 So I'd like to convene this meeting of the Board of Directors for the Senators of the Valley of Water District for June 1st, 2023, calling the June 2nd stick roll. President Smalley. Here. Vice President Hill. Here. Director Ackman. Here. Director Fultz. Here. I wanted to mention that Director Fultz is participating virtually, and it was planned that way. And Director Mayhood. Here. The additions or deletions. That does not. Okay. Oral communications. This is for the team members to public, who wish to bring up something that is not only agenda this evening. Anybody who wants to comment? I see Jim Mosier. Raise his hand. Jim. Yes, thank you, Board of Directors. I just wanted to mention that the Budget and Finance Committee, which I'm a citizen member, had looked into a program called the Household Low-Income Assistance Program. It's funded by the state. It's a past use through one of the federal infrastructure bills. And it offers up to 15,000 on a one-time basis for low-income ratepayers to have their bills paid. And the Friends of San Lorenzo Valley Water has been in touch with the organization in Watsonville that administers this program. And it's called the Central Coast Electric Services, I think, CCES. And they, I know they've contacted the district. We've also been in touch with the Mountain Community Resources and Valley Church, United Two Organizations that would be able to help people fill out the rather cumbersome forms and process that people have to go through what would not involve a lot of the other district staff at all. So I think it's potentially a win-win to help folks who are struggling in the valley from post-fire and floods and other reasons not to be able to pay their bills. And what I think would be helpful for those folks is for the district to reach out as best we can to let people know who are behind on their bills or having trouble paying their bills to let them know about the program. And I know that we had in the last mailing to ratepayers a notice about it. The one thing that I think would be helpful is to have something maybe on the home page or the web of the Water District webpage, a website to let people, so that you can easily find the information about this and get them referred to the CCES. And right now, I had quite a bit of trouble finding it on the website. It took four clicks to find on our website how to get in touch with this organization in Watsonville. So anyway, I wanted to let the full board know about this program. It's a way that we can help given the struggles that many people are having in the valley to pay their bills that would be a win-win and not take a lot of our staff's time to make it happen. Thank you. Okay, thanks Jim. I'll leave it with staff to follow up on that for perfect. Can I comment on it? No, not. No, I don't, no, I don't want to discuss. Okay. Okay, okay, moving on then to new business. First item for A is a general legal counsel, Rick. Yes, thank you, Mark. The district kind of is- Excuse me, Mark. Sorry, can we agendize that program that Jim Mosher was talking about? I think that the budget and finance committee could discuss that and then bring that up. Or assign it to the budget and finance committee if it isn't already done. I think that that's a good one. Yeah, okay. Thanks, Bob. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay, the district has contacted, contracted with Nassim and for general legal services since June 2017. On May 26th, 2023 district sent notice of discharging Nassim and as general and special legal counsel effective May 31st, 2023 due to non-performance. Moving forward, there is an immediate need to contract with new legal services. The district manager has reached out to White Brenner which specializes in water law with over 30 years experience and has available staff to immediately in removing the backlog of projects requiring legal counsel. Mr. Brenner is here tonight via video conference to address the board and provide her background. The district's procurement policy section E provides for non-compliance negotiations basically sole source when the district manager teams and emergency exists with ratification by the board of directors. The absence of legal counsel is considered an emergency. There is a motion attached to the memo and at the point we can introduce Barbara Brenner. Okay. Welcome, Ms. Brenner. If you could take maybe two minutes introduce yourself your firm to the board of staff and members of the public. I'd be happy to. Good evening. I'm Barbara Brenner, one of the founding partners of the White Brenner firm. We, there was four of us originally 10 years ago that formed the firm. We all came from larger law firms and I was specifically seeking to spend more time locally though some that has worked to some extent but to some extent I'm still traveling quite a bit. Not too much, not as much as I used to be. I used to travel a lot throughout the state and that's because my water practice is throughout the state. I've practiced it up in the Shasta watershed all the way down to the Colorado River issues and a lot of things in between. I wanted to try and get some focus in the Sierras which is where I spent a lot of my time and I live in the foothills of the Sierras and I've accomplished that with some projects and smaller water districts in that area but I'm now spending quite a bit of time down south doing groundwater adjudications predominantly. That's Sigma's sustainable groundwater management act has become quite the force in our industry and so I've ended up doing quite a bit of that work in the last few years and it's brought me into adjudications. So in addition to the specialized water work I have been doing general council work for the same number of years, just about a few less and we pitched you guys back in the day, several years ago and Nassim and Vita's out. So I'm glad that I was contacted and would really love to help you guys out and see if we can gain a very positive and resource-resourceful relationship. Thank you, Ms. Brenner. Questions from board members? Gary? Hi, Barbara, nice to meet you. I guess I would like to hear how you work with other members of your staff to work as a team to deal with all the different tasks and the reason I ask this is because there's a wide range of expertise that's needed in the tasks that come with working with a little water district like ours. I mean, there's a wide range in terms of breadth of topics but also difference of expertise. And so what I'm mostly concerned about is how you work with other people to sort of delegate activities to make sure that things get done on time. We have task meetings, regular task meetings as well as litigation meetings, number one. We still go into the office and actually talk to one another as well as doing Zoom meetings for those that are at home at the time. And we also use an app called Slack so that we set up individual clients and matters in Slack so that everybody in that channel knows what's happening at all times and then you can tag people to communicate, to ring an alarm in their system so that we're not just depending on email and calendaring devices. What we do is we assign a particular lead and then somebody that's an assistant to that lead and then individuals from there depending on the task to the particular task of that and then continue to communicate through email, see seeing each other so that everybody stays on the same page. And then of course we have our paralegals that calendar things. And we calendar our municipal work like we calendar litigation. So we represent several cities and other special districts. So we're used to the variety of tasks. That's one of our main reasons for forming the firm was to represent smaller districts and medium sized districts because we are a smaller firm. And two of us left our larger firms for conflict purposes. So we instantly set it up to be a general municipal practice with particular specialties, mind being environmental and natural resources, the water arena and litigation. We also have specialized land use. We all dabble in contracts but then we've also got a gentleman that is more specific on construction contracts and those type of projects. We've done a lot of water supply and sewer treatment type projects, the capital improvement projects as well as Prop 218. And so within the firm as the younger attorney develops or a new attorney comes into our firm, everybody needs to know how to do the general municipal practice but then it's up to you to determine what area you would like to develop as a specialized area. And then that's kind of how we've built this firm over the last 10 years. So we also have another more advanced task app application that is used that has deadlines. And so at the task meeting, you make sure that the task is assigned. They know that it's assigned. There's a deadline and pre-deadline. So there's a deadline to get whatever the product feels out to the client and then there's internal deadlines for review, et cetera. So that's how we handle it. Thank you. Jeff. How many people do you have on staff by specialty? I mean, how many attorneys? How many paralegals? What's the total size of your company? We have two paralegals and an office manager, a legal secretary. And we have one, one, two, three, four, five partners, two of council and then we just lost an associate. So one, two associates and three law clerks, two law clerks. And we just hired another part-time contract attorney. We're in the search for an additional full-time attorney as well. Do you see the workload that we would have for you as being a challenge for the amount of staff you have or is this something you're gonna absorb pretty quickly? I think we can absorb it fairly quickly and one of the reasons why I say that is because my schedule, I just ended in a phase of an adjudication a couple of weeks early. We knocked out a lot of the briefing, et cetera, that goes along with the end of a case. And we are also dying out on another client that was a city, a pretty large city that was a mutual agreement to separate and we've been tagging along, tagging along since the beginning of the year and we're just about done with that tagging along. So the summertime is, this spring and summer is a good time for us actually. Thank you. So hi, thank you first of all for your willingness to step in here on such short notice. I really appreciate that you were still interested in working with us. I think that it's been made clear that we have a rather significant backlog of work and some urgency to moving through it. I understood from the staff report that you were gonna apply your resources to doing that can you give us sort of a timeframe for how quickly you think you can get us back to current in terms of the backlog of legal needs that we have? No, I don't know if I can give you a timeline given the information that I have to date. I did speak with Mr. Rogers and we did chat about the list and he provided me a list of projects but I can't say that I've studied that list to really understand or we've walked through that list to really understand what it's gonna take to come up to speed. I wouldn't be able to really answer that with any sense of firm with any firm response. I appreciate that. I wonder if you think you'll be in a position by our next board meeting later this month to give us more information and a clear picture. I should be able to. Yeah, if I can have a little more in-depth conversation with folks over there. That's obviously contingent upon whether we go ahead with this motion. Yes, okay. Okay. Bob, questions? Yeah, and Rick, excuse me, Mark, how do you wanna handle this? I've got some questions about the agenda item and then I have some specific concerns about the contract. Let's go to the general ones first. If it's specific to the contract, are those all the nature that you feel we need of that tonight? Oh, yeah. All right, there's a couple of terms in there that are what I would classify as extremely firm-friendly. And I just need to get clarification to make sure that I'm reading it right. Not being an attorney and not playing one on TV, but I do read contracts a lot. Would it be fair to say, Rick, that the non-performance that you're referring to with Nausman has to do with the fact that we have a tremendous backlog of agreements that need to be resolved and they offered no path forward to resolving them? That is correct. How many agreements do we have in backlog right now? I can't give you that number, Paul. We have made some significant progress. We have made some other progress on some of them and I can't give you direct number. When you say we've made progress, has this been making progress with White-Brenner or with other attorneys? No, with Nausman. With Nausman. Since our last board meeting closed session, we've made some progress. We received the two consolidation agreements draft from Nausman. So if I'm understanding correctly, Nausman will be, even though they've been discharged, they will be doing some work for us and then other work will go to White-Brenner. The plan would be if the board proves the agreement tonight would be senior staff and myself to be with a sprinter and discuss the list and project a path forward. And that would be a question that I would ask Ms. Brenner if she feels that she needs support from Nausman or not. Well, I mean, some of these I think are kind of in progress and so I don't know how the handoff gets handled but there probably needs to be a handoff or if they're far enough along maybe they finish them. So what I'm hearing here are those even though they've been discharged, they're still doing work and they could conceivably do work for us going forward. I think they could conceivably do work for us but through White-Brenner. I see. I've had conversations with Nausman since the termination discharge letter and I was basically told that they would get caught up on as much as they possibly could before this date but I've not received anything. So I don't have much faith in much more work coming out of Nausman. Would you say that we have more than a dozen agreements in back lawn? Sorry to say it again. Would you say that we have more than a dozen agreements in back lawn? No, I would think around four or five. Okay, interesting. Okay, well, I'd like to have a recurring update on this situation and the agreements that are in backlog and the ones that still need to be done until this situation clears. And in my opinion, after reviewing this with White-Brenner there's still a concern about how we can clear these agreements quickly that we need to find additional help. So, I mean, I don't see this necessarily as an exclusive. What is exclusive is we need to get work done, some of which have been festering for a while and it needs to get done ASAP. I didn't necessarily hear the staff numbers and White-Brenner that would lead me to conclude that they will be able to clear these quickly but we will definitely see what they have to say hopefully at the next board meeting. I think this is something the board needs to keep their finger on pretty closely in order to make sure that the district itself is fulfilling the obligations that we made not only to community members, but also to our suppliers. And the plan moving forward, Director Bolz, is to meet with White-Brenner, go through the list with senior staff, then do a monthly report to the board up to a quarter and then quarterly reports to the board of our status moving forward. And that would include both retrospective view as well as prospective view. That's correct. That'd be great. I did have one question for Ms. Brenner as a 10-year user of Slack myself and integrated very tightly into our operations including code repositories. Are you saying that you're going to bring Rick and his staff into your Slack for communication? We have used Slack with clients on a specific channel during certain procedures, but I've never used it on an ongoing basis. It's something we can certainly discuss and if it's something that they're comfortable with and works well, I'd be happy to do it. I'm only concerned about the speed with which things get done. And I find Slack to be a very efficient, very fast way to communicate. And given that there probably are a handful of these agreements that are very specific and need very immediate attention, it might be something to consider, but only if all parties are interested in it. We use it quite frequently with our suppliers and contractors and it works great. So I'm glad to give you the time. I enjoy it. Yeah, our team uses it all the time. That's right. Okay, Rick, that's basically all I have on questions, but I did want to talk about the contract at some point. Okay, let me do another round of questions with one or two. Either your thoughts have generated any other questions or if there's anything on contract from anybody else. Yeah? No. Joe? Jamie? Okay, I do, before we go into contract, Bob, I do have some general questions that I'd like to get out also. Yes, of course. So, and to Rick, what's your proposed the length of time for the contract we would be issuing here? What are your thoughts on that? I do believe the contract stage, it's a five year contract basically and Barbara can correct me if I'm incorrect. Basically, it locks in the rate for five years and there's some inflation increases in the rate over years. I would recommend that we enter into that agreement. It does have the clause in the contract that we can terminate that agreement at any time just as the same as NOSMA. I really believe that NOSMA's qualifications are a lot of districts looking for water rights environmental, CEQA contract, and that... You said, Boston, did you? I'm sorry, white renters background with CEQA contract, water quality, and so forth. What I don't wanna do is I don't wanna hire a legal firm and then six months down the road, talk about going out to bid and having to reeducate another legal firm or even go through that process. We can terminate the agreement at any time with a white renter. Okay, but you did talk about more either formal or frequent reporting back to the board on the performance given that this is a new firm and for now at least this is going directly to the rather than R&P. Reporting back to the board on assessment from your perspective, are they being successful? Are they delivering so that we're not back into a similar situation that we have in the last several months with NOSMA? That's correct. It basically the title is progress. I'm concerned about going into debt on reporting back to the board because of the confidentiality issue but it would be a title and where we are in the process on a monthly basis for the first three months and then I would recommend court. Okay. And from my perspective, I did hear the request that believe was from Jamie to report back at the next board meeting on that list of deliverables. I don't, given the list that I've seen before I don't know that that's gonna be realistic but I would certainly hope by the first meeting that we had in July that they're able to do that they'd come back to us with a realistic perspective on when they can work with those. So great if in two weeks, if not the next meeting immediately after that. We will shoot for the 15th, but if we don't make it we don't get in and we'll have something to say how the progress is going on schedule. Right, we'll be on the agenda. All right. Okay, I'll give you that. I'll have a bottle of questions on us that you have on the contract then. Yeah, I, Rick, if you can help me out here I was actually looking specifically for a clause regarding termination for convenience. And I'm struggling. Could you point out where that is in the contract? Give me a second or Barbara maybe you'll all right I should, but I didn't see it. Yeah, I'm looking at the section seven term and termination. You know, it's not really unambiguous that it's termination for convenience. It does talk about a five year agreement which I think is excessive and a automatic renewal for another five years which given that we really don't want to be in a situation where we're not reviewing. I mean, Nausman was sort of coming up for review anything. I think both of those are excessive but I do not see an explicit termination for convenience. There's usually very specific language around it and this one at most you could say upon termination but within the context of the sentence of before it would be around termination of the agreement where we would give notice 30 days prior to the subsequent term and that would terminate it. But if there's an intent to offer a termination for convenience, I think we need additional language to make that explicit. That's fine. I think I'm looking for another paragraph that does have the language that you're thinking about but we'll be happy to make it clear. That's not a problem. Yeah, that'd be great. Because if you don't want to change it to annual whatever term you want to change it to that you're comfortable with is fine. Well, if we were actually locking in rates for X number of years, I would be more inclined to a term greater than one but effectively if we're adjusting it for cost of living and our next adjustment comes up in seven months anyway, it's for like, well, maybe we do three years with a one year annual renewal. Five year renewal is really aggressive. Okay. But that's just my opinion. That doesn't mean I'm speaking to the board. So, whether or not anybody else has that but I mean the term in this is just excessive in my opinion. By the way, I served in a committee that actually did the interviews for the church well. Wait, was it back then? Yeah. And so I'm familiar with your firm. It was a very close game down between the two of you. So, yeah. Thank you. The second question I had was around our work product. It looks explicit that you own the originals of the work product but who owns the actual intellectual property associated with the work product? Attorneys retain their work product or notes, et cetera. And the client files all go to the client, originals, copies, et cetera. So, contracts, that type of thing. Any work associated, you know, any memos, any work associated with things like comments on an environmental document or anything else is the clients. But my notes that I hand write and that I keep as my attorney notes, those are kept with the firm. That's about it. I think I just want to make sure I'm clear in this. So, for example, if you develop a contract template and in the future, you're not our firm, we can continue using that contract template or any other contract that we may have done in conjunction with you. We can use that for any purpose going forward under any circumstances. Yes, and we actually encourage that. We encourage the development of, you know, this is our format of how we do this type of contract and how we do this type of contract and encourage you to use them so that our review time on subsequent contracts of the same type is much shorter. And then those are yours. I mean, those become yours. We don't say you have to give that back and you can never use it again. No. Right, well, I just wanted to make sure I was... No, no, no, I... Yeah. Yeah. I work in intellectual property, so I get very sensitive about who owns what. Yeah. Yeah. And Rick, it says in here in the agreement that we reviewed this with its own legal counsel. Have we done that? No, we have not. So basically, just so everybody knows. Okay, well, I'd like to offer a formal amendment that we modify the term to three years with a 60, not 30-day notice for whether or not we want to renew and that the renewal be one year and that language specific to termination for convenience be added to the section seven. Okay. Thank you for that, Bob. I'd like to hear from any of the rest of the board on those or on the friendly amendment that Bob is making to the motion that's written on the length of term and then on this determination clause. Thoughts? Jamie? I think they seem reasonable. I would be inclined to support this friendly amendment. Okay, yeah, I'll support that. All right. Okay. So yes to that, the three year term in particular. Okay. Given that, I'd like to make a motion that the board director district manager to enter into a contract with White Brenner, bill of Pee for general and special legal services under the terms of the attached agreement with the amendments proposed by the record folks to this. Okay. Thank you. Before we take a vote on this, let me ask from the general public, any comments on this? Seeing none, Olly, can you take a roll, Colton? President Smalley? Yes. Vice president Hill? Yes. Director Ackerman? Yes. Director Fouls? Yes. Director Mayhood? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. I look forward to working with you all. We look forward to getting documents and input from your firm. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Be careful what you wish for. We'll get it done. Oversight. I was posed a question, so let me ask that. Ms. Brenner, now that we've made this motion, are you available to stay for the meeting? In the event that we have questions during the meeting of work? I'm happy to stay. I'll probably mute and go off my video. I've been in this litigation for the last several weeks, so I'm a little tired. But, and I don't know anything about the agenda items, but I'm happy to help with it. It's working very well. I would expect if we had any questions more from a procedural and Brown Act issue, which I think you're familiar with. So, yes. Okay. If needed, and I hope not, we can call on you. Okay, I'll move on to the next item then, which is the special district risk management authority board election. So, Rick. I think the district secretary wants to present this item before me. Okay. Okay. Well, every four years, there is an election of the board. Let me see if I should read this. SDRMA, Board of Directors election is coming up and they have collected all of the election committee has collected all of the nominations and have confirmed four candidates that met the requirements. The resumes of those four candidates were included in the packet. And now they would like us to choose three of the four to vote for. I'm sorry, I wasn't prepared to present it. No, I had you as the presenter. You did CSEA quite well last time. You covered an appropriate. Okay. Before candidates in front of us, we need to vote for three. I have thoughts on which three, but I wanted to see what anybody else from the board has as far as an opinion or shall I jump in first on this? I see Jeff raising his hand. Okay, Jeff. So I want to support the three incumbents. And the reason I want to support the three incumbents is they are all employees or directors of small independent districts such as ours. The fourth candidate that is not an incumbent is employed as a city manager in a large county and is only marginally connected to small districts like ours. So I think we would be much better represented by the other three. Those were the same three that I had flagged. Yes. Jamie. I didn't have a really significant opinion about this, but they've come down to seem to find one. Okay. I guess I thought that Aquanata Warren brought something to the mix that the other people didn't. Coming from people, you know, coming from Brooklyn and Honey Lake, those are really small areas. And what Aquanata Warren brings is an understanding of the ideas of water equity and inclusivity, which I thought was probably something that this organization could use. So I was hoping that she would be among them. And I guess if the others, I thought other three, I thought Robert Swann was just looking at his resume, the way he wrote his, was the strongest of the candidates of the other two. And I thought Jesse Clayboulds was not very well written. And I guess I wasn't very impressed, but I don't have, you know, strong feelings on this. I just felt like I should mention that there are other things besides representing a tiny district in the mountains. And now that the name is mentioned, Jesse, I do have to agree with you on that. So strike what I said earlier, about three. Yes, because not Jesse and Aquanata, but Bob. I agree with Gail, I had the same impression when I reviewed him. Obviously we don't know these people well, but based on the writing, I think Gail hit it on, hit the nail on the head. Okay, then I'd like to make the motion that we propose a vote for Robert Swann, Aquanata Warren, and Sandy Siefer-Grafison. Second. Any comments from members of the public on this? Seeing none, Pauline. President Salli. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Fultz. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Question passes. Okay. Thank you. Moving on then to the next item. Unfinished business. The emergency contract for exploring repair of the Quail Hall Road. Yes, and the district engineer is here to present this item to the board. Thanks, Rick. This is rather an unusual request. As you are aware, Quail Hall Road, where we were fighting in last year is washed now. It has been made clear to us by the county that because the failure is within the bounds of the Quail Hall Road, it's not the same as the Quail Hall Road, but it's the same as the Quail Hall Road. Yes. Thanks, Rick. This is rather an unusual request. Thank you. The first item was the failure is within the bounds of the utility trench, we will be required to address it. The problem is that in this area, the water table is exceedingly high. It's 18 inches of the asphalt, or at least was last time we had it open. And the area is San Diego's habitat, making it a little more interesting to work in. So what I'm proposing here, what I'm requesting, is that we issue an emergency contract to Anderson Pacific, who is prepared to be on site Monday morning, to perform an exploratory repair in which they would, one section at a time, remove failed asphalt, remove failed backfill, determine what we need to do in order to actually repair this area. The board of staff has been in contact with county department of the words roads, basically the case either to determine what we think the preferred backfill is going to be, which is going to be largely native to ant road base as opposed to the slurry that was originally installed. In addition, we are looking to add possibly dewatering of the site in order to ensure that we actually get good backfill, good compaction. And it can be paid. Currently the area is plated and is becoming, it is becoming very difficult to prevent it from being a safety hazard. Thus the emergency nature of this contract. That happily took questions. Okay. Why don't we start with you Bob. Yeah, I just had a couple. In terms of the original construction that was done in consultation with the county as well, correct? Correct, it was performed to county detail. To their, to their requirements and specifications. And I'm assuming we're going to coordinate very closely with them on this as well. How does, how do we get to a resolution given that county has the requirements and what might be done here may not fit into those requirements. We have staff have already discussed this with the county and have determined that there are a couple of possible backfill sessions that we can use without further discussion. We had this in writing. And if we determine, we see what's under there that something different is required. They are aware that they will need to be responsive quickly. Okay. Basically between myself and our contractor. What the correct response will be. Okay. So they've already indicated a willingness to modify their requirements for this in order to accomplish the goal of getting that road back in shape. Correct. No, it's good news. But I'm glad to hear that. I mean, I think it's important for the county to be aware of that. I think it's important for the county to be aware of that. I think it's important for the county agencies to cooperate on this sort of thing and really keep in mind that the, that the real objective is to getting the motoring public back into, you know, I'm not having to worry about whether or not there's going to be an issue there. So I'm glad to see that you guys are working really closely with them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I understand that we're trying to understand the. Depth of the water damage. Will we be able to. Put our main back in the same trench or is there a possibility we'll have to retrench elsewhere. We will not be. Okay. So. The exploratory contract starts at. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the final financial cost of this work is going to be because we've got to do this exploratory effort and see what the depth of the damage is. That's correct. Babe. It isn't a fairly significant. Junk. We've put the 250,000 not to exceed number of on there. So that we don't just have the contractor run hog wild. We've got to do that. And in addition, we will be submitting this FEMA under the category C. In the current disaster. Disaster that is just about to open up for which the kickoff meeting is next week, the February storms. Right. So can I ask you, given how high the water table rose during this last event, right? I mean, obviously this is going to be a continuing problem if we have to do that. I mean, I don't think we're going to be able to do that in the future. Can we get away with not moving our main? Or is this going to continue to be an issue? I don't believe it will continue to be an issue because we're not going to put slurry backfill back. The, the use of slurry, basically put a three foot impermeable wedge on top of our pipe and force the water down into the sand backfill. And wash it out. Thank you. Thank you. So. Yeah, I think. The. The number was a little eye watering when I first saw it, especially when it says exploratory and I'm going, oh my gosh, if this is exploratory, what, you know, what is the total thing, but is. Can you just explain a little bit further on this? Is this, is it not so much exploratory as maybe incremental? Is it, is it sound like they're going in and taking out one little chunk and trying to fix that and then going in and seeing how much more or. Can you explain a little bit more to me? Process will. I would suggest that it is both exploratory and incremental. Okay. Because we won't be opening up the entire church all at once. Yeah. That way lies disaster. We'll be opening a small piece of the church at a time and it is exploratory in that we need to determine. Not just how much of the area has failed and how much of the volume really has failed. But in addition, what are the subsurface water conditions? And what are the subsurface compaction conditions? Once we've determined that we'll be able to more effectively. Turn this from exploratory into a criminal. I think the initial. Probably two days. Where in we first open up. You know, first open the road up. Look at whether or not we need to be watered to what degree. And determine what has been washed out of what is still there is going to be. The. I would say the exploratory in terms of techniques and methodologies portion after that, the exploration would be limited to some extent. And. If I could ask one more question. What do you, when you say dewater, are you, are you talking about something that you're just waiting for, you know, are you doing something to get the water table to go down for a while or are you talking about something that's a more permanent action to try to keep the water table. Down, which seems like it might be hard to do. So. I don't think we are prepared to spend the tens of millions of dollars that would be required to do that. Yeah. This is a temporary condition. We would be placed if necessary. And we don't know yet. But if necessary, we would place a well rolling up slope of our work area by probably 40 or 50 feet in order to pull groundwater from spring that is just up slope of where we're, where the failure is in order to prevent that water from flowing through the work area so that we can actually control the amount of moisture in soil while we're impacting. Thank you. Okay. Can I come back to a quick question? I have a couple questions first and then I can come back to you. I don't know. Are you involving any outside engineering expertise in this? Or is this between our registered civil engineer or licensed civil engineer, Josh Wolf and the counties similar on their side to say, yeah, this is what we think is appropriate. Yeah. I think it's going to be a collaboration between myself, the licensed civil engineers at the county and the very experienced foreman that Anderson Pacific has provided us. Okay. Yeah. Both book knowledge and street smarts as it were. Okay. And the way you're describing it, it sounds like it's possible that the, the material beneath the piping may be washed out also that we put into there and we're going to have to go investigate that before we can determine how much we're going to have to do as far as repairs. Correct. Okay. All right. And you say native and just want to be clear from anybody else also. You mean soil of the same type or backfill of the same type as what's next to the trench? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Fortunately for us, Granite Rock Sand Plain is about 500 feet away. Yeah. Okay. It's the definition of. And if we do that sand backfill above it, it's likely then with the water and flow through their same as the surrounding material. Yes. Okay. The idea is to create a backfill at least in the foot or two above the pile that as closely mimics natural conditions as possible. Okay. And then what do you guess? What do you estimate? How many days of work does this up to 250,000 bias? Is that four days? Is that 20 days? I think it buys us about two and a half weeks. Okay. And that's roughly seven hour days because that's what the county will allow us to work. Seven and a half hour days. Is it Monday through Friday? Okay. So it's, it's, it's not possible that we do this not simply exploration and exploration repair within this home where you expect you're coming back to us then. Now that we know everything, here's what the repair cost is going to be for us. The intent is for the repair to be the way that we restore as we complete the exploration. I, we open up the road. We determine what we need. or what we do that thing all as one operation, right? But, do you think that there's a possibility for the length of the fence? We're able to do that, isn't that too bad for you? It is possible, but I think it's okay. Okay, I expect that I will be coming back again, not again, but I would rather not just on the issue of larger. Okay, let me go to Jeff for a moment. Okay, so going back to your comment very early in the discussion, and my understanding is that we have a situation where we're on a slope, the native soil in the area is actually sand, it's very permeable, water flows through it, we dug a trench, but piped down and we backfilled the trench with something that is relatively impermeable, which in effect created a dam, built up hydraulic pressure on one side or the other, and the water had to go somewhere, so it started washing out through repair. Is that a reasonable assumption of what you think happened? Okay, so what we're doing now is removing the impermeable. We think we'll remove the impermeable barrier and replace it with something that will allow the water to continue to flow through the rocks. Right, that's the strategy, got it. Okay, Jamie? I'm fully prepared for you to say that on that, but is there, does FEMA cover exploratory work? Is this, I mean, would- When this goes to FEMA, it will be presented as we have to repair the road. This is what it took to repair the road because we are not able to say in advance we need to do exactly X or Y or Z, but rather we need to find out what the problem is as part of how we are fixing it. FEMA's accustomed to that. Okay. Given what I've heard, I'll make a motion that the board director district manager enter into a contract with Energy Pacific Engineering Construction in the amount allowed to exceed 250,000 for the purposes of repair of the failed pothole of water mine and quail hollow road. Second. Okay. Any members of the public have comments on this? Seeing none. Holly? President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackman. Yes. Director Fals. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Motion passes. Moving on to item 5D, the biannual draft budget of fiscal year 2023-2025 discussion. Yes, thank you. The district finance manager is here to give me a presentation and answer the questions of board and I will ask her to move forward. Okay. Let's bring up the presentation. Okay, so this is the second round of operating revenue and expenses, the non-operating revenue and expenses in the capital budget portion. So the second rounds, the changes in operating revenue for fiscal year 23-24 resulted in a net increase of 5,000. This was to account for an increase in the LEWOP grant program. So the original credit amount was for $2,000 max credit to customers. And they just recently increased it to the $15,000. We haven't really seen a huge participation in the program. So we're keeping up at the 5,000 to be conservative. The change for fiscal year 24-25 was to take into account the changes that were discussed in regards to the consumption amounts for four springs in Brackenbray and the CZU homes. This resulted in a decrease to revenue of 104,000. Originally, we had assumed that all homes would be back online. For this round, we assumed that 50% of the remaining 62 CZU homes will be back online at four units per month. And for four springs in Brackenbray, we accounted for the homes that did not burn down at four units per month, whereas before we had assumed that all of them. The changes in operating expenses for fiscal year 23-24 resulted in a net increase of 25,000. This was various changes that are listed below. Salaries and benefits were updates were made based on MOU negotiations and updated assumptions based on differences in separate employees versus new hires for contract professional services. We did some decreases in digital dock management offset by the increase of the fuel reduction contract of 25,000, which I had previously had incorrectly in the first round and an increase of 2,000 for software and fiscal year 24-25, there was a decrease of 20,000 for digital dock management, decrease of 20K for architecture fees offset by the fuel reduction contract and the increase of 25,000 and 2K for the software. For maintenance, decrease of 15,000 for admin building remodel and the increase in general administration is for the forgiveness of AR for the LIWAP program, which I originally had $500 in there. And so I increased it with 4,500 to reflect the 5,000 in the previous slide of the operating grants for that program. Moving on to non-operating revenue for fiscal year 23-24 compared to the current fiscal year of 22-23, it increased 387,000 or 28%. This is primarily due to an increase in interest investments. This year 22-23 assumes that the majority of the loan funds would have been spent by the end of the current fiscal year we're in. And so that's why it's a smaller amount. And fiscal year 24-25 compared to 23-24 is a decrease of 273,000 or 16%, primarily due to the decrease in interest investments. And that is because the loan funds are projected to be spent by the end of fiscal year 23-24. Same report, but the capital contributions portion, 23-24 compared to 22-23 decreased 988,000, primarily due to a decrease in expected FEMA reimbursements offset by an increase in capital grants. 24-25 compared to 23-24 increased 528,000, primarily due to an increase in expected FEMA reimbursements. So the district is hopeful to have the large FEMA projects obligated by the end of 23-24, which I'll cover more in the capital budget portion. Moving on to non-operating expenses. Basically for both fiscal year 23-24 and 24-25, we have debt principle payments of 2.18 million. And then this next page, I couldn't fit every whole report on the screen. So I just kind of listed it out here, but I'm referencing page 85 of the agenda packet. Non other non-operating expenses include standard margarita groundwater agency, fiscal year 23-24 and 24-25 are both about 165,000. And then the total non-operating expenses are about 2.3 million for each fiscal year. Capital budget portion. So the fiscal year 22-23 estimated actuals are 6.2 million. It was budgeted that we would spend 13.3 million for fiscal year 22-23. 23-24 is expected at 27.1 million. 24-25 is expected at 11.8 million. And then we estimated future years 25 through 28 at a total of 17.6 million. So the FEMA projects make up about 38% and 46% of the total capital budget for 23-24 respectively. So as you can see, that's a large portion of what the budget, the capital budget is being spent on. The district cost share of FEMA is basically the portion of FEMA that is not reimbursable. So the 10% for the CZU fire projects and the 25% for the recent storm projects is those are the FEMA reimbursement percentage is 75% for those. This makes up 4% and 15% for fiscal year 23-24 and 24-25 respectively. In excess of loans for our 14.5 and 15 million loans, most of the projects are coming in over budget. So the overage of those will need to come out of reserves, 6% and 18% for 23-24 and 24-25 respectively. And the majority of the excess funds being from the FEMA projects. So some things to note on the capital budget, the district's main focus is to complete the loan and grant funded projects as those have the project completion deadlines and designated funds. And most of those projects are already in process. FEMA reimbursements, as we all know, it's been a long drawn out process. The large projects, the raw and potable projects are in the final review stages. So we are hopeful to have the projects obligated no later than the end of 23-24, so June 30th of 2024. And FEMA obligation means that the funds have been designated to the district for reimbursement. So basically they've awarded us those funds, but it has to go through the long process, EHP review, environmental review, all that, before we can get to obligation. And then the district plans to review, you know, all the projects quarterly and provide updates on the status of the FEMA projects, expenses incurred, funding received, et cetera. And so the statements of revenue, expenses and changes in reserves, I did notice that on the report that was in the budget, there were some slightly old amounts that were in the capital improvement portion. So I just wanted to include this in here to show that this was the corrected statement. It was only off by like a million. So you can reference what was in the agenda to this to see and we'll post this presentation on the website for that reference. But to summarize the statement of revenue, expenses and changes in reserves, I'll highlight the increase or decrease in reserves is basically you take the total revenues, subtracts the total expenses and subtracts the capital project expenses from reserves. And that will give you what your increase or decreases. So the estimated actuals is an increase of 2.1 million, the 2324 budget is a decrease of 3 million primarily due to capital project expenses exceeding our grants and FEMA and debt funding. And fiscal year 2425 budget is an increase of 4.2 million primarily due to anticipated FEMA reimbursement. So we're expecting to get the 14.1 million of all those FEMA projects. And then the debt coverage forecast. So on the top one is the debt coverage forecast from the 21 through 23 adopted budget. And the bottom is the proposed from this proposed budget. The district has debt covenants that require a 1.25 debt coverage ratio. As you can see in fiscal year 2526, we do fall below that ratio if we're looking at the ratio excluding the fire recovery surcharge. So obviously we're currently undergoing a rate study and so that will help analyze and discuss this matter further. So the next steps, staff plans to bring the 23 through 25 full budget package to the June 15th board of directors meeting for review and if possible, adoption by the board. Questions. Okay. I'd like to hear from the budget finance committee members. First, before we go to the rest, does the chair deal with the story? Well, I want to thank Kendra and Rick for turning this document around and doing a lot of work on a short timeframe to first respond to the board's input about the changes they wanted to see in the operating revenues and operating expenses. And that's all incorporated here. And also in terms of dealing with the capital budget I think that both Jeff and I were concerned that maybe there was too much optimism about when the projects were going to be done. And so they've gone back and spread them out and also prioritize the ones that need shown in yellow in this diagram of what ones we have to do whether we like it or not, even if we don't have that we have to spend the reserves to do it. So I appreciate all that you've done to do that. And I think it's pretty clear where we are in the sense that the rate study and having some kind of rate increase down the road is going to be necessary. And then the other thing is, is that we're very, we're not entirely in control of our future here because what the reserves do is so much a function of how fast the money comes back from FEMA. And so maybe after some of the other board members ask questions, I'd like your ideas about how we track our cash positions so that if money doesn't come in when you think it is that we don't get ourselves into trouble. Jeff? So first of all, I would like to thank staff and Kendra in particular for listening to our comments and our multitude of free suggestions and such. This is a vastly improved document from where we were before going back a couple of meetings. And my comments are about the content, not what the numbers tell us, really not the structure of the document. The document structure looks pretty good to me, but it's very clear that as Gail said, the rate study is essential and we're gonna have to make some adjustments between inflation and the amount of capital projects we have underway, which we have to fund substantial portions of there's no way we can, we can do that without moving forward with the rate study and probably a significant adjustment. I want to thank the staff and I want to thank the budget and finance committee. This is hard work and especially during salary negotiations. So I appreciate what went into this. Yeah, I agree with Jeff long-term. Obviously we're gonna have to have that conversation forward, but I also think that we are stuck in the same position that every other water district, we're all sort of fighting these same battles in terms of trying to bring our projects and quickly enough labor across the state of California is at a premium. It's impossible to get these infrastructure projects done on time. You saw on our capital budget that we intended to spend more than $13 million this year and we only got $6 million of work done. And that was in a year where we had a lot of emergency repair work that we had to do as a result of the storms. And yet we still didn't hit that number in terms of projection and that's not a fault of staff. So thank you for this work. And I'm sorry that this continues to be such a frustrating process. Okay. Bob? Yeah, thanks Mark and thank you everybody for the work. I do have a fairly lengthy series of questions. We'll go through them as quickly as we can just to confirm Kendra the current budget is not forecasting any rate increase for either of the two years under consideration. Correct. And Bracken Bray and four, we're already serving Bracken Bray and Forest Springs customers today. We are serving Forest Springs through a master meter. So once we finish the consolidation we'll be individually metering them, as I understand it. That's correct. Yeah. And so the, is the budget assuming the master meter or individual meter? So it's assuming individual meters. Do we think that will be done by in the timeframe of this budget? So we had budgeted then starting July of 2024 and I believe, correct me if I'm wrong where this consolidation will be completed by then 2024? Okay. That is the expectation. Yes. Yeah. And in your comment here about extending the waivers for the people that lost their homes during the fire I think it should be indefinite just my own opinion especially due to the county's torture chamber for rebuilding. There's no way that they can forecast how long it's going to take to do anything. Yeah. We plan to bring that back to the next budget and finance meeting. Yeah. I would just encourage it to be indefinite for this easy way of thinking. I wasn't sure what you meant by digital dock management decrease of 20K. 1,000 in your budget. If you had 2,000 for digital document management and we decided to cut that. We removed it. I understand that it was removed but what was the task that you were talking to me? I do believe the task was to convert paper documents to digital. Okay. So this assumes we're going to continue doing paper documents, invoices, purchase orders, all the rest of it. That is correct. But a good portion of it has been switched over to digital or has been done document by document management. I do believe we've done some of the engineering plans to switch over. We've been doing that, you know, as needed and charging those off to the general operations each department. Okay. I'll follow up with you independently on the scope there. On the changes in operating revenue that's on page 82, five of, looks like 16, wish I had better rise. You know, the operating revenue bottom line is still misleading. I would very much, if we're not going to put in, sorry, if we're not going to take the fire recovery surcharge out of that calculation as I believe the board had instructed staff to do, we at least need to put in a footnote. Indicating that that fire recovery surcharge is in fact not part of operating revenue for the purposes of applying it to operating expenses. And it's just really important that that be crystal clear because that's the promise that the board made to the community. Okay. I continue to see the same formats and I just don't know what to do here because I thought we made it clear. On the capital grants you were talking about for the 23-24 budget, are those grants in hand or are those grants that we're expecting? Any grant I included was an awarded grant. And can they be used for any use? I mean, I thought they were for particular purposes. I don't understand your question. Well, when you say capital grant, the way it's presented here is that it seems like we could use it for any purpose. I don't normally work that way. Yeah, yeah. So that's just the summary of all of the grants that we were awarded. So the capital grants is a combination of our Brackenbray Forest Springs Consolidation Grant, our Fall Creek Fish Ladder Grants, our AMI Meter Grants, the Fire Hardening Grants we received. And there might be another one I'm missing, but that's just a general sum total of the grants that we are awarded. In the final budget, will that breakout be available and footnoted for people? Yeah, I can include that. In terms of FEMA reimbursement, we're forecasting not much for next year compared to the year after. Is the bulk of that due to the raw water pipelines? The fact that reimbursement isn't coming in next year? Yeah, so I budgeted the three million because that's a combination of what we've already submitted to FEMA. That just has not been obligated yet and what we're expecting to have obligated by the end of the fiscal year. And then obviously you'll see the jump in fiscal year 24-25 because once the projects are obligated, our intention is, so what you can do is you can take a project drawdown so you can submit everything we've expensed to date for reimbursement. And then we plan to start submitting monthly invoices. So eventually we'll start receiving those monthly reimbursement checks to help with cash flow concerns. But... Yeah, because there's quite a variance on FEMA reimbursements for this year. I mean, that's eight million more or less. I think this speaks to one of the things that I've been most concerned about and I don't know that I've seen it yet which is a monthly cash flow projection for the 24 months covered by this budget. I know we've talked about how critical it is that we don't run out of cash but right now I have zero feeling as to what our peak or drop is relative to cash flow and also relative to risk. So the federal government isn't necessarily the most reliable in terms of paying. And if something gets shifted out a couple months, I wanna be able to see where we are on the risk program. Right. I think it's absolutely essential. Yeah, so a cash flow projection is in my plans. I just, it hasn't happened yet but I do plan to do that. But it will be in the final budget before we vote. A 24 month cash flow projection? I don't... Well, you're talking about most of the money coming in 24, 25, we're gonna be spending money at a furious pace according to the capital budget for you now. Okay, I will look into that further. I mean, I can't give you this. Cash flow budgets are typically part of a operating budget. Okay, I will look into that further. Well, let me just say that I think that Kendra will be working on this but there's only so many hours in the day that she can do it. And so to try and also to try to do the cash flow analysis too far in the future is just a waste of time because you really don't know what's happening. Yeah. So I think what I would say here is that if you can, by the next time we bring this back, you can do it for 23, 24, that to my mind would be good enough. Yeah, that would certainly help. Yeah, that would help. But to expect to try to do it any further, I just think it's an exercise but it's so low certainty that it's just not a good use to your time. So you might try building a spreadsheet model that you could easily move numbers around and say, best case, worst case, most likely. That's typically the way you do it in your budgeting activities. If you have a model that allows you to move numbers around, but exactly as you're talking about Jeff, and you're right, you would do a best case, worst case type in order to judge what kind of risk we have here with respect to cash flow. Look, I do not want this board of this district to be in a situation where we have another emergency because we're having too many emergencies here. This is what oversight's about. And I understand the time aspect of this, Gail, but I would only modify that perhaps if it can't all be done to incorporate regular routine cash flow reports in for the board, which I think would be something new as well. I appreciate that this is word. This is one of the reasons why I was so adamant about wanting models from the company that was doing the rate study to be able to provide this kind of support for our staff. Once the models are in place, using them is very straightforward. It doesn't take a lot of time, but I understand building the models is tough. But that's what I wanted the rate study consultants to do. And I'm not sure we're gonna be getting that. I hope we are, but it's not crystal clear to me that we are. Okay, on the next question here, if you take out the surcharge, our operating net and our net net goes down significantly, well under the three million that had been baked into the last rate increase, three million in operating margin, which is only about maybe two thirds, 60% to maybe 75% of what the district actually needs every year in order to meet its capital obligations given the inventory that it has. In order to boost that back up to three million under the current operating expense assumptions, which I'm anticipating will go up as a result of other activities that's underway, there would need to be an immediate rate increase of about 11% followed by rate increases of approximately three to 5% depending on what the operating expenses ultimately do. And that still doesn't address our unfunded capital projects. And given the grant situation, I'm not sure we can depend on the kindness of strangers over a multi-decade period of time. So this budget here is assuming that you're gonna manage operating expenses to be about what inflation forecast is when historically, the district has routinely exceeded in inflation by anywhere from two to three X through the three time what inflation is. I'm not saying that we're gonna be increasing operating expenses by 15%, hopefully, but to say that we're gonna manage to be effectively inflation, I'm skeptical. The history has shown that is absolutely not possible to do the last rate study that put together showed operating expenses at much lower than what they actually came in at. So I'm not at all convinced that we're gonna be able to do this. Next question on the raw water pipeline in the capital budgets, are we assuming plastic pipe? No, that determination has not been made. So the numbers in here are really pro forma. What are the numbers in here based on? I think it's a placeholder. We haven't made any determination of the type of construction and we are moving to those steps now, but the main response for FEMA is we have to get the scope of work right and FEMA will pay whatever the actual costs are. So that's our best baseholder number at this point in time. I think it would be very worthwhile, Rick, to footnote the items in here that are placeholders that where a final determination hasn't been made. I mean, on other things that are in here, I think we're pretty clear about how the materials that are gonna be used and I understand we're estimating, but for those raw water pipelines, we haven't even made a determination on materials yet. So I think it'd be worthwhile, at least highlighting that on the three or four line items in here that are raw water. And we will be bringing an item back to the board on our second meeting in June to start the discussion of continuing to make that determination. I hope that'll be accompanied with a ton of information. Let's see here, or I'm scrolling. Oh, the last question I had was on reserve balance, reserve balances by reserve account. Will that be provided in on June 15th, that I didn't see it in here either? It is on page. My apologies if I missed it. 88 of the agenda topics. Fabulous, thank you. Sorry I missed it. That's okay. So what we're doing here is... So Bob, this is the one where in my PowerPoint, I said there was a slight error. So in the PowerPoint for 23, 24 and 24, 25, the capital projects portion changed slightly. So just FYI on that, that'll be updated in the full budget package. Okay, and just looking at these numbers, they don't, is the operating reserve at least meeting the current requirements? I know the capital reserve, I think. I mean, so the operating reserve is basically a formula to be 4.5 times the... So that's why you'll see that the capital reserve is negative because basically, it's offsetting what? Well, the capital reserve has a formula too, but the district's never been able to put together the finances to support that. Okay, great, thank you. Sorry I missed that. Okay, thanks for calling. Hang on, hang on. Okay, and Kendra, I really appreciate the really thorough job you did on the debt coverage forecast. And the number that I look at of course is the excluding fire recovery surcharge. So thank you for putting that one in. Typically, I know that 1.25 is the absolute bare minimum, but from a reasonably prudent, fiscal position, you don't wanna get down to the minimum because especially in the area we live in because stuff happens. So a 1.5 is, I mean, legally we can go to 1.25, but in terms of a good position for us to be in, 1.5 to 1.75 is a good place to be. And I see we can meet the 1.5 excluding the fire recovery surcharge. I guess the question I would have is in the debt covenant, are we allowed to use the fire recovery surcharge or not because it is a restricted fund? I don't know the answer to that, but I can look into that. Yeah, because that would be, I think, critical from depending on how the whole rate study thing goes than the prop 2.18 process. Yeah, I'll definitely look into that. Great, Mark, that's it. Thank you very much. Okay, thanks. Questions over here? Each E3 in the presentation will recover salaries as in the operating budgets. Does this include currently vacant positions that we're attempting to fill? Yeah, so it's assuming that we're fully staffed. Okay, yeah. Even though we're not fully staffed. Correct. Okay, good, okay. I've heard previous comments about that 27 million in capital expenditures coming from the next year. Given what we, the forecast is what we're gonna do, in the past year, and what we actually did in the previous year, we forecasted, we did about half, or less than half of that 6 million. I think that that 27 is overly optimistic, but I'm okay with that. I think that spreading that 27 million up, likely to help the cash flow aspects and makes that too easy. But in addition to that, any project on that list that you bring forward is coming back to the board anyhow for our approval. Some of those projects are already been approved by the board, and whether it held up, and I would say going or in construction. And some of those are our large project. Fish ladder starts in Monday. Lion, pipeline, only about 5 million somewhere in there. There's some large projects that contracts by the board have been approved, contracts have been awarded, and we're moving into a construction season, and we're already in the construction season, all to be another large project is in construction. So with that 27 of them, what do you guess we've improved and committed? Have we done 20? I'm not looking to add up numbers. About 20 million of them, that's been. So in the, where it lays out all the projects, we did include a status section that either says like in contract, in construction. So yeah. Okay, all right, thank you. And as stated by others, there's also seen that the pages 8788, reserves are going down, we're drawing on reserves. That's not something we can continue to do. So thoughts on anything else, Rick? No, but a lot of these projects that are in construction in this year are grant or are loan projects, which the money is already in the bank, so to speak. Right, but I'm looking, I'm beyond that one. And no, I mean, our reserves are low until we start getting money from FEMA. We're gonna have to monitor closely as the budget financing manager in particular are concerned about cash flow so far. We will not be entering some of the future projects, not unless we have the cash to pay for it, obviously. But yes, cash flow is becoming and reserves are becoming low. Okay. Okay. Well, I told the questions that I had at this point. Let me go out to the general public. Director Fultz has an answer. See, Bob, let me go out to the general public first and see if there are any questions. Comments from the general public? Questions? Seeing none, I'll come back to you, Bob. Yeah, Mark, just to follow up on your earlier question about open positions. How many open positions do we have then? What are they? I believe the environmental planner. And one in water quality, two. We have three open positions. No, we still don't, we can't. No water quality, right, position. Oh, that's right. Okay. The plan, the first three positions, though. And sorry, what were the positions? Environmental planner, field system coordinator and water treatment operator. Okay. But they're shallows or polluter. Correct. They're fresh. Yeah, no, I didn't hear that, Mark. I was just curious which ones are open. I mean, the reason I asked is that in 2022, I think it was the operating margin wasn't as bad as forecasted because there were four open positions for most of the year. So it allowed the district to get close to that three million number that had been baked in for the 2017 rating freeze. So depending on how long it takes to fill these, it'll contribute to that operating margin as well. Okay. Okay. Well, no further comments or questions on that from anybody else, the other board members that are here. I think we're good with that. We don't have a motion in front of us tonight. But I understand you're gonna bring that back to us at the meeting on the 15th. And we look forward to reviewing that. And hopefully we'll be able to get that back to you as well. All right. What was that? Can someone hear me? I lost down. Here you go. Try again. Okay. The, as at the Valley Press, I believe had a full page, very nice full page article about the work we're doing on the fish ladder. Oh, this way. And I just want to congratulate whoever facilitated getting that in the press. Carly. Carly, if you're listening, good job. And just a quick comment. I would like to thank Ken for hard work and staff, the management teams, coordinating staff on the budget. It's sort of a long time after we went into this budget. And you need to hear them a few more comments. Do you have some challenges ahead? But I think she had a fantastic challenge. What was that? I think we're gonna jump. We have an agenda to approve. I mean, now minutes to approve. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The consent agenda. Yes. I was skipped over there. Is anybody? I hear you. Want to pull everything from the consent agenda. I see no communication or other informational materials. With that, I think we can adjourn. Yep. Yes. All right. 812 I have. Thank you. This is Barbara. Thanks. I'll see you in a couple of weeks.