 Good morning, Jack. This is Mike. Yeah, good morning, Mike. Good to see you. Morning, Drew. It's Mike. Good morning, Mike. Do you know what we're waiting for? I think we have a full quorum. I think the recording secretary is probably just Roberta or Easter. You can go ahead and activate. Yes, I think he's missing the city of Santa Rosa for Jennifer. Sorry, we're getting some feedback. Hold on. I'm going to try. We're in a virtual format because council chambers are unavailable. One moment. Okay, let's see how that can people hear me now. Yes. Yes. Good to go then. Okay. Okay. In that case, we'll call the meeting to order. And I would remind WAC and TAC members to state their agency and full name for roll call, and we're making comments or asking questions. So with that, would the recording secretary please do the roll call? Yes, city of Katadi. Here, Susan Harvey, city of Katadi. City of Petaluma. Here, Mike Healy, Petaluma. City of Roonert Park. Here, Willie Linares, city of Roan Park. City of Santa Rosa. Natalie Rogers, city of Santa Rosa. City of Sonoma. Here, Jack Dean from the city of Sonoma. North Marin Water District. Jack Baker, North Marin. Town of Windsor. Sam Salmon, town of Windsor. Valley of the Moon Water District. Oh, Mr. Foreman, I think you're muted. John Foreman, Valley of the Moon. Marin Municipal Water District. Jack is here. I think you might have got muted. Thank you. And then for TAC, city of Katadi. Right, Scott, city of Katadi. Here. City of Petaluma. Mike Elmarini, city of Petaluma. Here. City of Roanert Park. Right, Grace Possum, city of Roanert Park. Here. City of Santa Rosa. Jennifer Burke, Santa Rosa Water. Here. City of Sonoma. Here, Matt Wargoola, city of Sonoma. North Marin Water District. Peru, MacIntyre. North Marin Water District. Town of Windsor. Valley of the Moon Water District. Matt Polner, Valley of the Moon. Marin Municipal Water District. Here. Jack Gibson. This is the TAC Jackman. Paul Sellier, Marin Municipal. Thank you. And for other attendees, we have Andrea, Armand Munivar, Brad Sherwood, Brenda Adelman, Christopher Boldt, Colin Close, David Keller, Jake Spaulding, Lauren Lum, Lynn Rosselli, Margaret DiGenova, Nicole Baxter, Paul Selsky, Peter Martin, and Tony Williams. Thank you. So next up is adopting a resolution, finding a proclaimed state of emergency, and the meeting in person would present imminent risks to health or safety of attendees and authorizing and continuing meetings by teleconference of legislative bodies. Drew, do you want to take this? Yes. Thank you, Chair Healy. This is pretty familiar with what everybody's seen previously by the WAC voting to approve this. It'll continue the virtual meetings for another 30 days. And then I believe Chair Healy will talk at the end of the agenda here a little bit as far as future planning on just, you know, discussion on when to return to in-person meetings. But for right now, approval of this resolution then will continue for authorizing this virtual meeting today and through the next 30 days. Thank you, Drew. So we're now taking public comments on this item. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in by phone, please dial star nine. And then I will ask the secretary if there's anyone who wants to make comments. You don't have any raised hands. Was that? We have one public comment. Ms. Edelman, I'll allow you to speak. Ms. Edelman, you can go ahead and unmute. Can you hear me now? We can. Okay. Thank you very much. As you know, I've been very concerned about all the growth going on in your cities and towns, especially the big cities. I have been around Santa Rosa and for the last two years, I've been seeing giant apartment buildings going up like crazy everywhere I look. And I'm just wondering what kind of analysis has been done on the new water that will be needed to address the new demands from these buildings? Excuse me. I'm very concerned that the people who are doing the developing aren't adequately addressing the water issue. I don't know how much communication there is between the water agency and plans for new development. I think there's been a lot of concern about this when even the press Democrat is running articles indicating concern because we're starting to see, excuse me, we're starting to see demand hardening. Well, just ignore it. Demand hardening on the part of the people who have been here a long time and already done all they can for in conservation. And I just really don't see enough happening that a lot of the more stringent policies around conserving water won't be happening for two months and that there's this waiting period for some reason that I don't understand is to things that the agency can be doing right now in terms of starting the conservation process. And I just think that the public is waiting to hear more information about how this is all going to work out. In the down river area and where I come from, we're already seeing probably the lowest levels of flow that we've ever seen at this time of year or certainly among the most the lowest and we're anticipating a very dire summer. So if you can answer respond to any of those comments, I'd appreciate it. Thank you, Brenda. I take that that was general public comment and not for this item. So Brenda's no longer on. I think we'll just treat it that way. So is there anyone else who wants to say anything about the resolution on the table? Hearing none, if there's a motion. This is Susan Harvey. I would move to approve. Thank you. Second. Second. North Marin, Jack Baker. North Marin. Okay. And I would ask Secretary Ather to take a roll call. Go to the WAC members. You have Katadi. Yes. City of Petaluma. Yes. City of Rona Park. Yes. City of Santa Rosa. Yes. City of Sonoma. Yes. North Marin Water District. Yes. Town of Windsor. Yes. Valley of the Moonwater District. Yes. Carries unanimous. Thank you. Now we're on to general public comment on non-agent items. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. And Madam Secretary, are there any, is there anyone in the public wishing to make a public comment? Yes. We have two hands raised. I'll allow Brenda Adelman to speak. Thank you. I just wanted to add that I obviously made a mistake. I met my comments to be for the general public comment. And everything I said a few minutes ago is what I would have said during this particular comment period. No worries. Okay. Thank you. And we also have David Keller. Hi. Good morning, folks. I would like to second what Brenda said. There needs to be a statement, a clear statement from the water agency as the major supplier for domestic use and residential industrial commercial use in the county on how to square the available supplies, the shortage of storage in Lake Sonoma and Lake Mendocino, the reduction of flows coming from the Eel River, how to square all of that in numbers, not just the allocations in actual what is expected and what is expected for the long term where this is not a one year drought and we're no longer in a series of droughts where we can consider it to be a drought that's going to be relieved next year. This is a long term strategy for the water agency and I'm sure you guys are thinking about it because you're smart, you're talented, but there's no public statement, no public analysis and this question about growth and supply has been raised in the paper and elsewhere in other conversations, but I've seen crickets from the water agency about how to square that in the long run. General plans are 20 year plans and yet they're all based on the fiction that we're just continuing the past history and historic flows when that is extremely unlikely to be the case. So somewhere, somehow, sometimes soon, I'd really like for the water agency as the main leader in this, sorry, Grant it's in your lap, to talk about how the agency and for those cities who aren't on the water agency supply or on wells or other or their own Russian river permits, how they're going to square growth and how much growth there can be versus a new predictable water supply and the five year urban water management plan numbers are not sufficient. They have not been updated to address climate change. They're all based on the fiction that we're continuing the same kind of flows and availability that we've had for the past 120 years that is no longer the case. So I'd really like to see that done publicly and done soon. Thank you very much. Thank you, David. Drew, did we receive any public comments via voice mail or email? We did not. Thank you. And I'll give Grant an opportunity to respond if he'd like to, but there's no obligation here. Well, I definitely appreciate the two public members, Brenda and David, for raising their concerns. I think there's some items on the agenda today that will go toward answering that somewhat, some relatively good news. All of the water contractors have been updating their water shortage contingency plans and we'll talk more about that as well later on the agenda. So we're watching this extremely closely. And yes, we're in the third year of a drought and there will be corrective actions taken by the state that will be all required to respond to. So taking under advisement. Thank you, Grant. Appreciate that. So next item for recap from the February 7 2022 WAC TAC meeting and approval of minutes. So the agenda or the minutes were included. Are there any questions from the group on that or comments? Seeing none, we're now taking public comment on this item. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in, please dial star nine. Madam Secretary, do we have any one wishing to comment on this? We have no hands raised. Thank you. And Drew, are there any written or emailed comments? There were not. Thank you. So with that, I will look for a motion and a second. Move to approve the minutes. This is Susan Harvey, City of Cotati. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Madam Secretary, can we have a roll call? City of Cotati? Yes. City of Petaluma? Yes. City of Rona Park? Yes. City of Santa Rosa? Yes. City of Sonoma? Yes. Northburn Water District? Jack, you're muted. Yes. Sorry. Town of Windsor? Yes. And Valley of the Moonwater District? Yes. That passes unanimously. Thank you. So now we're on to item five, the highlighted today's meeting, presentation on the draft fiscal year 2022-2023, water agency, water transmission system budget. Ms. Rosselli? Drew, is Kimberly going to give an introduction or should I just go ahead and get started? You can go ahead and just get started. Okay. Okay. And you can hear me and you can see my screen. Perfect. Thank you. Good morning, Water Advisory Committee members. Lynn Rosselli, Administrative Services Division Manager for Sonoma Water. Here to give you a high-level overview of the budget and rates for the water transmission system for next fiscal year. As you may know, the budget and rates are established for the three main aqueducts, Santa Rosa, Petaluma, and Sonoma aqueducts, and the water contractors on each one of those aqueducts pays the budget and rates associated with that aqueduct. We engage in a collaborative process with the water contractors. We begin in January. We take it to our board of directors in April when our board of directors would be scheduled to review and approve. I want to thank the members of the budget subcommittee for their participation and valued input into the process. Kimberly Zunino, City of Santa Rosa, Jennifer Burke, City of Santa Rosa, Craig Scott, City of Katadi, Julie Blune, North Marine Water District, Shannon Coutoula, Christina Goulart, Veronica Swie of Town of Windsor, and Oscar Magigal of Valley and Moon Water District. The budget, we're going to jump into the budget and the different categories of the budget they are shown here. These are the activities and the funds that we budget for. And we're going to jump right into our highest priority projects, 3.2 million budgeted for hazard mitigation to shore up our infrastructure against, in this case, flood and seismic events. The first three projects are going to construction this fiscal year. They are all offset by FEMA grant funding, and they are all high priority projects. We have 10.1 million budgeted for other capital projects. I want to highlight the Sebastopol Occidental Wells and the Todd Road Well. Those are production wells that are being rehabilitated and will be converted to aquifer storage and recovery, significant and important during this drought. And so when we add up the capital budget for hazard mitigation in these projects, we get to 13.3 million for the capital budget. And then for operations and maintenance, we have 38.7 million budgeted to shore up our aging infrastructure. These are critically important projects and the highest priority that has been identified by our engineers and operations and maintenance staff. We also have a number of studies and they all focus on hazard mitigation, water supply resiliency, and maintaining system reliability. The studies help inform new project development and help us apply for grant funding. And under the sub-fund category, we have 13.9 million for the biological opinion. It will fund primarily the Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement Mile 4 construction. The core is providing a 65% cost share, represents a major cost savings for the water contractors. And then we also have a very robust water conservation program coming up. We're collaborating with all of the water contractors and using offsetting federal and state grant revenue to help get the message out about the drought and conserving water and implementing water use efficiency projects. So the total budget is 71.83 million and it is offset by 15.31 million in grants, use of fund balance and bond proceeds. Operations and maintenance is going up to implement those aging infrastructure improvement projects, capital projects for the hazard mitigation projects that are under construction and the drought related projects, biological opinion for the Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement Program and water conservation and then debt service is increasing because we're issuing 15 million in water revenue bonds to help finance the entire capital program for next year and the years following. The allocation of the cost is shown in this slide. Operations and maintenance makes up the majority of costs. Operations and maintenance are not usually eligible for grant funding and the restructure agreement for water supply does not envision bonding or loans for O&M operations and maintenance projects. So that is funded primarily by the rates but the biological opinion and the other sub funds and capital projects are funded by grants, fund balance and bond proceeds as well. And so we take the budget and we develop the rate and the rate is prescribed by the restructure agreement for water supply. It takes the cost of operations and maintenance or the revenue requirement divides by the quantity of water sold and gets the cost of water per acre foot. The quantity of water sold has to be the lower of the three-year annual average of the last 12 months of water deliveries and the three-year annual average is what has been used for fiscal year 2223 and you get the cost of water per acre foot. The main purpose of this slide is to show that this is a fully volumetric rate. It's a uniform rate and when deliveries are lower, your rate is going to be higher and vice versa. Our deliveries over the past five years have averaged about 43,000 acre feet but the budgeted deliveries are 45,745 acre feet excuse me but we have stress tested the model to make sure that we have sufficient fund balance to cover us in the event that deliveries come in lower. And so we work very closely with the budget subcommittee, the members of the budget subcommittee to work on this budget and rates going forward. We began with a rating increase of 9.99%, brought it down to 6.84%. We spread operations and maintenance costs over a couple of years. We increased the use of fund balance. We're selling revenue bonds, 15 million in revenue bonds to cover all of the capital costs and we're using offsetting grant revenue of 5 million. And then on top of that, the water contractors elected to make the following change to further reduce the rate. They lowered their aqueduct capital charge which is a discretionary charge that is used to build fund balance for future aqueduct capital projects. It's also used as a rate stabilization tool and so the water contractors on each of the three aqueducts were able to bring down their rates rate increases to those shown on the screen here. And we end up with a total cost per gallon of $0.003. And so here are the rates by aqueduct. There are three aqueduct Santa Rosa Petaluma Sonoma deliveries are 45,748 per feet. And the total overall rating increase on each of the aqueducts is shown 6.06% for Santa Rosa, 6.16% for Petaluma, 6.52% for Sonoma. And that discretionary charge is shown there as $11 for Santa Rosa, 12 for Petaluma, and $38 for Sonoma. And here is our slide that compares our water rates per acre foot to other wholesale water contractors in the Bay Area. You can see that we are on the left hand side there. We are still the lowest of the others. They are all experiencing rate increases north of 7%. Our rate increase this fiscal year is 3.47%. And our rate increase over the past five years has been 4.4%. But our rate increase proposed for next fiscal year is what you were seeing on the previous slide in the range of the 6%. And so we had a unanimously recommended budget and rates from the technical advisory committee on March 7. Today, we are requesting a water advisory committee vote on the budget and rates. And then we will take it to our board on April 19th. And with that, I am happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Lynn. And just to confirm that it's the $1,062 or thereabouts per acre foot that works out to three-tenths of a cent per gallon. That's correct. That's great. Okay. Any questions from the Whackers attack? Seeing none, we are now taking public comments on this item. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in by phone, please dial star 9. Madam Secretary, do we have any people who want to comment on this? There are no hands raised. And Drew, did anyone? One moment, Brenda Edelman just raised her hand. One moment. Let me allow her to speak. Is Edelman allowed to speak? Can you hear me now? Yes. I would just like to say that you do an amazing job of working with the contractors and getting costs down. You have a very talented fiscal staff who is able to make the kinds of judgments and fiscal management that makes it very affordable for the ratepayers. They are very lucky to have your talents. Now I wish that you would do the same for people who have the water agency running the county sanitation districts and have public involvement. I could follow hardly anything you said because I got the budget for the first time yesterday and it is enormously complex. And I just wanted to make the suggestion that the talent that is used for dealing with the contractor issues is also used to help the people in the sanitation districts that are privileged to have your staff running our systems. I see all kinds of really large amounts of money that are sought and successfully earned from the government to pay for all of these projects that you need to pay for and you have involvement by the contractors in the budget process. Not one question from a contractor on a highly complex budget tells me that there has been a lot of behind the scenes discussions about the ins and outs of lowering rates extensively as you have from what was originally anticipated. So I just want to throw this out there that there's another meeting tonight about Russian River County Sanitation District and I'd just like to hear more similar kinds of reports about fiscal matters that you're reporting today to the contractors. Thank you. Thank you, Brenda. Anyone else? Yes, we also have a phone caller. Last digits are 6131. I'll allow you to speak. Phone caller, you can go ahead and unmute. Hi. Hello. Thank you for taking my call. This is Jim Downey from Pengrove Water Company. I heard a couple of different numbers for the rate increase this year. Could you tell me what the bottom line, what is the rate increase for the Sonoma Aqueduct, please? So Pengrove Water Company, are you on the Sonoma Aqueduct? No, but that's where our rate gets charged against the Sonoma Aqueduct rate for other regular customers. We're on the Petaluma Aqueduct. Okay, so the Petaluma Aqueduct rate increase is 6.16 percent. The Sonoma Aqueduct rate increase is 6.52 percent and it represents that this is the total that would be charged to the prime water contractors. On the Petaluma Aqueduct, it's $1,062 and on the Sonoma Aqueduct, it's $1,220 per acre foot and then those charges are passed on to you. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments, Madam Secretary? I see no other hands raised. Thank you. And Drew, was there anything in writing? There were not. Okay, with that, I believe we can just move on to the next item which follows item six to approve the FY22-23 water agency water transmission system budget. And Drew, that's you. Thank you, Chair Hilly. Well, you just heard a presentation from Lynn and as Brenda had commented, I mean, there is a lot of information in the budget. What's attached to this agenda item here is about 59 to 60 pages of finite detail on all the elements that roll into the numbers that Lynn Roselli summarized in her 15 pages or 15 PowerPoint slides. So I would, you know, Lynn had thanked the finance subcommittee that was chaired by Kimberly Zunino and I'd like to just also thank Sonoma County Water Agency staff with Lynn Roselli and Jake Spaulding especially and under the direction of Grant Davis. As Lynn summarized, you know, that the groups got together looking at a 10%, effectively a 10% rate increase initially and there was a lot of discussion that took place with multiple meetings in February that ended up with the rates that you now see that were summarized by Lynn. So rest assured, there was a lot of negotiation, a lot of good back and forth between the agency and the retail water contractors to come up with a number that's ultimately supported by all the TAC members. All the TAC members voted unanimously to approve this budget at the March 7th meeting and essentially when they voted unanimously, I was to recommend approval of the budget to the WAC. So that's what's here in front of the WAC today. I do want to mention that a year ago, right in the heat of the pandemic influences that there was a lot of discussion and effort made to try to keep the rate increases particularly low. Last year was around three and a half percent and the agency, you know, was deferred some projects a year ago and a lot of the discussion this go around was to try to get back with some funding that's needed to make sure that the agency can continue to provide water and are reliable in consistent fashion. So I think all the all the TAC members felt confident that the final budget, you know, accomplished that and again is recommending that the WAC members vote for approval. One last thing I'd like to do is just again thank Lynn Roselli for making herself available to all those retail water contractors they were interested in individual presentations on the budget for which she did so during the month of March and particularly thankful for that as well. So I'd be happy to answer any other questions that the WAC has on this slide. Thank you, Drew. Any questions from the group? Susan? Yes. Thank you, Chair. I would just like to echo some of what Drew said. I was trying to speak on the earlier item, but that's fine. I really appreciate all the really hard work done by the Finance Committee and then with Lynn's team, Lynn going out to speak to everyone. It's really a fine balance between keeping the rates where we would like to keep them and making sure that our infrastructure is where it needs to be so that we can deliver quality water. So there's always a fine line and fine balance there and the work that everyone does working together to kind of keep that in balance. I think we've again really come a long way and appreciate all the work that everyone really put their heads together and tried to make that happen. And as Drew pointed out, we do have to keep in mind that last year it was in the 3% range and you can only delay things for so long. So at least during our discussion at our Council, it was okay to go up a little bit over that 6% because we try to keep it between four and six. So thank you for all the hard work and Lynn, thank you and your team for coming to visit us all. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. And I would just add that and I agree with everything Susan said, but all the work that's gone into this by some of the water staff and our contractor staff serving on the TAC is why this item tends to go so smoothly at this meeting and that may be of a bit of a mystery to some members of the public, but there's an enormous amount of work that's gone to get us to today. So with that, Madam Secretary, are there any members of the public who wish to comment on this? Any hands raised at this time? No hands. No, I do not see any hands raised at this time. Thank you. I'm sorry. And Drew, were there any written comments? And we're not. Okay. I believe we're ready for a motion on the second. Chair Healy, this is Susan Harvey from City of Katari. I would move to approve the 2022-23 Snowman County Water Agency Water Transmission Budget as presented to us. Thank you. Go ahead, Jack. Looks like it's a tie. I was also gonna, our colleague could make a second on this. Thank you, Jack. So if we can have a roll call vote, please. City of Katari? Yes. City of Petaluma? Yes. City of Rohnert Park? Yes. City of Santa Rosa? Yes. City of Sonoma? Yes. Moonwater District? Yes. Town of Windsor? Yes. Valley of the Moonwater District? Yes. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. So we're on to item seven, the water supply conditions and temporary emergency change order. And I believe Don Seymour is going to take this one. Yes, I will. Good morning, Chair Healy and members of the WAC and CAC. So starting off with the water supply condition, Lake Mendocino is currently a little over 44,400 acre feet. And that's about 7,000 acre feet greater than the reservoir stored than the reservoir was last year. And it represents about 50% of the available water supply pool at Lake Mendocino for this time of year. Lake Sonoma is currently at about 144,500 acre feet. And unfortunately, that's about 8,000 acre feet less than last year. And it represents 59% of the available water supply pool. So a little bit of improvement at Lake Mendocino. And unfortunately, that's not reflected at Lake Sonoma. I think as everybody remembers Sonoma Water, the State Water Resources Control Board issued an order in December approving temporary to change petitions that the water agency filed in November. And that order temporarily approved using storage thresholds at Lake Mendocino rather than CUMLA's inflow at Lake Pillsbury, which is in Decision 1610 in Sonoma Water's Water Right Permits. Under those, based on those storage thresholds at Lake Mendocino, the Russian River watershed is currently in a critical water year type, which means the minimum stream flow requirement right now on the upper Russian River is 25 cubic feet per second. And on the lower Russian River is 35 cubic feet per second. Without that order in place right now, based on Decision 1610, we would be in a normal water year type, which is completely out of whack with where we are with the Russian River hydrology and the actual storage conditions. So that order we're managing the system under, it expires in June. So Sonoma Water is in the process of preparing its fifth consecutive temporary to change petitions to file with the state board, probably in late late April, early May in order to have something in place when that the current order expires. I'd also like to remind everybody that the Russian River is still under an emergency regulation that the state board adopted last June. That emergency regulation resulted in unprecedented curtailment of water right permits on the Russian River last year, last summer. Those curtailments were suspended in October following that large atmospheric river event. And they're still suspended now. State board is currently doing water availability assessments each month to determine whether some of those curtailments might have to be put back in place. That emergency regulation expires in July. And so the state board is also preparing to take their staff is preparing an emergency regulation to take to their board this May. Last Friday, they issued, they circulated a draft of that emergency regulation. It's out for public comment. They're going to be doing a workshop April 14. And they expect comment, the comments are due on April 18. And then they'll take it for their board for consideration of adoption on May 10. That will potentially bring implement curtailments again on the Russian River. Not so sweeping as they did last year. This will be, I think as everybody might remember, it was a blanket curtailment on the upper Russian River. They found there was no use of water other than the permitting stream flow requirements to health and safety that was available. This year it'll be done more like what was done on that lower Russian River. It'll be based on water rights priorities and water availability. So that's all I have, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Seymour. Any questions from the Whackers attack for Don? Seeing no hands raised, we are now taking public comments on this item. If there's any member of the public wishing to comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're calling in, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Do we have any members of the public wishing to speak? I see no hand vote. One hand is raised, one moment. Brenda Edelman, you've been allowed to speak. Thank you. Can you hear me now? We can. Okay. Well, one question I have is it's always stated that we're critical dry years, 35 CFS, but somehow for some reason, for some amount of time, they actually go down to 25 CFS legally. And I just want to bring to your attention one more time about how dire water quality becomes in the lower river. There's a propensity for toxic algae to develop, especially when flows are low and the water is very warm. And there's lots of phosphorus in the water that contributes to algal blooms. And it's a pretty serious situation. And I would like to throw in also that there are many unregulated toxins in the water, and they become bio accumulated when the flows are super low. And when we're talking 25 to 35 CFS, we're talking about almost no water going through the river. It's a killer for recreation. People can't do much in the water and can't enjoy the beaches. And it just seems like by setting up this situation where Lake Mendocino is a determinant, you have in effect lowered Russian river flows permanently. This is a different way of getting at the issue that was so opposed by the public in terms of low flows. It gives you more latitude in determining when critical flows can take place. And I just want to say that I've been watching river issues for about 40 years. And I've never seen it go down to 35 CFS except in recent times. And I'm not going to say that isn't appropriate at certain times, but it needs to be regulated in a way where you don't set the flow for months on end and not have any ability to adjust it at times when it seems appropriate. And I'd like to suggest, for instance, that there be a way where you can manage higher flows on the weekends when people want to recreate and go back to the lower flows in the middle of the week to have some flexibility so that you're considerate of the needs of the lower Russian river. And there's more that I could say, but I'll leave it at that for right now. Thank you. Thank you, Brenda. Any other members of the public? I see no other hands raised at this time. Thank you. And Drew, did we receive any written comments? We did not. Okay, then we can move on to item eight on the agenda, state drought response update. And Supervisor Rabbit, are you on and going to take this? Yeah, I just thought I'd use this on. Thank you very much, Chair. Appreciate that. I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to say job well done to the contractors and to the agencies that are with us, Sonoma Water especially, really for meeting the conservation efforts through this last year and for implementing and really having in your pocket the water shortage contingency plans. DWR came out with some funding, which was I think reflective of the good job that has been done in the region. And I think we should acknowledge that. I think Petaluma, Mike, nearly 11 million dollars from DWR for a couple different projects. MMWD, I know got 2 million, Valley of the Moon nearly 3 million. And these are significant amounts of dollars going forward. There's some funding previously Sonoma Water had up to nearly 9 million for Santa Rosa Plain water supply resiliency projects and what not, as well as North Marin, nearly half a million previously as well. Among some other good recipients including up North, City of Hillsburg over 7 million, Cloverdale 3 million. And actually here in Petaluma based daily acts as a 4.6 million dollar grant to do some Petaluma River watershed work as well. So I think that reflects really making, getting together and really working through these issues seriously, come being prepared and working as a as a region on those things. I also want to say very proud to, and I know another hats off to Petaluma for some of the three different projects that are going forward on through the North Bay Water Reuse Authority, nearly 7 million dollars, expanding some capacity at Ellis Creek, some urban recycled water expansion, extending some pipelines and and again agricultural recycled water use, which which is which are all great and I do think that because we take it so seriously and and do the good work and get jump out in front and be prepared that we do get rewarded in these ways. So there's even though the end of the day we'd all like to be rewarded by rain falling from the sky, if a few dollars fall our way from Sacramento, that's also not a bad thing and it's also very much needed. So I just wanted to take that opportunity and put that out there and I appreciate you giving me the time chair. Thank you. Thanks David. Appreciate that. Any questions from the group for Supervisor Rabbit? Seeing none. We're now taking public comment on this item. If any member of the public wishes to make a comment via Zoom please raise your hand. If you're dialing in please dial star nine. Madam Secretary, do we have anyone? I do not see any hands raised. Thank you and Drew did we get any written comments? We did not. Thank you again Supervisor Rabbit so we can move on to item nine on the agenda. Water supply can oh I'm sorry Grant. I just uh Chair Healey if I can I wanted to also comment uh Director Rabbit and I heard directly from DWR um he went off and rattled pretty impressive list of projects but I think the point I'd like to emphasize that he mentioned was DWR in making now over 41 million dollars worth of grant money available to our contractors and partners in the region. That's that's outstanding number and the reason we did that uh I was told personally was because of the water conservation targets that we've met. So this is apropos to some of the earlier public comments made this morning. You all have followed your water shortest contingency plans and are implementing them. It's it's well beyond what others in the state have done. If you look at Hillsburg and Cloverdale last year's water conservation somewhat nearing 50 percent that was noticed by DWR. So you know I I think about a year ago in April we had the governor standing in Lake Mendocino and at that time we were not receiving large large expenditures of dollars coming from the state to match our own efforts. This is definitely more in keeping with what we were hoping for and I'm I'm really pleased to see it. So it was 11 million dollars in phase one. The lion's share of that was going toward ASR groundwater wells in the Santa Rosa Plains, the basketball road and Occidental as well as Todd Road making those orchestra storage and recharge facilities. That's very very important to make us more resilient and then these 41 million dollars for the projects those are leveraging additional rate payer dollars as well as federal sources. So Director Rabbit thanks for raising that up because that's that's really the point is what we're doing is of relevance it's seen statewide and we're doing all that we can to leverage those dollars so coming on the heels of a recommendation for a budget that now goes to Director Rabbit and our colleagues on the 19th. That said I want to thank staff and all those that were involved in this because you all said it this is work in progress. We we wanted to come in with higher rates I have to make sure you're aware of that and if you look at that slide that Lynn produced about wholesale water rates most of our colleagues up around $2,000 acre foot very wide we're closer to a thousand we just crossed that threshold we had the lowest rates in the Bay Area. Those wholesale rates we work hard to keep them low but there's a point you compound COVID with all the additional regulatory requirements to deliver you safe reliable clean drinking water. We needed the rates to go a bit higher and your staff the water contractor staff rightfully from their point of view pushed as hard as they possibly could to keep them as low as possible but I'm pointing out like I've done year after year that these low rates are at some point going to make it difficult for us to catch up so what we committed to do this year was implement the projects that are budgeted and that's the challenge to our staff and our O and M votes that want to put these projects in place now things happen along the way the unforeseen things throughout the year but our pledge is to get those under contract to get those moving and to make sure that the rates that you're proposing get us these projects that we're going to deliver on and that's that's the that's how we will be measured but I have to point out that we were closer to 10% rate increases of what was necessary and we felt needed and that gap is going to have to be caught up at some point so I'm just being the the realist here 41 million estate dollars that's also well how you keep your rates down we're leveraging your rates for state and federal funding and I cannot be happier to see this whole region from basically the North Coast Resource Partnership all the way down into Marin benefiting by working together it's really remarkable and very much appreciated so thank you thank you Grant anyone else okay now I believe we can move on to agenda item nine water supply conditions public outreach messaging and we have very duke and then pop the outside believe yes thank you chair Healy I'm going to allow Paul to kick off the presentation then I'll follow him great good morning everybody wanted to just keep you informed of the water use efficiency outreach program related to the drought and just to remind you this has been a continuous outreach campaign that's been underway for over a year now starting you know in January of 2021 and you know on the coattails of what Grant was saying in the first couple of months of 2022 we are still tracking nearly 20% less water use as compared to 2020 in these first two months which is a difficult thing to achieve during the winter time when typically there is no irrigation happening and so all of that additional savings has to come from other other water uses so our constituents are continuing to heed the call and doing a great job next slide so we recently provided messaging to the public about the annual fix a leak week this happens in collaboration with the US EPA's water sense program to bring attention to the fact that homes on average are leaking more than 10% of their water use and that there's a constant need to be vigilant to be aware that things can start leaking at any time and so you have to do regular checks in addition to the outreach message the partnership's website included information about locations where people can pick up leak detection dye tablets one of the common ills in residents are toilets that are leaking in a manner that is not detectable through a standard leak check so these dye tablets help homeowners determine whether they have a failing flapper on the inside of their tank a great campaign in addition to being on the website these ads were running in the press democrat and a variety of other social media platforms next slide and then in addition for fix a leak week we relied on a lot of the standard bill inserts and other materials again just to get the message out to people that you have to be aware and paying attention to check your home and your fixtures do a leak check at the meter or contact your utility staff to help do that for you in order to make sure that you're not wasting water unnecessarily I'll turn it over to Barry thank you paul I wanted to just touch on the our bilingual drought messaging I know we mentioned this during during every meeting but it bears repeating that we we use a variety of platform social media bilingual media to to get this message across to all of our customers and then finally I want to just touch on our updated campaign for spring that we're working on right now these are just some early versions of our drought is here save water message but with a slight change to say the drought is still here as we all know and just to follow up on what paul said this this is the third year we've been working continuously on drought messaging to conserve water so those are two versions and then here is are some of the examples of how we've updated the campaign for spring using the similar images drought is still here save water showing lake sonoma on the left and then on the right are drip irrigation that is always encouraged for landscaping and again the the theme and the the the the method to all this is to keep repeating the message its repetition and continuity so again thanks to all the partners for participating in the ongoing campaign and we're happy to answer any questions either now or by email or other methods so thank you chair healy and members of the of the whack thank you paul and barry are there any questions from the group on that seeing no hands raised we're now taking public comment on this item if you wish wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in please dial star nine madam secretary do we have any members of the public wishing to speak and there are no hands raised and drew did we get any written comments he did not thank you so moving on agenda item 10 items for the next agenda so normally this goes really quickly um bit of an angle to twist this time we may have the potential of meeting in person back at our usual meeting spot in san rosa on may 2nd if things don't get um worse between now and then and drew can you or someone else tell us about the logistics i know you mentioned that we will not have the if we do do that we will not be able to have a mixed virtual and live meeting uh because they're not set up for that at that location so it would have to be completely live is that correct uh yes that's correct unless and unless jennifer wants to um correct my understanding and that is that the facilities there at san rosa are not set up for hybrid meetings so if the decisions made to go back and meet again uh where we have historically met uh at san rosa they will be 100 in person there will not be any uh remote uh hybrid aspect to it so just want to make sure everybody's aware of that so do we need to make that decision now or can we wait until further on i guess at this point my question would be if there are any members of the whack attack who would not be comfortable meeting in person speak up okay not seeing anyone i guess that's tacit approval if we can make it work um and then um drew is do you have one more whack meeting or is this your your final rodeo i have one more uh whack attack meeting and that's the meeting in early may okay well we'll give us we'll save our thank yous for that okay and if i could just one other thing as far as the next agenda um you know there have been a couple comments made about you know what is the agency doing for water supply planning growth and the next meeting uh there's there will be uh jacob's um accelerated regional uh water supply resiliency study that has a focus on um drought management options and so i just want to encourage um the public uh to please stay tuned and and they'll hear more about some of the planning to address just water supply reliability there's been a lot of work in that jacob study and i think it'll be interesting for folks to to hear that so just want to mention that as well appreciate that um so is there any member of the public that wishes to comment on items for the next agenda this is your opportunity please raise your hand in zoom war dial star nine madam secretary anyone i see no oh we have one hand raised mr keller i will allow them to speak thank you keller you ever allowed to speak all right thank you um at the next meeting if there could be a little more in-depth update on what's happening with the pot of valley project by then the license will have expired which is april 14 and nymph says issued a letter saying very clearly that they believe the uh requirements for fish passage and other um base conditions for operation of the project expire uh on april 14 and need to be redone and reconsidered um so that and other updates on what's happening what's happening with trying to gather support in the russian river watershed for paying for uh whatever improvements need to be done at the pvp to get water transferred and how that would be paid uh it would be very useful for this group to continue to get up-to-date information as a body and to consider that and actually discuss it in in public um so i'd appreciate seeing that on the next agenda thank you david anyone else and drew did we get any written comments we did not okay with that i believe we are done for today and we will see everyone in may hopefully in person bye okay bye everybody hi thank you everyone