long Pico don't get the press banner. It's not delivered period. So we don't always get the press banner. I guess we're a little backwards here in Long Pico. Careful Lois, stereotyping Long Pico. I'll get a phone call from Gina. Anyway, thank you. Bob and Rick Moran and Steve for your comments. Thank you, Lois. Bob, you have your hand up. Just a couple of things. After that mailer was done in 2018. I went into the Boulder Creek post office. After it been delivered and the number of mailers that were in the garbage and on the floor was staggering. I, I, you know, I think inserts are one thing, but standalone mailers I think are just. At least not that kind of mailer, maybe a postcard or something, but certainly not that kind. It was, it was money that was wasted. Please keep in mind, Carly, that the post is now open for business. And also mountain bulletin. The press banner is moving towards where they want you to pay for the paper. If you're not in a, in a dense delivery area, it's just too expensive for them to deal with, I think anymore. So that, that is something that, that needs to be factored into whatever we end up paying for ads is what the reaches that we get, you know, before when, when I went everywhere in the valley or almost everywhere. And, and Scott's Valley, that's one thing. But if they're, you know, if the circulation is shrunk, the value of the ads are, are much, much lower. I'm also not really a huge fan of ads and given the budget that we have 25,000 that could get eaten up pretty quickly with ads. So they need to be really targeted on what you're going to do. But in general, I still think that we're, this still feels to me a little bit like, you know, ready fire aim, we just don't have a great, and their plan doesn't really give me a sense of what the goal is, where we expect to get to what the end point is, what the metrics are, what the measurements are, how we judge the ROI. And what the board involvement is going to be in helping craft these messages. It's all very big. Thank you, Bob. Lou, you have a comment or Carly, what did you want to rebuttal anything? No, I agree with a lot of what Bob said. I will, I will comment that we did take advantage of the post offered a free article and we did take advantage of that. Right. Thank you, Carly Lou. Thanks, Dave. Two comments more on chatterbox. First of all, I'd like to commend both Carly and Rick. For choosing chatterbox as our social media outreach. You don't need to go any farther than page four of the attachments to the board packet. Under the giving hour, they quote the Greek poet Homer who said, the charity that is a trifle to us can be precious to others. I think that speaks volumes towards the same values that we have in terms of reaching out to our rate payers, specifically with the Lyra program. So I really like the fact that we're using chatterbox as our outreach. The second comment is, as you look at page 14 where they're actually talking about additional marketing items, they're proposing and I'm not sure if this is something we're planning on doing, but they're proposing a press release on construction and capital improvement to go out this month in July. And this pains me to say because infrastructure is my number one priority, but right now I think the most important press release to go out in July would have to be fire prevention month, which right now is scheduled for August. So I would just propose flipping those two doing a press release on fire prevention this month and then doing the press release you were planning on doing in July on capital improvement next month. Thank you, Lou. I think we can leave that to the staff to figure out. Today's meeting that she changes been made. Great. Thank you. Our management today. Terrific. Okay. Let's go to the. Our public attendees and do you all have any comments or questions. Regarding chatterbox and our outreach efforts and anything like that. Not much of anything. Coming back to the, to the board. So we have, what's our, our ask here is to approve the. Funding of phase three. Is that the gist of it here? When I lose my place. Yeah, so. It's the recommendation here that the board addresses review and authorize the district manager to extend the contract with chatterbox to continue to carry out the district's communication and outreach needs. And the amount of $23,600. I'll make that motion. So I got the motion. Thank you. Holly, would you like to record the vote? I'm sorry, Bob, do you have a question? Yeah, just to clarify and question is, is the work that they're proposing to do for the rest of the year, or is it only for part of the year by rest of the year? I mean, rest of the budget year. Oh, sorry. I believe it falls a little short of the fiscal year. It's exactly. So it, so there may potentially be another ask for money later. Right. Okay. So that's probably what we're funding is the amount of hours that they're allocating, which is the 265 hours of work. Like phase three goes from July to January. Right. But because it is the hours allocated, I believe we can stretch this out depending on how we take advantage of. Okay. Thank you. Back to you, Holly. Thank you. Director Moran. Yes. Director Falls. No. President Swine. Yes. Director Ferris. Hi. Motion passes. Thank you, Holly. Rick, what do you team up next? Okay. Item. Six B is a district surplus property. It's going to be a lengthy presentation. It'll be a two part presentation. I will give an introduction into the, into the parcels and somewhat of an explanation to the parcels. And district council will move into the process of surplus sale that needs to be followed, which is a kind of cumbersome and complicated, but an important process. Okay. Earlier in the meeting tonight, district council spoke about a spreadsheet that is in this item. It's the Excel spreadsheet that lists all the parcels that are being recommended to be disposed of. Either through our software or the two different types of software and transferring over to the district secretary. Two important columns were cut off. So we're going to put that up on screen. And we will be zoning and we'll be putting that up on screen. And we will be putting this too. On the, on the website tomorrow. Keep in mind, we are not asking the board tonight to adopt any resolutions or to, to make a motion. So to speak. We are asking for direction to staff and council to come back to the board. We are asking for direction to staff and council to come back to the board. We are asking for all documentation needing to move forward. This is kind of an introduction to the full board tonight. And if a CTV will put up that spreadsheet, that would be great. And I will start on the, the record, we'll start with the recommendation. We're recommended that the board review this memo. And perform the following review the attached list of district parks and district parks. We're going to review the attached list of district parks and district parks. We're recommending in ownership of the district. Passboards have done this process, but staff has fallen short to dispose of these parcels. A lot of these were problematic that we are going to address this time around. We're going to review the attached list of district parcels parcels recommended to be surplus. And ask for direction designating parcels. We're going to review the attached list of district parks and district parks. We're going to review the exempt surplus and exempt surplus earmark for disposal other than by auction. Three definitions that district council will speak to further in this memo. We're going to review legal council's draft policy to govern the disposal process for board approval. It's attached in this memo. We're going to, I'm asking to direct the district manager to facilitate a resolution to move forward with the motion. Um, we're going to review the attached list of district parks and district parks on our real estate auction site. Um, asking for board approval. We want to direct legal council. Prepar a resolution D designating the administration building a surplus. Some years back, this was brought to the board to surplus. The administration building. The moved ahead to, uh, dispose of and move to a temporary. Facility. That went all the way up to board, where staff is still researching that, but we have a concern about this property being surplus because if it is surplus, if something was to happen to it in a natural disaster, such as earthquake or something being already surplus, it is doubtful that FEMA would cover replacement costs or may even have some insurance issues as it was designated no longer abuse to the district. We're going to ask, we're asking you to also direct legal counsel to prepare a resolution based on the board's findings and direction tonight and policy in regard to these recommendations and return to the board for adoption to move forward with the surplus of district property by auction. With that, I'll give you a background. The district owns approximately 172 parcels throughout district boundaries. An update review finds that 23 of these parcels have already previous been declared surplus and are still in ownership of the district and there are 15 additional parcels being recommended for surplus. Most of these parcels were obtained in the consolidation of Lompeco and are no longer necessary to the district. These are like the Lompeco main office building, you know, the district is not maintaining an office, old well sites, treatment sites, and they have some just parcels that are no longer needed. We're asking the board to consider to surplus. In addition, there are seven parcels that require further discussion regarding maintaining ownership. These parcels are commonly known as the Zioni watershed and at one time, this property was earmarked for the Zioni dam that is no longer a capital project of the district, nor does the district have water rights to Zioni Creek. One of these parcels are the same parcels that the district just approved the woody debris project on Zioni Creek and we'll talk more about that. Individual parcel information and mapping can be reviewed by going to the Santa Cruz County GIS website and that is a link in this memo. None of you have gone to that website. It's a pretty unique website on the county GIS. You type in the parcel number, you'll get a parcel map, you'll get zoning information, you'll get a considerable amount of information, you'll get the size of the parcel, very interactive and you can really look into it. Some of the recommend surplus properties may be problematic to surplus due to facilities on the parcel that may require abandonment. Some of these parcels are landlocked and these parcels will be recommended to be designated as exempt surplus earmarked for disposal other than by auction, most likely a negotiated purchase with the property owner that the property is an inholding on and these parcels have no legal access across joining parcels. So these parcels have really no real value to anybody but the property owner in which this parcel is an inholding off. One of these parcels is recommended to be exchanged for another property necessary to relocate a water storage tank in the Lost Acres area. We have a very small 30 by 30 parcel with a small tank on it and we have the adjoining property owner that's going to give us a considerable easement for a water tank and water supply line and as part of that negotiation we want to trade for the easement. Staff is trying to declare trying to determine if the board did declare the admin building a surplus. We have found information all the way up to but we staff cannot find a adopted resolution so we're asking the board to to anyhow to consider re-designating the admin building from surplus. Requirements for declaring surplus and disposal of property are very complicated. There are specific procedures for special districts to catalog their property including surplus property and to sell off this property. Surplus land means land owned and fee simple by a local agency for which the local agency's governing body takes formal action in a regular public meeting declaring the land is surplus and it's not necessary for the agency's use. Land shall be declared either surplus land or exempt surplus land as supported by written findings by a local agency may take action to dispose of it consistent with the agency's policies or procedures and later in this process district council will explain those procedures and the policy. A local agency on an annual basis may declare multiple parcels of surplus land or exempt surplus land. Staff has investigated the best way to dispose of surplus either by a realtor, sealed bid or property auction. In the past the district we have disposed of surplus property by sealed bid and handled the complete transfer of ownership. At times the cost of the advertising and transfer of ownership was greater than the high bid received. Cities and counties have moved to online auctions for selling tax delinquent property. The county of Santa Cruz for some time has been using a firm called Bit for Assets an online real estate auction site for selling tax delinquent properties. The cost of this service is 10% of the auction price paid by the buyer so that means that the auction price would 100% of the auction price would go to the district and 10% above that would go to the auction house for the cost and the cost is all paid for by the buyer. Bid for assets completes advertising with the 200,000 online bidders list however the district will do additional advertising making sure that there is notice posted in neighborhoods and also making sure adjoining property owners are noticed of pending auction. They complete all ownership transfers and collections and funds. There are non refunded deposits that the buyer is responsible for that would go to the district if the buyer would not come through with the purchase. Moving forward legal council has developed the draft policy to govern the disposal process for more approval attached to the list of the district parcels parcels recommending to be surplus and that was also up on the screen right now and there's a far right hand side I have put determinations of which parcels are just designated as surplus and exempt surplus or exempt status earmark for disposal other than by auction and council will explain. At the July administration committee meeting the committee discussed this item and recommended it moving forward to the full board before disposal of surplus plan by auction. With that I'll ask the district council nickels to pick up on on the surplus thing process and add to this report. I'm happy to do that. If you don't mind Rick I wonder if it makes sense to have some discussion at this point or if it should all wait until after I do my presentation because there is a lot here and of course it's all interrelated so Should we turn it back over to the board chair for questions then at this point I think might be good that sounds super to me okay so let's let's ask at this point we'll take a pause and we'll ask if any of the directors have questions or comments I know I do I see that so does Lou and Bob and everybody else so let's start with number one on the list Lou your first up all right thanks Steve um Rick a question for you uh is not the admin building a red tag structure not anymore we have uh we hired a local firm to to bring in compliance and work with the county and we have had all red tags removed from that building so we have no issues relative to the occupancy of that building and any detrimental effects that that building might have on the on the oxen that's correct at this point time that building is fully permitted okay thank you Bob you're next in the queue director interesting itself yes all right can you hear me now or might be going into broad bad broadband but we can hear you now so I was at the meeting where the okay sorry it's the broadband kind of goes in and out this time of the night for some reason um I was at the meeting where the the admin building was surplus I was frankly a little astounded by it but um I don't recall if there was a resolution with it or not Rick we can't but but there was an affirmative vote on it yeah I it may not have been it was sort of of I think it was pretty Gina and you know that didn't always work out so well Gina or on the during the discussion this is I think a really key point there was this category called exempt now what had been explained to me before at least back several years is that the only way you could get rid of property was through an auction process that is you couldn't engage an owner directly to be able near an adjacent owner directly to to dispose of the property is that something relatively new or did we just have bad legal advice a few years ago well um well let me put it this way that there is a new law under the the surplus property act that now applies to districts that became applicable to districts in about 2016 if my memory serves and that has completely overhauled the scheme that applies to special districts in disposing of surplus property now the scheme existed to some extent before that time but it applied more typically to municipalities counties rather than special districts um and it's that law that creates this exempt surplus category that we're talking about now so you know whatever advice was given before that act became applicable to special districts um simply needs to be revisited now under the law okay I'm willing to bet that the last bid was sometime in 20 because it was kind of a it was kind of a hot mess the last one the district did where there was two neighbors competing for the same uh parcel I think that was in 2016 or maybe early 2017 so the the former attorney may not have been fully up to speed on it um you know from my point of view just being able to see rec and his team move forward in this and have some great has available to us is fabulous because you know some of these properties were were surplus as long ago it was 2009 I think and you know it's one thing to do something it's another thing to execute and I'm really happy to see that Rick and his team were committed to executing on this and getting these things out from underneath us as quickly as possible thank you Bob any other questions or comments from any of the directors so I just had a question so there's in total we've got 172 parcels that we want to get rid of correct Rick no that's not correct we have 172 total parcels in ownership of the district in our boundaries so total parcels are 23 plus 15 plus seven is what we're looking to get rid of and some of those have already been declared surplus but I want authorization to move ahead with auction so 23 15 45 is what we're looking to to dispose of okay so and it's it looks like there's a good vehicle for getting rid of them through auction vis-a-vis this bid for assets outfit that's correct it's pretty much you know turnkey they do it all they do you know the deed transfer of ownership they do the collection of money they do it all and the county of Santa Cruz can't you know they think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread they've been using bid for auction they're most of the cities and counties who do tax sales now use bid for auction they're well established in California and we've done not a lot but we've done a handful of property transfers in Santa Cruz County and it's a nightmare no two are the same so if anybody is can take the time and go down and district staff do not have to do that at the county building and spend you know Holly and I have spent hours and repeated trips to try to move through changing ownership and getting things recorded at the county it's it's a nightmare okay and there's some some new properties that you want to have declared obsolete or surplus or whatever right that's correct most of them being it came with the consolidation of Lumpico like their main office building treatment facilities that have become very problematic now with homeless dumping of vehicles and garbage trespass so we we determined we visited all these sites we physically have been to all these sites and determined that they have no use to the district or future use to the district we're not going to put the intake back in at Lumpico we're not going to reopen the office at Lumpico right so um they do not have a use there's a couple other parcels that are in our our north system service area the one I want to trade for the new lost anchors tank that's came up and some of these are going to be problematic if you look at one of these it's uh the uh it's the opposite side of the benelum and swimming hole the whole length of the benelum and swimming hole we own the opposite side of the river we used to have an intake back there at one time many many years ago you mean the swimming hole it isn't allowed to swim in that's correct okay some of these courses we own are are unique there is no doubt about it and at one time or another there was going to be an intake or a dam on every one of these little tributaries and so we have a piece of property um and it'll be good to get rid of you know that's a hell of a liability or excuse me that's a heck of a liability the benelum and swimming hole because it still gets a lot of a lot of people walk it and and go down in that area so someone was to get hurt you know I'd let council speak to that but no doubt we would be named in some type of a lawsuit my daughter still has the scar on her leg from swimming in that swimming hole statue limitation so uh and then the last uh that I I did not make a recommendation to the board is what we used to go we call is the Zioni watershed it's probably the bulk of this property over a hundred acres um it's uh was planned to have a dam at one time the Zioni dam it's located quite a ways out of our service area up off of Zioni creek um we have no real use for that property we're not planning on putting a dam we're not we don't have a water rights we have no facilities um we do have to maintain it we do get trespass we do get homeless issues and uh we've had you know on and off several issues with uh illegal activity and we you know we have it's a liability so I I purposely didn't recommend a declared surplus because I think we need to have good discussion about that property at board level just because I this has come up by previous boards and there has always been discussion on this property at board level resulting in the district's retaining ownership so I thought it'd be appropriate to bring it uh to the board and work with you on making a decision on that property okay perfect thank you rick I see that um lois found the raise hand button again so we're gonna question and make a comment okay I I kind of want to go back to the auction I think that's a fabulous idea because it takes some of the work away from staff where they have to work with deeds and property and at the admin committee I brought up how as a law as a as a credit union person sometimes we had to repo a car and ever now then I would go out with another employee and we would actually repo believe me you don't want to do that because people get mad and sometimes the repo man and it's scary um so I nobody's gonna hopefully put a gun to rick's head if he wants to get rid of any property but it needs to have somebody who knows how to deal with property which the auction house would take care of everything it'd be out of the district's hands as for if I can go to the Zioni property the watershed my understanding is that we don't have water rights for that property the property therefore is really not beneficial to the district um and the county or I guess the city it's the city of Santa Cruz it owns a jason jason property it's the city rick that's correct city of Santa Cruz okay so I don't know there's there might not be any hope that they would be willing to take that property over um but it is a cost to the district to maintain that property and it's I'm sure it's absolutely a lovely property I don't know I haven't really seen it but it probably is but we don't need to keep it because it's a really nice property if it was beneficial to the district I could see keeping it it is a watershed and if if the city of Santa Cruz won't take it we may just have to keep it or I don't know what we can do with it if we can sell it to individuals I I don't know what that does I is the woody debris issue right there by where that property is rick it is on one of the parcels there's a total of seven parcels in that general area that we own and one of the parcels has the woody debris it is considered um good quality watershed it is a co the Ziony Creek is a co-host stream fisheries agencies monitor that stretch of the creek because it is so pristine it has the the habitat that steelhead rearing light it has you know overhanging banks woody debris as you know I would like to see if the district would like if the direction of the board was to move to dispose that we try to court other agencies that are in the business of protection of watershed more so than the district such as fish and wildlife separate biomes there is redwood trees on another portion of the property in matter of fact I think in the early 70s that was the one and only time the district logged garrison logging came in that was the first I think and only time the district logged in a long time someone that was more more set up and it was more their charter to really develop and monitor watershed than we are so this is an important environmental place it is that that we need to take into consideration is what I'm hearing from you it is but it's not a piece of a property that we take you know we have other important environmental watershed that we take water off of that need maintenance need fire management it needs to be addressed and I feel more comfortable addressing the properties that we're using as a water source than ones that we are not using as a water source because we just don't have enough finances and resources to do it all well I understand my opinion not obviously not the board's opinion probably yeah I understand that and yeah it would be great if we could find somebody who would take care of the property that we'd know it was being well taken care of I think that would ease concerns by the public and and by board members if we found somebody like you were saying to take care of the property we wouldn't just sell it to private people to build on or whatever and I believe we could do that under and I'll let Gina speak to that under surplus property on one of these three categories to another public agency or another agency that would protect and preserve that you answered my questions thank you thanks Lois rick just another quick question for you honor with respect to the properties that are considered surplus and you're asking to add to the surplus list do we have an idea what all of those properties in question are costing the district annually if anything I don't know if there's any cost you know staff time on removing garbage we've had you know some tree work that had to be done from an adjoining property owner that's you know concerned about dead tree it's minimal but there is a life there's a liability out there right yeah is there any idea what sort of gain we might receive from selling these identified properties most of them are postage sized lots however there are a handful that are flat postage sized lots that would add possibly ADA property to the to the neighbor on one or two sides very accessible so they could generate some revenue and then of course the you know the acreage ship Olympia I have no idea without some type of an appraisal right um all right thanks Rick that was I think it would be you know there'd be a few dollars and we all get said and done because I'm not sure but the lumpiko property you may be I think it has septic water buildings on it you may be able to live there I don't know I have to check with the county on that right okay so it's possible that some of these may have a pretty good value thank you no other questions from the board that will let Gina continue with her remainder of her presentation okay thank you Steve thank you Rick and I just want to start by underscoring what Rick said initially which is that we're not looking for any formal decision tonight by the board this is just an effort to get kind of feedback in general direction so that we can bring a formal package to the board that the board can approve that said we may ask for you know a motion or something if it's a little unclear which direction the board wants us to go in order just to help us finalize the recommendation for when we bring this back I'm going to be talking a little bit about the draft policy that I'm proposing for the disposal of surplus land this policy is intended to do a couple of things first it's to help us comply with the surplus land act that was recently made of it applicable to special districts as I discussed a little bit earlier and it's also intended to help avoid conflicts of interest and gift of public fund issues essentially it's to provide a process that will help make sure we dot the i's and cross the t's in terms of illegal requirements of how we dispose of this property and of course I will be you know taking a close look at the final package to make sure everything is in compliance with law so that as the stuff gets disposed you know we don't create any issues for ourselves but that said I also want to help the district come up with a process that's cost effective so that you know the costs of legal review and sales and so forth don't dwarf the value of these properties so I've attached the surplus land act um as it was enacted in 2019 under assembly bill 1486 um that contains the that assembly bill 1486 that's part of the board packet contains the provisions that apply to the district um I've put it there because uh just for reference for anybody who really wants to dig into the specifics um but I'm going to talk about the process at a higher level that doesn't go through all the the detailed requirements of that law so just speaking at a really high level the process that we're going to follow to do those of these lands involves like rick said putting them into one of three buckets the first one being surplus land that's land that doesn't qualify for the exemption under the surplus land act that land has to be posted notification has to be posted to a state website before we can sell it and we also have to provide notices to certain government entities that may have an interest in using the land for housing or public space etc so we've got an additional hurdle with land that doesn't qualify for the exemption that we have to meet before we can auction it off so the process there for the surplus land is you know we post it to the state's website we offer it by letter to the agencies that were required to offer it to and then if nobody responds to our notice then we get to auction the land off um the next category is exempt surplus land that land does not have to be posted to the state's website and it does not have to be offered to public agencies before it can be sold so within that category we have certain lands that it may it's going to make sense to just auction these are lands that are exempt because of perhaps size etc but that we don't have to offer to an adjoining property owner or another special district etc but some of the for some of the categories of exempt surplus land it's required that the land either be offered to an adjoining property owner or to another public agency etc so for any exempt surplus land we're going to have to determine whether it can be auctioned or whether it has to be offered to an adjoining property owner or to a public agency etc and I would add that if land is exempt and it's not going to be offered via auction um for that land there's going to be another step the board has to do which is for example let's say the district offers the land to an adjoining property owner and the property owner makes a good offer and the district wants to sell it then the board is going to have to approve that sale because it's not being done um systematically through the auction process um so kind of stepping through the elements of the draft plan that starts on page 87 of the board packet the first couple of sections really reiterate what I just said the process is that the district manager prepares a recommendation or request for the board you see the initial sort of draft of that recommendation tonight you'll see a final one when we come back to the board then the board is going to have to by resolution put each of those parcels into one of the applicable categories exempt surplus land um or surplus land and for the exempt surplus land there's going to have to be a recommendation of whether it's going to be disposed of by auction or whether it's going to be offered to a continuous property owner or offered for donation or exchange to another public agency or another entity um so uh let's see a couple of other elements of this of course we're going to have to follow the conflicts of interest code with this as well as with all contractual contracts of the district but in an abundance of caution we've also recommended in the district in the draft plan that all um sound uh staff board and committee members and their immediate family members uh be prohibited from participating as a buyer in a public auction or any other disposal of the surplus real property and that's just to avoid any fear well clear of any potential issues under the conflicts of interest code um lastly um the district manager did mention that there's a desire to notify neighborhoods and neighbors of some of the lands that are going to be sold off of a pending sale by auction and so um i'm planning to add that is not in the current draft policy that you see in front of you but i'm planning to add it to the draft policy that will come back to the board for approval and of course i'm open to any other changes or suggestions that the board may have um before this comes back for final board approval that it jeana that's it okay you got to you got to work on your clothes so i know when you're done okay so um bob you have a question or comment yeah just just a couple of questions so so when i um when i look at the spreadsheet that is available it looks like we have land that is either surplus or exempt surplus other than auction and i i guess the the format of the draft resolution it wasn't i mean the three categories look like they're in there but they weren't like really crystal clear for me it's like there was exempt or surplus and then exempt there was sort of a longer list of other possibilities so i'm not but i didn't see anything in there for exempt other than auction am i not coming through you're breaking up but i think we understood your question yeah i think if i can i'll take that and rick may want to jump in but um for some of the exempt parcels i think we're going to need to flesh out the disposition process a little bit for the final resolution by the board because the precise method of disposition depends on the reason why it's declared exempt surplus so for example if it's exempt surplus because it's smaller than a certain size and it's um being offered to a contiguous property owner then of course you have to actually offer it to the contiguous property owner but another grounds for exemption is that um for example the property can be exchanged to for another property that's useful for the district so if it's exempt for that reason then we've got to offer it to another agency that um or we've got to offer it in exchange for other property that's useful to the district so um i think we're going to need to flesh out that category a little bit in the final spreadsheet that comes back with the resolution for board approval yeah and it it might help to also have maybe a summary table or something of what the various options are and what the requirements are i just i got lost going through the uh through the pros and what i'm what i'm concerned about is just making sure that it's very clear to our community what what the various options are um i mean i i poked around a little bit with the list and you know there's one parcel that's not buildable but it's right next to two other parcels that are empty owned by the same person of course you know and if they got all three they'd be at 1.03 acres which basically is a buildable a lot at that point so i want to make sure that you know what we're communicating out into the public is really clear about what the various paths are for each one of these parcels and the resolution may not be the best way to communicate that the legal language of the resolution may not be the best way to communicate that well i i'd imagine that you would have as part of that resolution you would have an attachment that would state all that my correct you know that would break down the individual parcels and their status either exempt surplus or exempt surplus i think that would be a good way to communicate all the specifics of the board's final decision and support the necessary findings yes and and bob that's the reason you know we're not gonna we're not gonna look in to see you know as dig as deep as you did um you know who owns the parcels but it's important look at who owns them yeah that it's important that we notify the adjoining parcels and and get this posted in the neighborhoods so people know and you know not just go through the auction house on the 200 000 on their list because you know that list is good we may get some uh some interested people but these parcels really only have a use to the adjoining parcel next door i guess what i was asking is is i get the table about you know making sure we're classifying them i guess for each one of those classifications if there could be a a bullet point summary of what's involved in disposing of property via that classification i think that would just be um i think that would make things very very clear that may not be compatible with what you need to do for a not involved with this every day to take a look at something and go oh okay this is classification this is what has to happen am i interested or not move on or or you know go down to the next step right i think that's council's intention that we make this as clear as possible so that someone from the outside could look in and be able to understand it and i think that's really important and that's our our plan yeah i mean part of this feedback i mean it looks like what happened is after the admin committee there was some additional um research and um additional value uh valuable information put into this and so we didn't cover all the just for everybody else on the board we didn't cover all this specific detail during the admin committee but we did get a very in-depth conversation about the uh auction process and the parcels themselves and that sort of thing which i think was helpful all right the zoning wasn't added to the list that the uh you know we built onto this spreadsheet um since right yeah zoning for the for the buyers is very important right right so yeah okay thanks it's good let's move and there is a uh zoning uh definition sheet from the county uh behind the spreadsheet that states what all those different zones of zoning is yeah that's fantastic okay thank you bob uh any other questions from any of the other directors before we let the public share some thought to comments let's let's go to our attendees who've dwindled by one anybody uh yes jim mozier you have the floor thank you steve i first want to say i in support of getting rid of these surplus properties that have no use for the district the small ones where my concern lies is the land that is watershed particularly the olympia watershed um i think it's a broader discussion that we need to have about the district's role in protecting the watershed generally not just that part of the watershed that that that district has direct interest in in terms of water rights that's a very sensitive area um i'm not uh as the only public agency that has watershed protections slb watershed protection as a specific mission i think it is incumbent on the district to be very careful about how we manage the watershed so i'm very concerned about the notion that we might sell that property off um i'm not sure given the sensitive nature of it who would want it um and you know the idea that maybe santa cruz city might take it or that our land trust might take it they have very different missions than we do in terms of protecting our watershed so i hope that before the board took any action to make that property a surplus property that the public would be brought into the discussion there'd be some review by environmental scientists um to advise us on its importance and what's needed in order to keep the watershed healthy that it's not just sensitive land but it's also unique um property that i personally think the district's uh to uh overseeing it is really critically important to our environment here thank you if i could just interject uh chair swan uh mr mohair referred to this as the olympia watershed and i've had a couple of emails saying this is not the olympia watershed the olympia watershed is the property located directly behind xiany fire this is the xiany watershed that's several miles up in the xiany canyon um the olympia watershed is not being discussed tonight that is very sensitive habitat it has our olympia well field on the parcels and that's located right behind xiany fire i just want to make sure that people aren't getting this confused the property in question if you if you do pull up the county's gis the several miles up in the xiany off of xiany creek uh uh up in the canyon it's completely two different watersheds just just a clarification well thanks rick i i didn't realize that that uh relieved some of my concern um and i will do a little more research on this again i think it would be really important for uh further to be good public discussion about uh any of the land we would give up that's part of the watershed right and that's why that's why we're here tonight and that's why it's listed to to to for for further discussion um so you know it it's not just a slam dunk so to speak thank you mr roger uh we have uh i don't know uh sinson bindi sinsi who is that but simply take your name and let us have your comment or question this is synthia zenzel and i just figured out how to unmute myself um i have concerns also about the water rights and the watersheds so the xiany office and plant are there water rights associated with that property that would give a potential buyer the right to use that water um synthia okay that's the lumpiko piece uh at the lumpiko office we do have water rights the property would not come with the water supply permit we have been in discussion with cowfish and wildlife and i'll ask uh our environmental planner carlie to jump in here because i've asked her and she's reached out we have had discussion and are looking at carly help me out here returning that water right back to the stream right we're thinking um about doing a 1707 permit through the regional board which is an in-stream dedication for that water um we've talked to the county um and i've talked extensively to the regional board about starting that process does that answer your question uh yes what about um the potential use of any of these properties as recharge areas for the are they of interest to the santa margarita uh groundwater agency at all i've reached out to um to our consultant uh i'm drawing a blank what her name is right now uh Georgina Georgina and two of these parcels have wells very small parcels are like 20 by 20 that have wells deep water wells in in lumpiko to see if they would be any use for monitoring wells as part of the the groundwater monitoring program and at this point they would not and the majority of these parcels are very small postage stamp parcels though of course the acreage is right on xiany creek and there's quite a ways you know up in the xiany watershed and would not have a use in the in those aquifers for return my my other question uh that comes up because in my neighborhood local contractor has succeeded in acquiring unbuildable lots that he then was able to get through the permit process to build um structures on whether a full-size house or an adu and i anticipate that in some neighborhoods there would be pushback if the neighbors realized that allowing uh an adjacent property owner to acquire that property would mean those properties would be built on and increase the density in that neighborhood so i'm wondering whether um there's any requirement that you do sell to the adjacent property owner or whether neighbors can join in to take that property off the market and preserve it as unbuildable well i mean i and i'll let council speak up but anybody will have the auction process and that's where i think it's important that the district do its due diligence and making sure that the local neighborhood knows that these parcels are coming up and not just be on auction websites um to make sure that the adjoining parcels know that it's coming up so everybody has a chance to to bid on the parcels and the way the auction works the auction at close if there's a bid it can and and it will continue for an additional 15 minutes after close and then there's another bid it continues and an additional 15 minutes until there are no bid so it could actually according to the the auction folks it could go on for a couple of days if there's if there's continual bidding anybody will have a chance to bid on it but as far as you know what happened to the parcel that's pretty much out of the control of the district and Gina do you want to add to that or i think that's a fair summary and we've had that situation happen before more money for the district and is it possible to put some kind of restriction on the property say to prevent logging or development from the district standpoint no that would come from the county you know the county does land management the district would not have any i don't think any right to do such a a covenants say thank you Cynthia any further comments or questions from any of our public attendees okay we'll go back to the panel here uh lois your name uh your you found that button again you are recognized aren't you sorry you told me where it was now it's terrific great to see technology creeping into you yeah um well i can only speak for long pico sort of um but most of the lots in long pico are very small i happen to have five lots and i don't have an acre um i i did own a couple of more lots and at that point i had an acre but there was a house on it so for somebody to be able to build they need to have an acre here in long pico so i think it'd be a little hard to come by with some of these small lots most people would just pick them up to have some privacy um now maybe they could do a grandmother unit on it because i don't know that you need a uh an acre to add a grandma unit um but for the most part i don't think a lot of the lots that are being listed now are in long pico most of them i don't think you're gonna it's not going to be an issue and then there's long pico creek um that creek uh they're not going to be able to get um water rights to long pico creek because there's salmon in that creek and the water district had a hard enough time trying to use any of the water out of the creek we did use some but um it's there are a lot of safeguards put in place to protect the creek um and to protect overbuilding in long pico thank you lois anything else no bob your hand is up yeah i i did i looked at about a dozen or so of them i only found one that might possibly result in them if it was joined with the two adjacent lots of a buildable lot most of the ones i looked at were enclaves they're surrounded by other um somebody else's parcel i assume that back in the midst of time the owner of the parcel at that time gave the property of the district as part of a mutual water association or something like that and you know we're dealing with the historical legacy of that it it it's just really important that as a public agency that we keep our footprint to um particularly in those kinds of parcels to what we really need in order to run um the agency and to return that parcel hopefully back to the owner that that originally gave it or to their errors or uh successors um i also want to weigh in a little bit on on jim mosher's comment i definitely agree with jim that the zianti property is worthy of a more in-depth discussion and we kind of started that a little bit at the admin committee level um the the parcel is zoned i think parks and recreation and certainly one of the you know questions i had about is whether it could be turned into um a park or recreational area by partnering with some uh third party agency or whether it would just be better to um uh dispose of it to an agency who specializes in this kind of parcel or whether there's some surrounding parcels that might be interested in and i notice one is right next to a fairly large uh structure i don't exactly know what the structure is but you know there may be uh some additional interest on on their part but we definitely do need to have that uh conversation that that is part of i would say an overall watershed area but it's it's not part of the san lorenzo valley water districts watershed area um as i've said before i'll defend our watershed areas vigorously and aggressively against anybody trying to encroach on them that those parcels are a little bit different they don't they don't deliver water to our customers um and while they may be valuable to other agencies um they don't have as much value to us as for example ben loman mountain does so um it may be that there are other agencies looking for this kind of opportunity or some non-profit or ngo um that might be able to really make use of that in a way that's compatible with the uh with the land so i'm looking forward to having that uh conversation with the community bob uh lou you're uh up thank you steve a quick question for either rick or gina is there any limitation or restrictions to the funds that we receive in selling any of these surplus property um i i'm going to refer that to gina but i have i have a recommendation uh once we get to that point but i don't know if there's uh limitations i'll refer to council yeah i can't think of any um i suppose um rick would know more than i did about whether any of these parcels were subject to some special agreement but i i doubt that's the case yeah we we have no time to my knowledge any special agreement but when it comes to the lumpiko parcels you know we do have a uh large overruns on projects associated with the consolidation of lumpiko and i would think that we would could use that money to help offset some of those over construction overruns um and i would recommend that to the board thank you i think that makes sense but if any other funds that we would get from selling surplus property i would certainly like to see them funneled into infrastructure right there's several things you could do i mean obviously goes right back into our into our reserves you could use it for for fire management for improvements uh removal of evasive feces on other properties uh you know enhancements to watershed or you can just put it you know in our reserve funds it's totally up to the board anything else lute no thank you thank you okay uh bub you're uh rick yeah i mean in terms of the properties out of lumpiko i i agree with rick we're and i think we again talked about this a little bit in the admin committee we're you know i think we're two million million a half two million over on uh our lumpiko program we have not fulfilled all of the promises we made the lumpiko yet relative to the service lines and and the i think we also have the the um the main supply line that still has to be done too i think correct rick it's correct yeah so i i think definitely the money from anything that sold along pico needs to i you know i don't have a number even at that i think they're still going to be significant yeah even at that i think they're still going to be significant overruns that we're going to have to address as part of the allocation process of the three million we currently have in margin dollars to allocate to a variety of areas including infrastructure pensions reserves deferred maintenance and that sort of thing so those are all but but the lumpiko property needs to go for that the rest of it i would tend to agree with you lu would need to go into infrastructure i don't want to mislead the board but i don't think we're going to see you know large windfall from this a lot of these are postage stamps a lot of this people you know are not going to bid a lot of money and maybe a couple hundred thousand or less hundred thousand dollars but it's still good money don't get me wrong but we're not going to see millions can you all hear me yes okay i'm getting signals that my internet has become unstable so i don't know if it was me hearing bob with issues or if it was my own playback having an issue if i get the same thing okay uh lois i'm sorry bob were you yeah your question answered uh okay hang on lois i'm wondering bob off are you finished bob for yeah thank you see yeah thank you sorry lois go ahead okay about um the lumpiko properties i don't think they're going to bring a lot of money in either i think part of the problem that happened here why lumpiko came up so short is there's been a tremendous amount of cost for the environmental issues um and i i'm not allowed to laugh about this sorry but like i think is it the lois tank where there's an endangered species of rat and it's having to be moved elsewhere so it isn't hurt while they're working on the lois um tanks is that right rick well i i think council will slap my hand if i start talking about construction projects okay so i'd be happy to discuss with you yes there are environmental issues with some of the lumpiko problems projects i mean there's been a number of issues that came up that when all of this when all the numbers were brought up for lumpiko they didn't really include that that i could ever see and i'm not blaming anybody i'm not blaming the uh the people who came up with the numbers i'm just saying there's been a lot of things delay um in uh environmental uh just so many things that have creeped up oh there was tribal lands was one of them also it's it's just been like oh my gosh one thing after another and um but aren't you lucky to get us i like that yes yes so we're ready to uh we're ready to move on with some recommendations here yep well i've got a recommendation that you continue to proceed with disposing of the property in the best fashion possible with genus comments and with with guidance again a review from uh or any input from uh from our environmentalist uh on staff if anyone learns that we can so what i'm hearing then just uh let me recap a little bit i'll turn it back over to Gina that move ahead as recommended recommended um develop uh the three bucket lists for for parcels exempt status exempt surplus for surplus and further evaluation of the ziany seven parcels ziany watershed uh will be needed so we will not include them in the surplus at this time is that what i'm hearing i don't know that i'm suggesting that you preclude from including these ziany parcels if if uh if some sort of assessment can be done in a reasonable time as whether we need to be concerned with it well i think you know just from what i've heard and i'll and i'll turn it back over to the board i don't want to uh i don't want to assume it sounds like maybe we should take these parcels to the maybe to the environmental committee see were that what flushes out there and then move it ahead i don't think we can move ahead i'd like to move ahead we can always come back but i don't want to slow down why we do an environmental assessment or try to come up with a recommendation on the ziany parcels and hold up on the other not unless i guess i'll turn it back to the board for direction yeah no i i agree with with that statement if you want to separate out the ziany stuff so that it can be studied a little more carefully to make sure that it's treated with the most utmost care and concern to the environment but yeah other other than that get rid of the stuff that's been declared excess and surplus and and all of that is at the at the fastest rate of speed possible given the circumstances that's my take on it all that the other directors speak for themselves or not jenna do you have any thoughts bob go ahead bob yeah i i i agree with you steve i think one of the issues about this has been that the previous boards have declared surplus but have not really executed and we really need to get into an execution phase as quickly as possible there's no reason to keep um analyzing this over and over again we we know what the answer is staff's got the answer on this for the ones we've declared surplus let's just get it done get into the hands of people that can do it and do it efficiently and perhaps that's really the benefit that we have right now is that the internet has brought a lot of efficiencies and and we're going to take advantage of one here thank you bob sorry lou how about thank you steve um i agree with everything that rick and steve and bob have said and my only question is do we need a motion or can we just do this off the consensus i'll refer i'll refer to council yeah i don't i don't think there's a need for a motion tonight um so long as there's a some consensus in terms of what we're to do next and it sounds like there there is to uh to a great extent right uh rick go ahead yes um so i i can i consent to this i agree with uh what we're hearing is a consensus of lessening liabilities adding revenue and getting something done that we've talked about doing for a long period of time so uh yes i agree we should move forward with this one thing i would like to see is uh a map so i can put these places uh in physical locales you know i just need to see a map that we could have some of these sites uh okay i'll work with you on that rick difficult to get a big map but i'd like to work with you on the county gis site because you can really pull up some great information with mapping you can do the google you know the earth the satellite and you can do the eight overlay apns i mean i think that would would be the way to go i'll work with you thank you thank you and uh lois can we get a an example from you consensus you agree with the consensus okay thank you lois that's uh that should provide the direction that i think staff was asking for okay it's pretty much moved ahead as recommended and we moved the uh the seven slanty watershed parcels we are not going to move them into a bucket at this time to declare surplus we will move those for further review starting with the environmental committee okay what's next rick that was a lot i think we move into department status reports and the consent agenda i do believe okay let me double check okay yes i do believe we are consent agenda we're up to the consent okay anybody anybody have anything they want pulled from the minutes that are represented in the consent agenda um i do i do have a question please sure i don't know is james still on the virtual meeting you better be i have a question about the operations report um from the last uh board meeting and that is i did not see any information relative to overtime for that month was that uh did i miss it or is it was it left out of the report i think it was missed if that was the case because it was in there okay well i i didn't see it james i mean i looked twice and and didn't see the the overtime report so okay so you're looking for the overtime report from me uh yeah i think that would be there yeah um i will check double check that and i'll make sure that i put it in the next report if it was not in there so i'm gonna thank you i'm gonna assume then that we uh we don't have any issues with the previous minutes and that the consent agenda is accepted the minutes are in with that issue next up district reports status reports anything that anybody wants to bring up relative to engineering environmental finance and business legal or operations are there any questions for any of those uh departments from anybody i have a few questions bob go right ahead um this one's for carly carly about how much time are you spending on the um uh working with chatterbox and the outreach what percentage of your time car's percentage um it's probably 20 to 30 depending on what we're doing um or less i would say thinking about filling out my time card today i was probably spending two to three hours a week at max um when we were putting out newsletters or press releases um but besides that i would say probably an hour um a week on average thanks on the on the water quality switching from wells to surface and vice vice versa um have we considered putting uh an icon pair on the website to sort of show where we are with um uh surface versus wells just something to think about um on that and then if they click on it they could get to a lot more information behind it which i think is what you were including water quality reports and all that um let's see um on the french broom pole um which consultant actually helped the district staff pull french broom jody magraw consulting and also on maintenance issue there was one where a contractor drilled through an eight inch main um do we get reimbursed for whatever expenses that we incur when that kind of thing happens just in general we do build a contractor do they pay sometimes yes sometimes no and when they don't do we take them to collections small claims how do we basically make it so that people don't want to do that kind of thing well it's been said that it's not worth going to collections or claim on these in the past as far as since i've been in this position how much did that one cost us to fix i don't have the solid number off the top of my head but i can get that to you there's there's more to that i mean obviously operations and finances on we've been talking they get a 811 before they drill right we've been about about recouping our funds we've been in currently in in talk with council um recouping funds is not that easy we need to develop a policy and finance manager i have been talking about the mechanism to recoup costs um from construction damage or um uh you know contractor there's more to that and then we will be developing a policy and working on re-collection of funds fair enough today get an 811 before they drill most of the time yes sometimes no you know if they say everyone's different and this one happened to be done and don't ask me why but they were out in the middle of the night about three in the morning four in the morning putting in signs this contractor was and that's correct and they did not call 811 they did not call 811 of course and so in law that should be easy to recoup but as you know easy to recoup and having to go through a collection process or a legal process is also costly yeah and this contractor was very up-owning to what they had done and taking responsibility to the fullest so i don't see us not getting paid on that one okay well that's good i mean it's it having a policy in place to deal with these particularly if they don't do 811 i think is is really important um and james on your water production i see that we're still at 50 percent or at least in june we were where were we still 40 percent more or less that's pretty good for a light rainfall year isn't it yeah it has a lot to do with the felton system though they're all surface water pretty much so that has a lot to do with our how we stay at a 50 percent or better and are we in compliance with the the felton permit yes we are on on both felton and the downstream in the river in the san lorenzo river yes we are great thank you and lute to answer your question it looks like the wrong overtime after ours was attached you're correct so i'll be sure to put that into next month's report along with july right thank you terrific any other any other queries about any of the department status reports from anybody i have one question is it appropriate to ask how the process for hiring a new engineer is going okay we are in the process um we are we've narrowed down to one candidate uh we have made him a higher offer and he is reviewing our offer great terrific thanks for the update uh okay anything else bob yes yeah sorry i forgot to ask this on my earlier one rick are we still going to be able to get these two pipeline projects done before winter um yeah well we just issued the notice to proceed i mean it'll be close but we're moving uh i we're not i think we're about a week behind schedule and now we're just waiting for the contractor you know he has i forget what the amount of days but it's a short once the notice to proceed is issued you know all this paperwork's in all this insurance and bonds and everything and it has a short timeline now to gear up and and turn into a schedule so he'll be moving right along i'm ever confident that we'll get through their projects go ahead james yeah so the notice to proceed went out to the construction management engineering firm and the pre-construction meeting is scheduled for next week and once the pre-construction meeting is done the day after the award or the notice to proceed goes out to the contractor and then they have 10 days to start work from that day and that's when i let it go out after the pre-construction meeting to the neighborhood saying which road should start first and and give a description of the project but it sounds like we may not start before mid august possibly yeah it's probably right they're small they're not large projects they're not really traffic related so they're they're probably you know more or less blow and go i don't see these projects taking that long you know they're the traffic is non-existent um they're relatively easy projects there's nothing it's just pipe services blow and go yeah and they all have to be on the job in the first week of august yeah with the 10 days to start working all right thank you hey thanks bob uh okay anything else from anybody with questions for the departments any anybody want to talk about the committee reports environmental facilities in the packet any questions about them well i'm prepared to make a little report about our environmental committee meeting today please do okay thank you so we held our meeting this morning at 945 uh carly blanchard our environmental planner uh made a update on the fire management plan uh she is working with a consultant for panorama about final finalizing a grant from cal fire uh that grant is uh to go to 70 to 90 percent of the cost share not exactly sure what that means but um that is uh by the end of the month i believe you said carly right right yes uh there has been uh site visits by panorama to do infrastructure mapping for planning defensible space around that infrastructure and uh staff and consultant we're meeting later today or earlier today okay and then we also had biologist uh dr jody magraw gave an update on the olympia habitat plan and the conservation area management plan um they are sending that plan to the u.s fish and wildlife service for review um the conservation area or easement is an area to protect local endangered species and restore the sand hills habitat that those species live in also to compensate for sand hills habitat the district uses in its various projects um there is a five-year plan for the olympia conservation area uh which is 6.3 acres uh jody and staff uh did some broom removal recently on that conservation area was done by hand using hand strength and uh weed wrench and uh that reflects the board's policy on herbicide use and i'm glad to see uh things are moving in a forward direction in the uh management of that 6.3 conservation area thank you that was our meeting thank you rick yep uh okay anybody else did i capture that pretty quickly carly you did thank you thank you okay uh there's no uh written communication information material there's a copy of the article about the acquisition of generators in the packet and i don't see anything else going on so unless there's any final comments questions from anybody i'm going to call this puppy adjourned thank you all very much thank you attendees for attending and thank you staff for staying late and participating we appreciate it and we'll see you all next uh thank you next meeting thanks everybody thanks Steve thanks everybody