 Yeah, so I'd like to reconvene this meeting for the Board of Directors for the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for November 16, 2023. Molly, would you take roll again, please? President Smalley. Here. Vice President Hill. Here. Director Falls. Here. Director Maygood. Here. Director Ackman. Here, I'm having a little trouble with my video, so forgive me if I'm not on camera at the moment. Okay, we will. Once again, CTV, can you please promote another? Okay. We have nothing to report out from any actions taken during the closed session this evening. Carly, are you aware of any changes to the agenda? Staff, that's fine. Okay. I do have two procedural changes to make to the agenda as far as the order of items that we're covering. We're going to start with the Proposition 218 Outreach and then cover the two change orders for the Alta via Drive issues. Then we'll go into recent interactions with Big Basin Water Company. Covering the Prop 218 Outreach first because Director Ackman needs to bow out for a work-related board meeting that she needs to attend. So, those procedural changes, I will then ask any communications from members of the public on subjects within the jurisdiction of the district that are not on the agenda this evening. Thank you. I'm Jim Mosier, a great payer in Belton. I am presenting on behalf of the Friends at Santa Linda Valley Water, a local all volunteer citizens group that formed in 2018 with a deep concern for our local community and for continued reliable access to affordable water. We would like to propose that the board increase the benefit amount for the rate assistance program. We recognize that this is not on the agenda tonight. We are making our proposal now that your board members had a time to consider prior to the December 7th meeting when the board will be deciding whether to adopt the rate study. California now recognizes access to safe affordable water as a fundamental human right. Unfortunately, the cost of water delivery in California and across the country is skyrocketing due to a wide range of evolving conditions that are very familiar to our SOP community. Aging infrastructure, climate change and droughts, fire and flood damage, among other things. The rising cost of water creates particular hardships on low income households and FSLBW, since its assumption is placed a high priority on mitigating that hardship. We advocated for and supported SLBWD adoption of the rate assistance program, which currently provides qualified households with a $10 credit for each month under water. The rate study now under consideration proposes to increase the rate benefit to $15 a month in the first year increasing the benefit to $20 a month in later years. FSLBW replies this increased benefit but believes it is insufficient in light of the large rate increase that's being considered. So we are urging the board to consider increasing the rate benefit proposed in the rate study. We suggest any of three options for increasing the benefit. You can increase the benefit to equally increase in the base rate applied to all households. The proposed rate study would increase the base rate by $12.70. In the first year, so their grant benefit would increase to $22.70 and increase each year thereafter by the amount of the base rate increase. Or you could increase the benefit to 50% of the base rate as is done in the East Bay Municipal Water District. In this formula, the new grant benefit would be $24 increasing each year after that by the rate base rate increase 50% of the base rate increase. Or you could simply increase the benefit to $20 a month a year and increase it by $5 each year thereafter, which may be the simplest way to do it. We recognize that the program is only benefiting a relatively small group of low-income households, and then this is only a very modest way to assist those in need in our value. We wish the state would step in and address this growing problem, but unfortunately the governor recently vetoed a bill that would have provided meaningful assistance for low-income households with their water bill. In the meantime, we believe that SOBWD can take this modest step as a means to help households facing daunting financial champ challengers and who will be the most hard hit by the proposed rate increase. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Anybody else? I do see one remote attendee, Mark Dolson. Hi. So I just want to briefly expand on Jim Moser's comment. I, the way I see it, you know, districts across the state are struggling to contend with escalating cost of water and rate increases are an unavoidable response. And I see SLVWD trying as hard as it can to minimize the negative impact of its rate increase on those rate ratepayers that are least able to afford it. So from this perspective, the rate pair assistance program is just a tool that the district can employ in pursuit of that goal. It doesn't really matter whether the program should properly be funded by the state. The only really relevant question is whether the district can adjust the program to improve its positive impact. So I appreciate that the district is open to doing this. And I just think we want to push a little harder on exploring this option. Because as near as we can tell only a fraction of the rate payers who are eligible for the program are actually subscribed. It's hard to know what that fraction is, but maybe one third. This suggests that, you know, either they don't know about the program or they don't find it to be very significant. So that latter possibility is a concern. To assess this, the district could just try increasing the discount from $10 to say 20 or 25 in line with the various options that Jim laid out. And at a minimum, I think this response would provide useful feedback. So for example, there's $25,000 allocated for this today and it's not being used fully. It would cover about 100 rate payers at $20 per month. If more than 100 tried to sign up, this would tell the district that allocating more money to the program really will have a significant impact on the community. That would be valuable information. Otherwise, I feel like the program is really just window dressing. So thank you. Okay. Larry Ford. Thank you very much. I'd like to. I'd like to endorse what Jim Moser and Mark Wilson just said, and just say that I think this is one of the few ways that the water district and the rate payers could proactively make the cost of water more affordable. And I think it would be a good test of the assumption that more people, more eligible rate payers would join the rate payer assistance program. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I don't see any others. Wishing to participate. We're online at this point. Anybody else. We'll move on then. First, we'll start with the property team outreach. Charlie, are you. I think the memos from you. Yes, I'm happy to present and let Jamie wanted to present, but I'm prepared to please. Please go ahead, Carly. Okay. So, in April of 2023, the district kicked off its rate study process with reptilus, the firm we consulted with. Over the last few months, reptilus and our staff have presented to the board and public regarding the rate city process. And in order to expand outreach around the rate study and the potential upcoming. We've also set where we could just go through. We've requested that Miller math field are the outreach firm help with this effort and getting the messaging out to the public. And we brought this item to the admin committee on November 3rd and received direction to move ahead with Miller Maxfield to produce mailers to the public as well as social media paper ads, press releases. Part of the initial effort will be a mailer that will go out on November 27 to inform the public of the vote around the rate study acceptance at the December 7th meeting. The example of that postcard that will be mailed out is within this agenda packet. And then we also are preparing social media posts as well but those aren't complete. We do have some pricing around ads at the board is interested in that. And then outside of that, we have also agreed with the committee that we'll put together a detailed FAQ around the prop to 18. If that's the way we ended up going. So, I'm happy to answer any questions and Jamie, it's the president of the admin committee wanted to make any additional comments that be great. Okay. Jamie. Yes, I would like to add. So, just returning to the previous board meeting when we discussed outreach on this item. We, you know, one of the things that we had talked about was doing an initial meeting in advance of the December 7th. We had a study presentation to the board. And what we concluded at the admin committee meeting was that our time would be spent better spent, putting as much effort as we couldn't to outreach and advertising to let people know what was going to be considered at that December 7th meeting and directing them to, you know, additional information as described by Carly, rather than attempt to rush. In advance, and then have the December 7th meeting. So, there will be additional public outreach efforts as the board has already discussed, following the December 7th meeting should the board vote to move the to appropriate to 18 process, but we thought that this would be the wiser use of our resources in the interim. And I'll turn it back over. I don't know if Jeff would like to make some comments as well. I'll start it well. Okay. Question on the covering memo. Page 84 of the agenda packet. Next steps of the rate study of the board rate authorization is shown as November 16. That was pulled from a previous memo item. So, the dates on this are incorrect. Okay. The board rate authorization would be December 7 correct. Yes. Okay. All right. That's the one question that I have on this agenda packet. So, Bob. I've been through two of these fairly closely. One of the things that I noticed at both 2013 and 2017 is that people tend to come to the hearing if they come with questions about how to vote. It's like we're missing a step along in between when we say we've adopted it and when we have this public hearing. It's like there needs to be another one in there to allow people to come and ask questions. So, they decide not to contact anybody at the district or they want to have questions in a way that would allow more of a discussion around the question. As you all know, Prop 218 in line with many other state laws and regulations requires a certain minimum that public agencies have to do. I'm never in favor of doing the minimum because to me, doing the minimum basically is telling your community we're not really going to go to effort to actually engage with you on this issue. And while I appreciate the fact that we'd be sending out things and doing some social media and that sort of thing, we're still missing that piece. And I guarantee you we're going to have people at the, what is it the February meeting, they're going to come with questions and at that point truly too late to do anything in terms of voting. I also notice at least this particular postcard does the same thing that previous communications did. I mean I had the ads from both 2013 and 2017, where the sales pitch was we're going to do infrastructure. The reality from both of those rate increases that more than two thirds of the money went to operating expenses. That was not discussed at all in any of the sales material. We're kind of proceeding down the same, the same path. To me, this is a, you know, generally speaking, it looks like we're just following the same playbook that we followed in the last two times and I, I don't expect any real differences and outcomes on that should the board choose to adopt this. If we're interested in doing something different than I would suggest having a two hearings one hearing in January one hearing in February and that's where we'd be inviting people actually come with questions to have it more of a public hearing slash workshop so that we can be a little bit more interactive as opposed to the rigid rules that we operate the board meetings by. And that's just based on my experience with having gone through two of these. The 2013 was extremely contentious because of the proposal to build the Taj Mahal. And the 2017 was contentious around the rate at which the initial rate was going up and the total rate I think went up like 65% for the average bill. It doesn't have quite 65% doesn't have quite the step and they're not building a Taj Mahal. So, some of the emotion around that may not be the same but I think that's even more reason to try to do something a little bit different this time to do real engagement and transparency with the community. Okay. Um, as rarely as it happens I agree on this one. I think that I'm going to be struck. I haven't had the experience with the 2013 or this 2017 but I did have the experience with the rates are charged the fire search charge. It's really uncomfortable to see us basically having the hearing and people just showing up and some of them honestly and honest questions. And, you know, in the way it was a regular meeting didn't really allow for us to have a lot of back and forth. I think that the other thing that I'm concerned about is the timing of outreach I mean I think it's good that we're going to let people know that a decision is made on the seventh to move forward with the prop 218 process. But when people are really going to pay attention is when they get that notice in the mail. And that's why we need, I think, some kind of workshop community meeting. That's between when people get that and, you know, say a week or two after that and a week or two before the meeting at which 45 days later or whatever. I can answer people's questions and as Bob says not have it a formal meeting but have a more of a workshop kind of thing so what what is what is the admin group talked about for that. So, one of the potential strategies listed here was to have an informational public meeting in advance of the prop 218 approval meeting. And we looked at it and said wait a minute we'll get Thanksgiving. No, no, no, I'm talking about after the notice comes out which is going to be sometime the end of end of December. Okay, so you're talking afterwards. Yeah, because that's when people are going to go oh my God, right or have true questions. Well depending on how much information is in the notice right how specific it is around what their bills going to be working on that. I apologize, I think the memo the cover letter cover memo here is a little confusing, especially because the original dates were posted as part of this and wasn't updated. What we talked about in the admin committee was having a public open house or meeting that would address questions prior to the vote so after the mail or goes out about the prop 218 process we'd hold some type of public meeting or an open house to allow everyone to come and ask the questions, and then we would have the actual board, the actual vote. What kind of what week or time frame do you think you were targeting with the admin committee's discussion on that given we start the process on December 7 or 8. I do have a schedule that Miller Maxwell unfortunately they weren't able to give me the information prior to them, the agenda need to go out but I do have additional info information so if I can have a moment and I'll look into that Bob has another question. I don't have a question about it. You know, the reaction to the open house part of this isn't really a social event. This is we're talking about money. Either workshop or hearing. I really want it to be somewhat come across as somewhat formal with a in terms of this is real guys. Come and ask your questions. I don't want this to come across as a sales pitch or a or a social event. That's just my opinion, but you know this is great. Is, since you've discussed this at the admin committee meeting is Miller Maxwell. Ready prepared to support this workshop. Yes, yeah. Okay, with whatever other materials. We think we would need for that. As far as some type of a presentation. Yes, and it looks like in the scope they've provided they have the public meeting occurring in January, but they don't have a specific date this time so. That will need to be determined, but it would happen after the mailer goes out and then prior to the meeting with the board. Right. Okay. Well, does the mailer not need to have. Workshop date. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. And then before we finalize the mailer. The committee to hone in on that. If I could make a quick point or two. Sorry, Jeff asked when the mailer was going out exactly. Yeah, I jump in here and I might be able to answer as well. There will be more than one mailer so we're doing a mailer in advance of the December 7th meeting and the mailer after the December 7th vote. The admin committee is meeting again at the beginning of December, and we'll have an update for Miller Maxfield at that time. And we'll look at dates for the public outreach workshop. And at that point, my recommendation, because I do this professionally, is that those kinds of workshops are not typically board meetings. The board members may attend, but they may not necessarily need to participate. They're typically led by staff, and it's an opportunity for staff to respond directly to the public with their questions. It's an opportunity for us to listen in, but there's not a vote that's being asked of us so it's not a formal a board meeting in that sense. I have an issue along. So, one of the things that the other one of the other big things that bothers me about these, the prop 218 is the manner in which it's conducted and I understand that it's in the Constitution I don't think people really understood they were going to have an anti-democratic reverse vote when they voted for it. The focus was on the other part of 218. If we're not going to have a board meeting or a meeting where dissenting voices can be heard or other points of view can be heard, not only by the public but by the board members. And I will obviously offer a dissenting opinion, then it just becomes another sales job. And I, again, if that's what the board wants to do, you know, we can certainly do that. But regular ballot measures, regular votes always have both sides, both arguments. And there's a debate around it. This prop 218 process tends to, again in the past, stifle any kind of debate. It then becomes much more of a sales job. So that's why I put you to talking about it. Let me go to Jeff first, Jamie, and then I'll come back to you. So I didn't hear Jamie say that board members wouldn't be attending or wouldn't be available to answer questions, only that it would not be board members running the meeting and we would not be dominating all the discussion. Is it going to be three minutes? Is it what again, what is the forum by which a board member is able to participate in a meaningful way answering questions, providing a dissenting opinion, providing dissenting information, etc. That's not clear at all. Jamie? Yes. Okay, so board members have lots of opportunities to offer their views. We have multiple board meetings where we have discussed the right things. We'll have a public hearing where we will have an opportunity to hear from you, Bob. We'll have the vote on the 7th, where I'm confident we'll hear from you there. And of course, we'll have the final decision in February, where again opposing board voices can be heard. The public workshop is to actually hear from the public and not the board. And that means that the public will have an opportunity to get up, give their comment if they have dissenting opinion and ask their questions. They can, the staff then takes those comments in. And then the board members, they're provided in a report back to the board if there's board members are not in attendance. And it further informs our decision, but it's actually not an opportunity for you to give another view of your opinion since you've had so many and you will continue to have so many. It's an opportunity to hear directly from the public. Well, by the way, you know, you all have opinions. We all have it. Just as mine happens to be the dissenting. Let's be real clear about that. I'm not going to interject here for a minute. Jamie. As board members, we're also members of the public. Correct. And we're free to attend the meeting. But I feel that we should be also limited to that. Three minute rule. We're putting on the members of the public. We're not going to have a board meeting. We're not going to have a board meeting. We're not going to have a board meeting. The board is in attendance as a quorum. And we comment on an issue before the board. It's a public board meeting. It's no longer a workshop. Okay. We can. We can very easily, and we've done this in the past, have a board meeting and run it as a workshop. It is absolutely the way to do it. I'm going to defer to. Jamie. Or that's, that's my opinion. I don't think anybody will take in with you. All of you is offered here in our next discussion. Right. I believe our policy. Or policy. Allows for us to hold meetings like that. Where it's a workshop. Right. A study session rather than a meeting where we have votes. And I'd like to be able to offer information to the public that they may not have thought about it. It may not have questions about till they hear a dissenting opinion. Okay. So the admin committee is going to meet further on this. Jeff, Jamie. Carly. You've heard. Yeah. You points here. I don't see that there's any. Motion that we. I do have. Have here in front of us. Yes. Let me. Accept the staff report. That's. That's true. Yes. I do see that motion. Let me go out to the public and see what questions. We have from the public on this agenda item. Come back. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Jim. I just, I'm very pleased to hear about the idea of a workshop. I thought that. Bob. And. I thought that was a missing piece of this. So I was very pleased to hear that you're considering that. In terms of the information that's out so far about this, the race. Two things I think are quite efficient. That would be very helpful. One is, I know this question in the community, but what the impact of the race study will be at the school district. And so I hope that that could be very explicitly laid out. Based on their usage. This year. What will they be paying in the next five years. So that we can. From what I can tell, I'm on the budget plans committee and I tried to figure it out. I couldn't. Really. Figure it out. Because I don't know what their usage is. They're a fixed rate. They'll be less. I think it's going to be less. But the base rates going up. So I just think the community will want to know that. We know that the school district board will be very interested. And I was pleased with the proposal. Making it look like. Well, at least have a very modest. If not actually. Reduction. And secondly. From my meeting of it, the main increase is going to be in the summer among heavy users. Who have gardens. And that is not clear in the way it's been presented so far. By the console. By the ref talents. So I think we need. You really need people going to know. Who's going to be. Really impacted by this. I would just encourage the admin committee. And to get your consultant to develop some. Material that will help. We'll. Clarify. Who's, who's paying. What. And. My read that's who's going to really have the rates go up. Okay. So I think we need. You really need people going to know. Who's going to get really impacted by this. I would just encourage the admin committee. And to get your consultants to develop some. Material that will help. You really need people going to know. Who's going to have the rates go up. Okay. Other participants. I see. You have your hand up, Mark. Do you want to comment on this? Is it still left? Okay. I actually do have a comment. It's really a question as a member. A public member of the admin committee. There are some things I'm unclear on. And it might be possible for Jamie or Carly. To comment. So for example. I don't know. What sort of presentation is envisioned at the December 7th board meeting. I don't know whether it will be a presentation by ref tell us or by Miller max field or by none of the above. I don't know. Secondly. What opportunities the admin committee is going to have. To. To actively. Collaborate. With Miller max field as they develop materials to be presented. As opposed to simply having them tell us what they've done. And accept that as a federal company. Thank you. Okay. Jamie or Jeff. You want to comment on. In particular. Mark. I think it would be good for Carly to. Explain what the presentation at the December 7th board meeting will look like because that's not. Really within the admin committees per view directly. Okay. Yeah. I believe for the December 7th meeting, unless Heather had something that she was planning to prepare, it would be a staff memo. And then the board to vote. The other piece that we've talked about as staff is preparing an informational memo that talks through. What we've done in the past few years. As far as capital improvement projects. And other operational changes that have happened. So that would be a separate item. And, but otherwise I believe it would just be a staff report. For the rate. May I. There is a presentation plan with RAF tell us and myself. For the December 7th meeting. Okay. Okay. Okay. From the board. Yeah. Time is really getting compressed here. When is the admin committee meeting again? So we meet the first Friday of each month. And I just, I have the updated schedule here now. So the board is going to have a meeting. So we're going to have a meeting. So we're going to have a meeting. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So we have the updated schedule here now. So the postmark for the prop to 18 notices will be December 29th. And then the public hearing would be February 15th. So we have between December 29th to February 15th to hold the workshop. Okay. Happy new year. Okay. Okay. The other thing. In terms of the usage part, I think, I mean, I don't know if I'm going to talk about it anyway, which is who's being impacted. At one point in time, I had gotten a histogram of the number of customers that fell into each unit category over a, I think it was averaged over a three or four month period. And this was when Stephanie was here. And I think I got it for both winter and summer. And it might be worthwhile to do something like that where you've got what your rate is, if you're one unit, you know, up to 20 or whatever it is with before and after, you know, what your expected pay. I think that would go a long way to precisely addressing what Jim was talking about and do it in a graph form. So that it's easier for people, you know, with table and table and table and table and table and table and table. And I think that's a really great idea. Well, then, I'd like to make the motion that the board except of the staff report concerning Proposition to 18 outreach. The modifications. The changes that have been reflected in the comments here. schedule. Second. Okay so that's for me anyway a little bit unclear exactly what is it that was changed? What are the specific things that are different from what's in the report? Um Carly presented uh alternate dates uh than what's in the report. That was so that that's the the substantial change that I saw. Okay but if we're just voting on that that doesn't entirely reflect everything we discuss. No it doesn't. Okay so are we saying that they the rest of those items other than the dates the rest of those items are not part of the motion? Um correct. Okay great thank you. Okay we have a motion in front of us uh Holly. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Falls. No. Director Maygood. Yes. Director Ackman. Can I offer a friendly amendment to the motion which I think gets at what Bob was suggesting which is that in addition to incorporating the adjusted dates provided by Carly that we will um come back with a plan for a public outreach workshop uh a format to be defined uh at the next admin committee meeting. Um I appreciate the offer. I won't change my vote given the language that you used. Okay I slay off for my friendly amendment. Point of order once once a vote is happening you you can't start making amendments so if you want to make another motion or Bob wants to make another motion after this vote we can do it but we need to finish this vote. Thank you Bob. Director Ackman. Uh I guess I'll vote no because I wanted to make an amendment to the motion so I'm not quite sure how to do that. You make another motion. Okay well I yeah. Okay uh you had my hand up but you know it's impossible for me to just make a motion. Yes I didn't see that uh so you've heard what uh Holly and Gail said do you wish to offer anything else as far as a motion? I would offer a second motion that says that in addition to accepting the changes proposed in terms of dates uh that the we will come back with a plan for a public outreach workshop to be held between December 29th and February 15th on a date is yet to be determined. Second. Okay Holly. Thank you. Anybody from the public wish to comment on that motion? Seeing nobody else from the public left online. Oh I do see two. Okay. Seeing nobody from the public. President Smalley. Sorry I didn't have a quick comment. Okay. Again I appreciate Jamie doing that. I could vote for something that um had some specificity around it right now it's it's not something that I could support though I appreciate the effort I'm looking forward to what comes back and hopefully that will be what I can support. Okay. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Falls. No. Director Mayhud. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to uh change order items. Um the Alta Via Drive main replacement project let's see uh Carly you submitted this to us uh for you. All our district manager or engineering manager Garrett Rolf to introduce this item. Promoted. Thank you. Um staff recommendation is that the board directors review this memo for contract change orders one two and three and authorize the acting general manager to approve the Anderson Pacific engineering construction requested change orders one two and three for the Alta Via Drive main replacement project. The background on this the Alta Via neighborhood including the Alta Via Drive went away across the avenue um were damaged by the 2020 CZU fires destroying above ground water mains in the area as well as several homes. Our currently ongoing project includes installation of a permanent pipeline beneath the roadway which will replace the temporary fix in place since 2020. The current project is also greatly increases the number of fire hydrants in the neighborhood. The construction contractor Anderson Pacific has been performing well with minimal delays and no issues from local ratepayers. They have submitted to us the following items for which they're requesting additional payment. PCA-01 material cost escalation bids for this project were submitted in late January of 2022 and the project was awarded in February of 2022 from February until April of that year material shortages caused prices in the three times for ductile iron pipe to skyrocket. In April the staff presented updated material bids from forced suppliers showing cost increases of 15 to 20 percent. Can I stop you? Yeah sure just a minute. If you're reading these three to us yes verbatim unless there's a reason why these have to be read into the record no because they're already printed. I think we're good with these. Do you have anything else to add beyond what we've read in the memo that you want us to consider before we begin the discussion? No, I'd be happy to take questions. Okay all right then let me lead off with just a comment on this first. I think the cover memo for these change orders is concise to the point and provides appropriate explanation of what these change orders are from my perspective in going through these. Joel wrote these. Yes. Thank you. I will. Okay with that let me go to the rest of the board and see what comments and questions we have on these. Jeff? So looking at these I don't see how we get around the fact that the cost of the pipe went up that's you know the sun also rises. I did have a question here if I can give me a second here to look at this. There's one where we encountered a culvert. Whose culvert was that? I believe it would be the county's culvert. And it was apparently in bad repair so we we've put our pipe underneath the culvert and repaired the culvert too. Correct. If that's the county's culvert shouldn't we be asking them to chip in on repairing it? That sounds reasonable to me. I know it's obviously not our $70,000. Well it's not a lot of money. Yeah I mean if it were $70,000. Yeah it was $70,000. Why poke the bear? $3,500. What's the other one here? No that was really the only one I had on that. Okay okay we're focused only on this first change order. Gail? Seeing what just questions on the first one would you want to go through this? No I'm sorry first agenda item. Yeah so I have a couple of questions and I want to make it clear that I realized you're sort of in the awkward position of cleaning up things that happen that you have no responsibility for and I because it's all before your time so I fully appreciate this. But I guess I was I understand the problem with the prices going up but the amount that went up was well beyond the level that the district manager or now our general manager should can approve on his own and so I'm just trying to understand what you know normally the process would be. It seems a little bit too casual that just the chief engineer can just say yeah we'll reimburse you for this. I mean that when I saw that email I thought you know that seems like there ought to be a little bit more of a formal interaction and at what point would this have come back to the board saying this is a lot more expensive than we thought and this is a question I just don't know what the policy might be. It should have come to the board prior to acceptance. Yeah Any amount over what the district manager can approve? I recall though that did we approve the contract explicitly with the fact that we would pay for I'm almost positive we had the materials escalation. I am positive we had it in there but I wanted to make sure what I don't know is whether we had any limit on it. Yeah right in terms of what could be agreed to without it coming back to the board. So I think that's it's a really good point and I think we probably need to clarify that in future contracts. Yeah so the yes we're not buttoning up the project and and waving goodbye and oh here's another point check yeah $150,000 worth of change orders and we're finding out about it we're in a position of what else can we do this point as the board other than say yes if it had been brought to our attention maybe we would have said yes to HDB. Yeah that was my response but you don't have that choice for that input to be able to offer. Okay all right Gail. Yeah That's okay I have another question on the third one where we had encountered the the pre-existing one and a half inch pipe and apparently it was not where people thought it was and this you know was a fairly expensive fix and I guess do we not do things like go out with a magnetometer and figure out where things are so that we don't do this I'm just surprised that we would not go out and figure out where the pre-existing lines are and make that determination accurately before we start putting in the alignment of a new pipeline. Yeah I agree it's somewhat shocking the amount of information that we don't have on our own system. Commonly one and a half inches going to be plastic and you're not going to pick that up in any utility search other than if it was leaking and you were bubbling into it. Well it depends on the age of it if most of these were replacing or old they probably would be metal. I will say I mean this is not the first time that the district has found a service pipe that no one knew about yeah that's ours that's ours I mean you know just down the road from where I live there was a pipe that was supposed to be here and it was over here and you know I think there was a service line over on the cottages and yeah okay right okay. Yeah I was going to ask about the same thing that Gail did and say but since it's a service line it probably didn't get covered in the inventory that we did right so is what it is. I did want to echo what briefly what Mark said this was a really great memo that explained things very very clearly and I appreciate you doing that. One question I had have we had any issues with Anderson Pacific relative to noise or anything like that like we've had in other places. So Anderson Pacific they're staging out of Middle and Riverside Drive over in Brooklomen and I think the neighbors are a little perturbed with that usage on that property it's a zoned residential property and they're doing construction staging out of it. But are they there at 7.30 in the morning backup beepers going off? I don't have any particular information on that. No one's complaining so probably right. I think Rick from Rand lives over there the former board member and his wife Chris and they've called me a couple times expressing their displeasure with construction activities happening in his own residential area. Okay yeah and then just on the on the culvert I am much more concerned about the free ride on paving that we're going to be granting the county I don't know how to deal with this but I'm actually surprised for example or runway which is what I drive on a lot got resurfaced this year at some point we're going to put it but that was the first time in the 35 years that I've been here I'm sure we all have the same stories we're going to be doing a lot of paving here that we're going to be basically subsidizing the county and it's an issue from my point of view. Now if there's a way we can work with the county to minimize what the paving is while still being good citizens all that I'm certainly open to do that I'd certainly like to have a very productive friendly conversation around it but we need to do something. To that point Bob I've already had the thought of and it's in my notes I want to begin to address that at an engineering environmental committee meeting yeah and have a more open discussion with staff what are our policies for the different roadway types that we're working in between county, state, private and let's get so that we as the board understand what are the district constrained to or what are we doing beyond constraints that we're doing to be good neighbors but let's do that at the engineering and surface it back to the rest of the board. If we need to be aware of that again I thought it was a very good memo and thank you for spending the time to put it together the way that you did. Okay uh Jamie. No questions I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the memo I understood it completely. Okay um and to Jeff's comment about going back to the county for this uh if I were the county's engineer and we came to them uh we had no we had no plans to replace that at any time soon thank you for repairing that for us um have a nice day exactly exactly I understand it's just but I don't know about anything to like this beforehand such as the paving yes but we'll talk about that offline in another in another meeting so after the fact there's nothing there but before the fact you might say hey you're culverts collapsing right and uh let's let the cost of it so I'd like to make the motion and then we'll go out for public comment I move that the board direct the acting general manager to amend the existing contract with anderson pacific engineering construction in an amount not to exceed 93 742 and 69 cents for the requested change orders one two and three one second okay any comments from the public on this uh same man here uh and now online uh holly would you president smalley yes vice president hill yes director false yes director mayhood yes director ackman yes okay okay moving on then to the next uh change order item um which is the ultimate drive replacement uh specific line specifically on moan and way for the soldier pop wall uh our engineering manager will also take leave on this item okay okay so would you like me to read the memo or do you want to just jump into questions uh I'm good with going into questions since yes unless there's anything else beyond what you reflected here in the memo I would say the only no yeah it's all in the memo okay all right then for the rest of the board the engineering committee uh did uh review this uh previously um uh but I let's see recommend the board review and discuss yes uh we are great that to review and discuss uh we did not uh recommend anything beyond that um so uh I had a couple of questions at the engineering committee meeting that I wanted to either follow up on or read it right here um this is a private road correct that's my understanding yes okay um and from what I remember before we didn't do anything to cause the failure where we're uh proposing to put this uh soldier pile wall okay am I correct in that or you are correct okay so uh this was an existing condition uh in that area prior to us uh doing our construction yeah I have some uh additional information if you're interested in the geotechnical report sure so it indicates certain heavy storms of January 2023 the outboard edge of moan and way failed creating a 30 foot wide by six to eight foot high headscarp observation of the recent slide scarp indicates that fill slope has slid in the past as evidenced by buried vapor barriers below the recently installed vapor barriers to protect against erosion and further sliding okay so that was uh this past winter right so it's been covered with plastic and there's other like here's a plastic under that right we're trying to shed water coming and just yeah the water eroding the loose fill so it's a cut and fill road right so the inboard side is more solid the outboard side had trash in it and right um fill it's a private road um from looking on uh google maps it looks to me like there are two or three homes beyond where we're going to install this soldier power wall and it's a dead end road it is a dead end road there are seven meters beyond the location of the retainer okay okay so meters not necessarily houses though right because the way that they're configuring you make a lot with a meter or something there's additional at least two meters below and out to be a drive right this area is heavily impacted by the cz fire right so a lot of those homes are no longer standing correct okay um so at at most seven seven right pairs right now maybe three maybe three yeah maybe three at this point okay um did we get competitive bids any other contractors there are not any competitive bids at this time okay did we seek any we can't seek them uh it's what i thought we asked at the committee meeting about that's what i recollect but okay okay um then um um given the current condition of the of the road uh and what we're what we have in contract for road rehabilitation repair paving are we gonna are we likely to see a change order after you put if you put this wall in for and here's what else we're going to need to do before we finalize the yeah so the contractor and the district and the county we've already walked both roads so alta via is a county maintained road right moaning way i'm focused mostly on moaning way so we have a unit price for dig out sections right which would be six inches of base rock and three inches of ac and then we have a unit price for ac leveling so do you think we're gonna have more change order it's guaranteed we're gonna have to pay additional money for paving okay yes are we gonna see another hundred fifty to two hundred thousand dollars i anticipated this road to be between sixteen thousand five hundred and twenty two thousand dollars in addition to the contract uh amounts for paving okay okay yeah uh those are my questions at this point uh bob morning the meeting with me were the questions you know yeah i mean the chief question i had and like we have our attorneys here i think uh is whether or not this will be considered gift of public funds given that this is a private red if it's a gift of public funds um yeah please don't yeah i don't i don't know that we've had the opportunity to analyze it my first reaction um without having specifically looked at it for that criteria is that it would not it would it sounds like it would meet the criteria to to not be that meaning that there's enough benefit to the district um you know that you wouldn't but but again i say that it's just an initial reaction without having actually analyzed it and you can certainly give us direction to look at that issue yeah i mean that was one of my questions i had yeah for me is is the biggest one this does go back to i think the general issue that we've talked about already i won't belabor it too much of really understanding who owns what and and getting a clear picture of that before we go out there now the complicating factor here and why i'm inclined to just go ahead with this tonight is that this is an area that was heavily impacted by the cpu fire and the notion of however many houses are i'm going away being able to handle this is like zero um in terms of them financially handling it um i i think at at some point that there's a collective response to the cpu fire that we have to recognize and deal with and while i don't necessarily want this to be a precedent setting thing for everything that we might encounter i i think in this case we uh we we need to proceed okay um gail uh i can't agree with that what bob just said i i i have a hard time seeing why this is our responsibility at all um it's a failure we didn't cause the failure of the road um and i mean i could just think of there's there are thousands of places where there are private roads where people would love to have somebody build a 200 000 retaining wall for them and so i i just don't see how you can justify this so i'm gonna vote no jeff when i first looked at this i immediately thought who's what whose road is this and why aren't they paying for it um how much of this i mean you've got the wall you're gonna have to excavate for the pipe uh are we paving the road also or so the pipes already installed okay we cannot pay beyond this road failure unless we build a wall okay is the rest of the road paved on either side it is paved except where we've dug the trench and put our pipe in okay it's restoration paving in this case is very loosely uh used so what is the paving what's something is there is something is there but it's very minimal i've got a a Subaru four-wheel drive and i went up there with it and okay it's so it's not sitting on three inches of nice nice clean asphalt it's in a very poor condition for the road overall agreed for for monad's way and altivia they're both in very poor condition this is what's the why we have to do the digouts and we have to do the leveling course yeah i mean again from a broader policy point of view um you know these are absolute things we need to address particularly going forward but can we conclude the project if we don't do this let's say we just said we're not going to do this retaining wall uh what what what what happens the contractor will not pave he won't even cross it with this slurry truck so they backfilled with base rock above where the road failure is so it seems like it would open us up the liability if we don't pave and gary um correct me if i'm misunderstanding but i thought this retaining wall would also protect our water main and that was part of the reasoning that we wanted to move forward as well was if another storm happened the road failed it would take the pipe that we just installed with it i would be very concerned if there was a failure there and we were just done construction and dug up the road and put our pipe underground and then there was a failure and that people would want to blame us for the condition any other questions no none of these you wonder right okay uh jamie sorry are we voting or asking questions we're still asking questions okay so um i i think that jeff essentially asked my question but it sounds like um if we don't do this we are unable to ensure that our pipe is protected but what what was in place before uh tarp with sandbags no i mean like was oh oh this is why i mean it's above grade it got burned in this easy fire it's an above grade temporary pipe of hdpe i mean basically all of that area had above grade pipe right so before the fire hit it was all above ground right so again this is not uncommon up here people are just throwing pipe down to serve mm-hmm yeah yeah it melted so now we have another pipe above grade that we're operating with and the new pipelines installed under the road so we can continue doing that just leave the above ground pipe not do anything more the new pipeline is installed yeah i understand that yeah that's the alternative i think as we just continue serving those places on above ground pipe if what's in the ground is sunk cost and bye-bye how much should we spend putting it on the ground how much of the contracts just for the modern way part not i mean the pipe is installed so all the houses are going to be connected to the new main the only portion portion of the contract we're going to do is the paving right um so the only able to do paving beyond where you're proposing correct soldier by wall correct um and if we serve off of the uh main as it's installed right now and a failure happen uh it's going to happen where you're proposing to put the wall we go back to what bob is i think suggesting above ground that's there it's i'm not by the way just be clear i'm not i'm not advocating for it i'm saying the alternative is you abandon what you installed and you continue serving remember ground we could uh go above ground from there uh if the failure happens um the pipe is on the inboard inboard side correct so up against the slope on the uphill side another policy item uh yeah once you get to the hairpin there's like a drainage feature where the culvert it and it's that drainage feature area where the soldier where the wall would go it's downhill from the culvert is where the role is where the wall goes yeah okay okay guys it's ugly there's no good answer there's no good answer here right it's just like the least worst um what i was asking for on the paving uh the cost the additional change order cost that we're going to see on that uh you gave us an estimate somewhere in the 20 000th range okay uh is that based on your discussions with the contractor or sell because i'm still concerned about another hundred fifty two hundred so the contract includes an overlay on the entire road blown away and out of yet and prosper i don't feel like it over like that so the only change is sub grade prep right so that was walked with the county with the contractor on the district on all the roads right okay on the entire project okay and mark was spray paint we got unit prices okay and we have square footage from the spray paint side of it and between 16 500 okay sounds like $22 000 for the change i agree for that portion of the to address the subs so standard but condition of the road so we can put our overlay down right i mean it's not to say that it couldn't come back at 35 000 or what have you but it's 150 or 200 right they've done diligence okay which is good yeah okay still conflicted on this one so okay i i know okay the board directs the acting general manager to amend an existing contract with under specific engineering construction in an amount not to exceed $198,900 for the construction of the modem way soldier pile retaining wall i'm just doing this along here no seconds right i i so we have a motion out in front of us uh i'm not hearing anybody else at this point okay let's move on yeah staff needs to come back with a solution move on yeah i think what i'm worried about is that after last week where we said we had a we were basically being told what to do by the payment company and i kind of got the sense here that that's also what's happening is that the the paint the paving subcran tractor is saying this is what we want to have happen because it's the best thing for them and there's i just would like to see some alternative solutions that you know so that because it's very easy for them yeah sure on may 8th uh the contractor said to rfi alerting the district to the problem of this existing condition and my predecessor reached out to hara kusinage geotechnical engineers and requested that they perform a geotechnical investigation and design a soldier pile wall to address it good and that's what i presented yeah no that's what i'm saying is that you're in this awkward position where i want to know it's not your work not you so i'm just saying it solves the problem yeah yeah it's it's not necessarily a hard job to pay for all this i guess well we're just in there disturbing and working it's a method to solve the problem sure uh and it's a uh a very permanent yes solution it is so what alternative could you bring to us if it's not this 190 we contacted the engineer record and asked him about putting a concrete slab on grade over the failed section he said that that would not be wise because that's a bearing failure and it would be undermined he said if you don't want to build a wall you could build like a viaduct like a bridge but they're doing what they do in nine in several places you're not going to be able to get away from a deep foundation because the material at the top is incompetent and failing so we have to get down into competent material for it to work okay so we could look at a bridge that would probably be just as expensive or more i think more or more yeah i mean you talked about i mean you see what they do on nine in those viaducts i mean not that we'd be doing that big but it is a there's a ton of drilling that goes on and concrete and all the rest of the can levers out over the failure exactly i i they do it on highway nine between felton and santa Cruz they've done it at jay's timber line yeah you guys oh yeah those are those are massive jobs um yeah they've gone all the way down the bottom don't walk um uh the motion i can do right there the motion um i understand i'm still searching uh so i'll second it you and we can vote okay okay um we have a motion in front of us colleagues that's been made and seconded need to go out to the public thank you thank you uh comments from the public uh anybody want to weigh in on that mr morten please my name eric martin from bold creek um seems to me that you're talking about doing capital improvements to private private property um my house my water meter is out in the street and next to the street in the right away from my side and meter to the house is my problem it seems to me that in trying to fix these folks problem line up their meters out on the street tell them to do it however they want i mean why am i going to pay for capital improvements on their property we spend for capital improvements on my property except me immediately but it seems to me that kind of swimming through the seaweed not seeing the ocean because the seaweed's in the way this is all a private property issue they chose to build their houses there they chose to build a road with multiple layers of plastic and failed roadbed so you put lipstick on that pig you're gonna own it no we're gonna own it and my point is if they want those those properties to have water put the meters out on the street right off the main offer them some kind of deal with the contractor maybe they can get together and go in and mass for the project but i i have a fundamental problem doing capital improvements on somebody else's property it's not going to really return anything except to those folks that'll do anything for anybody else because that's a dead end spur correct mm-hmm yes so it seems to me that's their problem that road the culvert the the lack of a retaining wall the drainage issue the bad roadbed this seems to me that you put anything on top of that you're going to own it and it's going to come back and you will buy it because you're going to say well it was fine before you cut your grubby little mits on it and even if only you just put some asphalt on top of it and it slides down the hill how much is it going to cost to replace i don't know how long the road is but let's just say a hundred feet of road that slips all the way to the side where the embankment is are you going to build them a whole another bridge across that opening just just food for thought thank you okay thank you um anybody else uh online wishing to comment about this one seeing nobody else online well yeah i mean certainly created solution and and might be worth looking at i i mean just looking at the map here i think there'd be access and easement issues um that that you would encounter it may be that everybody will be cooperative um if to do that you'd also probably be looking at a long line um they would also probably have to deal with a pump situation um yeah i mean always look at i just want to move this along one way or the other right great to either because we got to get this and that and recognize i don't know how many feet went into moan and weigh but recognize if you do anything else you basically just you know flush that money um so um uh yeah that money is probably more than what we're talking about here would be my guess again going forward we got it to have a better policy around private roads we have a motion in front of us um holly president smalley no vice president hill no director falls yes director may good no and um director ackman might have left already yeah but she i saw her eyes blink she's still alive okay are you still there no she said she left at 738 okay but my vote would be yes if they move in second okay okay so can we take that i think so it doesn't make any difference but uh it does for the record yeah she had moving yes okay she may be in her other meeting yeah i'm not able to participate just as a follow-up question to the failure um how much longer is Anderson Pacific gonna be in there or want to be in there um so they have to do a little cross country portion between moan and weigh down to alton via we just got authorization from environmental to proceed on that and uh then we have to swap over all the meters paving in december is that a road in the road or in a cross country that was a cross country it's through the mountain okay so so we're gonna be paving yeah we're gonna be paving december type right december yes okay you guys got a month to um yeah figure this out yeah come back with all right uh we're done with we're done with that item uh moving on then uh uh so the recent interactions with the big basin water company um this is the demo that um i put together um i had confirmed the information that we saw uh in the center cruiscent article uh it was i think uh november 5th uh where it was uh describing what went on in the meeting that was held for big basin users on november 2nd referred to the fact that uh and we're now providing the water uh from our district was a surprise uh we did authorize the connection we did authorize the connection yes but the the recent uh in august start but uh so based on that uh i talked to our former general manager uh and then also talked to carly to understand uh what it is that uh we are doing for uh big basin at this point so i summarized that uh in the memo that i put together um and basically we're sending water uh to the tune of 93 000 a day uh we're being compensated uh by the uh court appointed receiver for that for that uh at our residential rate of uh the 1260 1266 uh poor per ccf um i also had uh concerns after what i was reading there and from some other uh media sources about what was being said about the water district and what we were maybe going to do were not going to so i contacted the uh court appointed receiver and had a discussion with him um and i've reflected that here in the memo also uh with what i wanted to convey to him being uh conversations at the end with rick and rick rick was retired wanted to make sure he knew that uh the district's uh efforts to evaluate consolidation and where what the board told rick uh back in february that you know cease suspend further evaluation and the fact that we're considering the late increase since they're now purchasing water from us wanted him to not be aware and he was aware of all of those so um information that i got from him uh the one thing that uh uh i have you know some question on or concern on is uh our staff further supported uh because in the past i'm aware of we have uh work that we did on we have a big basin water company that uh the previous owner operator jim more asked us to do that we're still not compensated for um and i don't i didn't want to see that continue so i understand from the court appointed receiver that he'd like to engage us and work um and he is the one that told me that yeah he'd like us to be able to increase our pump capacity but i didn't come back to carly at that point to ask any questions on that i don't know if that was true or if yes we are following through on that but between he's asking us to take the pump capacity from 62 gpm to 100 because from my calculations of we're running that pump here 24 hours at capacity to provide that 93 000 uh gallons a day so okay he wants to go further to see if we can go further and i think it's so that they can shut their well down to do well rehab work sometime in 2024 so that we could be a maximum capacity that's important instead that's my guess there's two reasons for that they did say that uh it's willing to uh compensate us for that so my thoughts were well uh do we want to get some type of a contract agreement in place for our services so uh with that uh that's what i wanted to convey in the memo as far as what we might do further on this so i'd like to open up to the board for questions on this we'll start with gail um i guess what i'm just concerned about is that we make sure that we cover our costs on this and that those costs are not just the incremental cost in other words there has to be some kind of overhead charge that goes with it because our own right our own rate payers are expected to help pay for administrative overhead the buildings and everything else and so i would hope that we would have some kind of contract i know that there was we talked about this gosh over a year ago and it never happened but we should have some contract i think for providing water i'm also concerned about what's going to happen when the new rate increase goes through and what exactly we're going to build them um because obviously the the fixed rate that we have right now 1266 per ccf is not going to be it right and so what what rate do we charge them at and then the other is some kind of contract for providing emergency um help for them and i and i don't think we want to become their their electricians we want to only be called on in emergencies um and make it clear that uh you know in emergencies we have to deal with our own emergencies first there's a big storm and i guess finally i would say that i would hope that um we make this somehow coherent with what we would do in terms of selling water with scott's valley and i spoke to dave today about that because i wanted to see you know what they and he says that they also have paid the 1266 which is pretty you know expensive for a situation where it's just basically turning a valve at the at the intertie um and so he was saying that actually he was engaged or they were engaged with along with santa cruz with a discussion with rap tell us to try to figure out what would be the appropriate costs of water that would be shipped along the new intertie of the santa cruz and scott's valley are going to have this big intertie and what rates should be charged for that water from santa cruz to scott's valley and as dave said with the potential that they might charge us that water from them for for some reason so it does raise an interesting issue of whether we should be talking to rap tell us about coming up with what what is an appropriate rate i mean obviously i think the first thing that comes to mind is the industrial rate right which is what i think is going to be 10 something going forward less than the current 1266 but but i'm not sure that's exactly what it should be with i think we should take advantage of having rap tell us still working for us to get their advice about you know and that there should be some little extra thing we pay them for to do that calculation for us it would be good to do it now okay jeff so two concerns here one is that from what i can see the big base of water company with or without the receiver it's not fiscally solvent at this point they're spending more on water every month than they're getting in from the ratepayers and i know they have a big rate increase request at the public utilities commission but until that happens they're spending down the bank account whatever bank account the receiver has to work with so i would say that any agreement we have with them we need to have very strict terms on payment and and make sure that we don't find ourselves suddenly with them it arrears to us several hundred thousand dollars and no cash um so i i think we really need to be sure that and writing an agreement that it has prompt payment that we are willing and ready to turn spring it off if they miss payments um secondly i would comment on what gal said regarding the scott's valley to santa cruz pipeline that they're put again and if they put that in presumably we were happy to sell water to scott's valley at the rates we were selling it and it was profitable for us i presume um if they put in a big pipeline down there we are going to be in a price situation between santa cruz and us as to who scott's valley decides to buy water if they need more water than they've got wells so we need to take a look at the impact of that and whether we want to continue selling water to scott's valley whether they want to continue buying from us after they put that pipeline in it's a future set it's a future issue that we need to look at but but i think my my biggest point on you know the more relevant point is uh the big basin that they just don't look like they're financially solving business at this point and we need to be very careful or not no we need to be very careful that we get paid properly and okay we need to be very willing to turn this bigot off if they don't pay well i mean i'd like to start by saying it's really unclear to me where um this interaction goes between what staff should be doing and what the board should be doing um there there's a lot in here and what gale talked about that sounds like uh items that staff should be doing not the board and uh this has been a topic in the past in other contexts and um it it it's concerning to me okay right i i think you should have taken the rather than i mean if i had contacted the guy would that have been okay no okay well see there we are okay um i i think there needs to be a whole lot more clarity around this because it seems like there's two sets of rules um however within the context of what we're talking about here i mean i also saw something in the in the paper about them thinking the best thing was for us to buy them um i i think at some point uh staff should probably have a conversation with them um about about what a public agency can do and so that they are providing real information to their customers that's solid um if they did something like a felton that might be one thing um and i say like because it wouldn't be exactly like but like that but to think that the San Lorenzo Valley water district is going to cut a check to buy the big base of water district uh big base of water company um hopefully that's not what he meant um i would have to see the contract relative to a services i'm very concerned about this escalating way out of control very very quickly and us having very little ability to throttle that it's not reasonable to say once you're supplying them water you're going to cut it off no it's not i mean that is not going to happen right and i was being somewhat figurative there i mean that's that's our yeah um so i mean i i think i i think we are already you know again we're trying to be really good neighbors here i mean we've had the filling station up we you know we've been supportive as much as we can uh we did a ton of work around trying to figure out if there is a way to um make a a merger happen neither the state nor the county was willing to put any money on the table at the time it didn't seem like all of a sudden we have money um wow that's really interesting um so and by the way we're you know we we will never recover those costs that that we invested so i am deeply concerned about how much further we're getting into this and i i think this is something that carly and the new general manager ought to be um uh working on um i think the other part of this is all of these conversations need to immediately shift the staff period um and with respect to the competition part between scott's valley and um federalism valley which you are alluding to yes i discussed this at least a year and a half ago and when there was some discussions around this that candidly if i were scott's valley people i'd be doing exactly the same thing how do we get an enter tide of both agencies who have significant surface water uh resources and play one off against the other when it comes to pricing i mean it's you know negotiation 101 um and if they can get a deal with both so much the better so um again but again i think that is an appropriate activity for staff not bored at this point unless the board is going to interject itself by taking action approved by the entire board to have these kinds of conversations otherwise you're you're stepping out of bounds of what you're entitled to do okay i understand i do want to comment on that um in my role as board president um i reached out the court appointed receiver not good enough i understand your point on that i have a different one so you should clarify that on the board policy then because you're stepping into staff activity uh and if the rest of the board uh feels so there can't be two rules for different people if if the rest of the board feels so okay great just by long as we have a two-tier system here you and i can disagree okay the rest of the board could weigh in on that then the policy needs to be uniform or nothing that is everybody can do whatever they want or not okay it has to be uniform it has to be uniform um we can take that up at the discussion when we review the board policy may but for the purposes of this uh memo and where we are at this point i prepared a motion uh with this that i'll read out and then go off for any public comment um i move that the board direct the um acting slash interim since uh interim starts as Monday to meet with the budget finance committee to discuss a compensation agreement um as requested for support services to the big base of water company i'll second that okay um um any comments from members of the public saying none online go ahead eric martin boulder creek it sounds to me and i'm not intimately familiar with that big base negotiations in the water district but my question rhetorically or not is once they're hooked up to the water are we responsible to repair their system and no so then the question is when that system needs to be repaired who do they call ghost busters or they call somebody i'm sure the staff you know exactly how much you pay him in a given day you know how much gas his truck runs you know how much his tools average probably on a monthly basis and is the i don't know what kind of money the receiver has uh obviously he's keeping their money in a pool and don't wing it out as required but that's going to be on their side i think of that is what i think of those providing them water is you've got a big pipe going up the hill and the sandlands the valley water district meter everything on that side is their problem just like it is at my house everything on my side of the meter is my problem if we offer services from our skilled staff to work on their stuff are they are we is is the water district going to be compensated on an hourly basis for the work that they do that's my question is there is there a rate schedule or is there some sort of procedure where the water district can send the receiver a bill for 10 hours of his time growing up and fixing their their broken pipes and so then that's their problem they have to figure out how they're going to pay for that via the receiver and and the the obvious customer base on what they want to do but it just seems to me that if you if you parse this out and make it very clear delineation between our water system and their water system and you can find the boundary then just offer the services but make sure they pay for them there has to be a way for that to come back because i know if i don't pay my number you'll catch a lien that might have my property and there's got to be a mechanism to where the water district can do something like that and say well we don't want to own it we just want our money back and so all of those members of boulder big base of water they're all individual members individual plots they can i don't know what the law says that there has to be a way that they can be individual responsible for any work that's done in their be their behalf so that's just the fun okay um what you're alluding to for us getting uh paid is what my intention was in a compensation agreement so uh but that's not the details of what we're prepared to do here this evening my motion was for the budget and finance committee to begin to take up that discussion and i agree okay thank you okay uh so we have uh a motion out in front of us uh bob i mean i'm just putting myself in the shoes of the interim general manager with you know we don't have a great onboarding program here right and with all the things that this person's going to have to do um i would really strongly recommend that we postpone this until after there's an opportunity for the interim general manager to deal with the other things that he's going to have to deal with um i don't know if this is a top priority i don't know if this is something he should drop everything else and work on i don't know if this needs to be done by x i don't know a lot of things around this but i do know that from my point of view this is not anywhere close to the top priority that i that i would like the interim general manager to be working on when he comes here um and by directing him to do this gives it that stamp that it's something he needs to take care of i don't think it is at this point could i make one additional comment here um i think it's incumbent on big base and if they want to talk to us about stuff to come to us with some kind of proposal and without i mean so far they haven't come to the board with any to our board with any proposal they've cut some deals with rick to buy water and get a pump fixed and a couple of things like that you are the only participants in this conference press any key to continue this conference but i i think we really don't have to do much of anything other than sell the water at book rate until they come to us and say you know would you do this and this and this and can we have an agreement and then we can evaluate do you want to withdraw your second i'm sorry do you want to withdraw your second let me comment on that let me comment on that for um the court important receiver has already asked staff for work am i correct in that current yeah so they're already asking us okay to do work did they provide a proposal um let me let me finish they're already asking staff to do work and they've asked for a cost system okay good uh that you know that that is happening but i wanted the rest of the board to be aware of that also that that is transparent and if we're okay with that and having staff do that okay i still think that the budget and finance committee should have that discussion that's what the motion was put out so let's let the interim general manager do this job okay are you okay i mean that's something so we have a motion in front of us um holly president smalley yes vice president hill yes director falls no director may have yes motion passes okay um we're moving on then to uh the long pico canyon emergency evacuation project or engineering management thank you um so the easement was sent to legal to have the uh amendment added prohibiting the use of glyphosate on district property and we're waiting the agreement to be returned with that added language as now i could read you the memo or 10 questions any questions all right let's back up a bit from that um this uh agreement did come in front of the uh engineering environmental committee and the recommendation to prohibit the use of glyphosate was from bob recommending that the easement cover that uh so uh with that be any committee or mech recommended to the board that we uh directed them to make that incorporation so that we could review the final easement with that unit so uh with that uh bob yeah i mean i i thought can we bring us back on december 7th with the language in it i mean i mean with the amended line yeah sorry with the uh with it with the amendment line yes thank you okay okay i have one other quick comment um you also need to amend the signature block on our side uh because the version that was posted still has rick rogers yeah i have an email address there so any other that's a comment from that yeah no this would be a good thing to get done so we can get there is a back road into long pico is that what this is there was a privately held back road that was gated and they opened it up this winter for a while with the county sheriff and each other is this is this the same road that they're talking about those from west to newell creek okay i don't know where so west takes you up to lock loman yeah you know the lewis tanks yeah so it's right by the lewis tanks you go down that room there's a gate there and then it takes you over by where the dump is yeah okay it's it's gated i don't know that i'm gated on both ends if you go down to the dump it you come to the end that's gated yeah because there was one there was a privately owned road up there that they opened up for a while last summer so there's that different okay that was just because of trees down there so gail any comments questions on this one i i don't care i vote for it tonight or i'll vote for on the seventh either way okay is there any rush from the county to have this agreement executed that yes the county is wants to execute the agreement immediately they're ready to go when do you think you'll get it back from the attorney it's been when did we have the meeting i mean uh that's a good point we met on the third yeah first weekend yeah i was on the third right i mean we're two weeks yeah but the memo was written last week but no in terms of the attorney doing the work that seems to be a i haven't received a response yet on it okay can we ask the attorney uh yeah i can i can check with barb and and get an answer to staff tomorrow oh thank you all right fine with get it turned around yeah okay all right um i mean i want to do it what's that i want to do it i just like voting on what it is we're actually doing not yeah okay i don't have an opinion on this as to whether now or we do it in two weeks so i don't think anybody i'm not hearing anybody else from the board jump up to say push it through now yeah let's bring it back okay bring it back to the uh december 7th meeting yes yes sir continue it continue it until then okay all right moving on then uh let's see the uh consent agenda uh does anybody want to uh pull anything from this without any objections uh we can approve that uh seeing none here uh district reports um the department status reports uh gail any question question from the environmental and i saw that the um rfp on the lachlan feasibility study received no bits and do you have any thoughts why and is does this mean we're going to go back to the drawing board we're going to do that again or what yeah so the next step will be to reach out to a few of the firms that we've worked for in the past or worked with in the past to get an understanding of why they have proposed on this rfp um and from there we'll most likely go back out for bid so it's unfortunate we sent it to i think almost 30 different firms that we we had a list from the city of santa cruz our own list and we sent it to all of them no thoughts on this it's surprising to me also yeah and your plan going forward was is trying to get a better understanding why these firms didn't propose initially and then go back out for a bid again i would i would hope in particular the ones that we frequently get responses from like sanis for reddit and some of the other ones what's wrong with this one folks i was just going to mention i i thought that it um had something to do with we thought perhaps we hadn't given enough time that was one of the reasons they should comment to that effect right so okay uh anything else go jump so fish ladder yeah come on make a smile is it done done we are out of the creek the diversion's out bypass is out where the water looks when did i know when did we get out oh how far after the there's a second week about yeah no so after the 15 after the 15 before the 15 it was after the 15 it was but we have gotten the extension from all the partnering yeah i think okay i can look it up and um so how much more work do they have to do there before we then get to the fencing and the nice good looking stuff that we're going to put up around there right so we still have to do some concrete work on the landing we have to put in the foundations and the staircase going up to the top of the bank um then they have to install the potable water main across the pedestrian bridge they anticipate all the work being done by christmas and then we'll be waiting for the motor control center and that'll be in january of february so sometime january we could be putting up the the fence completing the re vegetation work as well yeah that's something that's as we talked about before a nice looking not the normal industrial yeah okay well that that's good this sounds like maybe a spring um ribbon cutting ceremony and welcome the fish in to the to the uh concrete um excuse me the um next one was uh fell tonight's tank yeah so we've uh executed the contract with surveyor he's been to the site to do the survey we need to get the actual document from him and then we'll either have to proceed with the geotechnical investigation or acquire the easements but i'm not sure why that's an either or i mean don't you have to do geotech and environmental regardless yeah i mean if we get the easement before we do the geotech and the geotech work is back and says it's so there's something wrong that could be like we are now at the easement where we can't build a tank is it possible for us to do that work prior to trying to negotiate i mean we have the way to go on to the property now so the gentleman that owns the property somewhat concerned about heavy equipment on his property so we wouldn't it's not clear to me if we'd be able to get a drill rig on his property with his consent or if we have to use like a minivan drill and get some data that way if we wanted to wait till after we get the geotechnical report to get the easement do we not have an access document agreement whatever in place to be able to go on to the site we do have an access agreement that says no heavy equipment okay yeah all right thanks that was the missing piece okay that i wasn't sure about yeah because i know we've been negotiating on that okay yeah um all right well people won't wait a long time um let's keep pushing on the guy um let's see the other one was down on environmental grants real quick on grants have we um gotten any other indication we're going to get any more grants yes so we just submitted a usda funding opportunity for two separate projects one is through the resource conservation district of santa criss county for the olympia property field reduction around our well sites and removal invasive species and then the other is for just general uh infrastructure protection by hardening with field reduction so they both were about five hundred thousand dollar request and those are grants and those are both grants are they any matching or anything like some uh they do have a match i believe it was 25 percent okay so if we got both million dollars we get there it's actually over a four-year period so how we did it was what we had budgeted for field reduction would be our match so there wouldn't be an increase to our budget it would be what we have budgeted already got it okay um in terms of grant um opportunity velocity slowing down about the same it seems that the field reduction has slowed down slightly there's still opportunities coming in but there just isn't as many open right now i'm assuming in the spring we'll have another go after some more funding so that's usually when they're released okay okay great thanks okay i've got one question garret at the recent engineering committee meeting you mentioned um highway nine cal trans emergency work and i didn't see that listed on the department summary correct so yeah that was an oversight on my part okay so so are we making progress on that yeah so we have a survey from cal trans unfortunately doesn't go all the Lorenzo avenue right um so uh we've we've we've we've uh we've drawn up the layout but it doesn't include one of the sites right where the pipe is so we're not going to do this on an emergency then uh during the week of september whenever it was 10th or no i'm sorry november 10th yeah so cal trans they have a culvert repair they're going to do on big basin way on the 27th and then i think after they're done with that repair they would be interested in coming to my prospect so do you think we're going to be able to have something in the way of a design and a contractor pricing engaged or yes that's working as fast as we can to get it okay to that point okay thank you i do see a question from one of the members of our public attending remotely um elena lang right and elena lang boulder creek um i just kind of maybe quite a question on the fish ladder i know we talked a lot about lamp ray passage and the only thing i've seen is this picture so i have not seen it in person but from the pictures it looks like it actually ended up with a bevel dash instead of that like four inch radius minimum for lamp ray passage and even below the bevel there was another couple 90 uh degrees that that was in those uh wears uh when they poured the concrete so i don't know what cdf and w had to say about all this because lamprey you know is listed as a species of concern in the state of california but uh from the pictures that i saw it didn't really look like it was meeting the requirements for for lamp ray passage um you know maybe that was just looking at that wrong but i just be curious what cdf and w had to say about that and why the that four inch minimum radius wasn't maintained on all the the edges so they could pass up and be able to spawn on fall creek um thank you so waterways did update the design for the fish ladder to accommodate lamp ray passage and that's how the the design was completed um the question of the exact radius would be something i'd want to talk with matt well the engineer on but i believe that's that's what we had approved by cdf w as well so they reviewed that design prior to us completing the work so alina i can follow up with you as well on that okay that'd be great i mean i just saw the pictures secondhand i'm like oh i you know it's hard to kind of make it out but it definitely looked like a bevel instead of around so that'd be great follow up sincerely okay um about any other questions then i think we are done so uh we can adjourn uh