 Good evening, everyone. If we could have your attention, please. We're going to get started. Good evening, Capitola. And welcome to the candidates forum for the Soquel Creek Water District Board of Directors. My name is Tony Castro, and I will be the moderator this evening. I'm representing the Capitola Soquel Chamber of Commerce, who is sponsoring this event. The Chamber does not endorse or support candidates. And we are here to facilitate questions, covers many issues as we possibly can tonight, during the next two hours, and learn more about our candidates. Today is Rosh Hashanah. And we do apologize to our Jewish friends for having the forum on a Jewish holiday. Scheduling forums is very difficult this year because the timing of having them prior to when absentee ballots are mailed out was really crucial. This forum is televised live by Community TV of Santa Cruz County. And we'll be rebroadcast every Tuesday at 7 PM on channels 26 and 72 until the election. We have received many questions from the Community for tonight's forum, so many that we sorted through them and have more questions than we have time for. We will not be able to take any questions from the audience tonight, but hopefully your questions will be answered. Each candidate will have two minutes for self-introductions and opening comments and two minutes for closing comments. Each candidate will answer the same questions. There will be no questions targeting just one candidate. Tonight, candidates Carla Christensen and John Hughes Jr. will not be here tonight. We strongly encourage everyone to get out and vote on November 4. Your vote can make a difference. And each candidate will have two minutes to answer each question this evening. Now to my left is Nikki, and she is the timer. Can all of you see the timer here? Yeah. OK. And she'll be letting you know if you're over two minutes. And then I have Christine McBroom here, and she's going to be giving me additional questions if we need them. OK, so we're going to go ahead and get started. And Doug, let's start with you for self-introductions. My name's Doug Dever, and thank you all for coming tonight. I appreciate that. I'm a 23-year resident of the county. I attended Purdue, where I have both a bachelor's and a master's in industrial management. And I've got a 38-year working career in both the private and the public sector. And I'm most recently retired from Cabrillo College as the director of facilities planning. I'm also involved in the Rotary and many other community activities. I'm running because the current board, in my opinion, has lost touch with the community. I was disappointed in how the board didn't value public opinion, how they sent inconsistent messages to the community, and how condescending they were with their personal agendas over your needs and your wishes. The key issues, I think, that I see. First-year rates have gone up by more than 42% as of January 2015. You're the highest rates in the county. The current board voted not to assess the economic impact of these increases on you. And they actually did not want you to know. The current board believes that you are 100% responsible for fixing the aquifer problem, yet you use less than half the water. The current board's almost sole focus is on conservation and punitive rationing and not finding additional water. They implemented a stage three groundwater emergency, which wasn't really needed. We don't think. The aquifers have more now than they did 10 years ago. And we think that there's some fiscal management. So what's our platform? We want to treat you like a customer. We believe that you deserve community respect, outreach, and involvement. We want better collaboration. We want to balance conservation with finding new water, sound fiscal management, and balance the water usage with finding necessary jobs to keep the community going. Thank you, Doug. Bruce? I'm Bruce Jaffe. And people ask me why I want to run for reelection. And it's not because I'm a glutton for punishments, because I care. This is a community service position. Nobody's getting rich on this. I'd like to thank the chamber for hosting this event. We have a real problem. There's seawater entering into our aquifer. It will pollute the aquifer. It's not easily reversible. Once the seawater gets in, it stays there for hundreds and hundreds of years. In the past, the basin was balanced. The amount of water coming in from rainfall was equal to the amount that we were pumping out. However, beginning in the 1980s, we started over pumping the aquifer. We created a deficit that lasted until essentially today. But it didn't go up in just a monochromatic way. It went up. And then once the current board got on, it started reducing. It went up 25%, and now it's back down to 1980s levels. Why is it down? Because the board was proactive and because the community was concerned and reactive to the policies of the board. We enhanced conservation. We increased education. And we had tiered rates. So the solution, there's both short term and long term solutions. We need to use less and find more water. The solution in the short term, besides people conserving and thank you very much for that, is that we're going to use additional supplemental water from Santa Cruz. And then in the long term, we're going to be looking for recycled water and injecting that into aquifer. So I want to thank everyone here. Together we can solve this problem. Thank you, Maria. Thank you. My name is Maria Marcilio. And I'm a little bit different than the other candidates in that I have 20 years in management. I've been at my company 10 years. I'm a senior manager there. Natural and organic foods. Very concerned about the environment. But I'm also concerned about the users. I want to make sure that everybody has enough water, including the farmers, the businesses, and the users, the residences. I like to read my plan is to reduce waste within the department. So I'll be looking at budgets. And I'm very budget oriented because I've got a business background. And so I'm used to working on a shoestring. I've got a strong background in education in terms of training and empowering people to know what understand the problems as well as how they can be part of the solutions. But we do also need to find some water sources. And there are a number of options. I won't go into all of them. But they have to be tried and true, environmentally sound, and economically feasible. So that your rates will be kept at a reasonable rate. I've been in the community for over 25 years. And I've raised my two children here. And so I want to hear your concerns. I'm very, I want to hear what you have to say. I've been going out to a variety of different people. And I've been listening to what they have to say. And taking that in and building my campaign and my platforms based on your needs. So thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Thank you, Bill. First, I'd like to thank the audience and thanks Tony and to the chamber for coming out tonight and getting involved in making the right choice for new leadership here at SoCal Creek Water Board. Second, I'd also like to thank Doug Dever and John Prentice for running with me for the board. These gentlemen are successful contributors in our community. We all have different backgrounds, but we all share a common interest to bring positive and progressive change to the water board. So who am I? I'm Bill McGowan. I live in Aptos with my wife and four children. I'm a second generation Monterey Bay resident. I went to Berkeley. I have degrees in history and civil engineering. I've worked for Granite Construction Company for 25 years. In fact, I'm a second generation Granite Construction employee myself. A lot of my experience, and I've been involved in construction my whole career, has been in water infrastructure. I've been involved and I'm very familiar with all phases of water supply, including planning, permitting, working with regulators, working with water companies, customers, other stakeholders. I understand pipelines. I understand pumping, reservoirs, water treatment. I understand diesel. I led Granite's team when we bid the diesel project down in Monterey. So I know what it takes to make seawater into drinking water. I know all the parts and pieces that go into it. And I understand the costs and timeline, permitting, environmental concerns, economic concerns that go in with it. So if that's a solution in our community, that's something we should take with a very clear mind and we should fully understand what we're getting into. So why am I running for water board? I'm running for change. We do need change. We need new leadership focused in the right direction. And I have the qualifications to understand water in depth. And then of course, as a community member, a longstanding community member, I'm in it for the long haul. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. Hello. Thank you, Tony. And thank you so many people who care about our water situation, which seem to be more and more people for showing up tonight. I'm Rick Meyer. And I've been on this water board for about two years. And I was involved for a year or so before that. My background is as a manager in Silicon Valley companies. And now I own a energy audit consulting company. As Dr. Jaffe, my running mate, stated, in the early 80s, there was balance. The water that reached our wells was about the same as the water that we took out. But then previous boards, long before our time, started a fairly heatless policy of draining those aquifers. Just whoever wants the water can take it out. Now our aquifers are below sea level in many areas. And the aquifers are connected to the ocean. And the ocean is coming in. It's wrecked a well owned by the city of Santa Cruz. Salt levels are rising along the coast right outside where our wells are. And this is a problem that the current board has inherited and is wrestling with. Since Dr. Jaffe joined a new board majority about 12 years ago, the over pumping that was going up, up, up, and up so far out of balance has steadily came down over about a 12 year period. And now things are in balance, except that the aquifers are still below sea level in many areas. And we have to refill them. And we have a few years to do that before more wells are ruined. And ruined wells means a ruined economy, a ruined real estate market. Your board has viable solutions that we're already pursuing. And we're doing what the state's requiring of us. Thank you. Thank you, John. Good evening, everyone. Real quick, the other thing that keeps going up, up, up, and up is the $16 million budget. Good evening, everybody. And thank you for attending this evening, taking time out of your busy day. My name is John Prentice. I reside in Aptos with my wife and children. What brings me in front of you today is for once to try to solve this solution of supplemental water supply. For decades, we've been kicking the can down the road. And I think it's time to find a supplemental water supply without excuses and using dates that date back to 1980. As you've heard previously, the speakers, to me, this is not a problem. This is a situation. Problems can't be solved. Situations can. This is a situation that us, the community, can solve. What won't get this solved is spending millions and millions of dollars and upping our rates 200% over cities that are neighboring us. What you did not hear in opening is the most important thing. We need to foster relationships with other people pumping out of this aquifer. That's the most important thing. We need to foster relationships. You haven't heard it. That is the most important thing. You're going to get nowhere unless you have a relationship with everybody that's pumping out of this. You can expect voluntary, voluntary water conservation programs, not $3.2 million mandatory water rationing, expect significant cost savings, expect improve water offsets, expect dramatic improvements in the bridge building in our county with other stakeholders. I'll be open and transparent, transparent, like this right here, not like this. And in other words, I represent positive change. Thank you for your time, John Prentice. Thank you, John. Shelly? While plowing through the water board's July 15, 892 page agenda, Hydra popped into my head. Remember the nine-headed sea monster whose heads when cut doubled? The work plan to identify stakeholders and develop outreach programs read like the biblical gets. Even the resource plan update was pages of new alternatives and screening criteria for subsequent alternatives and not paralysis by analysis and outreach. Leadership at some point requires a gut reaction. As the peer reviewer exclaimed, you can't get absolute answers. Just take a few baby steps. Grow the district's cash reserves required to build solutions by scaling back the expensive community outreach and rebates. Try the incremental solutions identified in the district's research. Continue to support DSAL's approval process. Most importantly, support creation of a special district to fund solutions. Make good use of staff time. 892 pages can't be effectively implemented. Say no to hook up moratoriums and other cockamamie growth control measures. The water users have stepped up, but the conservation can't create water. It can only save what you have. It is time for the board to take the next steps in our Hercules in a battle with Hydra. The board needs to work with the county. The county has the authority to designate all the water users tapped into the water table into one district for the purpose of constructing a sustainable aquifer. Only when all of the water users are sharing in the costs and the efforts to recharge the aquifers can the project be agreed upon and built. Unify the water users into a single hydrate. Thank you, Shelly. OK, on to the first question. Now, some of you addressed this in your opening remarks, but we want to be clear. What are your qualifications and what skills do you have to become a board member for the Soquel Creek Water District? And we're going to start with Bruce. OK. So my qualifications, I did not go into the background. I've lived in the county for over 30 years. I have two children who I expect to grow up and want to live in the county. It's a great place to live. I want to keep it that way. I want there to be water for the future. So my education is in water sciences. I have a master's in oceanography and a PhD in geology. I'm a research associate for Institute of Marine Science at UC Santa Cruz. And I'll also work for a federal agency. In terms of qualifications to be on the board, I've been on the board for 12 years. I've learned a lot in the process. I've learned a lot about what the problems are with the water district, not just the problems in terms of seawater intrusion, which is huge, but problems with contamination. We have Chromium 6 naturally occurring in parts of our basin. We're the first permitted agency in the state of California to remove that Chromium. It's a high priority for me that the water that gets to our users is as safe as possible. I think what all my background really culminates in is that the way I think when a problem is put in front of me is very analytical. And I look at the different sides of the problem. And there's just one purpose that I have. There's no hidden agenda, very transparent. The one purpose is to protect the water supply. Thank you, Maria. I have a master's degree in industrial psychology, which is human resources. It's very, very good qualification for this particular position, because we have a lot of technical skills. And that's a great thing to have on the board and in the district, however. What we need now is a balance. We need someone who can come and help the board collaborate with all of the users in the district, as well as with other users in the basin. There's a new law that just came into being. And it's going to require all of the water districts in the basin to collaborate and to come up with a plan by 2020. But they have to come up with a group, a team. And I'm very much of a team builder. I get results. That's what I do. I'm very strong in terms of analytical skills, but I'm also very strong with people skills, because I listen. I listen to all the factions and build solutions, come up with results. I'm very much of an environmentalist, so the Sierra Club has endorsed me. And I am making sure that we have solutions that are environmentally sound, as well as financially sound. Thank you. Thank you. Bill. Thanks. Thank you. Where do I begin? I start with education. I have an engineering degree. Kind of taught me how, civil engineering degree, how things are solved, how things are built, how water infrastructure goes together. So I have a firm grasp on that. Almost as important, I have a history degree from Berkeley as well, which gives me a social context of working and living and solving problems in a community in a collaborative way. A way that allows a community to succeed and grow and not to drive itself into a hole. Because one thing I know about the history of any civilization, of any community, that nothing is static. Everything changes. And we, as members of our community, have to take an active role in making the right changes and the right decisions for our community. So at Granite, I serve on Granite Sustainability Council. And I represent the customer for Granite, which is really kind of fun for me, because it's going out and recognizing the people that we do business with every day. And it certainly fits into what I would do on the board here at Soco Creek, is recognizing that we are in the business of serving the customer. Also at Granite, I manage a project right now. It's a water project out in Carmel Valley. It's a really interesting job. It's a dam removal reservoir removal project. You may have heard of it, the San Clemente Dam removal project, where we're removing an old obsolete dam and reservoir that's completely silted in, functionally obsolete, and restoring several miles of the river. It's a really cool job. Working down on the peninsula has kind of given me some insight, again, too, about what a community looks like when it's highly stressed by a water supply issue. If you've done any studying about it down there, they have some serious problems that we do not want to bring up here to our mid-county district. I'll just stop there. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Rick Meyer, and I was educated at Yale. And also at UC Berkeley. For about 25 years, I was a manager and then a vice president in Silicon Valley companies. We came out with all kinds of new computer software and products you've come to know. Now, my work on the water board takes a lot of my time, but I still have some time to do energy audits for customers. I'm a consultant to building owners. I help them reduce their costs of energy. I've been two years on the board, and I've proven to be a good team worker, a good analyst. The entire board has endorsed me and Dr. Jaffee as well to continue serving. Our packets do run into hundreds of pages, but they need to be read and analyzed, and policy decisions made upon them. It's a big commitment. I think I'm an agent for making sure that we all move forward, grapple with new problems, find the new solutions, implement them as soon as possible. I'm endorsed by the Sierra Club. I've lived 17 years here in this community, and I think I know it pretty well. I serve on the Energy Committee of the Association of California Water Agencies. And within the district, I serve on a committee that is actually bringing about the regional collaboration that everyone here is talking about. Thank you. Thanks, Rick. John? First off, I do not have a doctor's degree to hang on my wall to make that clear. Also, I have a full head of hair, so don't let the youth fool you. I have a 20-year-old son, relatively the same age. 23 years, I've been in this community running a large business, $100 million a year business. I was one of the youngest CEOs and general managers in the country for a car dealership. I successfully was there for 23 years in the car business. Currently, I own four businesses that I'm the president of. I'm used to running staff of 100 plus. Right now, we're at 52. I've given back to this community for 15 to 18 years, over 150 charities. My reputation in this community speaks for itself. I do not need a doctor's degree to hang on my wall. I have real life reality things that I've solved in this community. I just came off a four and a half year project where we saved 60 years of history out at the racetrack. That was a noise abatement issue, which is a little bit tougher than water. Four and a half years, we came together. We solved that without attorneys, without litigating it. I'm happy to say that they will continue to have racing out there. That was all of us getting together, the neighbors, everybody involved, and collectively coming to an agreement, being flexible, and not having the attitude that we're smarter than our staff, our experts, and our customers. And I am not endorsed by the Sierra Club, but I can tell you I'm proudly endorsed by the county supervisor, Zach Friend. My endorsements are very impressive. I invite you to take a look at the list of them. I just don't think all those people can be off on their judgment. Thank you. Thank you, John. Michelle? I served eight years as a county commissioner in Colorado. You called them county supervisors here. I also served chair of the Clean Air Advisory Board, the county planning and zoning commission, the state's Colorado County Inks. I was chair of the transportation committee for the state taxation, yada, yada, yada. You don't know anything about Colorado. But what I do have is years of experience with one of the cutting-edge communities in the United States who was trying to do what Santa Cruz has been doing. And I know with many of the activities that you're predicting, maybe I would need to cut off. I know what the outcome of many of the things that have been proposed will be, because we destroyed my community with some of the proposals like the moratorium. That's what got me involved in this whole conversation. One of the things that is wrong with this board is that there are too many master's degrees and researchers and teachers. The board has excellent talent, but you can't have five of the same thing. You have to elect a board that has other perspectives, and that's where you're going to get your solutions. Thank you. Doug? Can you hear me OK? I'm going to go through my technical qualifications in a minute, but that's not why I'm running for this board. I'm running for this board because I went to board meeting after board meeting after board meeting where you, the public, the taxpayers, and the voters were ignored. And so they all want to talk about technically solving the water problems. You didn't vote for Zach Friend to be your supervisor or John Leopold. You didn't vote for your public officials because they have an infinite knowledge of asphalt. You voted for them because you want people that represent you, and you want to be able to go to a board that you can talk to that will listen to you and will work with you for a solution. And that's not what's happened, and that's why I'm running. But I'll get into the technical. I have a bachelor's and a master's from Purdue. It's a combination of management, industrial engineering, and computer science. I'm not aware of any of the candidates that are hydrologists, so anybody that claims to be a water expert is not going to be able to compete anyway with the staff and with the consultants that they bring in. I believe that you're voting for somebody that you want to respect and can work collaboratively. I ran facilities planning at Cabrillo College. I did a lot of infrastructure as part of that. I also ran the business office on an interim basis, so I'm very familiar with the financials, how to run the budget. In addition, I worked in a company. I was a vice president of a company in Berkeley where we had a groundwater contamination problem. That was a significant issue. The site was threatened to be on the superfund list. But working with engineers and hydrologists, we were able to resolve the problem at no remediation cost to our company. It's about managing complex data and coming up with strategic solutions. It's not about micromanaging, and that's what the board today is doing. I'm also actively involved in the community, the Rotary, CASA, still with Cabrillo College. So I think you want somebody that's going to represent you, and John and Bill and I are those three. Thank you, Doug. On to the next question. And Maria, we're going to start with you. How do you feel about DSAL? DSAL is an alternative, but there are a lot of alternatives. I do know that DSAL is an expensive alternative. I saw an article in the Sentinel a few days ago that said that it's not as expensive as people once said. But all the other data suggests and says that it is expensive. And environmentally, it's not the best solution. It causes a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. There's the intake issue and the damage to the marine life as well as when they put the brine back into the ocean that also has an impact on the marine life. So is it a solution? Yeah, there is, but there are certainly other ones. There are injection wells. There's rainwater collection. There's quite a number of things that are much more implementable and economically feasible than DSAL. And so they would be higher on the list. And there was also a board meeting that suggested that the people, you, were not as interested in DSAL as water transfers and injection wells and also rain collection. So that's my answer. Thank you. Thanks, Maria. Bill? I don't feel about DSAL. I mean, I get it. I understand the process and how we take in seawater and how we treat it, how it's a reverse osmosis and how we deal with the brine afterwards and discharge that into the ocean and what we do with the finished water. It is a relatively expensive process to bring into our community. I do believe that over time, I think the costs are going to go down on DSAL. I think it's kind of like renewable energy in that sense. When you put solar panels up in the 90s, things are cheaper nowadays. You could put solar panels up today. I think DSAL is headed that way in the future. Living on the coast in a kind of Mediterranean semi-arid climate that we have with limited rain and limited water supply. It may be a solution for a lot of communities along the coastline. So I think to make a long statement a little bit shorter, I think it's something we need to study in our community. It may not be something in the next five years or 10 years, but it may be 20, 30 years out. I think the technology is improving such that we can do that. In terms of concerns about DSAL, you do have to worry about the marine life and what you're drawing in. You're going to draw in millions of gallons of water every day. You're going to draw in a lot of fish larva and you're going to do a lot of damage to the ecology and the ocean right there. So you have to be very careful about how you draw in that water and then how you discharge the brine so that you're able to mix it, say, with sewage water and make sure it doesn't impact where you're discharging it as well. That's another thing. But most importantly, DSAL irrevocably links our water supply to our power supply. And that's something we have to take with a certain amount of caution. We have to be careful about. We have to think about greenhouse gases and carbon footprint. Can we bring in renewable energy to power our DSAL plant? Those are things that we can work out as a community. Certainly it's something here in Santa Cruz County that we can do. So I'm bullish on it in the long term. Thank you. Thank you. Rick? We have already studied DSAL in depth as a board. We spent several years at it actually. So it's fairly well understood by your board. I try not to have some personal preference for some technology over another. I try to look at the entire impacts of a project. Its costs, its environmental impacts, its permitting hurdles, likeness of litigation, and many other factors. The DSAL Nation project that was planned with the city is effectively dead due to political opposition. There is another DSAL project that is planned for moss landing just a few miles south of us. It's a visionary project that includes a large data center as well. I consider that a backup plan. And so we are tracking the progress of that. But I too consider DSAL to be a backup plan. When we did study all of the alternatives, the board chose water recycling and injection as superior to a local DSAL project because the costs were more like $53 to $56 million instead of over $90 million for a local DSAL plan. The energy input to water recycling is a fraction of the energy needed for DSAL, at least with using the current technologies. And finally, the environmental impacts are a lot less. This technology is used in Orange County and places all over the world. And it's proven to be safe and effective. The water would be injected at several sites. It would basically fill back up the aquifer to overcome the over pumping that went on for decades before our board took over. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you. I wish that what you see here is that they're trying to unring the bell. I sure wish that they had the same attitude before they spent the $7 million of our money that went to Santa Cruz on the DSAL. I am not opposed to the DSAL as a supplemental supply, I think realistically for a six to eight year plan, a water exchange with Santa Cruz, we have a lot of the infrastructure there. I think that that cost is probably a little bit more realistic. The MOS landing DSAL is an option. I think well injection to rebuild our aquifer is probably a little bit more realistic than the MOS landing. But once again, we need to get on the same page with Central and the city. And that needs to happen before we can move forward. What I am against is spending millions and millions of dollars, $3.2 million this year, $3.2 million on Conservation Plus. That is not going to bring us a water supply source. Note to self, that's $3.2 million to educate the public that brings no supply. You know, and the plus stands for police. We're paying for water police to drive around and make sure we're not watering our sidewalks. That's not bringing us a supply. I'm open, and that's what the experts are for. That's when you pay experts, you listen to what they have to say. You rely on the experts. When you spend $1.3 million this year on experts, maybe you should listen to them or not spend the $1.3 million. I really think it's important to look at everything. I think it needs the 1,500-acre feet that we're saying is a deficit. If we take that number, I think it should be a three-prong approach, maybe 500-acre feet for each one instead of looking for this silver bullet that's 1,500-acre feet. Small de-cell plant would be my option. Thank you. Michelle? Yes, the mission of the district is to provide sustainable and cost-effective water. Problem with de-cell is it's energy-intensive and reliant on defaultful energy markets and therefore should not be the preferred solution. But water conservation, catchment ponds, and even gray water are rain-dependent. California's weather history contained in the tree rings warns us that droughts here have occurred for 50, 100, and even as long as 200 years, in which case, continuing the very extensive environmental and regulatory process for de-cell could prove the prudent precaution that we take. Thank you. Doug? At this time, there are districts really looking at six options that fall in three categories to find additional water. And I would support any one of the three that would work. All of them have potential roadblocks. They have environmental impact studies. They have cost impacts. The most effective solutions would involve working collaboratively with other agencies. If you're going to do, whether it's de-cell or moss landing plant with multiple players, it's going to be much more cost efficient than doing it alone. The same with the reinjection of recycled or treated water. Also transfer. So any one of them, we support more water. We don't know what the right solution is because it hasn't been researched in enough detail, but we want to get it. And the area where we believe John and Bill and I that were differed from the other candidates is we are committed to searching to find additional water. I know Bruce Daniels isn't running in this election, but he's obviously behind four of the people that are. And I think it's clear what he said. He said, I think it's clear that the methods we have used, of politely and unobtrusively asking people to conserve, have not worked. Now, I think I disagree with them. All supplemental supply will be hugely expensive. The only option that is totally and entirely under our control is rationing. And so he wanted to, I would reverse the priority and make rationing a required high priority effort. Supplemental supplies then just another less important activity which we could make it happen would spare the pain of rationing. So that's what you're getting. You're going to hear them talk about water, but when, look where the money's going. They have $24 million allocated to rationing and to conservation over the next 20 years of which over 3 million of it's allocated in this year. And they have zero money put aside in reserves. So when you find a $50 million solution, it's a lot easier to do it if you have 10 million to put down than if you have to finance the entire amount. Thank you. Bruce? So I wish we were in a situation where we didn't need a supplemental water supply. I wish that conservation could take us to where we need to get the groundwater levels to rise above sea level to keep the sea water out. That's not the case. We do need a supplemental water supply. DeSal is one of the options. Currently the board is pursuing three options. Two recycled water options, one that's district only and one that's a regional solution. Where the reason we're pursuing that is because the cost is less. Greenhouse gas emissions are less. And there's more control when we do that project than we, in the past, when we've done a DeSal project. It's out of our control right now in terms of the regional project with Sanctuary's. They are reevaluating and who knows where they'll go. So I'm moderate. The Sierra Club has endorsed me. And that's despite the fact that I was a member of the DeSal Task Force. My stand on DeSal is that I'm a reluctant supporter. There are other supplemental water supplies that are less costly, use less energy, and are better for the environment. One thing is no matter what we come up with, and I mean we, not the board. I mean we as a community, there's going to be a vote on that. It's not going to be dictated to you like you will have this. So again, together is how we're going to solve this problem. It's not going to be from a board. It's going to be the community working together. Thank you. OK, the next question, and we're going to start with Bill. What is your position on the idea of a moratorium? Well, I'm pretty clear position. I'm against them. I think it does a lot of irreparable damage to a community. I think there's some pretty good examples in the coast communities here in California, whether it's down in Monterey Peninsula or in Cambria and places like that. The moratoriums, building moratoriums, bring good, do damage to the economy, damage to the culture, damage to our way of life. It puts people out of work. It puts people out of work in my trade. I'm in the construction trade, so all the trade workers that would be building in a community, they'd be out of work and they'd be moving out of the community. It puts people in the professional trades out of work. What about architects and engineers? What about local businesses that want to start up in a community and there's a moratorium in place they can't do that? So it's something that we have to do our level best to avoid in our community. A moratorium is not a positive thing for us. I'm just going to leave it at that. Well, the problem that a moratorium is designed to solve in our case is that we have existing customers who pretty much have a claim on all or even more of the water than we have now. So many people come to our board meetings and ask us, why do you allow new hookups to go on when there isn't enough water necessarily for the existing customers? And they point to places like Mendocino, Cambria, Goleta, where moratoria have happened. Because of this, I took a close look at this as a potential policy myself a few months ago. It would be a pause in allowing new hookups until there was a sufficient supply. But as I looked at it, I saw that the burden of the moratorium fell very unfairly on just a few people. Those people who have property, they want to develop. They want to maybe expand a house. The most poignant case are the people who have a small lot and want to build here when they retire. I felt very uncomfortable contemplating stopping these people in their tracks. We found a better way. We instituted a strengthened water demand offset program so that when someone does come and we allow them to build as a condition of their permit, they must reduce demand somewhere else in the district. If you're going to use, say, a quarter of an acre feet for the house that you're proposing, you must find savings somewhere else of twice that amount. So we have arranged that new development does not overburden our existing customers. This moratorium discussion is over. It was over in June. No one that I know plans to raise it again. John? I plan to raise it one more time. I'm assuming that you're talking before a few months ago. June 4th, approximately at 3.32, I got an email that Rick says in here that I'm going to help you behind the scenes basically, and he's coaching Maria on how to start legal ramifications to basically enforce a moratorium. I think that was on the front page of the Sentinel. There are a couple of copies I just happened to have if anybody missed it. Then I got another email that Bruce Daniels sent at 9.51 a.m. on Wednesday, April 30th. Despite the reversal last night, the leadership was still effective in moving the board and staff towards a moratorium. I will continue to support you in pushing for a moratorium. This has Rick Myers' fingerprints all over it. It's from his email account. So you just can't unring the bell. The bell's rung. The night Evely sometimes works, but typically you don't preference in this email. This is behind the scenes. I don't want to make this public. This is for your use only. That's not how you preference a night Evely statement. I, as you can tell, a moratorium is not for us. I mean, the water offset that they're claiming fame to was in place before, that's already saved us more water usage, less than our water usage by double what a moratorium would, which is 3% what the experts are saying. So for them to say that they're gonna, all of a sudden I got smart and I don't want a moratorium. The board vice president told me less than 30 days ago that they are doing a political dance right now, December after this election, he'll bring it back up and he thinks they're doing a political dance and they're gonna second the motion. Thank you, Michelle. By the way, I'm sorry if it was too loud earlier. I didn't have a little spongy thing. Now I have one. The moratorium is how I got involved in this whole fight. I'd only lived in this town about a year when my tennis buddy told me that her husband's an architect. They're a young couple with four children. They live down the street from me. And she told me that her husband was so worried because there was going to be a moratorium. Well, I went through the roof. I'm from a town that had all the right intentions. 30 years ago we were the leaders in growth control, moratoriums, you name it. And we destroyed our middle class. What happens with a moratorium is you put in Picking County, and I'm gonna assume your number's probably close, 85% of our economy was generated by the real estate, building, land use, the construction industry. They are the engine that runs your community. Moratoriums throw that segment of your community into uncertainty. And they don't know if they're gonna be able to make their mortgage or pay their rent for a year or two years, three years. How long is the moratorium going to be? And you lose your middle class. More important, well, not more importantly, but adding to that, building moratorium, the board staff told them would address 2% of the aquifer draw, with no impact on 90% of the current users, including 50% on wells. There's no point in hurting your community for something that will gain you nothing. Thank you, Doug. I do not support a half a moratorium because you can't have a whole moratorium because you only control 50% of the usage in the basin. So, but I do not believe in moratoriums. A moratorium means that all projects are bad. So you have a sleep clinic, which saves me from going to Palo Alto. You've got a dialysis clinic that even though it's not in SoCal Creek Water, it's right across, same aquifer, church edition, school editions, all this kind of stuff when you have a moratorium, they're all bad. To show you what that means, on April 8th, the board, Rick Meyer sent a letter to Twin Lakes Church saying that we basically implemented a temporary moratorium until we can figure out what we're doing with all the will serve requests. And so therefore you guys are hung out on your project at potentially significant cost to you while we debate whether we wanna implement a moratorium or not. That's on the 8th of April. On the 9th of April, there was an internal memo at the Water District stating that their own expansion project required water demand offsets. And what did they say about that? Tom LeHue said it just illustrates how complicated and problematic a blanket halt to will serves or moratorium can be. On 4-9, Rick Meyer says I'll be gone for the next meeting, but trust me, I trust you all to solve the problem. We don't wanna be a victim of our own moratorium. We're not the planning department. I do have a little, okay. And you look at the projects. John Leopold, his act friend among them are supporting local economic development, including building 20 minute neighborhoods. This is the whole concept of trying to reduce you from driving and trying to get the villages to build out. I wanna talk about the water demand offset program as I have a second. The Aptos Blue Project, which was raved on by Sam Farn, all the local politicians. The new water demand offset would take, their project cost about $800,000. The water demand offset program would add $300,000 to their water hookups. The water demand offset program that they've implemented is a moratorium. Thank you, Bruce. I'm against a moratorium. There's no need for a moratorium. Moratorium does not solve the problems. The problem, once again, is that we need to raise the water table to get above sea level. Sounds like a broken record, but it's true. So, there were customers who came to us and asked us to look at whether or not a moratorium is a solution. We responded to that. We agendized it. As a board, we decided not to institute a moratorium. It's a dead deal. It's not something that's gonna happen. Not why I'm on the board. The WDO program that's been talked about, Water Demand Offset, which I was part of the board when that was instituted. The whole idea there is that you don't mortgage the future by letting new water hookups happen. So, you offset the water use so that you don't hurt the water resource. You keep it, you don't do harm. You do no harm. So, just to reiterate, there've been a lot of accusations going back and forth. But the truth of the matter is, and you can check the minutes of the meetings, you can check to see who endorses each of the candidates, and you can see that there's no moratorium issue. It's a done deal. Thank you, Maria. Okay, well, since I've been named in this article, that was in the Sentinel, I do wanna bring up to you, think about how much time and how many resources it took to find that one article three months ago. And I don't know about the other candidates, but I can tell you, I sure don't have that kind of money. Follow the money. But with that said, moratorium, my views on that have evolved. Three months ago, I had one idea, and I've learned a lot in the last few months, and really there's very little buildable land in Santa Cruz, which means that if somebody wants to put a house up or maybe build a remodel or something like that, that's really not going to affect the water table tremendously because there's just not that much space. And my son is an electrician. I believe that we have to keep a healthy economy, and so there are businesses that may need to expand. Maybe there needs to be some small businesses that need to put up a sleep center like Mr. Deaver suggested or other sorts of things like that. That's fine. I have absolutely no problem with that. Thank you. Thank you. We're gonna start with Rick on the next question. Although the city of Santa Cruz slash Soquel Creek Water District partnership has terminated, what will you do if elected to advance countywide collaboration among water district and agencies? The reason we need regional collaboration is because we have one big glass, but there are very many straws in it, all owned by different people. There's Soquel Creek Water District, Central Water District, the city of Santa Cruz, small water districts, small water agencies like Trout Gulch, big water, well water users, Cabrillo, Seascape, individual well owners. All of us have to participate in a solution. And well before the state decided that there must be sustainable basin management with the recent legislation, we had already begun. We have had a series of meetings among private well owners so that they're up to speed on the threats of seawater intrusion and the range of possible solutions, the legal aspects to water rights and so forth. So we have been educating them. My running mate and colleague, Dr. Jaffee here, chairs the Basin Implementation Group, which is a regional group that is tackling the problems of basin-wide management. Recently the county has joined and we have invited the other agencies to join. We hope that this will evolve into the Sustainable Groundwater Management Organization that the state anticipates. We also collaborate directly with the county and they recently passed some ordinances for water conservation that are very similar to ours. And we on the other hand, enforce some of their ordinances. I meet with the county supervisors periodically and I look forward to expanding our regional solutions. Thank you, John. Quickly, to answer the question, it didn't take a lot of time when I see emails that say, this is private for you alone. I do not want made public. Kind of stands out like a red light. Follow the money. I'm funding about 90% of my campaign just so when I get elected that I don't have an agenda and I can make my own decisions. Last time I checked on my website, which you can go there, I believe it said I have a total donation of $25 to date. So there's no money. It's just about right or wrong and sadly to justify it that way. This board cannot get it done. Let's just make it simple. If they could, they would already have done it. They've already said that this problem has existed since the 80s. They can't get it done. I mean, look at it. You have these people, as they said, pumping from a straw and they declare emergency and nobody else does. I think they might think they're a little bit cuckoo. So I just, they can't get this done. You need a new board. There's just no way you're gonna get all these people at a table and move forward relative to already been done. We're gonna continue to kick this can down the road. You have three candidates that have stepped up to volunteer their time to have change. This, I don't think has happened before for this district and so we're asking the community, just look into this stuff. Just look into what we're saying, okay? We're not making this stuff up as funny as it is. We're really not. We just, we have concern for our kids and our generations, our grandkids. We want clean, safe, reasonably priced water. It's that simple. What will I do? I have some colleagues on boards with Central and Santa Cruz, I'm not sure about tomorrow. We'll give them a call and we'll sit at a table and have a meeting and make it productive. That won't cost a couple million dollars. Thank you. Michelle. Rick Meyer well described what it is like to read the work plan. I'm not sure if it's 30 or 40 pages, but it is, it's what made me think of the biblical begets. It's that work plan of trying to work with all of the stakeholders, the well holders, the agencies, the governmental groups, Yadiyah, is why you have a hydra. It's why you have still been having this conversation for I don't know how many years, 20, 30. There is, but there is a way and the epiphany for me was when the county, back home counties can declare an area of mutual interest in a district and your county obviously has that authority because they recently said that everyone in the county that's drawing on the water table will use the same rules for irrigation that the four or five districts had already passed. So they have the ability to unify everyone. And from everyone I'm talking to, the well users, the members of the Santa Cruz Water District, you all want to solve the problem, but you don't have a vehicle in which to do it. That's why I would urge the new board to start working with the county of Santa Cruz to utilize authority that I believe they probably already have. And the board has done, Soquel Creek has done a remarkable job of creating studies and mapping what your water tables and your aquifers actually look like and who's drawing on them. And that becomes your district. That's the boundaries of your district. Then all those people together are unified and just with a school district, whatever, when you have a project that the various representatives of the district agree on, it goes to all the members for a bonding vote. Thank you, Michelle. Doug. I want to come off of what John said. On June 3rd, the board implemented a stage three groundwater emergency. And basically John Ricker, Santa Cruz County Water Resources director said he does not support the clearing of groundwater emergency. And the most important consideration for declaring a groundwater emergency under the water code is as a threat to human health and safety. So they implemented it anyway. And no other agency that takes water out of the aquifers implemented the same thing. Director Daniels stated, well, so if nothing else we need to make this declaration of emergency to get it on the front page of the paper to let people know to give them a wake up call that they need to do something. It's really hard to establish working relationships when you're not on the same page. And so far, the SoCal Creek Water District, I'm not saying we don't have a problem. We clearly have a problem and a challenge to address. But when you have very different views, not only of what the condition of the aquifers are but what the solutions are, it's really hard to bring people together and unless you're willing to come into the middle. And this district has really not shown that. You know, somebody from the Power O Water Management agency came to me that was on the board. We're both Rotarians and asked if he thought that maybe we could improve relations if I were elected. Any of the solutions that are cost effective are gonna require collaboration. If you look at water transfers, you gotta get water from another agency. We don't have it within the SoCal Creek area, at least not in the kind of quantities. If you wanna do a reinjection, it's a lot, you get a lot more economies of scale working with the city of Santa Cruz than you do by trying to do it internally within your own district. And D-cell's the same way that, you know, the preliminary estimates on D-cell and moss landing are 50 million if it's shared and 80 million if you do it on your own. So to get a solution, we have to work together with other agencies. Thank you, Bruce. Can you repeat the question? Certainly. Although the city of Santa Cruz and SoCal Creek Water District partnership has terminated, what will you do if elected to advance countywide collaboration among water district and agencies? Well, I think it's only natural to work together. Water doesn't know any political boundaries. It flows between the different jurisdictions. And so I totally support and have implemented plans to work together. I'm the head of the Basin Inmutation Group and recently we have expanded the group by inviting Pajaro, Santa Cruz County, city of Santa Cruz. We're gonna be inviting, we're talking about inviting private well pumpers. And together we're gonna work on the solution. So it's not an issue of whether or not we should collaborate. It's a must. Thank you, Maria. The various districts are very motivated to collaborate at this point. Because if they don't, they don't come up with a plan, then the state of California is gonna come in and come up with one for them. So you've got an audience that's very interested. And I'm glad that there's certain things in place already. My background is exactly that. It is a background of collaboration and coming up with solutions. Let me give you an example. I worked at an electronics firm and they were having a lot of problems, a lot of engineers, a lot of technical arguments. They really weren't getting the job done. The design of the product was delayed to the point where it was putting the company in danger. They invited me in as a moderator and conflict resolution. I went ahead, listened to everybody. We collaboratively came up with some solutions and we got results. We saved the company and this is exactly, exactly why I am an excellent candidate for this because I do this for a living. I make my living, building collaborative relationships and I can do that here and I want to, I want to help the district. That's my main concern is for the people, for you, for every one of you and for all of us here. Because we all live here, it's ours. We own this. Thank you. Thank you. Bill? Yes. So how will I advance county-wide collaboration in developing additional water supplies and the health of our aquifer, our groundwater basins? First of all, we got to stop building distrust and start building trust with our neighbors and fellow pumpers, people that pump out of the same aquifer as we do. You know, we got to stop this kind of wild west mentality. Some of that you see over in the Central Valley with some of the farmers where they're just trying to out-pump each other and the people with the most get the most water. You know, to a certain extent you could almost say we have a little bit of that problem here too and we need to stop that. We need to, as a district, we pump 50% of the water out of our main aquifer. That means we got 50% of the responsibility. That's a heavy responsibility for our district and we should be taking a leadership role in that but that doesn't mean we have all of the responsibility. It means we need to reach out to bring in the rest of the pumpers in our community in our aquifer and develop a region-wide solution. You know, it's a two-part solution. First of all, we need to develop a common understanding of the health and assessment of our aquifer. Where do we stand? You know, let's share the data that we have from a monitoring wells. Let's understand seawater intrusion, where it is, where our weak spots are, where we're, could get into trouble and let's get everybody in our aquifer to understand that as well. So we need that common understanding. That's a good platform to start from. The second place is, once you get that, then we can all work together for a region-wide solution for supplemental water supply for protecting our aquifer. It is our most precious resource here in the community. Without water, nothing happens. We need to protect that. These new state laws, these groundwater laws that are coming out, that's gonna be helpful. That's tailwind to the process for coming together and getting the community together to solve supplemental water supply and basin health solutions. Thank you. Thank you. Next question, we're gonna start with John. The Soquel Creek Water District recently declared a groundwater emergency and an associated water use reduction program that will result in mandatory rationing beginning in 2015. What is your position on these actions? Reckless, I feel that mandatory rationing when the customers have shown you a 23% decrease in water consumption, voluntary, there was no need for this mandatory. In my opinion, I believe they declared this emergency, which they're using their analogy, you know, they have all these straws in this aquifer and they're the only ones that declare it. So you might ask, why did they declare the emergency? Well, maybe because of the rate hikes, you know, we're 200% higher than Watsonville, that might have something to do with it. But really, I think it comes down to is they declared this so they can try to get a hold of the private wells and try to get meters on these private wells. Through emails I've read, it really looks like that's the direction they're heading is by doing this, it's gonna bypass the county because the county was not in support of the groundwater emergency. I have a letter right here from them. So they bypassed the county because they didn't get what they wanted, declared the emergency three, so now they can meter wells. I just, I don't understand why you would penalize somebody for using less water. To me, that makes no sense. Hey, good job using 23% less water, but here's your new penalty surcharge and rate increase and remove your billing to monthly instead of bi-monthly. Enjoy. To me, it seems like you might get a little bit more savings if you're rewarded people for saving water. Maybe use the 75 per person as a baseline and have a super saver tier. Maybe somebody that uses 65 gallons, you save them money. You give them a rebate, you give them a discount. Somebody uses 55, you give them a discount or rebate, save them money on their bill. You'd be amazed how well it would work instead of demanding you ask and incentivize. That would be my vote is to restructure this whole bill cycle. Thank you, Michelle. Could you repeat the question, certainly? The Soquel Creek Water District recently declared a groundwater emergency and an associated water use reduction program that will result in mandatory rationing beginning in 2015. What is your position on these actions? There are several points. First of all, the peer review demonstrated that the numbers that they are basing the rationing on may have been inaccurate because the original assumptions did not take into consideration the amount of water that comes through septic fields as a recharger to the system. As to water rationing, the members of the Soquel Creek Water District have voluntarily reduced overall consumption by 16% just this June alone. Setting 75 gallons as an optimum target to assist residents with quantified goal is good. But mandatory rationing with punitive fines and most importantly no long-term plan achieves nothing at all. You can get a lot of goodwill for a couple of years but not for the rest of your life. I've been taking a shower in two double buckets and then hauling the water out to my garden and let me tell you, I'm so glad we had indoor plumbing now. Rethinking and changing norms in water uses, landscape choices, et cetera are part of a sustainable solution. But conservation can't conserve water we don't have. It's very necessary at this point to utilize technological innovations to assist and expand the water nature provides. Population is growing. When I was a child in California was the fruit basket of the world. We need to grow our water supply to meet both our agricultural needs and our residential requirements. We have to grow this water supply. Thank you, Doug. Regarding the groundwater emergency, in spite of the data on June 3rd, the board implemented a stage three groundwater emergency goal was 25% curtailment, which immediately tacked 12.5% under your price of your water. That was in addition to the 9% increases that you've gotten three years in a row, the next one of which takes place in January coming up. So that's about a 42% increase in your water prices. The general manager said you could possibly leave the stage two emergency rates even in place if you declared a stage three emergency, would not have to up the rates, but they decided to do it anyway. So they figured the only way that you're gonna conserve water is if there's punitive penalties and fines on you that didn't need to happen. And in the next item on the agenda was also to discuss a moratorium. And they believe, the board believed that in order to implement a moratorium they needed to implement a stage three groundwater emergency. Then they went with the Conservation Plus program that was gonna roll out in 2015 as a mandatory rationing program with additional penalties if you were over the water limits. The additional money, first of all, Shelley's right, the 16% was saved so far this year and the goal of the Conservation Plus program was 11. So they'd already saved 16% this year. They'd already achieved their goal. There was absolutely no reason for them to implement further price increases and penalties on you for implementing the program. I wanna talk about the money. Now they've raised all this money. They've taken their revenues from $13 million last year to $16 million this year. So the price increases aren't just about getting even to cover their fixed cost. They picked up an extra $3 million. And what's the first thing they did? They're hiring 10 people buying vehicles and enlarging their district office and allocating zero money for additional water. So I think you can see where the priorities are. Thank you, Bruce. So there's really two parts to this question. They're not connected at all. The groundwater emergency, the primary purpose of that was to ask neighboring agencies to consider measures to decrease water use. That's the primary purpose. In terms of the mandatory rationing in 2015, that is not happening. We've taken a step back. We heard the customers. The program was flawed. We're inviting customers to come in and help us get it right. So there's really no need to do the mandatory rationing if the customers kept the water use at the same level. However, you might be surprised to know that there are users in our district who have water bills of $5,000, $6,000 a month who use, it's hard to believe, but over 5,000 gallons a day. The purpose of the Conserve Plus program was to send a signal to the water wasters, the people who don't respect the water resource like the vast majority of our customers do. 3% of the water users use 10% of the water. The upper 25% of the water users use 50% of the water. We want it to be fair for all the users. Thank you, Maria. I've been at the meetings. There's a lot of public outcry about this situation. And I've also talked to a lot of people and they are upset, but so are the people in other districts who are already on rationing. They say, why do you get 75 gallons a day and I only get 65? And it goes on and on and on. Well, I was really glad to see that it wasn't implemented. It's not gonna be implemented, but I'd also like to see that the users be empowered to learn more about the situation and to understand how other ways they can conserve. There are rebates available. I don't know how much people know about that. There are a lot of different things that they can recycle the gray water from their washing machine and it's not as disgusting as it sounds. And there are ways to do that in terms of hookups, you can do it yourself. And there are rebates for that. Rain catchment, I know there's not a lot of rain, but a lot of times there's enough to at least water some landscaping. We have a lot of resources available to us in terms of knowledge base and my goal is to get that out to all of you so that you all understand how we can all be part of the solution. And I'm very good at that. So I want you to know I'm here for you and I want to help every one of us. Thank you. Thank you. Bill. Thanks. My position on mandatory rationing is that we don't need that. I mean, I don't think that gives the community enough credit, the people that live here enough credit. I think we're doing a pretty good job at conserving just by education and awareness in the community. Some of the statistics are pretty good. Just in the last year, we've seen a 23% reduction in water usage in the district here. And that's just because people are coming online with the problem. They understand it and they're cutting down on their usage. And just as Dr. Jaffee said, there's gonna be a few outliers out there and we do need to reach them. We do need to reach out to them and get the word to them that 5,000 gallons a day is not a responsible member of our community and that needs to change. I make my way through the campaign. I'm continually impressed by the number of people who are conserving, who get it, who are making the effort and proud of it and they wanna spread the word about it. And a lot of guys my age are quite frankly making a sport out of it. And because how much water do they really need to live on a day? How can they conserve the water that they use on their landscape? How can they change their landscape for and conserve more water? What we don't need is laws and punitive actions against people who use over a certain limit. One thing about our community is not everybody's the same. We're not all cookie cutters. And I'm sitting and listening to a few of the board meetings and some of the customers come in and they have good reasons why they may need more water. Maybe they've got some fruit trees. Maybe they're growing some food locally that it makes sense that they have a little more water. Maybe they're growing food for their neighbors and things like that. So I don't think we need mandatory rationing. I think we can do better through education and awareness in our community. Thank you. Thank you. Your board passed a groundwater emergency primarily as an educational vehicle. We've been able to greatly increase the awareness of our water situation. That and of course the drought awareness. And this has been so effective that on top of the savings through 10 years of effective conservation programs under the leadership of Dr. Jaffe and now myself that with the recent savings of even 20 to 25% in recent months just compared to last year that we have in fact already met the goals of what was to be the Conservation Plus program. That's one reason that I voted recently to put the brakes on it and take another look. We do have water hogs you might call them and we need a way to reach them. But the number of customers in our top water tier has been dropping. I think it was about 60% wasn't it Bruce recently? People falling out of the top water tier. So that's happening as well. So instead of a broad based program to reach all of our customers I think we'll be able to implement a much more targeted program. But we do need to address the unfair sharing of a limited resource. And we need a way to reach them. We've been doing all of this with the voluminous and frequent public input and we will continue that as we roll out programs. But you know something conservation is cheaper than manufacturing water. We sort of have to manufacture process, distribute, pump, test water. That's expensive. A low flush toilet saves more than the water would cost to keep the old one running. Thank you. Thank you. Okay Michelle, we're gonna start with you. What funds in the budget have been set aside or dedicated solely to acquire new sources of water? That's an excellent question. I don't know. My read is, I can answer the question I want, right? If you don't know the answer. When I was reading through I was finding bits and pieces. And again, I've never seen a structure and agenda set up in such a complicated manner in 17 years working on boards. But what struck me is for instance one item I believe I've got it right was 2.4 million for the new outreach program. But I am not finding budget items that set aside any money as a cash reserve. And it was one of the things I called for in my six points of things they've gotta do. They have to build a cash reserve and they need to do it by taking some of the focus off of the rebate, the conservation, the outreach programs. And in fact, their own staff and their own researchers have told them that the tactic that they're taking with the conservation and the rebates and even the offset plan are actually reaching a point of diminishing return. And yet they're very expensive to fund with your budget. They require a lot of staff. A rebate for instance sounds good, but it's basically I'm gonna take your money. I'm gonna add administrative costs. And if you retrofit your toilet, I'll give you back your money. It would be much easier if the, or much more cost effective if the residential users just redid their own retrofit instead of adding the cost of Soquel Creek Administrated. I want you to get it right, there you go. Thank you, Doug. Thank you. I have it right now. Oh, I'm sorry. 750,000 to the man next to me. That's the gold ball plate. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Doug. I'm aware of the $750,000 and I believe that money was well spent to look at alternative sources of additional water. I'm not aware of any money that's actually been set aside. So the only money that I'm aware of that's been discussed was the conservation plus program, which basically was allocated at $3.2 million this year and $24 million over 20 years, which basically is about rationing and conservation. Because of the financial condition of the district, in other words, their operating expenses have jumped dramatically in the last few years. Their ability to borrow money is dramatically reduced. So if you look at their, they call it the capital outlays to, basically to revenue, they've gone from 6.34 to 1.99. What that means is that means their ability to borrow money, obviously when you find a solution for water, you can't charge the customers $50,000 today. So you're gonna have to build it into the rates, which means you have to borrow the money for the capital improvements to do it. Again, they're not sitting any money aside, as far as I can tell in the budget. So that means if they do find a solution, 50, 60 million or whatever the number is, it's gonna be extremely difficult, especially with the high rates they have now to raise the rates and to actually float the bond money that's gonna be required to actually fund a new water alternative. Thank you, Bruce. So we have an operating reserve of about $8 million. It's required by board policy. That's 40% of the operating budget. And Doug is right that our income to debt ratio has been dropping and that does affect our ability to borrow. Our current rating is AA plus, which is for a government agency, is one of the highest ratings, if not the highest rating you can get. So for supplemental water supply, what we would be doing and the plan is to determine what the supplemental water supply is, what the cost is and put it to a vote of our customers and part of that would be the financing. It would be financed. I don't think people want us to raise the rates now for an unknown supplemental water supply so that we can have a reserve. I think people wanna first know what the supplemental water supply is and then approve that supply and then go after the amount of money that's needed. And when you're talking about how much money it is, if you are able to get 30 year financing on a $50 million project with the number of customers we have, we're not talking in extreme amounts of money per customer. We're talking in the range of 50 cents to a dollar per day per customer. So it's, because we have so many people, there's a lot of, the cost can be shared and it won't be an incredible increase. Thank you, Maria. I haven't seen those numbers. I can only say that at this point because there's still an exploration of the various solutions, there's a number of solutions that have been proposed, six in total. I also suggest beyond the six, I will look at other ones in addition. There were a couple of decals, there were a couple of water transfers, some injection wells, but there are a number of other types of solutions that need to be explored. So it needs to be, the budget needs to be reviewed to make sure that all of the options are being considered that people really want. And there was a survey done, there are 23,000 voters in the district and 300 were surveyed. I don't know how many people actually responded to that survey. That number isn't significant and isn't reliable, therefore it can't be a valid number. So I want to see another survey done with a wider variety of people and a wider input. And then a budget can be developed to find the proper solutions that people want that are effective as well as environmentally sound. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. So this one's a little harder hitting for me. So I know the $750,000 number that's being spent to find new water sources for our community. And I don't have any science behind it, but it seems a little light for this board considering the level of the groundwater emergency that's being declared and the hair on fire mentality we're hearing from this board about water emergency in our community. So I'm a little surprised. There's a little bit of contradiction there. What troubles me is we're not carrying any money for building new sources because we don't know what we're gonna do yet. I went to a meeting, a board meeting about a month ago and we were still putting dots on a map about what we think might be solutions for the community here. And this has been a problem in our community for 10 years and there's been no solution come up with yet. So what I see is a lot of money being spent on conservation. Salaries for conservation. This is money thrown down a hole. This is not money towards a new water supply for our community. And then when we do figure out what we need, then I see us taking on a bunch of debt and we'll have a pretty heavy debt service along with those salaries and we'll be paying double for our new water because of poor decisions made in the past. And this is where the cat's out of the bag and we have to take account of decisions made and actions made by this board in the past. We didn't get this water, the supplemental water supply online. And now we have a little problem and our costs are gonna go up and we're gonna pay for it. So this is probably something we need to hold this board accountable. And I know it's got a little hard hitting but I mean this is something we need to address here in the election. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. We are paying now for bad decisions made in the past starting in the early 1980s of very different board. In fact, board members that now endorse the slate of candidates running against me and Dr. Jaffe are the ones who over-pumped and burdened us and our children with the expense of that. Water is very local. Costs vary enormously. The cost of extraction, treatment, delivery, it's different, it's all over the map. You can't really compare us with others. I'm very proud that our district is reviewed. Its finances are reviewed thoroughly before financing agencies will help us with capital expenses. And we received the AA plus rating and we've been able to borrow money at very low rates, interest rates. The conservation program that my opponents are attacking represents only 7% of our budget. And yet, look what we've achieved in the last year, about 25% reduction in water use for only 7% of our budget. Is that an ineffective use of our money? So when you conserve 20% and the rates also go up 20%, it's a wash because the rates are up but your usage is down. So although rates rise, bills don't rise commensurately. They've been, in fact, this 2020% example, your actual bill that you pay in the month would be the same. We reduced $117 million water rationing program to a much more acceptable $25 million conservation program. It's a bargain. Thank you, Rick, John. Did I miss something or neither of these board members said one number when they asked this question. So I'll give the numbers for you that apparently they don't know. Water sales are budgeted at 69.91%. That's what they're at. Their staff is gonna increase, it was 40.37. They're increasing their staff to 51.63. That's a pretty large jump. Let's see, their new water software program that they bought so they can bill us monthly instead of bi-monthly, that was $180,000. Their new vehicle they bought last month from North Bay Ford, that was $54,000. Replacement of a truck, $31,000. I think you're getting my gist here. Their budget is at 16.783 million, million, 16.783 million, that's up 30%. But yet, they tell the customers that we just wanna raise your rates a little bit so we can have a flat line. Then we hear, well, 7%, that wasn't a lot to spend for a 25 reduction. Well, wait a minute. The customers were asked to reduce, they reduced. That money would have been, we didn't have to spend that 7%. You would have got the reduction. This budget, as you can tell, is out of control. And this is a prime example of it. You have board members up here that have no clue what these numbers are. I went to the board meeting and I said, are you guys aware that you're gonna go through $20 million in six months from now to the end of the year? You're gonna go through $20 million. And they looked at me like a deer in the headlights. And I said, no, no, no, this is on your website. This is your stuff. Their debt ratio was at 6.36. That's how much money they had if they didn't sell any more water. 6.36, that's a pretty good rating that Laura Brown left them as they're being critical of. It's at the end of the year, it can be 1.99. It's like this, 1.99. They're financially irresponsible with our money. Thank you, John. Okay, we're gonna squeeze in one more question before closing comments. And you're gonna have a one-minute response starting with Doug. This is the question. Should businesses be required to pay higher rates as compared to residential users for water use as they do not have to ration? I think the first problem you run into with businesses, a lot of businesses today don't have their own meters. And so it's really hard to figure out how much a business should be paying for water. The other challenge, and I'll come back to the question, but the other challenge is that many of the businesses today are really struggling. I've worked with several of the small businesses. I do some consulting with the Small Business Development Center. And a lot of them in this area, that the economy is not that good in Santa Cruz County. And a lot of people are struggling. So I would take a hard look at it. I don't have an answer tonight to that question. But I can't assume that just because somebody's a business that they're making a lot of money and therefore they can afford to pay higher rates. I think the first thing we have to do is give them information about how much they're using so they can track and measure and set a goal for reduction. Thank you, Doug, Bruce. I have to be fair to businesses. I have to be fair to people who are residents. The, actually the business rates are less if you look at them because it's done on a bulk rate. There's not the tears. So I'd like to talk about with the rest of my 40 seconds in the accusation that the 20 million's gonna be spent. That's actually a plan. It includes CIP. That's not at all what's going on. Mr. Prentice has it wrong. So I wanna reiterate in terms of finances that the district is audited. They have policies that are enacted to keep it solvent and it is solvent. Thank you, Maria. Businesses need to understand how much they're using and my understanding is that they don't really know exactly how much at this point, so that needs to be defined and they do have to put in place best business practices but that's not really monitored. So it's not monitored very well. Let's put it that way. And so that needs to be looked at. And if we're all gonna be doing our very, very best to conserve then businesses should be included in that as well as everyone else. As far as the rates go, the rates should be equitable. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. I have spent a lot of time studying this but businesses are a service in our community and you raise the rates for water in our businesses, you're gonna raise the prices for that service in our community. That doesn't mean that businesses should go scot-free in this situation. Awareness and education with the businesses, giving them some meters perhaps so they can know how much they're using, helping them understand what conservation is so they can keep their water usage down. It would be good but just raising their rates is just gonna pass on to us, to the consumers in our community. And we can go about it differently. Thanks. Thank you, Eric. First of all, we don't know if there will be water rationing. It's an idea that's been floated and it's receiving and we'll continue to receive public comment from all of you. We looked at whether we could treat businesses and residential customers the same but we concluded that you cannot. A successful business, say a restaurant with more customers coming through, they use a lot more water to wash all the dishes primarily and we wouldn't want water rates that punished success of that sort by charging them a higher tier just for success. This is why we have flatter rates. There won't be rationing for businesses the same way. We just want them to follow best management practices. Okay, thank you, Rick. John. Yeah, I would need more information on it. It just seems to me that the aquifer doesn't, you know, it doesn't really care that who's pumping the water out, we're just taking the water. So to me it seems like if you're taking it out you should pay your fair share for it. We use the analogy that you're washing more dishes. Well, one might say if you're washing more dishes you're probably making more money because you're serving more food. But I just don't have all the information to look at a tier structure. I think it should be fair and equitable and I think that it should have community input and I think with the new board in place that's a good question that we should look at everything and put all options on the table and figure out what is right and what is wrong and what needs to be fixed. Thank you, Michelle. Most businesses are actually, they're the entire community. You've got a tennis club that has a pool that all the kids swim in. You've got restaurants along the palace here in Capitola who people come in and use their restrooms. They use their showers. In other words, a business doesn't have the control over how much water is used that a residence has. But more importantly, if we start mucking with that relationship of the mother with the three-year-old running into the nearest restaurant and the business is saying, no, I'm sorry, we've already used our 75 gallons for today. You will have to go on down the street. It destroys your community. You want to keep the community intact and you don't want to start. I would really, again with the moratorium, back off what your unintended consequences are of a blanket policy. Thank you all. It's time for closing comments and we're going to start with Bruce. All right. So we've been talking tonight about a number of things. I just want to show the graphic here. First of all, thank you to the Chamber of Commerce and the people who are in the audience and the people watching on television who care about their water situation. I've been talking about our pumping increase. This is the increase that occurred from the 1980s to when I came on the board. This blue area here are safe levels. This is sustainable. We're not sustainable beyond the 1980s. Once I came on the board, we enacted policies and the community came more aware and pumping went down. We're now very close to sustainable levels. The problem is that we have this triangle here of deficit. We have to recover that. We need new supplemental water supply. It's not going to happen tomorrow. That is why it's important for us to go after the easy transfer with the city of Santa Cruz. That is why we have to encourage conservation and thank you to all the customers who have been conserving so that we don't end up in a situation where we mortgage our future and have saltwater come into our aquifer. If you want to talk about real economic impacts, we're not talking about a 10% or 20% or even 40% rate increases. You get saltwater intrusion into your aquifer. You're talking about incredible impacts, devastating impacts. So for decades and decades, we've over pumped. It's time to heal the groundwater basin. There's real choices between the candidates. I just encourage you to vote for a candidate who you think is going to heal the basin, who that is their primary agenda. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. I just want to thank you all for being concerned citizens and to hearing what we have to say. I really stand for all of you and I believe that we do need a supplemental supply and it's not a simple solution. It is a multifaceted solution that's going to require a number of options as well, not only getting the water, but also working with the other groups within the basin. I strongly believe that we all need to be part of this and I think one of my favorite John F. Kennedy statements was ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country and I know that that's not the popular thing nowadays. People want to say, hey, I want it and I want it free but that's not what we're about here. We are all a community, all of us and I'm here and this is what I want to do. I ran for board simply because I'm concerned. I'm a very busy person. I do a lot of volunteer work. I have a full-time job. I have a lot going on in my life but I feel so strongly about this and about protecting you, every one of you and all of us as well as our environment that I said, yeah, I'm going to take the time and be a part of the solution. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Thanks. I want to start by saying thank you to the chamber and thank you to everybody who came out here tonight and thank you to everybody who's going to be watching this in the future here. It's been a pleasure to participate in this Q and A form today. It's been a pleasure to participate in the campaign and work with John Prentis and work with Doug Dever and work to bring about change in our water supply here in the community because we do new change. So I thought I'd just touch on a few things about where I stand to be clear because if you're having, just to help with differentiating between the candidates, if elected to the board, I'm going to fight to maintain a safe and plentiful water supply for our community. And that's without putting undue stress or trying to change our way of life because we have a pretty good way of life here in the community and we need to keep it that way. I believe in conservation. I think it's a necessary thing in our community. Where we live here on the coast, we need to be very careful about our water supply and what we use in conservation is just table stakes in our community. But we also need a supplemental water supply. We've got to keep this aquifer that we use every day that we cherish. We need to cherish it and maintain it and monitor it and watch it and take care of it. But we need a supplemental water supply that will help us do that. The current situation is that the district is out there by itself. No matter what you've heard, there's not a lot of collaboration that we're hearing about. I have some friends at other water districts and they're a little bit distrusting, maybe a little suspect of where Soquel Creek's going. So as I said earlier, I'm in this for the long haul. I'm in it to do my part for the community. I want to do my part. I want to use my professional and educational background to do. So thank you. I'd be honored by your vote. Rick. Thanks, Tony, for bringing us all together. This was the first time we've been face to face as a group of candidates. It's been just very interesting to me. And I want to thank all of our customers who are doing a remarkable job, not only of conservation, which has brought us back into balance after 30 years. But for all of those who come and help us to figure out solutions at our board meetings, to propose, to critique, to collaborate, this is working. I was very proud to join this board two years ago because it had undertaken to tackle a monumental job, the kind that often gets kicked down the road, like social security, underfunding, or whatever. But they had taken it head on. And of course, you're going to get criticism when you take on a big problem that's an economic and an environmental problem of this magnitude. But I think you have a pretty stark choice between Dr. Jaffe and I on one hand and the slate of three who are working against us. With us, you will be moving forward with solutions that have been very carefully considered. They are underway. They have gotten us back in balance. They will produce the supplemental supply. You will vote on that supplemental supply. And we will continue to manage the impacts of new development. You have a choice between candidates who ask for the science, who believe the science, who make policy decisions based on science. And you have, on the other hand, a lot of questioning or maybe undermining of the scientific conclusions. The big risk isn't the money we're spending. It's the risk of seawater destroying our environment and our way of life. Please vote for the candidates with these scientific and management expertise needed by the job. Thank you. Thank you. John. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for coming tonight. As you can see, I'm very passionate about this, to say the least. Couple things that stood out. We want to send a strong signal to the customers. It was a flawed program. 3.2 million sent a pretty strong message. Our rates are 30% higher. I guess I'm just frustrated because I'm tired of driving to Watsonville City every morning to get my daughter water because I can't afford to pour it out of my own sink. Of course you know what you're going to get. We have graphs. This line right here is your debt index. There it was, and there it's going to be at the end. The bottom line is the customers can't afford to move forward with incumbents. They can't afford to move forward. Our rates are spiraling out of control. They don't have the answers. They keep placing blame that it was the 80s and somebody else's problem, which I call a situation. Let's not let them off the hook so quick and easy. They're about a moratorium. They're about this conservation plus mandatory. They're about the stage three emergency. They're trying to do the political dance right now. That's what they forgot about. They haven't had to run because nobody's running against them. They forgot about this little thing called the campaign. And now they're trying to unring the bell. I just don't think that the voters out there are going to be fooled by this political dance. Numbers don't lie, as they say. $16 million budget. It doesn't matter, CPI, how you slice that thing. It's still going to come out $16 million. Eight, 10 new employees. It doesn't matter what pencil you use. That's a lot of employees. I don't know a lot of companies that are buying employees boot allowances. I saw that on the check registry. That was interesting. What you get with me is smart, transparent, and honest honesty. That's what you'll get. I'm all about smart growth, honesty, and being transparent. Thank you, John. Michelle. I returned to the area where I grew up because my mom and my sisters are here. And then the beach and this weather really caught my attention. But what held me and made me feel that I could be part of this community was the tremendous effort, the enthusiasm of the people who attended my first two Water Board meetings and watching those people. And to my, I've been just odd at all the years, I struggled to change things. And you guys did it on your own. You can serve water. Everybody's talking about how they carry this and they change that. My goal is to create a sustainable water table and aquifer so that all of California can be what we remembered. We can be an agricultural area. We can be an area where people want to live and grow their families. It's going to be a hard task. And I want to give kudos to the prior board. I have never seen such depth and research and what they have compiled to go forward is extraordinary. But why I decided to put my name in is one of the evenings the presenter was describing the structure of your aquifer and what the opportunities are and the areas where you can do immediately do gray water into something like Soquel and to see a seascape golf course, for instance. And you could block the saltwater intruding there because that particular section of your aquifer is so porous. And instead of grabbing that amazing concept, they started discussing the difference between point three and point four. The one problem with research, your board has too many research educators. What they know how to do is to study. They unfortunately don't know how to take the next step and implement what they've learned. Thank you, Michelle. Doug. I want to thank Tony, you on the chamber. And for all you folks coming out tonight, I really appreciate it. And I also want to thank the other candidates. Everybody here, nobody's going to make any money being on the board. And everybody here is committed in their own way. So I commend them all for doing this. We all agree that we have a basin challenge. It's not a Soquel district customer challenge. We need to conserve. I think we all agree with that. None of us want to watch the chart go back up again. So we're not trying to put in 17 Walmarts. And we couldn't if we wanted to. And we aren't an arid climate. Most of all, well, actually all the candidates tonight claim to want to find supplemental supply. But we've already talked about it. No money's being set aside for it. So you have to decide whether it's sincere or not. And whether you put the money is going to be the real, tells you where the priorities are. And we're concerned about the affordability of water, even if it's found, based on the current financial condition of the district. At least three of the candidates are currently supporting or have recently supported a moratorium. They backed off tonight. But they were for it months ago. They wanted to implement rationing, then backed off of it because of the election. They claim to want additional water, but they're not willing to set money aside for it. The issue is going to be by 2020, the basin, we're going to have to have a basin management plan, and we're going to have to have an agency run it. There probably won't be SoCal Creek water. But if you look without supplemental supply to hit the numbers that the consultants and the current board have raised, everybody in here would have to be at 53 gallons a day of water to basically hit the numbers to bring the aquifers back into equilibrium. So we're consistent. The others have fluctuated. But the biggest reason that I'm running is because it's about you. You elect people. I see Dennis here. I see Mike here. You elect your officials to represent you. And that's the passion that I saw, especially after watching the board meetings. Thank you, Doug. And thank you all candidates this evening for participating and showing your commitment to us. It was very informative, and we wish you all well. And I'd like to thank the audience. Water is one of the most important issues we have to deal with. Everyone needs water. So get out there and vote on November 4. And thank you for coming this evening. Thank you. Nice meeting you, guys. Nice working with you. Good. Yeah.