 looks like it's 630. So I would like to be this meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District on March 4th. Can we have the roll call please? President Mayhoff here Vice President Henry here Director Fultz here Director Smalling here and Director to here thank you any additions or deletions to the agenda staff has none I have one yes the city of Santa Cruz recently submitted a petition to the state's water resources control will change their water rights permits as they apply to withdrawing water from the San Lorenzo River I'm aware that Rick Rogers and staff have been working to review that and how it might affect the district but the board and the public have not had the opportunity to understand what the staff concludes and I'd like to make sure the board and the public have the opportunity to do that and to potentially ask any questions as you know we can't discuss this in great detail today because it's not on the agenda and we can't agendize it for a future meeting but our district council who is a specialist in water rights maybe you can just give a really brief description of what what we've been up to sure yeah briefly I can do that Chair Mayhood we have been reviewing Santa Cruz's petitions and the notice that came from the state water board regarding the potential changes to Santa Cruz's water rights and we have been meeting with experts to determine whether to file some kind of a response to that notice from the state water board and we hadn't put it on a meeting agenda because we were working on it internally with staff and I believe the responses due next Friday so there may not be an opportunity to put it on a regular meeting agenda unless there's a desire perhaps to review I mean there's there's gonna be a long process here so it could perhaps be agendized for some discussion after that initial response if any initial response goes in after that initial response is done while the process is still ongoing before the state board that seems reasonable to me is maybe after you filed it we can agendize it for a meeting soon after that before the water board is issued their decision so Rick and I'll work on that now is the time for oral communications and this portion of the agenda agenda is reserved for oral communications by the public on any subject that lies within the jurisdiction of the district but is not on tonight's agenda and let's see are there any comments from the public Jim Mosher can you hear me yes great well I was really glad to hear Director Smoli bring to the attention of the board and those attending the meeting about the Santa Cruz permit to change their water rights this is the first time in a hundred years I understand that they've done that first time I heard about this was when I read a opinion piece in the Santa Cruz Sentinel by Rose by the director of the Santa Cruz water district saying that they were going to do this I was surprised the Rosemary Menard surprised to read it in the paper and not having heard about this because I knew this could possibly affect our district as well as our watershift so I really urged the board and the staff to look at this carefully and hopefully it is part of a regional plan that will be beneficial to the region and not harmful to our area but seems to me we need to look carefully at what this may mean for our ability to draw from Fall Creek what it means for our allotment with at Loch Lomond and what possible implications it may have for the for the recharging of the aquifer and for the and for the general well-being of the of the watershed I just it surprises me that this isn't then discussed either here at the Santa Maria Santa Margarita groundwater agency maybe it has been and I just missed it but it just struck me as wow this is kind of a major thing and I don't understand the implications of the fact that protests have to be filed by March 12th it sounds like from what Attorney Nichols said that perhaps there'll be other opportunities to influence the decision even if we don't file a protest but seems like that's something that the board would want to take a careful look at to make sure that we're not losing some opportunity to be engaged in the process by letting that deadline go by without filing something I also thought this might be something we could talk to this Valley Water District about since this could potentially have an impact on them maybe this is something we could be collaborating on thank you thank you Larry Ford thank you this is Larry Ford wow I too was surprised that this is when this issue came up and reading the Santa Cruz sentinels I do every day and I'm very concerned about the potential impacts of this move by the city Santa Cruz on our ability to use Fall Creek water and to use the Loch Lomond water certainly I don't understand all the different dimensions of it so just hearing some discussion from Jim Mosier is very interesting and I wonder what else you know Director Smalley but I think it sounds like a really good idea to have some kind of a special meeting and also I'm really pleased to hear that the staff was already aware of this and that you guys are working on this it's all been with such short notice so that's all I have to say thank you okay thank you are there any more comments from the public if not Director Fultz yes could we schedule a special meeting in that for next week before the filing if Rick and I talk about that tomorrow and we'll see if that that's a possibility and and can get back to you yeah I mean I was aware that this was going on I I don't know that we had been informed there is a filing coming up shortly but I think it would be worthwhile for the board and the public to have a discussion about that before we put the filing in okay thank you so I'll check in with Rick about that and and Gina too because she needs to be there for that all right we'll go on for unfinished business and the first item is the loan that we're planning to take out district manager Rogers yes thank you chair Maynard I'll ask the finance manager to present this item to the board Stephanie are you now yes we can now okay perfect so this is essentially from a lot of the discussions that we had before all of the paperwork on the installment purchase agreement that go into all of this is now where we are at and ready for the board to hopefully adopt this is the $15 million loan through co-bank secured for 20 years at a 2.4 interest rate this is covering about 9 million worth of the CZ youth buyers and then another 6 million of other pipeline and a team project we do have bond counsel on the phone if anyone has specific questions about the installment purchase agreement but otherwise you know this is kind of just the culmination of the the discussions that we've been having in the past is there any discussion among the board and director Smalley yes I have a few questions the loan has several has a number of conditions and requires a project fund in section 3.10 and also requires financial statements and audits are the statements and audits anything beyond what we typically do and are we prepared to set up that project fund as required with all the necessary details so we do have the project fund ready and set up this money is going to be held similar to our 14 million COP at the at the count at the county that is separate and then we'll draw down on it as we you are paying the expenditures for these projects the other loans do require us to submit our annual financial report within a certain time frame that you know always is in time for us to have it prepared this loan does require a little bit more quarterly reporting a lot of what we do now you know what I present now in our quarterly financials is what they need they do need even though it's a high level they do need a balance sheet aspects of it and so we are going to be integrating that into our quarterly reports and so it shouldn't be too much of a list you know we'll do our quarterly reports a little bit more robust and then send it off to them each quarter okay and one other question that I have the section 4.6 system maintenance refers to maintenance that the loan expects us to be able to do on any of the systems that are being installed do we have a preventive maintenance schedule with all of our other equipment and is this then something that we just add to and also that section also requires anticipated costs for any of this maintenance so do we have this preventive maintenance schedule with costs for existing to expand on Rick may be able to answer that in a little bit more detail okay yeah it's a kind of a two-part answer here we do have a computerized maintenance management schedule now we have not funded all of this maintenance over the past year such as tank coatings would be one that comes catch up system maintenance yeah such as the vehicles are in the computerized maintenance management program you know we're up on vehicle maintenance but district-wide it's hit and miss at this point in time we do longer it we do have a mechanism for it but a lot of it is not funded at this point okay it sounds to me like though for the monies from this one it's going to require something a bit more rigorous than this to maintenance that's correct and and you know the main lines the maintenance is minimal now the tank the Blue Ridge tank will require either coatings or and a maintenance schedule protection we are built in the RFP for the tank replacement we'll have the first annual maintenance built in to the bid and hopefully we will get on track on on tank maintenance that's one of our first priorities and we're already scheduling tank maintenance coming up in the in this current budget process that we're moving ahead on your budget process okay all right thank you that's all my director folks yes I have a few questions not particularly difficult hopefully on page 15 of 52 the definition of revenues are we talking about total revenues or operating revenues it wasn't clear to me exactly what the definition was covering it is net revenues so it's gross revenues less operating revenues well by by total revenues what I'm referring to is non-operating revenues like property taxes for example does it include that no it's just from the water system revenues okay great um yeah the same pledge that was in your prior financing next one is what's our new forecasted debt coverage ratio after we take this loan down where do we end up well I had that at one point I don't have that up in front of me but I can send it to you it still is very healthy I mean we essentially would have been able to take out a loan double this yeah I do believe we're still around that I think we'll be around the 2.5 once this we're about to have that bank of Nevada loan that matures September yeah September of this year so it takes a little bit of a dip since we have that concurrent but next year I believe it was you know we were still in that 2.5 range okay yeah because I mean well 18 months from now we need to be looking at another one in my opinion okay section 6.2 just a small typo there's a reference to prepayment premium identified in section 6.2 I think it was meant 6.3 and on that um on the prepayment premium um could could you guys expand on that a little bit what's our effective prepayment possibility is there any prepayment possibility we could really take advantage of without paying a huge penalty so essentially we secured the lower rate some of the other options had it built into where you could do a prepayment at year seven or year 10 yeah we took the yield maintenance provision which means we can pay this off at at any point if the rates are higher if the rates are lower and we're looking to pay it off there is a calculation that that will occur for whatever the current going rate is the differential you know there's a portion that we would but we would have that option obviously if the rates were severely lower than you know the 2.4 we'd be weighing you know what the cost is versus what the what the potential savings would be able to refine it's a severe penalty basically for for doing it if it's under so we probably don't want to the good news is that you know we aren't paying that much interest on this overall um and then the last one might be for rick um here rick in the table there where does the non-fire recovery start make sure the public uh is is aware of that i don't have that table up is it is it the south zone distribution system piping talking about exhibit a in the project description description yeah a one yeah exhibit a right okay the uh the descriptions for the non-fire are the projects of the ormond road water main replacement uh the fernwood main replacement the wanita woods water main replacement the ziany drive water main replacement and the blue ridge tank project replacement right and is that sort of the order of priority that you are thinking we would do well you know pretty much so but seeing as we have a short construction window to complete these projects so you know the first year we'll be going out in design plan specifications um sequel review and then the second third year we'll be in construction and we plan to be simultaneously moving ahead on these projects some will maybe a little sooner than other i would say the long lead item project on this uh that might come in right at the tail end would be the the blue ridge tank blue ridge yeah you know tanks are always tanks are a little more problem problematic and maybe could we get stefanie to introduce uh i have a horrible time pronouncing your name as um maril because i'm not sure the board and everybody knows her yes we have mernal uh shaw from bbk law who had been our bond council on the phone she was the one that created this massive document so she was very very well versed in documents and you know loans of this batch no that's that's pretty much the question i just wanted to make sure that the community knew which projects were not part of the fire um uh related um and we're already working on the next list of projects through that was been identified in our water master plan to move ahead for our next round of uh of uh loan money as you spoke of we're already home for pedal to the pedal to the metal rick yeah all right great thank you director to do do you have anything you want to ask uh nope thank you director henry i read all of that and i i did have a question but uh i know the answer and so i i i don't have a question now okay we have a resolution before us can i move that and then go out to uh public comment yeah i'll have a statement when we come back let's uh i what is the number on the resolution uh chair may hood it is blank um so that it can be filled in with the next available number so well let's go out to the let's go out to the public and see if any of the public have a comment on the agenda item in front of us i don't see any um so we can um yeah you should check with the caller there's there's a caller well they they uh okay there is one caller here i don't know if they have a way does the okay but why don't you unmute the caller the caller if you'd like to make a comment please go ahead and do so appears like not so um okay we'll go back to the board and i'm going to go ahead and move the resolution and read it out it's resolution number to be determined um a resolution of the san lorenzo valley water district approving and installment purchase agreement with respect to financing improvements to the water system in an amount not to exceed 15 million dollars and other matters pertaining thereto second thank you thank you um um do we have um any comments or further comments okay director fultz yes due to the CZU fire the district is facing significant replacement activities which will result in additional costs to the district even with the FEMA reimbursement which is anticipated to be 75 percent of the allowed replacement costs while our estimate for construction costs is currently 20 million meaning our contribution would be five million past experience indicates that actual construction costs particularly during disaster recovery periods will likely be much higher so while the original proposal was for the district to borrow five million this is the reason in my mind for the change the last thing i want our district to have to do is go back to financing agencies for more money at a time when that money is more urgently needed it's at that point the negotiating leverage shifts to the lender and the deal isn't as good in addition the district has effectively exhausted its three million in reserves due to cost resulting from the emergency work required to restore service after the fire the methods available to us to replenish these reserves will take time it would be irresponsible of this board to not take steps to ensure sufficient funds are available for potential future disasters given that we live in an earthquake a heavy rain and now fire prone zone in other words given we're going into yet another fire season and maybe we didn't leave the last one waiting for a slow build-up of funds to replenish reserves is not prudent finally there is still a discussion to be had about the method by which we're going to replace the raw water lines from our supply creeks and then low and mountain and what FEMA would cover on that the path of least resistance and the only one FEMA may fund is to replace the above ground plastic pipe and wooden supports that burned with above ground plastic pipe and wooden supports that can burn again in a future fire should we as a community decide we wish to further harden our raw water supply lines and FEMA will not participate in that and our community would be on the hook for 100% of those additional costs we will be having that discussion shortly on the plus side it is possible we'll get more than the anticipated reimbursement from FEMA and possibly from the state but again it would be imprudent to plan based on hopes and wishes so with all of these uncertainties type of construction actual cost FEMA reimbursement levels state participation it was my judgment and I believe the judgment of the board the fiscal prudence requires we borrow more than a minimum forecasted amount this 15 million gives us more flexibility and more resilience to respond to the CZU disaster recovery yes we will end up paying more in interest going this route a bit more the good news is part of those interest charges will be offset by earning interest on the unused portion and remember that a focus for this district since 2018 has been on infrastructure so if any funds remaining after the CZU recovery those projects identified by Rick Rogers and James Furtado will be applied to that given our current interest rates I think it's staggering to note that we're only paying five four million dollars in interest over 20 years or 200,000 a year I would have liked to take down more to continue catching up in decades of much needed infrastructure improvements unfortunately due to the virus the fire and not having an engineering manager replacement until recently though we knew how now have one we're a little behind however I hope the district will be looking to take down another loan in another 12 to 18 months or so as you can see from the list there are projects that are not part of the CZU recovery in the meantime our board owes our community full disclosure of our true financial position meeting the capital obligations or money associated with decades of deferred maintenance and infrastructure replacement that are now coming due obligations to current and former employees necessary reserve levels for disaster resiliency and going forward the capital requirements for our district to maintain and improve infrastructure in addition the board owes our community complete transparency about why are operating costs have skyrocketed in recent years which results in keeping our district on the hamster wheel with respect to paying down our capital obligations the money we have for capital obligations is what is left over after we deduct operating expenses from our revenue the faster operating expenses rise and they've risen almost 90% in the last 10 years the less money is available for the millions of dollars maybe as high as the low tens of millions of dollars in capital obligations that we're facing thank you do any other board members have a comment i really don't want to say what my comment is thank you laus i think it's implied um okay we have a motion on the table and a second um so can we go ahead and um take the vote please director mayhut hi president Henry hi vice president Henry hi director pulse yes director smally yes and director too motion passes next is in under unfinished business is exploration of possible consolidation of san lorenzo valley water district the scott's valley water district district manager rogers yes thank you chair mayhut um this has been random outline staff recommendations to take initial steps needed to explore whether or not to initiate a consolidation between the san lorenzo valley water district and the scott's valley water district this is not a recommendation to approve a consolidation only to initiate a public process to start engaging with the public and gathering information needed to make a decision nor will there will be a request to appropriate this board to appropriate any funds uh moving this ahead it's recommended that the board s lv board direct staff to move forward with some initial steps of a lengthy public process to explore potential consolidation between the two districts staff recommends that these initial steps include establishing a committee to focus on the issues including meeting with concerned members of the community and starting to develop information to help the board make a decision the second part of the recommendation is to hire a consultant to to conduct a feasibility study uh that potential benefits that uh do an analysis potential benefits and pitfalls of a consolidation alternatively the board could take no action tonight and defer any further uh consideration of this issue to a later date this alternative is not recommended because it's uh it leaves it's uncertain if there will continue to be an opportunity for consolidation a little background at the february fourth uh board of directors meeting s lv the district manager and district council presented an agenda item to the board regarding possible the possibility of consolidating with scott's valley the staff report suggested there may be substantial benefits if the two agencies could be joined uh additional uh additionally uh the executive officer of uh the last go agency uh was at the meeting and just presented an overview of what a process would look like the board took no action at this time referring to wait to hear the response from the scott's valley's uh board of directors following uh their consideration of the same item at their upcoming meeting which was at february 11 at that meeting the scott's valley board directed its staff to proceed with exploring possible consolidation contingent upon the san lorenzo valley board also deciding to proceed the recommendation asking tonight would be given over well support that in public interest the need for a lengthy public process including an estimated two-year timeframe to complete a consolidation if it goes forward it would be the of the formation of an ad hoc or standing committee is recommended the committee could be tasked to perform a number of important functions including meeting with concerned members of the community identifying information information needs gathering information reviewing documentation and making reports or recommendations to the full board the board could appoint uh directors as members of the ad hoc committee the structure could be an ad hoc committee task for service of a short duration of no more for approximately six months or it could constitute more of a formal or a standing committee intended to serve for a longer duration a feasibility study both managers have outlined at a high level of the benefits of a possible consolidation however in order to more fully understand and vet the anticipated benefits and possible pitfalls a technical feasibility study is needed this would involve issuing a request for a proposal to hire a consultant or reference the feasibility study for the recent aptos central fire district consolidation was at a cost of 42 000 and change the board could also defer the consideration since the board meeting on february 4 there has been a considerable response especially in the communities of the san lorenzo valley there have been several newspaper articles and a great deal of discussion on social media one of the common questions is being asked why now and if this is the right time as we are in the middle of the cobit 19 uh pandemic and the starting recovery of the cz u fire these are definitely valid concerns however as i've been quoted uh there is never a good time we are prone for disasters with the different you know earthquake floods fire it seems that every couple of years the san lorenzo valley is faced with another ongoing disaster the current disasters are ongoing and responding to emergencies as a continuous function of our district with new emergencies threatening occurring at any time the consolidation opportunity was introduced at this time with a view towards taking advantage of anticipated retirements of senior staff which would facilitate a process that would not threaten staff jobs thereby allowing for the advantageous cooperation between the two agencies it is uncertain if there will continue to be an opportunity for such a consolidation in the future that is unknown in the absence of a you know definite reason why x exploration should not move forward any manner that is responsive to the needs and concerns of the community is recommended to start the process of identifying the questions that need to be answered gathering uh the necessary information in this way the two districts could continue to work closely together to achieve a better understanding or whether or not to initiate a formal consideration process in the future i'm asking the board tonight to uh to consider appointing an ad hoc committee that the ad hoc committee could be tasked to put together an rfp to bring back to the full board for review for the feasibility study the feasibility study would then be reviewed by the full board and public and be presented to contractors for bidding i am not asking the district to appoint any funds tonight this would be reviewed when the feasibility study uh were turned into the board for review um with that i think i'll turn it back over to the board i think the district needs to evaluate and move forward with this feasibility study so we know what the benefits and pitfalls are this is a good opportunity to someone understand what this process would be and i ask the the board if they have any questions or thoughts from here okay thank you uh doctor uh doctor director henry hey i i have some thoughts on this i know when i first heard about this my knee jerk reaction was no based on emotion only and even though i've only been a rate payer for not quite five years i've been dealing with slv for since march of 2010 so i have a quite an attachment to the water district um i really want us to have a feasibility study i need facts i i don't want um just emotion i i want facts i i need to make a decision based on logic and on facts um and to have a uh a committee to do the rfp to get someone to do a feasibility study i think would be a great thing the other thing is my understanding is that scott's valley merges with us scott's valley water district would no longer exist it would be san lorenzo valley water district i i don't know if we'd change our name i like the name the way it is i kind of wouldn't want that to happen um the other thing is when's a good time in the 70s we had a very wet snow millions of trees went down it was freezing cold no power for a week but then in the 80s 82 83 89 i finally said to my husband i think we need to go back to la where it's safe and he gave me this look as only men can do are you nuts he didn't even respond it was just a look so i agree with rick there is no good time there's always something and i really would like to see this feasibility study done i believe scott's valley wants to merge and if they don't merge with us who are they going to merge with and i have some real concerns about that who they might merge with if they don't merge with us they're small and it's getting hard for small water districts to continue and it would make slv larger and stronger thank you director henry um director smally yes i have several questions uh rick you've made the point of recommending that we establish a committee and to our consultant um is it your recommendation that we proceed on both of those concurrently or would establishing the committee um without going out to seek a consultant for this feasibility study uh be a reasonable first you know good questions mark i believe we need to do both i need i believe that we should establish an ad hoc committee first to put together the rfp and to report to the board on a over the six month period monthly at a board of directors public meeting of the progress and then to bring that rfp back to the full board for review i think that developing the rfp it will be a very very important endeavor and we should uh take our time doing that and make sure we incorporate community input as well as the board's input but i think we need the ad hoc committee to develop the rfp and and to go out so i would say both but the ad hoc committee first okay um you've said that there's never a good time however i think that the restrictions that we're currently under with the pandemic are unusual um the first in a hundred years what do you think we lose if we wait until we're out of this restriction that we're currently under where we can't meet physically so that we could have a bit easier of discussions and by later i mean is that is that october this year is that the end of the year until the state takes us off of the current restrictions that we're under i you know i thought about this and i thought about what the feasibility with the type of staff time and board time you know six months a few a feasibility study would take i think it's of the process i think it's a minor lift um i don't see the pandemic you know quite frankly i see uh video check video meetings kind of the wave of the future it is it's uh saving an incredible amount of staff and consultant time it's gets it's it's curbing costs from travel i see this probably continuing with a lot of the video conferencing it i went to a meeting for the first time the other day not to take time but i actually went to uh it was a half hour travel time in one direction there's two other meetings i had to cancel because of travel time if i was taking from my office on video i would have made all three of those meetings i think the pandemic has changed the way we do business we'll go back to some of it but i don't think we'll go back to business as usual um you know it's the board's decision if they feel um that they would like to you know wait a while but i don't see that anything to that would hinder the process or hurt the process okay um we've we've talked before about uh water transfers transfers from our district to scott's valley and from scott's valley to us um and i understand that currently we can't do that only under or we can only do that under emergency conditions if that was lifted and we had the ability to transfer water is there a significant more significant benefit to the merger versus the ability to just do that and if we have excess at times if we're selling if we're gaining a financial benefit from that um since what i see you saying in here is what i think i've heard you saying was the benefit most significant is the financial aspects so can you comment on that course well right now the the only thing that we've really looked into has been the the low hang for district manager from scott's valley and i have discussed you know the low hanging the fruit would be you know one district manager one admin facility um you know those were the obvious the feasibility study i think would look more in depth into that and could look at the sale of water we've been talking about the sale of water to scott's valley um for a long time before the north south intertie was uh installed when we looked at the pros and cons of consolidating with the felton water system one of the big pros to that is we have a treatment plant located in felton that we could treat our lock loman water and move it to our south system first which is you know the sov has about a thousand customers including the trailer parks in the south system in the scott's valley area in the scott's valley city limits so we already serve down there and we've been looking and working on our water rights because there are a lot of water rights restrictions there's none on the lock loman water but there is uh moving water through the town of felton through the point of use and we've been working on conjunctive use and on working on those uh on those uh water permits now for some time so i think the feasibility study would tell us you know the and and when we write the the rfp i think it's important that those type of questions for the answers we want are in there you know is it the best would it just be good for us to take say our lock loman water that we don't use and to get that into the basin you know as you know being on san margarita by getting the lock loman water into the basin we save money by not having to recharge the basin right so there's a lot of great reasons why we want to get water into that south system you know our south system and potentially into the into the scott's valley uh water system so i think the feasibility study we would definitely want that those type of questions answer okay uh last question i have is um how do you anticipate the district being able to do outreach um if we were to go ahead with this now under the uh pandemic restrictions that were were currently still served under uh with the outcome of of a feasibility study or uh from this ad hoc committee other than another zoom meeting like we're having now well you know obviously that's probably our number one but you know you take a look at since we've uh brought this to the board all of the local newspapers have carried this story on their front page for the most part with all the local press banner and the bulletin and so forth social media and as you look at this call tonight we have uh we have 61 participants uh i mean the word has got out and i think you know with our outreach firms uh working scott's valley you know we have an outreach uh consultant that you know puts most it gets our post out on facebook we have our website um i i think the the information could get out and would get out not could the information will get out okay thank you that's all my questions okay director too i think a lot of my questions have been asked um and then do we are we gonna potentially use the same feasibility company or is that something to be discussed later we would go the it'd be a we would put out an r.i.p that we would uh request consultants from you know all over the state uh let me let me be more specific would we use the same feasibility contractor to do the study as scott's valley in order to potentially save money or would that be a conflict of interest i'm not sure i understand your question tina we would have one the slb water would have one feasibility study to uh answer those questions i'm not sure if scott's valley would go out and and have get their own feasibility study but i doubt it we would most most likely we would meet with representatives of scott's valley they would review uh just like you know our our board would review uh their customers would review um and we would put out one feasibility study with slb water in the you know the lead agency okay and then and then are they gonna help us out with the cost in that we have not talked about cost sharing but we would uh we would definitely request uh cost sharing okay that that's it thank you director faults i'd like to hear from the public first and then i may have a few things to say okay and let's go ahead and go out to the public um you go ahead and raise your hand we'll call on you the first person is lee and sanders thank you i am lee alan sanders and i'm a rate payer yes oh no worries i'm a rate payer in the slvwd um after closely reading the minutes of previous meetings on this topic it's clear to me that rick rogers could be tagged as a lame duck leader due to uh upcoming retirement this means he could be free to make powerfully impactful decisions that will reverberate for many years without fear of consequences i recommend tabling all activity of any kind regarding this topic until mr rogers replacement is firmly in power elaine fresco hi i i hope this isn't a stupid question but i am very confused about what the how you choose the members of the ad hoc committee and how they do their research as opposed to the consultant that you would eventually hire rick would you like to answer her i'm not sure i understand her question okay how are you going to choose the members of your ad hoc committee well and what specifically will they be doing how are they doing their research uh i would leave the the selection of the members for the ad hoc committee up to our board of directors i would recommend two of our board members be appointed to that committee uh and staff would work with the board on putting together uh an rfp for the uh for the feasibility study okay and then we would report back monthly to to the full board on that progress i'm moving forward okay i think we should wait j maxwell j maxwell you're uh demuted you there thank you i'd like to um dovetail on a comment from the director um henry and she mentioned why does scott's valley need to merge and the observation would be is their face with unlimited growth because the city regulates growth not the water district they have limited resources in their aquifer if you look at their budget um history from 2015 to 18 where they ran deficit budgets the only thing that brought them out of deficit budgets was increased connections and they're running 800 000 a year and projected new connection uh revenue and my question is why is this a benefit to the san lorenzo valley water district if scott's valley is running in a deficit mode that's thomas thank you um i um i have a lot of concerns about the timing of this i wouldn't say that i have a position um entirely pro or con the merger but i i'm still waiting to hear what the compelling reason is to initiate this process now as opposed to waiting i think director smally pointed out some important issues um it seems to me that you know we've been recently talking about things like combining committees so that it takes less time for the board and the staff to deal with the issues that that we already have to deal with i've been in several meetings where staff has talked about their inability to take on anything else because and and director henry has always supported that to take on any extra projects or extra work because there isn't enough time uh and i can't quite imagine any worse time to take this on given the fact that we are recovering we have a huge recovery from the cpu fires that we are in a time of debris flow danger uh and that we're in the midst of a pandemic and it seems to me that we really this isn't a normal bad time to do it this isn't one event as we've experienced in the past like floods from 1982 or the earthquake of 1989 this is multiple issues happening and i i just have already been hearing for the last number of months that there's a limit to what the staff can do and there's no doubt that this would add to that right now so it seems to me that unless somebody can really give a compelling reason for doing it now other than there's never a good time i would say that this couldn't be the worst time thank you uh alina laying uh boulder creek uh rate pair um so i just wanted to say that our watershed is a connected ecosystem and it doesn't understand our district boundaries well there is a great benefit in managing a larger part of this watershed as a whole and it would allow the two districts to pursue a more ecological enhancements the merger would also allow for more efficient use of the available budget which in the end would benefit our water customers so i just wanted to say that i support this exploration of the merger thank you thank you alina hello good evening can you hear me yes hi yes thank you and uh thank you for your service or i'd appreciate it um yeah i just wanted to piggyback on beth thomas i was born here in 1963 in felton and i can tell you that nothing has affected this area as much as the cz u fire on top of the pandemic not not even i mean 1982 was horrible 1989 this is extreme situation in the sandlands of those of us who have lived here our whole life know that and i wish everybody on the board would really just get take sensitivity to what so many people are speaking to that have been born and raised in this area um there's also you know droughts that we've all lived through for years i know there was a bad one in the 70s and and when about 20 years ago how many years where we have signs out in front of our house so this always this looming drought that we have in our area um and then as i always say i have to i have to say that felton owned water that we pay 600 a year in property taxes with leans against our home on top of the 120 rate increase that we've gotten in the last you know 10 years has been it's very much um something that i think felton has a huge uh right to be involved in this and to have us say in this with our water um so and lastly it does laugh co really have to be involved in the exploration and is fishing game going to be involved in this exploration so those are my main concerns and things that i hope you will consider and that felton would be definitely something either paid back if this happened or something since we're spending a lot of money to not have our water shipped out as it was proposed to us in the bond thank you do you want to respond to her rick you know not really i i think the feasibility study would would be able to respond better you know i i still i'm not convinced that you know most likely we have looked at back of the envelope there could be considerable savings and that would be passed on to our customers hopefully hopefully less rate increases less uh percentage of rate increases so all the things that you know director folds would just rightly pointed out about our operating costs until i see the feasibility study uh that says you know what the consolidation would do you know i'm on the fence too i'm not uh 100 percent uh support of of the consolidation until we get a detailed engineering report and a feasibility report and hear from you know and let the let our customers review that information and then have this discussion moving forward i i think i think she i was just going to say that she asked a specific question about the involvement of laugh go laugh go has to be that's the law laugh go will have to be involved in in this discussion fish and wildlife uh most likely there'll be an environmental comment that uh fish and wildlife will comment as well well but as i understood this the um early um so does that mean that the feasibility study that we're doing right now would actually involve laugh go or not i apologize i misunderstood the question yeah laugh go i don't believe has to be involved that that's i think that's important that i apologize i didn't understand but and counsel nickles am i correct on that on the on a feasibility study laugh go needs no involvement uh i don't think there's any reason why they would have to be involved it'll at a later stage you know the reports that the district does may need to meet their requirements but i don't see any reason why that would need to be the case now they would need to be involved now i think as i understood your introduction rick it was that this feasibility study is kind of the the pre first step in other words it would bring back a report that we would then decide whether we want to begin the process and at that point laugh go would be involved so so as i understand it we're sort of voting on you know we're not voting to go ahead we're voting on um we're voting on getting some information kind of along the lines of what lois the board to do a feasibility study to get additional information to help make decisions down the road this is not a decision uh to approve consolidation it's the feasibility study would gather more information thank you uh Jim Mosher can you hear me can you hear me out great um i i'm Jim Mosher from felton i um i would urge the board to table this uh proposal uh and i i guess i'm i'm somewhat i've lived here since 1976 this is such an extraordinary time that we're going through um and i i just don't i don't see this as something as other people said i won't repeat what other people said about this but this is an absolutely extraordinary time and this proposal is going to take an enormous amount of time not only for the board and the staff but for the community um and just i just think about my own time this would become the number one issue for rate payers i know this from all the people i've talked to people were very very concerned about this um so we instead of focusing on things like fire getting ready for the the next fires uh rebuilding uh dealing with uh being prepared for debris flow working on infrastructure this is going to take over the the discussion in the valley it's going to it's going to be uh distracting it's going to be um it's going to be conflictual there's a lot of misinformation and i agree that it'd be great to get some more information but i do not think it is a good idea for us to move forward with this in any formal way on the other hand i think it would be great to continue to work with us scott's valley get to know them better their ways in which we can collaborate explore our conjunctive use uh and and and uh start introducing this idea to the community in a more informal way i'm also very concerned about how you would be communicating this to uh the to uh rate payers the district doesn't have a very good track record of communication that you uh this consultant is somebody who won't know the valley many many of the concerns that people have have nothing to do with the finances of this it has to do with what this is a this is our board in the valley we have only two elected board scott's valley has a city council we don't we're very concerned that this board has as part of its mission protecting the watershed as far as i know scott's valley does not have any environmental protection uh mission themselves these are the kinds of concerns that people are going to raise how are those going to be addressed uh uh and how will they be communicated um especially when we have to do it all by zoom and we can't uh get together so i urge you to table this thank you tony norton hi this is this is pete norton actually um i had a few i had a few comments here uh the first one was um uh the the managers have evidently been discussing this for some time and um you said rick said there was some low hanging fruit like cutting staff and consolidating offices and but there's got to be more than that i think it would be very important to for the managers to come up with a list of possible benefits and possible detriments and present that to the board and the public not to not to have to go and get a consultant to do that i think you know it wouldn't have to be detailed uh cost-wise or anything like that but just a general couple of pages on what the benefits might be so that the board could make a more informed decision about whether to move forward with hiring a consultant um my other point was that you had said with ad hoc committee it sounds like the only real purpose that they would have would be to design an rfp for the consultant is that correct anyway uh that's what i'm i'm hearing here that the the ad hoc committee themselves wouldn't be able to really investigate anything without hiring the consultant so that seems a little little uh premature maybe to have that committee where they can't really do anything what can they do if they if the managers can't even come up with a list of what's what the benefits are you know i think it would be advantageous to at least wait until there was a comprehensive list of what the benefits might be and um yeah i think that's i had something else but i can't think of it so that's it for now thank you uh joe kenney joe kenney are you there i'm trying did that work yes okay so um i live in ben lomond and there's a couple things i wanted to address and i work for a nonprofit i understand how stretched staff in all of our government and nonprofit areas are right now so in terms of savings we're it would be bringing on more than the number of ratepayers are currently in the system if i'm understanding because there's more people in scott's valley than there are in the valley scott's valley is about half the size in terms of connections in terms of connections okay so you're bringing on half the size you might save money with one district manager but you're gonna need way more people because you're serving another 50 percent so the people who process all of the um the the fees every month all those different kinds of things the people who read the meters all that has to be expanded um we have no control over what happens with scott's valley and the number of new units they put in and you know it's a growth territory right now it's the only part of the county that's really growing um there's going to be a detailed engineering report and the feasibility study i only saw 40 some a thousand dollars talked about the feasibility study but no price attached to the detailed engineering report i for one would really like to see that um and then the other is you just approved a 15 million dollar loan to pay for all these new projects who's going to coordinate those projects who's going to make sure they're really happening the staff so on one hand you're opening up for all these new things to be able to fix problems in this district and adding half the number of new connections with no anticipation of expanding staff if that's what i'm hearing and the other thing that was concerning for me in particular was that scott's valley is operating at a deficit i mean let's just find out why they're operating at a deficit and why we wouldn't be picking that up from them i don't see any advantage i'm sorry um it sounds like a pretty expensive endeavor for not even having an idea of whether this is worth it or not i also want to mention something that somebody else brought up is we are all in a heightened state of stress if covid weren't enough we've got you know a bad water situation coming down the pike we have people who've lost their homes we have a lot of people who've lost their jobs i'd like to take that money if it's extra money that would go into this study and give people rate hikes i mean rate what's the word um breaks so i'm sorry i'm not making much sense here but you can hear the stress in my voice multiply that by the number of people in the district and that's what you're facing with so put it off thank you char i'm charlene cc i live in ben lomond and um i don't like to repeat what everybody said but in this case i think it first of all i'm not a fan of this at this point for a lot of the reasons one last time you said they came to you with the idea and you weren't even thinking about a merger and now you've got this idea of a merger and you're sort of running with it and that's not always a good idea you know it really could be some short-term gains like the last speaker said of maybe getting rid of a one administrative position and then there's all the long-term consequences that many of us have mentioned once consultants get their feet in the door they keep on getting funded i've you know i've seen it at the county i've seen it at the city i've seen it other places where i've lived and paid attention um you know uh i'd also like to know about scott's valley's deficit you know they have a and they do have they're running um their staff is larger than ours and they have half the hookup so i'm not understanding that and when you all spoke you really didn't address us we the ratepayers and i was kind of kind of put off by that um you know i just want to again echo it's a horrible time i know people in the valley as you do who have they're not even back in their homes yet and there's so much to be done so i just want to see this i i don't even know if i wanted to go forward but i really think it it is you know you talk about not a good time but there can be the worst time and this i think is one of them so thank you larry ford thank you this is larry ford resident of felton um i really appreciate all the comments that people have made so far and i'm clearly in the camp that says now is not the time to do this but that uh the idea is interesting um certainly rick and lois i trust your wise judgment and long experience but i don't i don't agree i don't follow how it is that you got to those decisions in fact i wonder if as others have said in a different way are we trying to put the cart before the horse here why do we need to consolidate to get the benefits that are you know that we're talking about most of the benefits that i've heard about are very speculative and so um i just don't follow it and i so i would like to hear more about why this is even the best option what other options besides consolidation or merger would work could could we work together somehow um are there certain things that s of e water district would like to be able to get from scott's valley um that kind of thing and so i i too um i'm really concerned about all the other issues that we have to face right now the one that really worries me is that the the next fire season is about to come in probably in may and it could be just as bad as the last one and if that would happen if that were to happen it would be setting us back just as much if not more than the previous fire we we learned from the fire management consultants that the fire that the cz u fire on the s o v side was low to moderate severity that really freaks me out because that suggests that we could have a fire just as bad as that or even worse and i could go on about how that might happen but um i'm i'm really concerned that we need to be mobilizing all the resources in the district to make sure that we're protecting um infrastructure before some kind of another big fire comes in anyway um that's that's all i have to say thank you thank you larry laran palmer hi can you hear me yes great thank you so much for taking my call um first thing i wanted to say is rick has mentioned um a back of the envelope calculation and he also mentioned um certain retirement um opportunities for for savings if you've had those conversations or done those calculations can you please publish them to the community um organizational charts and anticipated retirements and how those how our staffs of the two our districts might be merged you already must know this so can you please publish it to people instead of just saying wait paying a consultant forty thousand dollars to tell us and you know your back of the envelope calculations they must include more than just staffing so can you please publish to us all the things that you've already had in your mind and you've thought and discussed and you've calculated can you please publish that and not wait for consultants to tell us and then the second point i want to make is as many people have mentioned scott's valley is a pro development environment and you know water is a resource that is necessary for development and the valley has a very different development profile how would you possibly tell scott's valley no you can't develop more we're not going to give our water to you to build more mac mansions more houses you know to over develop you know if you don't have the resources to build the houses now you shouldn't come to San Lorenzo valley and ask us for our water so you can build more houses because somebody's going to make a whole lot of money some developers going to make a whole lot of money on that and then walk away and leave the problem with our communities to you know have worse droughts because we run out of water and you know we have to keep rationing and and somebody's making a lot of money and walking away so i don't really want to support giving our water to scott's valley so they can keep developing it's no personal offense to anybody in scott's valley and the other the third point i want to continue to make which i made on the first meeting we had is that it's not you know as many people have said it is not just a bad time it is a very very bad time it's probably the worst time that any of us will experience in our entire lives to be adding something to people's plates people are overwhelmed and this is the very most wrong time to do this and i just want to say that like the outreach how are you going to outreach to a thousand families who are gone are you going to track all those people down and talk to them and explain all this to them and say i know that you're living in another state right now and you haven't finished you know you're not finished rebuilding and you haven't moved back but we want you to understand this and you have a stake in this you know how is that outreach going to happen i mean you guys don't do very good with outreach on normal issues that we've had for you know decades here so i don't see rising above and beyond to this extraordinary level of outreach i just don't see it happening and that's a huge disadvantage because you know people aren't here to vote so there you go thank you lorraine thank you joe serrano good evening board members joe serrano executive officer for laugh go hear me yes uh oh thank you for this opportunity to address the board i just wanted to write some additional information there was a question about does laugh go have to be involved with exploration or the feasibility study probably no oh this is the opportunity for the residents and the board to gather information and laugh go doesn't need to be a part of it that said laugh go can be used as a resource if you want us to help so i'll leave that door open but we do not have to be part of this process the second thing is about timing there's always a question about timing and actually historically when disasters or challenging times occur that's when neighboring agencies band together to help one another typically when things are going well partnerships are not really needed or considered uh but especially nowadays because of the pandemic the fires all these type of disasters and fiscal distress happening the idea of consolidation is being considered throughout the state so it's not just these two water districts that are considering it's being thought of in the state of California so i just wanted to bring that up that that's when when challenging times occur that's when neighboring agencies really look together and see is constant consolidation going to help the residents yes or no and one more question that i wanted to address is are there any other options besides consolidation and the answer is yes and the feasibility study can be an opportunity to identify other opportunities maybe consolidation doesn't work for for your residents but perhaps some other type of partnership will benefit that's something that can be explored in the feasibility study and as your board members mentioned it's facts they'll make it clear for your residents to determine what makes sense and what will benefit them with that thank you for the opportunity and i'd be happy to answer any questions Libby and Tom okay so i think unmuted can you hear me now yes yes Tom we can hear you delay so this is Tom Purdy my wife's in the other room we're in ben loman and um a couple of quick comments one is my initial reaction is i'm a little skeptical of the benefit to San Juan's Valley emerging with scott's valley hopefully the feasibility study will give us some ideas of what the benefits are i guess my skepticism is a fear that they're basically since they're growing be a drain on their water resources whereas our use of the water resources are maybe more stable i'm okay with the feasibility study but i think it's really important that it be designed to be impartial and bring out all the relevant facts and probably even more important as you've already heard from a lot of the skepticism tonight it's going to be really important to get the community involved not only in the inputs to the feasibility study but in terms of keeping people abreast of what comes up because if that doesn't happen you're going to get a lot of people who just won't buy into the idea um i'm also not quite sure why it's necessary to do this now but maybe that would be something else that comes out of the feasibility study so that's really all i have to say okay thank you tom rick moran yes rick moran from ben loman um i've spent about a year and a half going to santa margarita groundwater agency meetings on the fourth thursday of every month and uh the city at scott's valley water district not the city excuse me scott's valley water district in san lorenzo valley we're working together we're trying to come up with a mutually agreed upon way to resolve some of these same issues that are discussed in this merger all right but um so far in these in these meetings we've really just uh agreed on definitions and goals and what is coming up is the funding for the various projects that are going to have to be done and some of the projects are done in scott's valley some of the projects may be done in san lorenzo valley and it hasn't been really worked on how that money is going to be fairly distributed and you know so i like working with scott's valley i think there's plenty of fine people over there but until we can work uh demonstrate that we can work together and come up with mutually agreed upon decisions here that are fair to all of us i think we should wait you know we have the santa margarita to can demonstrate be an example of how we can work together and if we can then we can come back to this and talk about a possible merger but i think the first step is we should make sure that we can do our finances with uh the scott's valley water district uh before we jump into a full set on merger okay thank you very much thank you rick kathryn the chair may have i believe we did so this would be a second round of conversation all right well i i think we should go back to the board and um uh best dire we haven't heard from you good evening board can you hear me yes we can okay um i have a couple of comments i i think you're wise to consider a feasibility study in this matter however i think the the reality of a feasibility study may be somewhat different than um what happened with the fire districts in terms of cost and scoping may also be an issue because a pricey issue because water is far more complicated than many other things as all of us living in california know um so i think that 40 000 you should easily double that and probably much more to get the type of comprehensive answers that would be really beneficial for decision making and also other scholars have alluded to the fact that consultants like to add on the scoping in terms of what you get out at the end of the the process it's really important that the scoping is done very well otherwise you you the board would be looking at a document that may or may not serve your needs and may require more time and i could not agree more with other callers of which there have been several this is a rather poor time to be doing to adding on work i've been a consultant i've been in the position of managing a consultant as a staff person for a public agency and it can be very time intensive and if you just let the consultant run off and do things without engaging at the appropriate level you may regret that decision so i just wanted to put those considerations out there and um good luck i appreciate what the last caller said i believe the consultant is only going to come up with information that staff gives them either from scott's valley or from slv water district from my conversations with scott's valley residents they think that we are anxious to join with them because we are in financial difficulty they are against development just as much as we are but it's the i don't know the county that decides who gets to have new buildings or not rather than the water district and so i think all of us ratepayers in both areas are looking for a way to stop development but it's not through the water district that we're going to be able to do that i don't know if there's any advantage to us joining with them in trying to limit development whether that would give us any clout or not but i think that um what i hear is from both sides there's a lot of skepticism about what the advantages are to joining and i think it's up to our directors to provide more information i think the ad hoc committee is a good idea if all they do is do their own research and that means they have to have access to information from both water districts thank you thank you Cynthia i i think the two remaining names we've heard from both of them haven't we Gina well um chairman i believe you tried to call on Catherine oh i'm sorry Delmaso and she wasn't able to come okay then Catherine you want to try again excuse me chair i just got a call from the ctv and there's something about Catherine's uh process that she's contacting us that he cannot unmute her okay so she will not be a cute she'll have to send in her comment or question Kristen yes we can hear you Kristen ah great yeah i know this is very preliminary and just really at the start of the process but one of my major concerns right now is that any proposal for consolidation has to be done as transparently as possible and with as much public information given out as possible and because all of these meetings are still happening on zoom it's quite difficult to ensure that especially you know with people being scattered from the fires people may not even be aware that this is happening it was quite difficult for me to find and access this meeting and i know that this is not you know i'm i'm not alone in that um so you know beyond all of the issues with the consolidation itself um there needs to be a lot more outreach to people who are who have a stake in this so um yeah and then i do have concerns about um just the the severity of the displacement from the czu fire the number of people who either lost their houses or are not able to be in their houses right now who you know are just not paying attention to this process at all and you need to make sure that they understand what's happening and what the stake is and you know what their what their role in it is so thank you for your time rick would you like to just say how many um of our rate payers or they had to have their shut off so we have an idea somebody mentioned a thousand but that's the total number of houses not not the ones that are in san lorenzo valley right i i believe our connections are approximately 120 uh folks in uh in our receiving service but obviously this would impact our entire district so the the number is you know much greater even so they're not um not being supplied water it would still have an impact on all of our our people in our in our district we would want to be sure that we got the word out to everybody in our district um let's um can we unmute the people that are on telephone lines so that we can see i think i see only the one but can we just unmute that one briefly so that in case they have a question so the person on the telephone line did you have a comment none are there any more questions people who haven't spoken already okay then um i would like to uh go back to the board and can i start with director smally yes um we heard several questions from the public that i'd like to put to you rick um one was why do this now and that's following along what i was saying also um why now versus when we are out of this uh pandemic restrictions i i totally understand that question i i just don't think you know scott's valley knocked at our door just before and we uh we brought up this the situation just recently right before we brought it to the board um i felt it wasn't my decision to to put it off alone i thought it was a board decision um to uh to address and then i will say that you know as you heard people are already concerned about the next fire the next earthquake i i just sorry i've been here almost all my life i've worked for the water district for i'm going almost 44 45 years i i don't ever believe there's anything any time will be a good time um grant you sometimes are better than others and this is an unprecedented time that with the fire and the pandemic i think zoom is a great way to get information out people are distracted most of these people have been on on the call tonight and we have heard from our past my path has crossed with them at one time or another i know most of these people and i i understand their concerns um and it is a difficult decision to somewhat move forward but i think from all the questions i heard you know again uh the feasibility study and including what joe serrano said you know it will the feasibility study will tell us which way would be the best way for us to go and i understand concerns about consultants you know most of what people said are true about you know once you get in the consultant who got to be careful and monitor but i think we owe it to our our ratepayers and our customers to to at least get some questions answered uh a piece of the puzzle and then maybe put the puzzle back on the show but let's keep looking moving this ahead um my mind's not made up one way or another it's just i feel that you know we owe it to our customers to to uh take it and then do a feasibility study to see what the benefits are um and it may it may stop that for a while it's not a big lift i don't believe staff wise and board wise to do the feasibility study and the caller who who said that this study may be a lot more it's potentially it could be because a lot of this is complicated but we would not be committed until the board and public uh and and scott's valley uh saw what that price was and what that uh feasibility study consisted of okay um another question that i wanted to ask based on what i heard from uh couple members of the public um as to what are the benefits um and is that something that between you and the district manager from scott's valley water district could uh jointly come up with to provide us that uh two pages max of here are the potential benefits here um i don't potential downsides uh to come back to us a month from now with that yes i mean what about what about that is a possibility definitely mark um we could do that um you know i i also think though that the community wants to hear that from a neutral party um you know to uh to review what staff would say and a neutral party to review that and give comment and there may be you know when i'm when i'm thinking or yes the district manager from scott's valley and i took the low hanging fruit you know one district manager one admin building the slb water has has been moving to reconstruct a new admin operations facility you know we bought property we own several buildings uh we're looking anywhere maybe from about a two and a half to three million dollar project one admin building would be a considerable savings um staffing there would be other areas of staffing um but there's also areas that possibly the district manager scott's valley and i did not you know we're not consolidators so to speak we're running we run water districts and would have other thoughts and then the the question about why don't we just sell them our surplus water maybe our lock loman allotment we haven't used lock loman allotment doesn't do us any good sitting in lock loman we could sell that get it back in the aquifer um that has a lot of benefit why not you know we need to look at that and then we would that's what would come out of a feasibility study um our best our best ways forward okay good to keep the process moving even so we don't really move into a formal move for consolidation it's good to keep working with scott's valley it's good getting these questions answered and keep moving in that direction okay thank you that's all of my questions director too i didn't have any um any more questions at this time thank you okay director false yes um well i really appreciate everybody uh taking the time out tonight to attend this very critical meeting um and again everything that you've said in my opinion cuts right to the heart of the matter and that's this is not purely a financial decision even though that certainly is part of it um i have not heard anything tonight that changed my mind from the last meeting um however in the interest of transparency i think that we and myself or speaking for myself oh the community our thoughts about this in a comprehensive fashion so i have a statement that i prepared earlier that i want to read and have included in the minutes um later on i remain deeply skeptical about the cost reduction proposals i've heard so far as one reason to consolidate um we have been unable to do cost reductions in a relatively small district we're operating costs have increased by multiples of inflation over the last 10 years if anything it's going to be harder to control costs at a larger agency further i am puzzled by this push for consolidation given what i've heard about forecasted water usage as articulated by the scott's valley water district district manager at their meeting discussing this they are forecasting only 0.226 growth in water usage per year or slightly over 2.6 over the next 10 years compounded i remain skeptical of that number in light of the city of scott's valleys drive to grow their way out of their fiscal situation but let's take that number at face value based on their current usage that represents a ramp up to 10.5 million gallons more than they're producing now between now and 2031 that's less than two percent of our current production the scott's valley is looking to level off their usage of the ancient aquifers that are currently tapping into i would be happy as part of the santa margarita gound groundwater agency activity to find a way to sell our surplus water to help them out or scott's valley could purchase surplus water from santa cruise assuming they have a surplus in light of their growth efforts as well and then i think we need to look at the political economy issues the sand runs a valley is a no growth area as many of you have noted that was voted into decades ago and reinforced by county actions since scott's valley is a fast growth area becoming more urban with each passing year a consolidation will result in our district focus rapidly shifting to serve those development efforts in scott's valley that's just the nature of the beast and remember scott's valley receives 22 000 the water district receives 22 000 for each single family dwelling connection at least 13 k for more of their pack and stack denser development and they get another six thousand dollars for each recycled water connection so imagine a hundred unit mixed development they get a minimum of 1.3 million and maybe up to as much as two million in capital um that's a lot of money so i've heard from a lot of people that there's a concern that scott's valley just wants our water that may be true but would scott's valley worry that we just want their development money is at the bargain here and is the development money available to a consolidated district to improve infrastructure uh worth that bargain at this point i agree that more analysis and answers are needed however i don't agree with this recommendation as a district we're busy we have at least a year of intensive work and fire recovery not to mention the fire hardening activities we should be starting this year we're about six months from wrapping up the santa margarita groundwater agency draft we have a large number of capital infrastructure projects underway we need to finish our multi-year budgeting and provide our true financial picture of our capital obligations we need to finish our inventory project we are working through a series of sequel and water rights processes so we can start managing our district resources as a whole all of these items have enormous strategic implications and they're all input into a possible review of a potential consolidation so we might as well finish those and not invest a lot of time in consoling dollars and feasibility studies folks i already know that the consolidation is feasible we already know that the consolidation feasible our community knows that we don't need to use our money to pay someone to figure that out what i need to see and what i think our community needs to see is a compelling story as to why and a consultant is going to isn't going to tell us that only our staff can tell us that uh like mark i recommend that we ask the two district managers to collaborate on a term sheet this term sheet should provide the strategic reasons for doing this in a very concrete and transparent fashion uh it should address the concerns that have been raised by the community and we've heard i think an enormous number of those already and i recommend that they include a section on governance including board composition and suggested policies in addition this term sheet should provide sufficient financial information on operating cost savings through headcount identification and other efficiencies that we as a community will be able to get a good picture of what they have in mind are we talking about a savings of 300 000 or 3 million i don't think we have to do a consolidated budget i think we can just mash up the two budgets together and subtract out the items that have been identified and they should also include alternatives to consolidation such as long-term water sharing and other items that might come out of the santa margarita groundwater agency process because as the number of you have said all an outside consultant is going to do is interview the two district managers and senior staff and produce a report based on that information but let's just cut out the middleman i believe that our district managers with support from senior staff and from board members are more than capable of collaborating on this term sheet they can provide updates to the board over the next few months as they go along i anticipate this process taking about six months and then in the fall once we're putting more of these really pressing items behind us and with that term sheet in hand we can come back and re-examine the topic and re-engage in a debate with real information if the document produced is compelling enough then we could even take action to create an ad hoc committee or hire a consultant at that time or perhaps better yet put the question up for a vote of our community at the next election while i understand there is a vote during the laugh code process if we get that far it's a negative vote and at the tail end of the process when everything's but mostly a done deal and all the money's been spent and in general i'm not a big fan of late in the day negative votes that aren't associated with an election process i think a positive voting process will give a much clearer picture of the will of the people i also heard a district manager express concerns that failing to consolidate the scott's valley will open the door the scott's valley consolidating with others santa cruz well let's address that in the term sheet as part of the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats section on the face of it scott's valley and santa cruz may be more compatible since both are cities both want to grow rapidly both are facing fiscal challenges that they hope are going to be remediated by growth and they have complementary water systems santa cruz surface scott's valley wells but i'd also say that given the eight to one difference in customer count the citizens of scott's valley may not be well served by being swallowed by a behemoth whose main priorities lie firmly elsewhere and who are already focused on assisting soquel creek and above all let's look for that term sheet to be open and transparent transparent lots of sunshine so that we can put the rest all of the speculation that we've seen in social media these past few weeks thank you for your attention i'm looking forward to continuing the conversation director henry okay well to just address something director folks just said about scott's valley merging with san with uh santa cruz i see a big problem with that because the basin the santa margarita basin is is scott's valley and slv and part of the county that oversees well owners and if it's let's just say for kicks that santa cruz and scott's valley merged and scott's valley became part of santa cruz they would have part of our aquifer we would lose control as far as i'm concerned and that is concern um all i want here is facts and i i don't want to hear facts from director rogers i'm not director rogers pardon me uh district manager rogers and district manager perret harmon i want neutral information from somebody who doesn't have an or in the water i want facts i said this before that's all i asked for is facts and something to make a good decision on because my first reaction was uh but when i have time to think about it i'm feeling a whole lot more open-minded about it not so open-minded my brains have fallen out i just want information i just want facts thank you director henry um i guess all the way in here um i have very ambivalent uh ideas and i've gone back and forth on this and and it's largely because we know that the san lorenzo valley water district is a product of many annexations over time and consolidations with smaller districts and the reasons that drove those processes are still in play today the difficulty of small districts responding to national natural disasters raising capital for infrastructure paying for adequate staff and of course those are just going to get worse in the future as rainfall patterns become more erratic and fires increase in a warming world so i think that uh i see regionalization of management of water resources and consolidations and efforts to gain economies of scale through them is an inevitable part of our future we don't know the pluses and minuses of a potential consolidation with scott's valley water district and how those would stack up because we get out and that's kind of what we're trying to vote on today is is whether to find out um but my feeling on this is that i don't support doing that and this is because i feel that this is not the time uh for us to undertake this project we have a lot of work to do on the infrastructure repairing fire damage and we've also got five pipeline projects that we're undertaking as part of this 15 million dollars that we just got a loan for our staff is dealing with covet and they've had to deal with debris flow threats so that causes them extra work and i guess i've been very struck when at the previous meeting in this one is is i've been impressed by how um our ratepayers are really suffering under the losses that have been imposed by the fire the the two evacuations one for fire one for debris flows continuing concerns about debris flows and and the covid pandemic and all the stresses that come with isolation homeschooling kids and and losses of people that have been ill or died so i feel like this is not the time to take on a project that will lead to upsets and division in the community um and so uh the question is as well is okay that's fair enough we could always slow walk the process um there's nothing that says if you start to undertake consolidation that you have to zip through as fast as you can um but my you know and so you could argue that way that well we might as well go ahead with this feasibility study now but the problem i have with that is that hopefully three years from now um when we might be in a better position to take on this kind of workload when presumably a lot of these pipeline projects are done or underway or the fire repair infrastructure repairs are underway um that things will change in other words our financial situation will have changed over those three years and certainly that of scott's valley the other thing is is that uh santa margarita is going to come out with a study uh that as uh was mentioned by mark and by rick moran and i would like to know what that is going to state in terms of what's going to be imposed on us uh by that that whole process and that'll we won't know that till next february or so um so my feeling is that i think we're going to end we're likely to end up regionalizing water management but um i think we should wait and we should put it off for at least three years and we might as well put off the any sort of feasibility study we do until that time as well anybody any other board members like that have additional comments at this time oh sorry uh rick did you want to respond i do i just you know i and as i've said you know early on that you know i am i can easily go either way on this the district has plenty to do as stated but if we don't move ahead on the uh the feasibility study you know mark's questions if we could get a page or two of of the pros and cons yes we could do that but director folds his level of analysis we do not have staff time for that you know and you know that is a huge undertaking for staff back to the envelope quick and dirty if the board sowed the desires but what i don't want the board to do is is say that we're not interested in moving ahead on a feasibility study but we want staff to turn around this report um we don't have the bandwidth for that but we we could get the the back of the napkin some information i guess i am totally in agreement on that matt was actually i wanted to add that to my comments that i thought that what rector false was suggesting just went entirely against the idea that this isn't the right time and is um that we have so many other things to do because that would be very time i'm consuming so i think actually if i may say it absolutely it absolutely isn't and let me explain what i mean because i think you're reading into a lot more than i i suggested basically what what i'm talking about putting together is exactly the the couple pages on a strategic view of this that mark was talking about i was agreeing with him as well as a little summary budget that basically says here's the operating cost for both districts and here's what we're going to subtract out due to the cost savings that we think we can achieve based on headcount operating efficiencies whatever else is there at most this might be a couple of days work you know rick you seem to always jump to something way beyond what i'm suggesting and intended so i don't i don't get that but that is that is absolutely all that we need at this point and that's why i said i think it can be done in six months uh if and at that point time we'll have the first draft to send them our to read out and at that point in time we can then be better positioned to regroup and say firm affirmatively yes or no anybody else like to make a comment director too hi thank you i i'm actually with uh brick and um with director henry on this i think that having a at least an ad hoc committee to go forward with the feasibility to find a to develop an rfp uh it won't cost us anything it's a six month process to do that alone and then when the six months is over we have an rfp ready um and then we can decide at that time whether or not that's something that we want to do i i think that you know going forward with an ad hoc committee costs us nothing and it's worthwhile doing right now so that in the future if we do decide to go forward uh to think about getting a feasibility study then it's it's already on hand and we don't have to spend another six months doing that so that's my take on on the current the current matter thank you i think if i can just correct that i think the idea is that the six months would include a feasibility study by a by so in other words the the um the i'm sorry misunderstood that part yeah so i think the the timeline on this is as a correct me if i'm wrong rick but is that we would appoint a committee and that committee would craft an rfp and that would go out and then the committee would what the bids were um and then the board would decide whether they wanted to proceed with those but hopefully that would be fairly quick and so that we could be in a position at the end of six months to look at the finalized report by not only the consultant but any uh work that the committee wanted to do um by talking to staff or talking to people at scott's valley is that is that fair enough rick that's that's fair enough okay but i still i still think that it's i mean it still doesn't cost us anything to to get the committee going if nothing else and um i think that's something worth considering but he else have a comment after smally did you have anything else you wanted to add or i'm still of the opinion between the two district managers and i would hope that it's not a months long process but within a month to come up with the two pages that i'm asking about with here's a sort of a high level uh pros or pros and cons as to what do you see as the benefits of this and i don't think that it needs to involve a lot of staff i think you know a lot of these answers or between you and and director harman or district manager harman know that but if you can get your collective thoughts down written so that we could look at it as a as a board i don't agree with you mar that okay i wish you would that okay would anybody like to make a motion i'll make a motion then i'd like to request our district manager to contact the district manager at scott's valley water district and prepare a brief summary of benefits pros and cons and include some type of a budget analysis along the lines of what director folds is suggesting to come back to the board with that i would second that mark any further discussion did you want to put a time limit on that as i said my thoughts would be within a month but certainly no more than two all right for that to then let us discuss further we go ahead with the ad hoc committee do we go ahead with ad hoc committee attempting to prepare feasibility study okay can i can i add maybe the april 15th meeting would be appropriate okay no bob bob you're shaking your head i think we i think we need to i think maybe the first meeting in day i i'd like to make sure we give um rare compared a a good amount of time to do this personally myself i don't think there's really a big rush and we could take it all the way to six months but you know i think two months is sort of a minimum okay okay so we have a motion on the table that the board directs this district manager to work with the district manager peret harman at scott's valley to create a document that lists pros pros and cons of a potential consolidation with a rudimentary budget that goes along with that to be produced by the first meeting in may that was a great that was a great summary i do have a question okay can we make a decision for peret harman or if we can only ask rick rogers to do this oh we can only ask rick rick to meet with her yeah she chooses not to i have all indications director henry that peret will work with the district on i look at this as a very low level analysis for what we know i may talk offline with director smalley on this on with budget i'm not quite sure what we're looking for on that but i do not look at this as a big analysis moving forward i think that's what you intended director smalley right but that's correct yes i think he's i think he's wanting to peel the onion okay yes let's take this a slice or peel at a time i think they're very false that's are there any more questions or comments on the motion we go to the community i think we have to go to the public on this motion so let me look at the list of attendees and does anybody in the public want to comment on the motion on the table uh jim jim motion can you hear me yes i i i don't have a big objection to this but it just strikes me that we're just kicking this down the road and that you're going to have another meeting with 60 to 100 people coming probably telling you the same thing it won't really matter what the back of the envelope says about the savings i'd rather you just table this so that we can move on to the other issues that the district is facing and i'm speaking as a member of a community group that's working on a variety of issues in the in the valley i'd rather not have this one stay at the top of the list i'd rather get to things like fire management get ready for the next fire deal with the pandemic let's deal with infrastructure let's deal with all the other issues we're dealing with this is not something that needs to happen now so i i urge you to just table it thank you bill small man can you hear it can you hear me can you hear hi can you hear me yes we can okay oh sorry i'm i'm new to all this and anyway i like to i think i got a four minute thing so i'd like to request an extra minute you know after serving for 10 years as a water district director i have a lot important information here um it's really refreshing that i think that we should mr. small man will everybody gets the same amount which is three minutes well how about four minutes i yeah i you know i serve 10 years um for a water district director um so you're not going to give me you're not going to give me no extra minutes just like everybody else gets well thank thank you very much so i'll cut to the chase um right i like to read a quote from Barack Obama that reads all of us share the world for a brief moment of time the question is whether we spend that time focus on what pushes us apart or whether we commit ourselves to an effort a sustained effort to find a common ground to focus the future we seek for our children and respect for the dignity of all all human beings look i i i've served 10 years as a water district director and all i uh you know i suffered a lot of hate towards me um you know i had difficulty finding a job a job locally and i wasn't around so i can take you know take care of my teenage daughter and i couldn't find a local job because of your hate and i can feel it now i can feel the hate coming from me right now i can feel it i'm not going to give me an extra minute to talk about this when i have a lot of information a lot of education about yes thank you bob for your article on the op-ed we are owners and i'll cut to the chase because i know i'm going to run out of time weeks we're going to start protesting now we're going to start protesting now and i'm telling the public right now who's out there we are against this merger um uh and for a lot of reasons which you're not going to give me time to describe about but we're going to start sending you sent everybody in the public out there send start don't stop don't we're going to start right now and send a protest we're to pledge that we're going to protest against this merger and send it to Gail G Mahoud at south and rick rogers at slv.com and send it to another third party send it to me bill at scwatersolutions.com and we're going to start sending protests and we're going to pledge against this merger so what wasting your money on this nonsense you know scott's valley is over developing and we're not going to put up with this stuff so we want you to stop this right now and we're going to pass out flyers we're going to pass out everything out into the public to send all you got to send us an email with your water count number your address to gail to rick to me at scwatersolutions.com you know it's not it's not the right time i agree with you gail it's not the right time for this to happen and so we need to quit wasting our money on this nonsense okay you know what you know well you don't give me enough time you know i alina lang hi i i just wanted to say like i i am kind of disappointed that the board isn't wanting to move forward on the ad hoc committee i feel like these two districts have a lot to game from this merger and i am really worried about santa cruz and them coming in and trying to change our our water rights and that fight that's going to happen there and that we may end up on the losing end of this if if we don't team up with scott's valley so i think a lot what lois henry has to say has resonated with me and i'm behind behind her thank you thank you alina uh sylvia denzel i want to thank you all for your time and the discussion and i'm very happy with the final outcome because i think you've chosen a path that does not cost money and yet will bring us more information so i thank you for your very well reasoned uh decision tonight and i agree with um jim mosher in that we and so many people that we have other things that we have to worry about but i'm glad that you are at least trying to find some facts because i think that's what we're all looking for before we make final decisions thank you thank you uh tom it takes it just a minute to remind me i have to unmute so anyway i just have one comment uh and that is i think in this two pager that uh i believe you're asking to be put together and i it seems to me that's a great first start uh you might put in there a little bit about the any time issues i mean we've kind of talked around whether we can wait to do this for one year or three years or whether it needs to happen now so maybe rick you and the other director can spend a little can put a couple bullets in there is about what is the time issue on this that's my comment thank you tom uh rick moran i actually it's chris moran i'm on rick's uh computer i would like to say uh first of all that i do think this is a bad time i think that this is dragging it out and the one thing i agree with is there is no good time for this and i mean that there's no good time for this idea so this is a chess game and so we consolidate with scott's valley okay and then we don't have any more control over it because we don't have a city council we don't have a city manager then this gets taken over and then they decide when we're all consolidated to go with santa crews and then they'll still have our santa margarita water so uh scott's valley has more advantages than we do so uh i just want to say that uh oh one other thing i wanted to mention is that that we went we're we're santa's villages when you see all of those uh new houses from 17 when you look over there you see all of these new town houses you go along the frontage road and you drive behind there you are going to see a huge housing development rick and i drove back there about two weeks ago and you can't see it but it's back there and this is why they want our water and that's how i feel and i think this is a really bad idea i uh am very much against this and uh all of our neighbors everyone's concerned about this so i i hope you're listening uh thank you for all the work you guys do i appreciate it i'm done thank you uh sanders thank you i appreciate the opportunity i your incredibly gentle approach to this topic has been much appreciated my question is for our resident attorney representative jena nickles um is it uh allowable for the district to ask for all conversations between the two district managers to be recorded transcribed and made available to the public uh i i don't typically respond and i apologize mr sanders directly to public comments that'll have to be up to the the board and the chair if they want to direct that to me following the public commentary is there a quick answer to that if not we'll just let it ride yeah i don't think there's a quick answer to that right um lorraine palmer hello um thank you for taking my comments um earlier and considering answering providing more information up front i wanted to ask if your your informational paper that you're going to produce would also include per capita usage for each of the two different districts and those numbers before the last drought and during the last drought and how successful each district was in getting their customers to reduce their usage and conserve water and can you get information and include in in that report what the anticipated growth is how many new connections um each district is looking out over the next 30 years and give us some projection of what that's going to look like um because once we give up our water rights once we do a come uh once we consolidate our our rights as a sandlands valley community are forever changed and we can't undo that so i'd like to know a much longer view not just the immediate future you know what's it going to look like in 100 years you know so that's what i wanted to ask you to include in your report thank you thank you lorraine christin sandal hello can you hear me yes i would just like to say that i agree with those who are in favor of tabling this motion for now um simply because it's such a large issue and when you give up control of your water rights you don't generally get them back so i strongly feel that this should be dealt with at a later time and so thank you to everyone who brought up that point and thank you for your time thank you christin that's hollandbeck unmuted thank you um yes lorraine palmer keeps hitting a lot of great points um very very intelligent speaker there and i think that the one thing i have learned over the years and what um many people have told me is that you want to look at the last 100 years and look at your worst case scenario and base any business decision on that so the worst case scenario we would have in the san lorraine zoe valley would we be able to provide for ourselves um you know looking back and looking forward is is very smart when it comes to propositions like this these are huge decisions that will impact us as so many people have said for years to come um having said that i i think that uh what mark and bob are proposing with you know looking at operational costs of both districts is probably a good thing to do anyway because you have said that there that is one of the main reasons is because of deficits and operational costs or or that there were were kind of um not able to to function fully and so i would say well let's let's look at our own you know home and see what's going on and see if we can't resolve it i mean nobody's really talked about that so i don't know if we've looked at that in the past or can see if that is something it sounds like you were going to be consolidating jobs and stuff with scott's valley but yeah i think looking at operational costs and really taking um that from both from both districts would be a smart thing to do anyway it's just smart business so that's what i have to say and also to put this out it's just too stressful for the community right now thank you are there any more um people that would like to be heard on this motion okay and we'll come back to the board um i think we've already had a one round of comment but if we have a motion on the table and i'll if anybody else wants to say something again but i think i'd prefer to go to a vote if we that's all right i don't see any object uh lois yes well i keep hearing that we're going to give up our water rights rights that's not the deal we would still exist scott's valley would not they're giving up theirs to us i i just want to make that in my mind uh my understanding is scott's valley's smaller they want to merge with us not that we want to merge with them and we would not be giving up our water rights here we go i stated can i stated the motion man i don't know if i can do it again it's such a great job the first time it was it was really great i was reading um i was writing what bop said and you said it much better than i was writing it's recorded so if we could just go with that motion yes okay president mayhood yes president Henry yes director fulls yes director smally yes and director too yes with vice president Henry oh i'm sorry it was vice president every um so the motion passes thank you thank you i just wanted to to uh say that tina was uh not feeling well tonight and she was kind enough to um come in so that we could vote on these two really important issues with the full board here and discuss them so we're excusing her now um to go back and put her jammies on and get into bed thank you so much thank you well better thank you uh next is uh the grand jury response right and uh council nickles will present this uh item to the board you know okay thank you chair mayhood uh district manager rogers um this is of course the second time this item is coming to the board um i'll provide the background um fairly briefly as i as i did last time and that is um as certainly the board knows and many members of the public are aware um the centa Cruz county civil grand jury took a look at the district in uh 2017 and 2018 and issued a report in 2018 that's published on their website um the district provided a response to that report and then received a follow-up inquiry from the grand jury uh related to the implementation in 2019 and responded to that follow-up inquiry uh with a letter that's actually contained in the packet related to this item um just recently uh in February the district received another follow-up inquiry from the grand jury and that is what instigated this uh board item uh we prepared a draft uh a very sort of simple draft response that we brought to the board at the prior regular meeting um and it received a lot of public comment and comments from the board um and we listened to those comments and incorporated a lot of that input um into the revised draft response that you see in front of you here tonight um the district also wants to thank in particular uh tony norton who's been the chair of the laddock committee for some time who took the time to provide uh written input which is in the packet and also comment on the draft response um so uh staff we're hopeful that we have a final response here um that the board could approve to send to the grand jury it's got all of the backup materials that we plan to include with it um there was a slight change by the way to the proposed letter um based on input we got uh from miss norton and that slight change was posted to the district's website on monday um and it's just it's a change to the wording of the status update under uh item r3 um so that's all before the board i'd really welcome any uh you know comments in particular uh any specific edits or changes to be made to this letter um the grand jury was kind enough to grant an extension to us uh per our request discussed at the last board meeting so we would have a little more time to get input and refine the response but it is due next week and all indications are that they're probably not going to entertain another uh extension so it'd be appreciated if um they're specific that this if this letter could be approved or if there's specific changes that we could work through them um here this evening director faults would you like to start discussion um i can um and i have a short statement on this um you know i appreciate the improvements that have gone into making the second draft of the letter better but overall i still think the letter falls short of where it needs to be in terms of transparency about the challenges the long peak of community is faced during its integration into the larger uh slvwd um and in that sense i don't think the letter goes far enough in being specific about what has been done and what has not been done so your invitation gene i i appreciate that i i don't know that we'll be able to go through that tonight given the time pressures if we had another meeting maybe but we don't in particular my concerns about this letter are heightened by statements but i've heard regarding the status of the long pico assessment uh district it's out of money without that statement being immediately followed by but we still have two major projects to do and we're committed to getting them done asap i'm concerned that the statement is maybe subconsciously in placing the long pico projects lower on the priority list when they need to be higher i don't want remaining two projects to turn out like the felton heights tank project where the community contributed a large share of the cost of the tank in the beginning but 15 years later that contribution is now a fraction of the overall cost and the rest of us have to pick that money up as it is we're already short about two to three million to finish the promise long pico projects i understand that the virus and cz u fire recovery affected our district in a significant fashion but even before those events it was not clear to me exactly how long pico was going to get finished and since i joined this board i've been consistently asking that these projects get done asap because i believe we want to be known as a good partner when it comes to consolidation meaning we implement our commitments promptly and meet them fully our district promised and we still need to deliver on the individual service line replacements and the permanent distribution line in the long pico which i now believe has been funded the longer we wait to do these projects the more it's going to cost and will cost the slvwd community i'm hopeful that our current board and future boards will keep their eye on the ball to finish this project as rapidly and not as rapidly as possible to finish the project period because it just needs to be done and so for these reasons at this point without any changes i will vote no on the letter and encourage the grand jury to seek input from all previously and current involved parties as part of their follow-up to produce a comprehensive report director hammering well there are a couple of things to be done all the tanks haven't been replaced but they're scheduled the last two tanks are scheduled to be replaced by may 10 the other item a big item that hasn't been done is the the connection the intertide between san lorenzo and long pico and i i know they want to get that done yes the money has been spent but there's one thing that people don't know and don't understand special districts since 1979 have received money from property tax now i'm not talking about we're paying six hundred dollars a year and long pico i'm not talking about that money it's it's something you don't even see on your bill so all special districts get some money now fire districts totally supported by property tax now xiany fire they passed something and so we are paying more if we're part of xiany fire and we do see that on our tax bill but in 79 of the jarvis what is it prop 13 bill passed and so when s when long pico merged with slv i think we were long pico if i remember right we were receiving about 70 000 a year from that bit of property tax that was coming to us and as part of the merger agreement uh slv got our our property tax that look i think it might only be one percent it's a really small amount but every year property values go up there's only been two years 2008 2009 that were negative years and there was no growth but i predict just seeing the houses around me that have sold and people moving in and out that it could easily and and maybe uh if stephanie is still listening maybe she knows how much uh they're getting the districts getting from uh long pico but it seems to me it could easily get up to 90 100 000 every year and that's going to go on and on and on the legislature cannot just say uh we aren't doing this so even though we're out of money with this from the 600 dollars that we're paying it's i mean we haven't paid it all yet but we're it's already been spent but we're that money that one percent from property tax is going to continue to come to slv they're going to continue to get money from us so i think it's kind of disingenuous to say we're out of money yeah that's 600 dollars we're paying every year and we have still like five more or six years to pay um that's spent but i just want people to realize about property tax and that's going to continue director smiley yes um a few questions um on response number one regarding the annual report uh i don't see anything in there as to a time frame when that might be completed for uh the past year and given that and given where we are now halfway through the 2021 budget cycle is it appropriate to propose we will submit a biannual report this to address r1 could i say something there yes i'm the liaison and i've been talking to them yes go ahead okay okay they're supposed to have the report done by the end of the year um that's part of that what their charter says but 2020 as everybody keeps bringing up was a year of covid and fire and they didn't get the report done and they're as soon as hopefully uh they the four people for that board are approved to or for that committee the latter committee are approved tonight and with the help of Stephanie and others that this will get done as soon as possible the the annual report okay all right um um from reading this and from um other sources i think that the district considers some of these items to be completed um in particular um r3 and a couple of others if that's the case if the district uh does think that is it appropriate to say in that in these uh i see three recommendations so that uh i expect when we have to go back again to the grand jury with another response a year from now or a year and a half enough we don't have to reiterate those um and i think Gina you could comment that comment on that better than uh sure i'll take a shot at that um i i guess i'm not sure that whether we say something is completed or not will factor into whether we get further follow-up i mean if you just if you look at the i think we've said in the prior response that certain things were completed and then the request for information that we got requested specifically it didn't request kind of the specific request we got from the grand jury was to provide documented evidence of follow-through and implementation and it wasn't limited only to the recommendations that we had previously indicated were you know were ongoing versus completed so i'm not sure that i i don't have any problem adding that language i mean i'm sure you saw in the prior draft response that we had that kind of language in there and we could put it back but i don't know that it will have much impact in terms of whether we get another one of these in the future um for not the entire uh all of the responses but specifically our three our four and our seven were the ones that it appeared to me as though we provided enough information with this letter with all of the backups that you provided but uh i don't want it to hold up a submittal by march 11th if that's an issue so it's a question it's a question not something that has to be done and i think that could be added director smally if that's the will of the board okay okay um my other questions are on the uh enclosures um i don't see references to enclosures g and h in in the text or in your document in the letter itself that is a fair point um and it's one that i thought about in preparing the draft response could you say the letters again director smally um golf and hotel okay golf and hotel i thought that golf had been mentioned you may have alluded to it but in for all of the rest of the enclosures you reference in parentheses c enclosure fc enclosure d i didn't see these two called out okay um and and i think they should be if you are wanting me to conclude something by and by including that enclosure as part of the reference material okay and i believe that could that could be done okay i think it's a minor change but i think it helps the reader then understand what we are trying to convey um and then on enclosure h hotel um why is that pertinent to this response because that brown act training was for the board and hasn't been presented to the late on committee or they failed to see the significance of that one sure and i did go back and forth on that director smally um my record and i and i suppose i may be inserting too much of my recollection of this process into the response um i recall training being an issue with the grand jury in addition i believe many committee members attended that brown act training even though it wasn't specifically presented at a committee meeting but rather to the board so i believe it did serve a function as committee training okay but i guess i was hesitant to spell that out because i'm not certain exactly who was in attendance director henry can you answer that question director henry do you know about the training i yes everybody was invited it wasn't just for the board to that okay and it was more than just brown it it was more things than that okay all right thank you then all right that's all my questions okay um i guess we'll go out to uh the public mail if any of them have questions and i see that mark lee does i thought the response looked pretty clear to me uh i'd answered all the questions so i'm in favor of allowing it to be sent to the grand jury it looks fine to me but he also liked to make a comment toni toni norton okay sorry i had to wait for that i'm mute button to pop up um yes i'm toni norton and i've been on the um laddock committee since inception and i just wanted to say that um that while it's true we we do have um the most important one is the intertide that hasn't been completed i i um i did send uh the memo in explaining that the first um year and a half the after our merger nothing was accomplished at all and now even during the pandemic um and the and the fire um we still had our tanks going in so we have we have two louis tank and the drone tanks are completely in they look beautiful um james frittato took um me and um the co-chair out on a tour of it last thursday and everything looks great um and then the the last one will be completed um casky on as as louis said on um main tent and um and i i mean i think that's the most important thing and i i mean it would be nice um if if the board would commit to uh we we in one pico feel that if the projects as had been promised by the former district manager had been jumped on like he promised he said since we were paying for him that they would have been a priority and yet nothing was done if they had been worked on immediately then i think they would be done now at a much lower cost and we would not be out of money but unfortunately we are out of money so it would be nice if the um i mean we would love to see a commitment we've heard we've heard that you're going it's going to go in front of the board as the entretide project comes closer for um to commit to that cost we would love to hear that you commit to it because that's what was promised to us if money ran out the former district manager said in front of all of long pico at the xiani fire department that it would be at your cost and so the that's something that is critical and um but i mean and that's not what i was going to say this is in response to what director fold said i wanted to say that we are very everybody is happy that the tanks are in that and that's the most important thing and um and we we i don't understand the issue about our um charter it is complete we it was approved by the board that was um i think it was in 2019 it was completed and as i asked um miss nichols to add something about how our our committee believes that it's kind of a fluid document and that as as um issues come up we might want to adjust it but right now it's complete so i'm out of time now so um that's all i wanted to say thank you very much i think it looks great too i vote that you approve it i mean that's my personal if i had a vote that's what i would do thank you very much thank you johnny it's important to hear your perspective on it thank you very much anybody else want to say anything okay well i guess my response is if if tony's happy with the draft letter then i'm happy with it and so i'd like to move that we adopt the draft response to the grand jury with minor edits uh suggested by director smully and authorize the board president to sign the response letter on behalf of the board and direct staff to proceed with submitting it second okay any more discussion all right can we have a vote president manhead vice president henry director foals no director smully yes director two is absent motion passes we now go to our last item of unfinished business which is the approving the minutes for the special board of director meeting on february 2nd and this arose because director foals took it off of the consent agenda because he wanted to check the recording of the meeting to see if it was captured in the notes and gene and i discussed this and realized that we'd actually that i sort of made a mistake allowing that because technically the the minutes are supposed to reflect what happens in the meeting they are not supposed to reflect what somebody else writes outside of the meeting and so what should happen is that if anybody wants to make changes to the minutes they should come to the board meeting ready to suggest what those changes are so that it is recorded on is you know put in make those corrections are made and it's part of the videotape that we have of the meeting and then we can all approve that so with that what i would just suggest is we allowed director foals to um it was my mistake to allow him to do it but um that we just append his um comments uh on the uh the agenda to the minutes okay i got an issue here okay the board policy manual says minutes are summary minutes what he is proposing here is not summary minutes and i've got an issue with that either we do summary minutes or all of us can just write out what we want to say and make sure every word is in the minutes and it'll take us three years to just read the minutes i i am in agreement maybe i i uh didn't state this correctly that these are summary minutes and in the future i won't make the mistake that i made at the last meeting and that directors will have to state what change they want to the minutes at the time if they pull it off the consent agenda and they will have to be cast in such a way that they're a summary minute so in other words you can't send in something that's 10 times longer than what uh was written okay that that's but what i'm saying is i made a mistake and so for this one time i'm just suggesting we make an exception that we just append bob's modifications to the agenda go ahead holly i have a question about the statements that have been read recently um several directors have read strict statements and um are they to be included as um a written addition to the minutes or exactly how is that going to be handled i i agree that it's related but let's answer this one first and then we can come back to that if you don't mind you answer you notice my rings hand sooner than i expected you would i apologize no i think we just need to deal with the minutes that we have to vote on right now and then we can go back to your your question because it is it's germane okay i think that's a great suggestion let's just go with that okay yeah i mean you're no problem so i'm just making a motion that we adopt the minutes um with the appended page by bob and bob the second okay any further discussion if not we'll take a vote president may hood uh public comments if any oh gosh i'm sorry i forget all right any public comments on that doesn't look like it all right go ahead holly president may hood president henry no director falls yes director smally yes again director to his president i mean absent and so uh motion passes i don't know gina whether whether we can discuss holly's question uh i mean it's or not is that i think it's up to you chair may hood i you know it's it'll i'd be okay with you taking that offline with with uh with gina and coming back with the suggestion that we would follow going for you that my my feeling bob is is i'll just say my own opinion about it we just do this quickly is that we this is not i i mean i asked holly and she says that nobody else has ever done this and and i know for example i you know before i was elected to the board i used to watch the board meetings and and both lucaris and rick maran read statements but they never asked to have them in the um in in the minutes the minutes are supposed to be summary minutes and if anybody really cares they can go to the um they can go to the tape so i i think that i don't think it's appropriate to have um things appended in that way because otherwise everything is sort of as low as everybody could start doing it more transparency for people to read information i don't know not a bad thing but of course it's transparency you know and and no transparency on your part los i you know i really you know sorry i really have to object to personal attacks it's okay to to disagree it's okay to not agree with policy positions but let's try to keep the personal attacks to them minimum okay oh yes sir lois am i out of line here uh gail so um let why don't we i think that um perhaps uh director uh fulz and i and jeana should discuss this offline because i i don't think we need to come it's not a burning issue right now that's going to be part of the board policy manual yeah or maybe actually that's a really good idea we could we could that could that's a that's an excellent idea why don't we bring it up there and we're probably bringing back the board policy manual shortly yeah that would make that a part of it how's that i like that was a good idea rick sounds good all right let's see our next thing is we have new business and we just have one item on it and rick did you want to go ahead and yes item five a is the committee appointments it's recommended that the board of directors appoint four public members to the laddock committee uh jimmy newton mary and uh lababa uh tony norton and norm hagan and consider the attached memo from the board president proposing two changes uh to the board committee assignment for 2021 uh the lumpiko assessment district oversight committee consists of up to five public members who have a residence uh residential mailing address within the assessment district 2016 dash one which is pretty much the lumpiko uh service area the district posted an advertisement for public members to serve on the 2021 laddock committee on january 14th 2021 with a february 11th deadline for submitting applications uh the district received one application uh which is that should be attached in your packet before the deadline shortly after the deadline the district received three additional applications those are also attached all four applicants meet the requirements to be appointed to the committee of the board policy manual states that committee appointments will be reviewed by the full board at a board of directors meeting in december of each calendar year or as soon thereafter is practical public member applications will be reviewed by the full board each committee member shall be appointed by a simple majority vote of the board uh in the second part of this item is also attached uh is a memo from the board president proposing two changes to the previous we approved 2021 board member committee assignments on the budget and finance and administration committees these changes changes require approval by the board to go and affect and in your packet you should have a a copy of a memo addressed to me from chair well hood asking that we place this item on this upcoming agenda uh and currently director fold serves on the administrative administration committee and director henry serves on the budget and finance committee i request that these directors switch assignments so that director folds us on the budget and finance committee and director henry is on the administration she would remain i remain as the second director on both committees i had discussed the switch with director henry and she is amenable brown act rules prevented me from discussing this proposed switch with director folds before the board meeting the director fold states at the board meeting that he is also amenable to this switch i request that the board vote uh to approve these revised committee assignments as director folds does not want to make the switch and committee assignments and would remain as they are and no action by the board is necessary okay that i'll turn it back over to the chair or district council whichever feels what we'll do is we'll just divide these two two things kind of what i thought yeah to vote on um so uh we'll first address the appointing the four members uh to the lay dock committee and we had four applicants and we're basically uh recommending that we appoint all four of them and is there any discussion of this by the board any discussion by people in the audience and chair may hood i just recommend clarifying if you're taking public comments on both pieces both issues divided divided it into okay so we're only talking now about the uh appointing four new members or appointing the members of the lay dock committee for 2021 and are there any comments from the public and maybe we should unmute the call-in user to make sure that he or she gets a chance to speak call-in user one did you have anything you want to say oh hi um i'm christine and felton um i i think i i don't really have much to say but um i'm enjoying listening to the whole thing thank you thank you jamey well we're glad that you applied okay all right um with that why don't we uh can i just make a i'll just make a motion okay um i'd like to move that the board of directors appoint jamey newton mary labama tony norton and norm hagan as public members of the lay dock committee and consider the attached memo from the board president whoop no that's a period lay dock committee okay second okay thank you we have a second so can we have a vote director excuse me president mayhood hi i've president henry yes director foals yes director smiley yes and director two is absent motion okay great okay so for the second half of this um what i'm basically doing is asking for a switch of director foals and director henry on the two committees that they're on administration and budget and finance and as you some of you know they served they the last two years they served both served on both committees so they're both highly qualified to serve on either committee and so that you know that's it's fine in that regard but on the margins i think that as we watched the um discussion of the uh going out for the loan and other things we realized that director foals had more experience in the sort of finance end of things which i thought would be helpful to us in terms of thinking about how we what we might do with that money while we have it in terms of investments and things and on the other hand i think lois has got an awful lot of experience on administering um water districts because she used to run one in the long pico and i think she has a really good sense of how to do that and has a lot of sympathy and appreciation for the staff and those so i'm just would like to make that switch and that's what it's motivated by but as i said it's up to bob because uh i haven't because of brown act i could only talk to lois and she was willing to make this bob and if he wants to that's great if not then we'll just leave things as they are could i um i may be asked for your indulgence because this was quite the surprise as you might imagine given that we had you know kind of set things up for the year in january could we um address this at the next board meeting i'm this is something i need to ponder on a little bit there are definitely some um in my mind policy implications for this and i haven't given it the kind of thought that it deserves so with your indulgence and permission i would like to bring it back um on the 18th well i'd rather um just go ahead lois well i mean there are committee meetings that are coming up so if we put this off then it's okay this is march it'll be april before the switch would really affect committees i would think yeah i understand but i mean again this is uh quite a switch and i need to it is quite a switch bob but i guess my response is if you don't have a clear view on it then i'll just you know i i'll just i could just take it back i mean i you had made a strong case for being on budget and finance um in january and i thought it was clear that you want to be on there and maybe i've made a little bit of a mistake in terms of assigning you and assigning you should have done it the other way and i'm trying to correct that but if you don't feel that that's the case then i'll just let things well i mean if you um i mean i don't understand the burning urgency here a couple weeks is not going to make a big difference and it will give me an opportunity to ponder this a little bit more that's all i'm asking for is sort of that kind of courtesy okay director smalling yes i concur with director fulc's request it's two weeks i think the committees stay with the with the directors current directors staying with the committees for that period of time then we can okay director fulc elects to after that point all right okay i think it would be a good idea for you to uh tell me beforehand so that we can take it off the agenda um oh gee i'm sorry didn't think about that but my apologies um no i mean you don't have to tell me i mean it was you know given you talk to given you had talked to woe us i was concerned about brown act issues well you can communicate it to rick anyway okay let's move on actually that that was the last uh item of new business so um with that oh wait you have the consent agenda i'm sorry so we're tabling uh we're tabling the new business five a do i need to go out to the public if we've tabled in uh something i i don't think it's strictly necessary if no action will be taken but um it wouldn't hurt either to find out if somebody was here to comment on that issue all right i'll open up the or comment by the public okay seeing then we'll just go ahead and table it and move on to the consent agenda is there anything that anyone would like to pull off the consent agenda for further discussion any comments from the public on anything on the consent agenda you don't see anything um shall we unmute the call-in user just to make sure anything from our call-in user okay then i think we're uh wearing that then we're uh go to uh adjournment thank you good night thank you good night everyone