 Okay, welcome everybody to the SOV board meeting. Holly, would you like to call the roll? Yes. Present. Stevie one. Yeah, Henry. Here, but I can barely hear you. Rick Moran. Here. What's that better Lois? Yes. Is that everybody? Great. Are there any additions or deletions to the agenda? The chair staff has no additions or deletions to the agenda, unless district council has any. Okay. This time we'll have open it for communications from the public for any item that is not currently listed on the agenda. Three minutes. Are there any? Chair Swann, if I can just make a quick comment for folks who would like to participate in public communications, you can hit the raise your hand or hit star nine, raise your hand if you're on a phone. And we will call on you. For questions. Has their hand raised? It's Elaine. Hi. I just have a quick question about the committees and if you have any plans to restart them. Not at this time. We haven't discussed it. I think we're going to wait and. See how things work out from the. The government standpoint. See if the. Standards. Get relaxed as far as the virus crisis goes. Waiting for. We'll be accepting further instruction from. Our state representatives and the government. I mean, could we do a zoom. A zoom meeting. Consider that. Consider it. Sure. Okay. That's it. Okay. Okay. Jim, go ahead. I just wanted to follow up where you're late. I'm, I believe other organizations are doing committee meetings. So I think it is. I don't think there's a legal reason not to be doing your committees. And I think it would be really. Important to get those going again. Thank you. Thank you. The other comments. Doesn't look like no hands are raised. So. Move over to unfinished business. Yes. Item five a is the McCurry property purchase agreement. And district council will deliver that. Gina. I didn't find any. Did you want to talk through that? Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay. Great. Apologies for that delay. I'm not going to go into a great deal of detail on the site. Because I think it was presented in a fairly. A fairly good level of detail. A couple of meetings back when the board would ask to consider some of the. Issues related to the negotiation of the property deal. In your board packet. You can see that you have a copy of the final term sheet. That was signed. The offering term sheet that was provided by the district and signed by Mr. Nicari on March 10th. The offer price that was agreed to. Pursuant to the authority provided by the district. The offer price that was agreed to. Pursuant to the authority provided by the board was for a purchase price of $88,000. There are a number of other terms and conditions set forth in the term sheet. That are generally applicable to real estate deals and governmental deals. And in particular, there's a number of. Obligations related to. The anticipated construction of the swim tank replacement on the parcel. All of that is set forth in the term sheet. You will. You may have noticed that shortly before the meeting. I provided a draft form of the agreement. This is a long form agreement. That the parties are going to enter into to formalize what's in the term sheet. In a more standard legal format. But it, it tracks the term sheet very closely. It's the same purchase price. It's $38,000. It's the same. Conditions. For the construction that were set out in the, it's exactly the same. Conditions for construction that were set out in the term sheet. It. Does have some contingencies, including board approval, which we're going to be requesting tonight. Also successful, complete completion of the sequel process, which is important for any government. project in California. We've got to make sure that the project is consistent with CEQA and passes CEQA review before we close the deal and pay the purchase price for the property. So what we're asking the board to do tonight is to approve the proposed resolution which is exhibit B to the board memo and let me just get you the number of that resolution. It's resolution number 20 19-20. That resolution if approved by the board is going to authorize the district to proceed with acquiring the necari property. It's gonna allow staff to finalize and execute the written agreement that I emailed around just before the board meeting and to do everything else necessary for purchase for purposes of closing the transaction. And once again the way this is written the purchase price will not be paid until we actually receive the deed from Mr. necari and his family after CEQA is completed. So that's how the closing is going to work and if there are any questions I'm happy to answer them. We recognize Bob. Gina thanks. This is going to be covered through title insurance as well regular closing process. Yes we'll get a preliminary title report and a title insurance commitment prior to closing the deal. Thank you. Any other directors with comments or questions? Throw it open to the the public for any questions or comments as well. Seeing none. I think we're ready for a motion at this point. So we have questions popping up like moles over here. Okay who was first Rick? You were first. Okay so yeah I'm in agreement with doing all this and the one question I have Rick is you had talked about having some neighborhood meeting with his neighborhood and I was wondering as a board member could I attend those meetings? In the past board members have has attended such types of meetings as long as we have no Brown Act violations I have no problem with it. I refer to Gina if a board member would like to attend. Yeah this is a good forum to bring it up because as long as it's only one or two board members it would be fine. So is there any other board members who want to participate please speak now so that we can resolve it in this format. I'll just add to it Rick that that's worked out well in the past that we've had you know individual board member attend a neighborhood meeting. Yeah thank you very much like to attend and yes I'll keep keep you in the loop. Great thank you. Okay next up on deck is Lois you had a question? No I thought we were done with questions. Your hand is raised Lois. I know it's raised. Now it's down. What did you make a motion Lois? I wanted to make a motion that we accept resolution number 20 19-20. I'd be pleased to second that. Okay and let's turn it over to Holly to record the vote. Lou Ferris. Let me and I apologize let me jump in for a moment especially because this is a real property deal I want to make sure the eyes are dotted and teaser crossed so if the motion could be amended to approve the resolution 20 19-20 I'd appreciate it it sounds like a minor issue but it could be interpreted as being significant. Didn't I say 20 19-20? Yeah the issue is that you said accepted rather than approve and I'm requesting to amend it to approve All right resolution 20 19-20. Yeah approve. Okay. Terrific. Please proceed Holly. Director Ferris. Aye. President Swan. Yes. Director Fultz. No. Director Henry. Yes. Director Moran. Yes. Motion passes. President Swan. Okay. Did that pop up well before we did stuff? Okay let's who's got a question? Tina. Tina please go ahead. I was just curious can you hear me okay? Yeah. Okay I was curious Did the board have considered other properties or if there was a reason you were buying this specific property just because of the location or had you considered the other options? We had considered well I'll let Rick talk to it we've considered other options yes this is the best option for the district from all of our studies and recommendations. Rick would you care to expand on that? There wasn't a lot of parcels that met the criteria for the proper elevation and flatness that we needed that the tank would fit on the topography of most of the area it's very steep and this parcel happens to be very flat for the area and more importantly at the right elevation for water pressure. Thank you Rick. Does that help answer your question Tina? Thank you. You're welcome. Okay moving along to the oh god item 5b the draft fiscal year 2021 budget review right I'm sorry Rick that was yours. That's okay item 5b is the fiscal year budget 2021 we have the finance manager that will be giving this report. Hello so everyone should have the memo kind of going over the background the high level overview and some of the key reports that are making it up this does have the full picture of capital debt funding kind of everything in pulling everything together and getting projections for where we think this year's going to end there was a significant difference in what the fiscal year 2020 budget for capital projects was planned to be versus what is actually coming in a lot of these are projects that are just getting kicked out into the next fiscal year for example the swim tank which is now going to be called I believe the the redwood the redwood tank. Stuff like that gets kicked out so our capital projects were budgeted at 7.8 million we're expecting 4.6 in this year it's making this fiscal year 2021 budget come in a little bit above 12 million so that makes things look a little bit funny from that perspective so this first the first set of numbers that you're seeing on the memo are the reserve balances and kind of how those are changing from the original budget being about three million the projected reserve balance at the end of this fiscal year to be 4.1 and again a lot of that's just simply due to the capital getting pushed out so when we see fiscal year 2021 the projected reserve balance is going up to about three point just a little bit shy of 3.8 million the overview starts to go over some of the different operating expense increases and then we'd have a bridge on the second page showing from when we presented the budget at the last board meeting for how the operating expenditures have have changed for that then it gets into the pie charts that are showing the total uses of the funds and the total sources of the funds so due to the high capital projects it is showing that there is a decrease in the reserve balances to be able to fund all of those outside of that a lot of the numbers remained the same for what we reviewed the last time and so you know this is obviously a little bit less data being presented than what we're at the previous meeting so if people want to dig into some of the details we I can always pull up some of the historic stuff from that but for the most part I can sit here and field some of the questions we do have all of the related managers on the phone that can help answer some of the questions in their areas but overall I mean the reserve balances are going to be going up it is projecting that we'll have our operating reserve balance fully funded and we'll be starting to fund our capital reserve balance a little bit. Bob you have a question? Yeah questions and comments. Stephanie as of last year I believe our operating reserve balance was fully funded and the capital balance had just under a million dollars in it. Based on the budget you've put together our operating margin is about three million dollars unfortunately the way the data is structured it kind of mixes projects that you would take out of the 14.5 million which really need to be the five projects that we were said we were going to do that's a little bit hard to see how that three million dollars margin is going to be allocated so could you help me and and everybody understand how that three million in operating margin is being allocated? So the majority of it's going to fund the capital projects. Which capital projects? So if you go to the listing of all the capital projects that tells you how those are being funded and so it'll sit there and tell you which ones are the 14.5 so page I don't know what the exact page is but there's three columns the statement of revenues expenses and changes in reserves so there there's a section that says capital improvement expenses and funding so there's 12.1 in capital projects there's 146,000 being funded by grants and then there's 8.8 being debt funded so those are going to be you know that 8.8 is going to be the projects that are related to the 14.5 million then that leaves a balance of 3.2 million that the district is going to need to use the you know the operating income to be able or in this case also some reserves to be able to fully fund all of that 12.1 million. And this is where I think a broader conversation really needs to be had and we need to do this in conjunction with clarity around what all of our unfunded liabilities and underfunded liabilities are. We have we have pension obligations at least 3.5 million perhaps up as much as 6 million or over 6 million depending on what return on investments going to be in the stock market which I think we all know at least for this year it's not going to be particularly good. We have our capital reserve fund we have requirements that we need to be spending probably at least 3 million a year for capital projects just going forward and we have meter replacement and we have um tank maintenance and so I think what we need to do here is have a discussion with the information and all the numbers in front of us so we can decide how much money goes into each one of those pots. Right now what you're presenting it looks like is a set of recommendations for where that money should go and I think we need to have that broader the 3 million is going to go and if the I mean this is up to the board obviously but I think we need to have a discussion about where we want to spend our money for example I don't agree with the notion of putting in 2000 meters in one year what we do and we do that is we create this spike in that particular category which just leaves future boards with having to deal with an equivalent spike down the road I think we need to have a better analysis done of our meter situation here so we know whether or not doing 2000 or roughly 25 percent in one year is the thing that a service business should be doing. Service businesses should be doing things level flat even about the same every year not creating spikes like that. I think there might be some other places that we might want to put that money in order to deal with some of the other liabilities that we have that may be equally critical and so that's the invitation to the board to see if the board wants to have that kind of conversation about looking at all of our liabilities getting everything on the table understanding what all of our deferred maintenance liabilities are and figuring out where we want to go allocate these funds. Okay any other board comment questions about Bob's suggestion? Lois what are your thoughts? Lois go ahead. Okay I put my pot up this is April and pretty much Bob has been saying this for quite a long time and I'm not sure we can get a definitive answer on all of those things and I think it's important that meters are replaced maybe we don't need to do 2000 maybe we could do 1500 I don't know but those new meters make a difference about loss of water and people can track their water usage they're great and I I don't know how we're going to get all the answers that Bob wants and get this budget done. I just really don't know that's all. Thanks Lois. Bob you had a response? Yeah just a quick response to that. I mean it's great that meters do nice things but what is the return on investment for the meters or what are we getting out of that? Do we have any data about whether or not the meters that are out there really are substandard by substantial amounts that which means revenue loss or are they only a couple of percentages off. If we replace this how are these meters how are we reducing our overall operating costs? So I haven't heard any of the justification for that. I think a meter replacement project of about 700 makes sense looking at the age of some of our meters some of which go back 30 to even 55 years at least according to the data that I've seen but 2,000 meters I think is way too much particularly relative to where we are with our tank coatings. So yes I have been saying this for quite some time. It would be nice to be able to have these conversations earlier but these conversations still need to be had and even if we don't do it this year we're going to be doing it going into June, July, August, September so because these issues just can't go away we are facing an enormous amount of unfunded and underfunded projects and categories and as of right now as a board we have not dealt with those in a comprehensive fashion. Right let me take a minute let me ask Rick that's your name. Let me ask the experts here that actually run this business for an opinion on this because it's not Stephanie's job to figure out how many meters to replace I think she's basing that and the costs and such based on the input she got from operations and staff so maybe you could comment Rick is 2,000 an objective a magic number or is it an arbitrary stick in the ground or James you ever can comment? Well I think James is having some audio problems. The problem with our meters is that we do have a good amount that have reached what in the industry is considered their accuracy liability after 15 years meters start slowing down. My concern is we're losing revenue and we're showing an increase on the counter for water because we're not metering that water. We are behind on meter change over the only way we can tell you some of the information that Bob wants is as you pull these out of the ground we send the percentage down to be tested and they give back accuracy and then you can accurately tell how much water they want. Some of that problem is I do believe it's about 50 bucks a meter to have them tested. It gets expensive. One day to light back you're going to have to pull a good percentage of meters and send them out for testing. Up to this point have we done that? Do we have a historical reference that tells us based on whatever percentage you've been replaced this past year for example? Well the industry will tell you 15 years that you can keep a meter in the ground over 15 years. We're having like the meters in Felton that are just going dead. We're finally caught up on dead meter replacement. These aren't meters that are slowing down. These are meters that are going dead. We do not estimate any usage so the meter goes dead. That's lost revenue. Sure. And so we're trying to get caught up and you know I agree with Bob on the other hand but it's also it's our cash register and we're losing revenue. Of the meters that we've replaced that weren't dead but we're just simply aged that have been sent out have they come back with results that tell us yeah they were off by percentage? We only sent one out and it was off on the on the higher flows. It was an older meter. I think it was an 1.5-2-inch meter that was on a longer map that was in the ground. It was remarkably accurate on the low flow but not on the high flow. We do not send out to get tested just because of the cost. We could send out and have tested but it doesn't make sense. And the the target number of 2,000 meters is that that gets us up to our meter and we have a good accuracy and age of meters. And leaving us with X number to replace. That's correct. X number. Okay that's a good number. That's correct. Okay let me uh uh let us you had a comment again. I'll get to you next Bob. Yes. Let's go ahead. I'm having a little experience on another water board. I know that when meters get old they don't record water usage like they should. I also know that water meters have a life and I believe our water meters in SLD are pretty much beyond their life expectancy. And to me the meters the new types of meters tell the public our rate payers so much about what they're doing and if they have a leak it it's it's fantastic what these new meters do. And can I prove a dollar amount that they save or create for us? No but I have to have a meter like that and I'm really happy that I do and I think Long Pico was one of the first areas to get these these new meters and I think they're a good thing for the district and that in the long run they'll save money for the district. That's it. Thank you Lois. Bob? Yeah there's there's no there's no argument here over the fact that new meters are better. The discussion is over what the return on investment is and whether we're operating here and making allocations of capital based on numbers and not guesses. So I think we replaced 500 meters last year at least that was what I thought was in the budget or 400 something like that. Even if we had tested you know 20 of them and I get that it costs money to do though perhaps you can negotiate a deal if you say you're going to commit to testing X number that would at least give us some information about whether or not these meters are in fact out of spec. We're operating in a significantly lower capacity than what they should be. I mean I look at other issues like tank coatings where I don't believe we've done a lot of tank coating maintenance at least according to what James has indicated in the past and I get really worried about tanks. I also get worried about making sure that we can keep our promises on the pensions that we have committed to and that we shouldn't be just kicking that can down the road either. So this comes into how you want to allocate the capital the three million in margin that we have and putting that much into one category where we have really it sounds like zero idea of what the return on investment is. I just don't think is the best thing for the district or the ratepayers or our employees. Are you suggesting that we replace zero meters Bob? Sorry what was that? Are you suggesting that we replace zero meters? No that's not what I mean I said earlier I think a number of about 700 makes sense based on at least age. In lieu of any other data we've got 700 meters according to the information that Rick provided that are 30 years and older. So I mean I'm not sure why this hasn't come before previous boards or even our board beforehand if 700 meters are 30 years and older. But those to me it seems like would be candidates for potential replacement. There may be other meters that are failing as Rick was indicating in Felton that might supersede that but doing 2000 meters in one year and creating that kind of a spike in our deployment where you're going to try to manage that 15 years down the road I don't think that's a great thing for future boards to have to contend with either. Yeah how was the number of 2000 or arrived at, Rick? Through the age of our meters. District wide. A 30-year-old is just got to be losing revenue. And it also increases our unaccompanied water laws that we have or I can understand. But we have zero data with which to make any kind of concrete statement about how much we're losing. It sounds like that's a historical and a norm that's within the industry. Bob I don't think anybody's making any unfounded allegations that you know meters don't go bad. I think they do and I think Rick is basing that on the experience and the industry norms. I agree maybe 2000 is too many. What's the cost for the 2000? What's the number? 500 a meter about. It depends on how many meters they're going to be doing per day at the very back of the packet. It is the meter change out scenarios. If 15 meters per day are being done a 2000 meter project would be 745,000. If it's 10 meters per day that would be about 817,000. With the higher volume the only thing that I don't have factored in to the cost is the CalPERS pension. It gets it's relatively close. If you look at 15 meters per day it's 133 days CalPERS would pick in at 125 but it's based off of the fiscal year. So for example if the meter replacement program started in June and you know June is part of this fiscal year. July 1st starts the next fiscal year. You'd have to have 125 plus days in one fiscal year for when temporary employees would become CalPERS eligible. So 2000 meters roughly $800,000 is what we put in the budget. Okay Lou I see your hand up up and down like a like a gopher looking for a snack. When I first put my hand up you end up asking the question so I quick it back down but now I have another comment and that is that $12 million is a lot of money to spend in capital in one year. Bob's got a good point. We need to make sure that we are spending that on the right thing. Most of those that list of projects are items that we've discussed in the engineering committee and I wholeheartedly support is part of taking care of our infrastructure backlog. But maybe the better question instead of continuing to talk about meters is what are we not going to do with that $12 million that we should consider doing and possibly replace something that is on the list? Does anybody have any comments on that? Well Rick's hand is up. Let's see if he's got any answer. Rick? Well I don't necessarily have any answer to that question that Lou presented but I wanted to make a couple points is one the meters may be reading more and they may be reading less. So their inaccuracy can go in both directions. So we could be benefiting from some of that in one way. But I kind of agree with Bob here in the sense that we should plan maintenance is planned maintenance. It should be kind of methodical at a nice even pace where you can you know count on not trying to do everything at one step but you're moving along making progress as the things deteriorate you're catching up and so a slower planned way is what plan maintenance is about to my understand. The other thing is there are some other issues and this may be related to what Lou was talking about but Bob mentions tanks and pensions. So you know how do you divide that money up and you know we should consider those other aspects of need that and that's it thank you. Okay Bob did you have another comment I saw your hand up and down. Sorry I Rick was Rick kindly fell down what I was going to say. Okay well I'm kind of the opinion right now given the circumstances that the economies and the countries and everything else. Cash is king and maybe if the economy was where it was two months ago and if we weren't facing some of the challenges that we're currently facing here as well as globally maybe 2000 meters is a little aggressive and a little more money we should be a little more conservative with cash and so maybe the number should be scaled back to some reasonable number maybe cut in half or at least discussed further. So that's sort of my thinking on it right now I think maybe only because of the economic conditions that I would and the uncertainty that's out there that maybe we should be a little more conservative with with our cash. Well I certainly think you're you're right about the fact that the economy I mean we're in a recession right now and we'll how long we stay in it I think will depend on how long we stay in this lockdown and first longer we're in the lockdown the more serious damage we're going to do to the economy too so it's that trade-off there between the health of people and the health of the economy in that kind of environment cash is definitely king I agree with you on that. Yeah I see Stephanie you had to want to make a comment. So I mean there's nothing that puts the budget in you know sets it in stone you know we could go from the 2000 meters down to the 1000 that would be that would free up about $400,000 ideally what the budget and finance committee would have been talking about in conjunction while this all is going on is we were going to be diving more into the CalPERS pension and ways that we can utilize paying down some of our unfunded viability either there or the OPEB so there isn't anything restricting us from in three months from now picking some of these conversations back up and allocating more of the district's reserve funds to go towards that it's not uncommon to do an amendment to the budget directing you know a chunk of money you know like this $400,000 to be able to go to something once we're able to start having more of our committee meetings and have a more well-informed answer on some of these areas thank you rick uh yes when you said that bob i mean excuse me steve about cash is king the uncertainty of the economic picture right now that's absolutely true and i just want to totally reinforce that statement so that's what i have okay thank you any other comments from uh jenna are you just clicking buttons jenna you got a question i would like to make a comment before we go out to um public comments on this agenda item so i could do that now where i could wait go right ahead okay um i just wanted to let everyone know in particular the attendees that are on the phone please not use the webinar chat function to try to raise your hand if you want to ask a question if necessary as a backup you could indicate via chat to everyone to all panelists and attendees that you want to ask a question but please just try to raise your hand and wait to be called on the chat isn't a good way to do that we definitely don't want to have private chats going on in the background um we've asked members of the board not to chat with each other we'd ask you not to try to chat with the panelists or the members of the board and if there are any we'll try to read them in the record um because all those communications should be a matter of public record for purposes of the meeting so um apologies for that public service announcement and uh i will go back to me very good jenna jenna for those people for those people that came in late because i see we have 15 attendees now how do you raise your hand on the telephone if you're on a telephone i will defer to the folks from community tv to explain that function sorry i didn't i couldn't hear that star nine star nine will raise your hand on a phone thank you rin okay any other directors or staff with comments before we open it up to the public for input okay we'll open it up to the public for any comment you don't see any there's one two okay so that we got elaine go ahead elaine first on my list okay i'm on now right yes i just want to make a comment about the meters um if you have as i did a rental that had a bad leak and didn't know about it until the bill was over 500 it's really nice to have a new meter uh just to know about that and as in terms of revenue i don't know if it's possible but i would be willing to chip in to replace my meter um i don't know if that's possible but it could be a source of revenue for you folks okay thank you for your input i don't know how that would work but uh there'll be a there'll be a hat in front of the and feel free to drop in a donation no i don't know will i don't know i'll ask and see if there's something that we can consider discussing that and see what happens um thank you ej armstrong your hand is up you're recognized can you i can hear me yes there we are yes uh commenting on the meters uh one thing uh to avoid is a pig in the python in which you uh uh put a lot of cost going forward in terms of meter replacement another strategy is use primary meters secondary use a neural network of meters and that way you can use uh mathematics statistical mathematics to determine what your uh loss radius on any of the meters in terms of failure as well you'd be able to identify that mathematically you don't need to do it specifically meter by meter i think that'd be a low cost advantage new things are really great but you know down the line new things also have to be maintained and replaced and so you push you're just basically spending money today to push the problem out into the future it might it might be possible to identify the weak points in the system early on and and just deal with those specifically you know in case by case from that point of view that's my comment okay thank you you're with up for a concept well there's engineered data that they're testing with the meters and they're 15 years is the magic number that they recommend replacement most all agencies replace in 15 years some will replace it even sooner for the larger flows you know for inch six inch meters which we don't have for so the meters run slow they don't run fast they wear there's a chamber inside the meters and as it spins it wears over the years yeah very seldom for all ever especially with the magnetic rise every there's a loss of revenue how much just depends and uh when they go dead we even lose more revenue and that's the reason i'm you know pushing for a meter to get the meters up to what i would consider the accuracy you know we don't get anything right so you know it's up to the board if you want to cut the amount of meters back but it's also going to show a larger amount of water we're not going to be able to account for water and when we apply to the state or when we um provide our state about our water loss it looks horrible and they have concerns if we're losing 30 percent of our water not being able to account for are they subsidizing any of this meter replacement no no okay thank you okay so back oh bob i see your hands up again yeah uh just a number of points first of all if we could uh i would like to advocate that the board um asked the district manager to test a to be determined number of meters that are being replaced over the course this next year to be able to uh so we can derive some information about what our return on investment may be for these kinds of things if we are doing testing now um we definitely need to do some going forward it doesn't have to be an enormous number i think uh you know looking at uh a statistical sampling would would probably be sufficient uh the second thing regarding um uh water uh not being uh billed for um i think one way to start getting an idea of that is if we start running a report and seeing meters that are consistently at zero meters then we are zero units then over a period of time not just a month or two but over a period of time i think we'll be able to get a sense of whether or not we have a lot of meters that are um uh you know going bad and third um you know a lot of our uh water loss situation is due to uh leaks as well i mean the system itself the pipes um and at least some of the tanks uh you know are also quite old and this is something that the boards in the past have not wrestled with we're going to have to wrestle with that and figure out how we're going to address that i don't think 100 percent of the water loss is due to um bad meters but hopefully by statistically sampling that we'll be able to get a better idea of that going forward with respect to uh selling meters um i've talked uh in the past about uh the fact that we should be uh making kind of an option available to customers if they wish to purchase uh those kind of electronic meters in advance of when they would be otherwise eligible to get them we have 8 000 roughly meters in our system we're not going to be able to do all 8 000 uh overnight uh and perhaps some people may wish to uh to do that i i agree with allain i think that would be a good source of income for the district thank you thanks this uh are they available to be yes they're available to be purchased yes okay and have the of the 7900 connections that we have roughly and you replaced 400 last year how many were replaced how many get to be replaced i can tell you i have the spreadsheet up uh there's uh 20 to 94 meters that are 15 years or older um there's 500 that are 15 years there was a big push about 13 14 years ago there's 2200 that are 13 and 14 years old so basically if you look at 12 years and older that accounts for uh shoot my spreadsheet just choked on me there that's going to count for somewhere around 4 to 5000 meters that are 12 years or older so um yeah i mean it's a it's a it's an issue but it's one that has of course been building up for quite some time right Stephanie you have a comment i just wanted to address the the comment about zero usage the district already does do that when we see accounts that had usage um showing up with zero usage we do go out and investigate if it is a dead meter or not if it is a dead meter those do get replaced you know outside of any you know meter replacement program um so that is something that staff identifies on a regular basis i got one a dead meter that's all right by the way steve the number the number is 5000 four that are 12 years and older out of our 8000 okay all right so i uh jenna you had a yes president swan i just wanted to suggest um going out to the public one more time to close out public oral communications on this item i saw one uh hands go up from the public and then go back down and i'm i just want to make sure that we get any last public comments and then close it out okay sure um any uh anybody from the public have a comment they'd like to uh make we'll give you a second shot at it okay i don't see any hands i do see a thing saying my internet connection is unstable but that's surprising okay so i guess uh number of public comment uh so we think we kind of beat this up i'd like to suggest to to the board maybe that we do cut the number of meters anticipated in half and uh and take stefanie's suggestion that in a couple of couple three months we take a look at what to do with the extra 400 000 and about allocating it to those areas uh whether it's pension or whatever other areas we could possibly use it in and see how the economy is going at that point in time uh that's my suggestion i think it's a good one steve okay thank you i'll i'll also agree with that steve thank you so that's the suggestion that there's nothing to move on no motions or anything right this okay next up mr uh general manager it's item five c um it's uh correspondence p gini regarding uh p gini is wildfire mitigation plan and tree removal i do believe that the environment of planner is on at the attending the meeting tonight and she'll give you this item this item garlic sorry about that can you hear me now yes okay great so um i believe at the last board meeting we had nancy macy come in um and recommend that the board write a letter to p gini concerning their wildfire management plan um that they're staying together so we read drafts of the letter me and nancy and rick moran and rick rogers um went through the draft and approved it so we're hoping this will be the final letter that will send out to p gini great thank you uh okay let's get the director's comments we've got the first step lou thanks steve um looking at the letter i have no problem with the first three paragraphs i think that presents our position very well in terms of alternative uh pathways besides just cutting down trees i am a little concerned with one sentence in the fourth paragraph it's the one it's the second sentence with that says this should mean focusing on replacing the 7100 miles of infrastructure that they have committed to upgrade over the past over the next 10 years which seems impossible at the current proposed rate of 240 miles per year and i just it just wonders it that doesn't seem to fit into the whole discussion of um whether or not we cut down trees or replace infrastructure um on our land or even in the valley for that matter i i just don't think that belongs in the letter uh because it's talking about the state of california and not the san lorenzo valley and all we can represent and speak to is the san lorenzo valley and the water district i see your point it's a little uh it's kind of a little backhanded snag swipe at pgne bob you have a comment yes first of all i wanted to clarify for for the public i i think on the agenda it stated that the board at the last meet at the meeting of march 5th directed staff to work with um nancy macy i the the minutes actually reflect that we were going to send the this letter to the environmental committee i don't know if that took place or not but um i think what was really meant by the agenda is that because the committee meetings were canceled and because it was clear of the board wanted to move this along uh staff went ahead and undertook a uh rewrite of this so just a clarification for everybody on that the second part i want to mention is um i i actually have a very different um suggestion here for this letter in terms of the manner in which we're approaching this um you know in in the sales world when you're trying to um convince people to enter into something that would benefit you i think it's a really good approach to talk about how the interests align where we can get a win-win out of this and ultimately i think the district's interest in this is as follows um we definitely want to have them harden the power lines that go over our property so that our property isn't uh subject to as much wildfire danger we definitely do not want them to um move down a path of clear cutting to the point where it's bare ground or not much vegetation which will increase the erosion potential and have other severe effects downstream we definitely would like them to prioritize the kinds of areas that uh our property is uh sensitive uh environmental areas and certainly accelerate the overall program i don't know that we necessarily want to be instructing uh a power company on how or the technologies or the methods by which they would harden their facilities technologies change at a very rapid pace and i think uh we as a water district are not as uh expert in that just as i probably wouldn't like it if pgne came to us and said we should be using chemical x in our water treatment versus what we are doing um so i actually have a different letter that i'd like to share with the board uh and uh jeana i wanted to ask you about this um i can share through the um zoom web conferencing unfortunately the attendees won't be able to see it unless they're on that web conferencing uh but everybody else would is that going to be okay with the with the brown act or are we uh sort of operating outside of that at this point well um it forces us to improvise a little bit usually what we would do is have hard copies available in the meeting room um but for this circumstance i think what we could do is um you could share your screen for those who could see it and then if a member of the public um wants to get a copy during the public comment uh period they could i can ask us to email one yeah i can email if they put their email address in the uh chat i can email it to everybody that wants one it might take me a while to cut and paste it but i can certainly do that yeah and of course folks may want not want to do that so another way to do it is um holly if you have an email account up somebody could send you could give your email address and somebody could email you and request it if you have a copy yeah i this was something that i was just put together and because of the fact that we're dealing with this differently i wasn't exactly sure how to uh how to handle this uh so can we put it up and uh and have it and you can read it to us and the 15 attendees that are uh participating yes so what order is above it's um it's about a page um and by the way this was also addressed to pg&e the the sort of the requests that are being made in here are requests to pg&e if we were writing a letter to the governor i think we would want to have a more expansive discussion about how the pg&e public safety powers are affecting this at a financial level operational level public safety that sort of thing and it would be i think uh i think a lot of the topics would be the same um but i think we would also want to include other impacts so that the governor would be aware of you know how much this is affecting the public both environmentally as well as uh convenience and cost you know how much it's costing the district to do that i am sharing the letter now yeah everybody see the share yeah i can see it why don't you go ahead and read it and go down because we've got uh nancy uh as an attendee and and of course the two directors that work with her on this and carly is here as well she can see it i'm sure so okay i'll i'll read it the san lorenzo valley water district supplies drinking water to 7500 customers in the san lorenzo valley and scott's valley communities about half of our drinking water is obtained from surface water tributaries and springs that empty into the san lorenzo river these surface water sources are located on approximately 1,300 acres of critical biodiverse watershed property on ben lomen mountain which the district has protected for decades to ensure high quality um high water quality and minimal environmental impacts we recognize that pgne has a vital interest in maintaining the power lines across district property from boulder creek empire grade over the past several years district staff have collaborated with pgne's contractors regarding vegetation and tree removal activities on district property in particular the hardware trees that have a greater potential than redwood trees to fall and damage power lines the district understands the state of california's concerns regarding increased wildfire risk and the need for public safety while our district is committed to its collaboration with pgne we want to make it clear that we do not support a process that ultimately results in a zero vegetation situation across district property we believe this could trigger a cascading effect even if unintentional that will a significantly increase the potential of greater erosion which b has a high potential to significantly impact our district's water collection and treatment facilities at a high cost to our customers for example if turbidity levels due to increased erosion exceed 30 and carly uh you know forgive me for butchering this nepho lometric turbidity units and which c could cause significant damage to the downstream fish habitat in the sander runs a river habitat that is finally seeing the beginnings of steelhead and co salmon rejuvenation after years of effort in the part of many stakeholders ultimately we do not believe such outcomes are in anyone's best interests our district supports pgne's consideration taking a different approach using current and future power industry best practices and technologies we urgently request pgne prioritize its hardening uh hardening its power infrastructure in environmentally sensitive areas like the districts we believe that accelerated overall upgrades to pgne's infrastructure will help avoid psp shutoffs which also affect water delivery and we request that pgne and its contractors continue to collaborate with district staff prior to tree removal activities on the sensitive property we believe that this approach will result in better outcomes for the environment will enhance public protection against wildfires and will minimize impacts the district facilities thank you for continuing to work with our district on this vital public policy issue all right okay thanks for reading that bud uh so we'll stop sharing now okay lu and rick uh you guys work with nancy or carly rather uh you guys read that or heard that read it and any comments let lu go first here if you want to lu okay um i i like it uh i think it essentially covers the same major points that carly's letter does but it does it in a more collaborative way um i i could go with either one as long as we take that one sentence out of the the one that's in the packet right okay thanks rick okay um yes so uh i uh work with carly um in uh making some recommendations to this letter and um you know bob has done uh another addition to this and made some good points so and made some good deletions as well and i think lu speaks to that as well uh so um one thing i've uh heard from my experience in working with the water district is not to be so specific and to uh try and be uh more particularly when dealing with uh issues like this is being more general so you don't lock yourself into uh specific kinds of remedies um so i agree with bob and being uh calling for best practices rather than uh specific recommendations about how to change the wires or you know recommendations about that so um it speaks to the same issue about uh protecting the habitat for uh the river and the fish and dealing with erosion and dealing with the number of trees that are uh being uh cut down um or trimmed uh so i uh think bob's letter uh has made uh some progress in uh being more collaborative that's the word that i'm hearing from everybody and i think it is that so i appreciate that and i would support uh bob's letter um i would support any other uh any other board persons have uh comment um lois i think bob's is a good letter i think they're both good letters um so we could you don't have a dog in the fight right i you know i i think bob's is good but i thought the original one was good too so i appreciate bob's effort on that right thank you uh carly does staff do you have any uh comment on this does bob's letter missed the point somewhere from your perspective or what are your thoughts no i i do think um i agree with everyone saying that bob's letter is much more collaborative and i think that is a good approach um compared to the original letter that is maybe a little more um of appointing a finger i think this one does have a little bit more of a collaborative feel so that is a nice approach thank you uh any uh comments from the public i know nancy you're on the line or at least were yes let's recognize tina first your first up tina thank you um i i like points in both letters i think that uh i do agree that bob's letter is a little more collaborative but i also think that there's some good points in the original letter that uh leave out more specific things that are maybe happening that perhaps um if you're at a distance and you don't live in the valley you don't understand like the difference between hardwood and redwood and how the trees differ or how the erosion happens or you know maybe there's something that's more scientific that maybe someone reading this who isn't a scientist would miss so i think it might be a good idea to take both letters and um and sort of like look over them in the sense and and makes a new letter that's both collaborative and also hits on the scientific points of it okay thank you uh nancy you're next up nancy you're on mute all right is this better yes okay sorry i didn't know i was muted um congratulations on making this work you guys this is great um and thank you for addressing the letter and bob for your time and energy and writing a new letter um uh personally the the letter is meant to be critical because pg and he has failed to upgrade the system in the sander as a valley for 60 years in some areas and we have ample evidence of that where all the single wire uh single um six gauge copper wire which their own office of public advocates stated uh was antiquated and unsafe so um you know definitely some of that language is in there for that reason but i'll totally agree that the letter is unique um and but you've got to have it in there because um bob was using the other letter and since then there's been there have been there's a new ceo since geisha was in there and so we'll have to update that information um i would implore you however to see see the fire to the new wildfire safety division of the cpuc it turns out that the uh legislature legislature in their wisdom decided to create a new division in the california public utilities and it is called the wildfire safety division and their first job is to prove or disapprove or request changes in pg and wildfire mitigation plan and um so they should get a copy of this letter because right now the plan spends over 680 million dollars on cutting down trees including trees that are up to 200 feet from their right of way um and i don't want to go into details about that but cal fires involved and their pg me is already getting notices of violation because they're not following the timber harvest regulations but um so i think they need to hear how our water district feels that they're concerned that the removing of the trees is is uh potentially detrimental especially when they are healthy mature trees um not you know do you want to take out the ones that are brushing up against the wires you want to you know maintain the distance from the wires obviously um and you definitely want to get rid of the dead ones that are going to fall on the wires or the ones that are that are you know so weak and and feeble that they might um and um you know there's criticism on how pg and e determines that or how their contractors determine it um but um you know they shouldn't be cutting down happy health happy i wish healthy in mature trees um but anyway so if if you would see see the wildfire safety division and also the chair uh or the president of the public utilities commission mary bell batcher um who is very involved in this whole process and uh is eager to hear from people like the water districts um she she holds that information in high regard so um please let's please do address it to pg and e to the ceo and um well we can update um i'd be happy to help early update that information um and then cc the wildfire safety division of the cpu c and um and also uh the chair mary bell batcher of the cpu c so um and go ahead throw the governor in too because he has been very hands on in this entire process and would be interested as well um so um you know i i see i don't have any problem with getting rid of the 700 and 7100 miles of infrastructure uh but i want to make one point that um um bob i think your letter is beautiful i support it all the way there's not a problem with it except one major thing and that is in your focus to on the water district property you're missing um an important point and that is it isn't just water district property that is affected by what the just what pg and e is doing and because of the high utility associated wildfire danger in our district the importance of upgrading the system uh throughout the san rosa valley in fact throughout the the mountains but you know the whole coaster watershed uh are the whole coastal mountain range uh the santa cruz coastal mountains um but definitely in our water district in our watershed um if because if there's a fire up baircreek road even if you don't have property directly affected uh that wildfire will will affect the district so um that was one of the good points i thought you made when you did your original presentation was uh with regards to the other properties as well nancy yeah so that's my the only thing i have that's a real a real problem in bob's letter everything else is beautifully written um everything else is is is fine but you need to somehow add back some language that says we're concerned about our entire san roso river watershed um not just uh um you know not just our water district property right so thank you nancy yeah thank you very much for the opportunity to express my concerns yeah uh so i'm assuming uh that's really very good feedback and especially the copying all of the additional parties that you mentioned uh i'm assuming bob you wouldn't mind updating or working with carly and maybe perhaps nancy to take some of their suggestions and work them into your finely crafted uh pros that's why i raised my hand i thought that would be a uh a good thing as a as a next step and i'd be happy to email that out um here right away great i've got a couple more comments from the public here so let's uh ej uh you had something you wanted to mention uh yes i'd just like to mention that in my experience it's the subcontractors who are doing all the work they're the ones who are actually in the field sometimes they're two or three levels removed uh and they will do whatever they think that they should be doing depending on and who knows and i've spoken with a lot of them and some of them are very conscientious and other ones are just trying to get through the day i would recommend including in the letter something regarding the subcontractors and having a representative of the water district with working with those specific subcontractors every step of the way and i would also remind you that in terms of specifications it's all about copy and paste and it's under the master specification index and so having something in the letter regarding that that they could actually copy and paste for the subcontractors could be very valuable having dealt with a lot of subcontractors over the years and knowing what they can and cannot do in doing what power they they they have when they're in the field and they really do have a lot of power when they're actually in the field much more so than we think that's my thank you for your feedback dina you add another comment you only get the one shot at this you know i'm getting making an exception no no thank you i'm sorry i must muster the mistake okay thank you okay back to the board then so i guess our direction from this standpoint would be bob you've crafted a wonderful letter and if you will get together with carly and take the additional input from nancy and make sure we get the people who are currently in power and make whatever minor edits are being suggested we're good to go and i'll be happy to stamp it with uh with uh my name so thank you all very much moving that takes care of our unfinished business moving on to new business mr director it's uh item six a would be um the temporary utility billing policy changes in response to covet nineteen um the director of finance we will give this report uh stepping okay so the district did start moving forward with suspending um you know the past due process with regards to the penalties and turnoffs um however there is still more measures that could be taken um so this memo is to identify one the actions district has already taken in response um and two requesting direction for some of the other measures that could be taken uh the recommendation from staff was to temporarily suspend reporting past due accounts to credit reporting agencies delay efforts to initiate collecting past due balances via the property tax roll we had originally intended we would have already been in the process of this coming up here shortly in 2020 postponing this until possibly next year but however continue to use liens to secure debt owed to the district so those that's the recommendation for the actions that we're looking for if we want to go to the background the district has already taken the following actions uh in response to the past due policies we've suspended all late fees we've suspended physical past due tags and turnoffs we've suspended all outgoing past due notifications other than the standard blurb that shows up on a past due bill um and we sent a notification letter out to the property owners reminding them that um they are still responsible ultimately responsible for tenant account balances normally they'd get a notice when a tenant is being turned off but since we've delayed the shutoff process we wanted to proactively contact the owners um and then number two starts to go over the following remaining past due policies that kind of goes with the logic of our recommendation above um if we were to so a refers to temporary suspend reporting past dues to credit agencies if we were to continue doing this it would negatively impact a person's credit rating the property tax roll that is just a different form of collection that the district has not fully utilized in the past and then liens liens don't liens wouldn't impact someone's credit a lien would be a way of securing the debt owed to the district and become enforceable upon like a real estate transaction of of that home changing hands and then it kind of goes over kind of what some of our current past due balances are um and so I can kind of feel that any questions that people have we kind of laid out multiple alternatives that the board could take as well okay do you want to go over those or I assume the board has reviewed this and the public as in are familiar with the essentially it's I'm sorry go ahead Stephanie or say the alternatives are essentially uh do all of them do none of them or the board can you know pick some combination of yeah okay um Rick your first step okay uh so first of all Stephanie I want to really thank you for and Rick as well all the staff for being so responsive and sensitive to the new financial environment I think it's a great effort you guys have made one of the things I read in there is that the old message uh that's on uh that's a kind of like automatic message for past due was a little out of date is is that something you could uh change without too much trouble uh well I mean yeah so the the past the district staff was directed to send out the past due notifications for the the month of March um this is third party prerecorded stuff that is not you can't just pivot on you can't pivot quite frankly easily um I mean it took us about two months to get it rewritten for the SB 998 you know type of stuff let it let you know I mean you know the question did get brought up you know well can we pay them extra to expedite it well I mean they're just absolutely inundated so the short answer is is no um so that's why the district chose to stop send you know to stop the past due reminders even okay the only spot that it really shows up is on the bill um and it is a much softer message you know if you are past due a blur pops up on the bottom of your bill letting you know that you still have a past due balance um so that still is on there that's very common for um a lot of the other places we were looking at you know that you don't want to ignore the fact you know necessarily ignore 100 percent the fact that you know it is a past due balance you know because calling it out as a past due balance is still important to a certain regard yes okay well thank you for answering that well I support the staff recommendation for sure and I applaud the actions you've already done thank you thank you uh Lois oh Lois I think you're on mute by the way Rick just to get clear you you were supporting the staff recommendation there were there were two alternatives was there one of the three minutes hang on just a quick question back to Rick Rick were you supporting alternative one two or three well um I think all all the measures that they are currently doing to continue doing those is where I was at I think okay so that's alternative two okay I don't have that piece of paper in front of me but uh I'll take your word for it Steve I could chime in the staff had a recommendation there then were alternative so the recommendation is to temporarily suspend reporting the credit agencies delay the collecting via the property tax roll until 2021 and continue to use liens as the main way to secure debt owed to the district I agree with those recommendations if that answers your question Steve uh Lois back to you you had her comment sorry to have interrupted your time yeah okay well I think waiting to do property tax until December 2021 2021 when liens actually do affect people's credit ratings what happens with the property tax is okay it would start December of this year and the county teeters it if the person doesn't pay their tax bill the county gives the district their money anyway and then the county is going to do whatever they're going to do to try to collect the tax bill um but I found that putting property on the tax bill uh putting the the bill on the property tax bill really does a great job of collecting the money and you start getting it right away the person might not be paying it right away because the county's going to pay it to the district even if they don't um the only time I've known the county not to pay is something's on the property tax is if it was a huge bill that they owed thousands and thousands of dollars maybe more than their property is worth then I don't think the county would would teeter it in fact they'd probably be going after that property um I so I I disagree I think property tax is the way to go thank you los bob yes um Stephanie do we have any liens currently expiring that is right in the next year are we going to lose any money by maintaining uh any of the leads and not converting them to property tax uh correct I mean the district we it's a it's a monthly task of us going through and relieving any of them that are set to expire so we do have ones that would be expiring um our process is to relieve them correct okay yeah so just to be clear I agree with Lois on the property I'm not quite done yet so um the uh the other comment that I had is that we can at some point in the future a question we can at any point in the future move something from the lien to a property tax is that correct Gina might know Gina might know more on that one I mean I know we could send stuff to the county but as far as when they actually secured against the property and it going into the property tax rule I don't know that aspect that well well but I mean it's but to be the same thing as the past year balances you're sending right it's just we're basically we're going to remove the lien and we're going to send it to the county just like we would for the past two bills on item b is that not possible there is a much longer process for posting notices holding a public meeting to where the property owners can be heard and can test to the board putting it onto the property tax roll I don't know the county's exact procedures you know I believe it's sometime the beginning of August that we have to give them the listing by Stephanie I but it's the same process for moving something from a lien to the property tax as it is for moving it just from a past due bill to the property tax is that not the case correct yes for for that aspect of moving it from a lien to the property tax or if we had it even gone that process to the property tax correct that would be the same process so so basically what I'm hearing is that even if something's on a lien and it's expiring we're going to reissue the lien at some point in the future we'll move it from the lien to the property tax I'm assuming that this is not a permanent wreck this is not a recommendation for a permanent change it's it's only temporary obviously and the the the fact is moving something to a property tax I well where they're going to pay interest either way whether it's a lien or a property tax but the property tax is a typically a higher interest and it starts in a place to a process where ultimately someone could lose their property we don't hopefully this isn't going to last that long but I'm perfectly comfortable with your recommendations because of all that and I think we can pick this up again later the only other thing I might suggest is that for anybody that is past due I don't know if we can just automatically do a 12 month payment plan for them or if they have to request it but if we can figure out a way to further help the people that that wind up being past due by just sort of spreading that payment out I would be in favor of looking at that for some future motion and then just so that everyone's clear because I know lois is bringing up but this would be the first time that the district is doing the property tax avenue which is the only reason why we're suggesting delaying it is to you know be moving a hundred thousand dollars or so of you know long past due onto the property tax roll for the first time during what's going on that was kind of the reason why we suggested maybe we delay this process until next year sounds like a sensitive approach any other comments from board members thoughts okay go out to the public comments now any uh anyone in the public have a comment about this yes Beth you're on mute Beth yes thanks um I just wanted to say that uh I it sounds I've really appreciated how the district has responded I've gotten the emails and I felt like the communications were really wonderful to members of the community and gave some you know great information and a sense of peace a little for people who I know will need it I also think that whatever the decision is made to take these measures it would be great if there was some kind of communication and I don't know if it should be a general communication but some kind of community communication to people to as to what those measures mean and how they'll be carried out at least so that people understand that it's not a penalty situation but that it's more of how to carry that debt until people are better able to manage it good suggestion thank you Beth uh mr. Mosier join me around mute is do we take them off mute or does somebody else do that peace can you hear me now yeah okay um I was just saying I appreciated the board and staff's attention to this and taking a leadership role uh in the region to help people get through this I think it was just to really speak well for the district thank you thank you any other comments no okay great let's go back to the to the board then so it sounds like everybody's for the most part in favor of accepting the staff's recommendation and uh adding to it uh I think it was a good suggestion to communicate this change uh by posting it to the website and or press release or some sort of announcement to the valley press I don't know maybe we don't want to advertise it somebody help me on that to the extent that we yeah that we need to communicate the policies we should probably at a minimum put it on the website but so then do we need a motion and answer just direction well this is this is district council I would suggest a motion for these newest measures I would recommend against posting about them on the district's website these are mostly background collection activities um that occur when accounts are long past due and I you know there's various ways to do it but this may create more confusion than clarification to get into this information yeah good point thank you Gina okay we'll make a I'll make a motion then that we uh direct staff to follow their own recommendation which is to temporarily uh suspend reporting past due accounts to credit agencies delay efforts to initiate collecting past due balances via the property tax roll which had been planned to start in 2020 until 2021 and to continue to use liens to secure debt owed to the district can I get a second I'll second that Rick Moran I'll second that thank you very much Ali you'd like to call me Director Ferris hi President Swan yes Director Falls yes Director Falls Director Henry hopefully you can hear me I said yes yes Director Henry Director Henry is muted I'm muted yes one more time Director Henry yes you can hear me Director Moran yes did you get everybody Director Moran can you hear me yes I can and I said yes I said yes yes hear me Holly yeah yeah we got it yes we're on thank you okay next new item can this is a district council could I just get the vote read back on that item because it was the process was a little bit hard to follow Ali uh district council asked to read the vote back Director Ferris voted yes President Swan voted yes Director Falls voted yes Director Henry voted yes Director Moran voted yes yes item 6b is professional service contract for the Swiss bank red part bank uh we have the environmental planner to present the sign early yes so um in an effort to accelerate the ski cross for the redwood park paint project um we put an informal bid out to some consultants we've worked with in the past um we received two proposals back one from Rincon for $25,000 and one from Denise Duffy and associates for $35,000 staff recommended to go with Rincon which would be the lower proposal cost thank you Carly any uh questions or discussion from the board thank you President Swan I'd like to just point out that in the proposal for Rincon they are suggesting using a sub a sub consultant which is water systems consulting Inc otherwise known as WSC we have a long history with that particular contractor and not all of it is good it has been contentious at times in particular one of the people that they're proposing using on the project is Kristen Palenka um I just want to make sure everybody's aware that they are using that subcontractor and want to ask the full rest of the board whether or not they have an issue with that I do not I as a board member I do not have an issue with them as secretary okay uh does anybody else on the board have an issue with WSC I was surprised to see that they were a subcontractor of Rincon and I see that Rincon shows up again in the next to proposal you know got a comment yeah you know generally speaking I wouldn't want to hire WSC directly um but having said that I I I don't believe that there's any issue with the professional nature of the work product um and so um for this project I I think we're fine it could be the changed economic circumstances are perhaps changing some of the dynamics in the consultant field hopefully we'll see some lower prices here going forward thanks Bob Rick yes so uh I don't know particular issues with the WCM WSM um but um what I was uh glad to see is that Rincon had done some previous work on the swim tanks so they seem to me they have some familiarity with the issue all right and uh they did the NEPA work in 2018 I believe um so they anticipate the potential impacts to be less than significant uh I you know I um I'm leery of people anticipating things so I'm you know I I Rick has talked about this before that it's a pretty clean uh operation up there so I I don't anticipate that either but I'm just leery of using the word anticipate potential impacts um and they'll use existing maps and models are there existing maps and models that's to Rick Rick I I do believe that they're going to use the different from the first original sequel and we do have some existing mapping and surveying work okay and do uh you have I know Carly talked about expediting this are there dates for start and finish I don't believe we have those at this time we were waiting for the board to approve the purchase agreement and we will start right away I you know I I know you all think or made a comment about WSC I don't believe WSC is is on the swim tank project I think it's the next one the uh lion tank lion tank yeah I don't believe we are listed on this project thank you Rick I stand corrected this is a much smaller project than uh a lion tank project and just one more thing uh I like the change of the name to redwood park from swim tank so uh however that was done uh nice job I like the name that's all I have thank you thank you Rick uh any other names from any director comment question going once twice okay open up you got in under the bell Bob I don't know maybe we can sell the name to it there's you know for us for some amount of money so someone that has a lot of money now exactly good point okay open it up to the public any comments anybody in the public no questions okay back to the board all right anybody want to make a motion okay I'll make a motion uh I go ahead loss okay I I'll go ahead and make the motion I'm trying to find it the motion number okay oh yeah where is it anybody want to help me with that okay okay oh I wasn't expecting no that's okay I'm dropping everything let me do it with us we recommend uh I'd like to make a motion you can second that uh we direct the board of the sorry that we direct the district manager to enter into a contract with ring con consultants to complete the sequel and necessary environmental permitting for the redwood park tank project I'll second it then thank you Lewis how are you doing director ferris hi president swan yes director falls yes director Henry yes director Moran yes motion passes super duper what's next rick our next item our next item is item six c discussion possible action related to the lion tank access road rehabilitation project we should have the district engineer uh online who will give this report there okay afternoon everyone this is the uh client tank this road rehabilitation project um as you may know this settlement or slow started in 2017 the winter storms made some applications with fema in two in august of 2018 geotechnical investigation was completed uh second geotechnical investigation uh investigation was completed in august of 2019 uh earlier this year in february 2020 the engineering committee discussed the lion access road rehabilitation project in great detail after much discussion it was decided that uh district should retain an environmental consultant to analyze the two options that were presented in the latest geotechnical report and so march and early march march 1st 2020 I put out an rfp for environmental consulting services relating to the lion tank access road rehabilitation project and on April 1st we received one proposal from rincon consultants incorporated in the amount of $171,658 the proposal and cost estimate was included in the staff report so I'm here to answer any questions you have about the project thank you darin uh fellow board members anybody have any comments or questions another one of those uh only one bit kind of thing which is one of our favorite pet peas uh rick go ahead this is a question for darin uh this keeps us within the fema application timeline well the yeah we we we're in a one-year extension with fema right now I think it expires in September of this year and one of the requirements in working with fema is to demonstrate that you're continuing on the project making uh progress in uh evaluating and committing the ultimate repair of the project and so that's what we're doing with this rfp is hiring the environmental consultant to do the necessary evaluations of the two proposals and the project for great thank you uh bob I have a couple of questions first of all darin thank you very much for this like steve I'm incredibly disappointed we continue to just get one uh bid on these things it's it's quite astounding um the uh just for the for the members of the audience could you please um just give a brief description of what the outcome or deliverable is of this for this 171 thousand dollar um yeah I I'm I'm operating just a little bit outside my expertise here so if carly could jump in periodically but just in general terms the rfp provides for preliminary feasibility analysis and coordination with resource agencies environmental view and permitting review of construction documents and environmental oversight construction and so basically what that does is uh clear the decks so that the next step would be actual um moving to actual construction design and then to construction so what what we're doing with this rfp is retaining a environmental consultant through the entire process so initially they'll do an evaluation of the proposals the two options that were set forth by the um geotechnical firm at some point when we sort of vet those issues and we come to a preferred alternative then we would hire a design consultant the this environmental uh group would work hand in hand with the design consultant to um meet the requirements the resource agencies and incorporate all the permitting requirements into the plans and the specifications and then they would be on board to uh watch that project and sort of monitor that project through construction this is a multi this is a multi-year contract with the environmental consultant i was going to say that sounds like it goes beyond september so we will be able to get an extension with this kind of thing it's it's my understanding that as long as we're making good progress in in moving the project forward that FEMA will continue to provide us with um extensions but i i don't have a tremendously large number of project experience with famous so perhaps rick could have been here and give me a little help with his thoughts on this particular project oh darin that's okay i mean i just wanted to make it again this is a lot for the audience too i mean i just for the rest of the board you know this this sort of project would probably consume one whole year's margin on our operating revenues and perhaps more so um you know this is one of those things that will need to be talked about as we decide what to do with our operating cash thank you yeah just to put things into perspective for for everyone involved the cost estimates that came out of the geotechnical consultants evaluation are in the in the range of 12 to 15 million so you know if it was a you know one million project you know this may may appear to be a fairly large fee but when you get into the order of magnitude 12 to 15 million um there's obviously a lot of work that's involved there and and it's it's a it's a tricky site and an environmentally sensitive site thank you darin uh let's go close you have a comment or question find a microphone a photo of that site because it's mind boggling to see it and it it'd be easier to understand why it's going to cost so much so um i okay lou brought up wsc i have a real issue with wsc but it it they aren't doing what happened in the past i'm sorry but what happened in the past the former district manager would just go to wsc not put it out for bid and say i know these people they do good job and i think we paid a premium because of that um so they aren't i mean granted we didn't get any other bid here but at least it went out to bid and wsc isn't actually in charge so otherwise i i would have a big issue if they were in charge of this project that's it thanks louis rick your hand is up your hand is down you got a comment no no i did not i i bid all the comment i need okay thank you uh okay nobody else let's go out to the the fan club we we still have 14 attendees any comments or uh uh from the uh public from gale you are recognized can you hear me yes thank you um i am on the engineering committee and i just thought i would add in part an explanation that um the reason that this needs to be approved soon is that the results of the environmental consultants will in many ways um determine how we move forward so in other words they may determine that one of these alternatives is just going to be so uh environmentally problematic that we wouldn't want to pursue it and so it actually kind of helps us for stall a situation where we go and design a project that then turns out to be so difficult to get through all the uh state and other agencies uh that it would be a very good use of people's time that's all great thank you gail okay we're back to the the board action and uh so so we'll follow the i'm going to suggest that we follow the rec mail i'll make a motion that we uh award the environmental consultant contract for the lion tank access road rehabilitation project to ren con consultants and direct the district manager to enter into an agreement which was left off my notes i will second that motion thank you very much holly do the dirty rector ferris hi hi president swan yes record polls yes record Henry i'm mute los kick the dog please i can't even hear holly it's i'm saying director henry okay yes okay director moran yes motion passes super duper again you right bring us home i can't hear uh it's you it's very quiet can you hear uh you are very very uh low before try it again okay i'm better on uh 6d low no assistant rate program recommended uh board of directors review this uh memo and the attached correspondence from the friends of the san ronzo valley water requesting that the board consider establishing a low income assistance rate program um staff and the board members have been working with the friends of the san ronzo valley water this is a local citizens groups whose mission is to ensure that all citizens of our valley have access to safe safe affordable water which they recognize as a fundamental human right and to fulfill this mission the friends support programs and policies that protect and restore the san ronzo valley watershed waterways and aquifers prepare maintain the district's infrastructure and recognize that cost should be distributed in a manner that protects with limits and financial resources um they have submitted a local income assistant rate program for the board to review um and it's shown uh that they recommend that the board adopt a resolution expressing the intent of the district to implement a low income rate assistance program as soon as feasible and instruct staff to conduct necessary research and have staff report back to the board on the program implementation options and costs um they're looking at a possible assuming a minimum discount of ten dollars a month or a maximum of twenty dollars a month for an annual cost to the district would range between a hundred thousand and three hundred uh and sixty thousand a year um it's recommended that we uh move this uh item or have a short discussion about this item and talk about ways that we could move this item ahead and consider and discuss considering the possible amount of discussion that feels it deserves multiple meetings and recommends the special board directors meeting or finance committee meeting you schedule discuss their proposal or other options that the board feels desirable and with that um um uh some of the representatives of uh of flow uh I do believe are on the call tonight or on the meeting tonight Jim Mosier for sure um and I'll turn it back over to you sure uh now this is a topic and a discussion item that can take a lot of time to master and I don't want to stay here all night and I'm going to suggest that uh we'll get a representative from this organization uh presented uh Rick did an admirable job and I'm sure we've all read uh our due diligence with the documentation provided and uh I'd like to give the opportunity to the the proposing group to uh propose it directly to the board as well and then the board can have a bit of a discussion just what we want to do but I gotta tell you I'm already in favor of of uh scheduling a special board meeting to discuss this because this could be a very involved and long uh topic for discussion and I don't want to we're not going to do it tonight uh so that's kind of where I'm coming from but in that vein I'd like to turn it over to um one of the uh the representatives and then we'll let the board have a normal comment if that's okay with you guys so uh who wants to present this to represent this for the uh for the attendees is that you Elaine we'll recognize you Elaine you're only here but I see you can hear me now right yeah yeah so um I think it's a pretty easy presentation of what we're proposing we we know that the number of you have been concerned about how the low-income uh rate payers can afford uh the rates especially if there's a rate increase and what we did is we researched a number of other water boards in California and um saw what they were doing successfully and came up with a program that we think would be helpful to our district and basically it's uh giving low-income people a discount either $10 or $20 a month whatever you folks think is feasible um and the eligibility would be based on PG&E's care program which is already established in which other Lyra programs Lyra is standing for low-income rate assistance used to um to uh uh establish the eligibility of people so they they give discounts to rate payers who have incomes 200 of poverty guidelines and the application would be really simple they would just need to uh give a form with a copy of their PG&E bill and now we know the funding cannot happen through because of uh through the income that comes from uh water delivery so because of Prop 218 but we think that funding could be could come from property taxes or interest income and what we're thinking is that this is a better solution than not than foregoing the rate increase because it would give more money to people who are low income and the rate if you it it the rate increase will only amount to about two to four dollars a month uh this discount could be anywhere from a minimum $10 to $20 so we're thinking you could cap the program maybe cap it at 100,000 I mean that would be something you could decide on and that could help at least 800 people based on uh uh the numbers that we were given from Stephanie um the cost to the district if there is no rate increase would be uh about 325, 326,000 for this year and over 500,000 a year annually afterwards so we feel that this program is helping low income people more but also not depriving the district of needed funds for all of the projects that you have and for all the maintenance that's required so we think this is a viable solution and um we we hope that you will resolve to discuss it further and and decide on the specifics and go ahead thank you thank you Elaine I think you did a good job of summarizing the memorandum that you put together and your numbers are okay so uh you know in looking at this if it's 800 people out of 7900 connections that's 11 percent of our customer base basically uh it's a lot of money even 100,000 but I'm also keenly in favor of doing whatever we can to help uh where we can you know I've looked at at a lot of the other examples that are in the table in back Calaveras County water is the one that I looked at first and I'm trying to go through these and find a water district of similar size and nature is our own Calaveras is like twice the uh twice the customers that we have they have 13,000 connections and they also have their own hydroelectric plant as well so they're got a lot going out for them so I'd like to spend some time doing some additional research on these other examples and uh and uh and uh you know and then and then working with the other directors to come up with something but that was sort of my thought as as this but let's open it up to director comment at this point Lou you are recognized with your blue paw thank you uh I'd like to thank the friends of center runs of alley water for putting together what is a very comprehensive proposal initial number one three comments number one is I support this program I think it's an important part of of helping the ratepayers in a very financially stressful time uh number two I agree that there should be a backstop of between 50 and a hundred thousand dollars as a as a modest funding of this and and seeing how it goes but number three I do not think we should preclude a rate increase change by doing that I think we should not link those two that's pretty much what I have to say thank you thanks Lou any other comments Bob you're recognized yeah thanks Steve just to have a quick preface in this hopefully this is this kind of web conferencing is something that we can do even going into the future after the lockdown and I really appreciate the attendees hanging around as long as they did another innovation of course would be to either tweet out or post on Facebook when we're getting to particular agenda items so people can join if they didn't want to listen to the entire thing um you know with with situations like this I I think we uh need to have the conversation about um the entire sort of scope of funding issues that face this district many of which have been have built up over the decades um so that we really can start looking at where we're going to be assigning uh money um and whether that's relief for all ratepayers or relief for some ratepayers uh pension uh funding tank maintenance whatever these are all coming out of basically the margin dollars that we achieve between our water revenue and our expenses and so uh you know the choices that you face in that of course are either taking lower margin which means we don't have as much money for the other projects we have finding ways to cut costs in order to offset the uh revenue reduction or in effect shifting the costs from certain ratepayers to other ratepayers so in other words uh other ratepayers will effectively pay more in order to achieve the same margin targets that we need to handle all of the unfunded liabilities that have been built up over the decades so uh these are the kinds of things that I think are um uh need to go into the conversation we definitely need to have a conversation um and I and I believe that we need to ask staff to bring to that conversation a complete rundown on all of the unfunded and underfunded liabilities that we have including those that we haven't quite received calculations for so that we can have that conversation in a clear transparent fashion for the community so the community can understand what the priorities are in terms of allocating uh these kinds of funds and so I'm looking forward to getting that scheduled as quickly as possible thank you bob uh lois your hand is uh next up on my list here you'll have to unmute yourself there you go lois disappeared okay rick you're up okay thank you uh well this uh type of program is definitely appropriate at this time so uh I really appreciate people taking the effort to put this forward here um and I think the district can do something proportional to the its size um so it's a you know appropriate and we can afford to do something um and I know that the state legislature has worked on um program like this and um it would be uh interesting for me if mark stone um or uh one member of his staff could be around when we do have such a meeting all right and I uh support your proposal bob I mean Steve to have a special board meeting and um one of the things I heard earlier is uh I think uh somebody mentioned about uh if we're going to have uh committee meetings well um if we do then the financial committee should uh you know this could be something that could be put on their agenda as well so um I support this uh process and um I do agree with you Steve that it needs a fuller explanation and a fuller look at uh at a special board meeting thank you thank you rick lois I see you're back uh I'm back in town yeah you're up okay well a couple of things I have contacted mark stone's office a couple of times about the assembly bill 401 it's never been uh financed and I'm asking I and they finally gave me the name of someone else to contact um um and and I did that but I haven't heard anything and my question is are they gonna is the state gonna finance assembly bill 401 um so far no no response um okay I think that there are ways to help uh low-income people and I uh I agree with this I have a little problem with 100,000 because over 10 years that'd be a million dollars on the other hand I think we ought to apply some money to this and I'm not trying to be a cheapskate here but I was thinking if we did 60,000 and I if I remember when I was doing my numbers that'd be um five dollars for 1200 people a month that doesn't seem like much but that would totally wipe out the rate increase for people who are probably low income it's uh one if they use one unit two units three units are up to four units of water because the rate increase is a dollar 60 a month just the flat fee and it's 58 cents a unit so that five dollars would get rid of like 450 or for whatever it is so up to um people using four units I believe we need the rate increase I mean Bob keeps going on about we have all these unfunded liabilities why would we not go ahead with our rate increase if we have all these unfunded liabilities plus we have a lot of things happening right now we got we're spending money now on fire management on um reaching out to people outreach we're working on a number of things that need money and I don't think we can do a flat budget wouldn't that be great I would love it but just looking at the interest expense it's gone up 81 percent because of of the loan so and we have a number of things that are that have just come up that are one time items I'm not going to go over that as we talked about it last month so I think we should do something but maybe we need to start out smaller and see what we can really afford to do um because let's face it I I've said before my cousins on a water board in Southern California they pay very little for their water bill but they have so many more hookups than we do and unless you're taking a look at how many hookups these people have virtue versus what we have you don't really know how it's affecting their water district compared to how it would affect effectors jeez I'm waving my hands around anyway uh that's what I I was thinking just and I don't think anybody likes my five dollar a month routine but for people who use one or two units a month it actually gives them extra money um because it gets rid of the if we when we do the right increase this year and it'll get rid of the one that was done last year so anyway that's that's where I am I thought the water district rate increase right okay rick your hand is I'm sorry bob your hand haven't been heard yet please cut it well I think I have been heard this would be my second if so but if that's okay I just have a couple of quick points I think as part of this process we also need to take a look at our revenue distribution that is how many people are in the lower end of the usage spectrum it's actually rather illuminating and and a little bit scary um to see that because we have a small number of customers that account for a large percentage of our revenue um in addition to that just to be clear uh I am for if if what the board is going to do is continue what I view as a status quo approach to budgeting year by year not really making any fundamental changes in uh operating costs and that sort of thing then I don't support the rate increase because it continues to give our community in my opinion a skewed view of how things are here we are not in a status quo situation um I am perfectly willing to have a large conversation about what our total unfunded liabilities are the promises that we've made to our employees which are solemn promises the need to not kick the can down the road to the next generation for promises that we've made um and the only way we're going to do that is if we look at things in a totality with all the items on the table over a multi-year approach if we have that kind of conversation that gives us the foundation to go back to the community and start having a real uh conversation about where this district is uh and how we got here over the last 30 years uh if we're not going to have that conversation then from my point of view the only thing we really can do is optimize year to year with flat budgets and no rate increases until such time as we decide to have that conversation thank you thanks Bob Rick you had your hand up Rick did your hand is your hand up or did you just never put it down I probably never put it down but I'm fine unless it was Rick Rogers no we we still have um Mr. Mosier on the attendees that had had his hand up for some time oh okay I didn't notice that over there sorry I thought we knew that let's uh okay say with Lou you have a comment Lou yes real quickly I just wanted two points number one I agree with what Bob had to say and I think we need to have that discussion and number two I'd like to point out that I believe there's a potential for benefit to the district as well as the low income ratepayers by implementing a lira program I'm referring to the fact that we have a cadre of a few hundred habitual ratepayers that go through this vicious cycle of of not paying their bill until the water is turned off paying the bill suddenly somehow having the water turned back on again and then we continue that vicious cycle three months down the road and that that involves a lot of the district's time because the person has to go out to turn the water off and go back out to turn it back on again so there is some real savings if we can avoid if we can take some of these people and move them out of that category of habitual turn off turn on we will be saving money as well so I think there's a there's a dual benefit here potentially right as I had mentioned when we started this this is proven to be and obviously it's going to be a very large scoped it's becoming even larger in scope than originally identified and I think all of those comments that we've heard bear to be looked at in great detail and discussed and bringing in as many of your people as we can to also participate in this and Lois is Lois is close association with Mark Stone maybe she can find something more out of that one what the state may or may not do but at any rate that's where I think we're going to end up going to that to have a special board meeting or two to deal with this matter in great detail and come up with the program that I think well ideally we would come with something that would be both beneficial and implementable and practical but let's go back we have some hands coming up from the attendees now I must have overlooked someone we'll give them a opportunity to comment half the half the people have their hands up okay let's start with you Jim thank you I thank the board for considering this proposal and hope hope that we can move forward in a positive way I wanted to clarify that the Friends of San San Ange Valley water is a new group and that some of us were involved with flow and getting taking on CalAM and some of us were involved and felt and library friends but those two are separate groups that this is a new group with a new mission so I just wanted to clarify that so that there's no misunderstanding about who we are and I just also want to encourage the board to move on this relatively quickly because I think this the timing would really be around here with the state economy and the needs of the low-income folks in our Valley so I encourage you to appreciate that you're thinking about having a special meeting on it and our group would very much like to work with you on it as you move forward thank you thank you Jim see who's next well we have a phone number as next so I'll stick with people that have names so let's go with Beth hi this is Beth um I wanted to say that I appreciate also looking for ways to mitigate some of the impacts that have been over the last few years on people in the community who do not have the ability to pay for the rate increases um one of the things that occurred to me as Lois was speaking was that I think we can't assume that low-income people are people who are low water users and five dollars a month might not have meaning to their bills um but I think it's really important to look at the issue and look at look at the different possibilities for how those needs could be addressed another thing that occurs to me is that I'm not sure it's the timing is so uh you know I don't I don't feel like there's necessarily a rush at this point because I believe what's going to happen is because of the measures that the district is taking to help people who are having trouble paying in the current economic situation that some of that will be taken care of and I think it's probably a really important thing to find a more ongoing way of dealing with this uh that really does not uh impact the district in a really negative way financially but is also able to address some of those needs all right thanks thank you Beth uh yes okay great it's Peter Gelblum I assume that's who you were calling on um I wanted to address Lou's point about the rate increase and the uh Lyra program not being necessarily tied together um I mean I people need relief for their bills anyway but definitely one of the and I'm a member of the of the friends group one of the things that was the genesis for Lyra the Lyra proposal was the fact that that I think although I'm not sure that Bob agrees but it seems to me pretty indisputable that the rating increase is necessary for all the reasons that Lois mentioned about the unfunded liabilities and she didn't even mention infrastructure uh so that's in there uh the district needs money things you know things just are getting more expensive everywhere what is more expensive and it's not going to get cheaper it's going to keep getting more expensive and so uh I'm assuming that the rating increase is absolutely essential it has to happen and one way to mitigate that is the Lyra program the Lyra program would be important whether or not the rating increase goes into into into effect but uh it's particularly important to offset offset the the increase in expense for what I view and I think a lot of people view as an absolutely essential increase to pay for all the things the district needs to pay for thank you thanks um so just to make a point you know the the board is in agreement that aim we want to do something and and we need to are probably going to schedule special meetings for this to discuss it uh so the remaining people with their hands up you don't need to lobby for this uh at this point because we're already convinced we'd like to do something so just to say that to save uh in the essence of time we'll recognize Gail again yes thank you I would just encourage uh when we think about this to not leave any money on the table uh when we talk about rate increases in the sense that um while we want to protect the people that have low incomes we also have people here that can afford a rate increase and to not have a rate increase would be silly because you'd just be leaving money on the table um in addition to the point that we needed all so I would hope that we would approach this as something that could be revenue neutral in other words um we would make the program the size that it needs to be to serve that 10 or 15 percent of the population that needs it and we would offset that by a rate increase perhaps even bigger than the one that was already budgeted thank you okay thank you Gail yeah I'm I'm getting to that there's the last of the list because I don't have a name and we're going to recognize the ending in the list I heard that I'm unmuted uh yeah whoever you are a mystery guest signing in we're trying to guess your occupation in 20 questions okay uh it's Bruce Holloway from Boulder Creek when well I finally figured it out uh it's a lot of echo going on so um when we when we worked on water rates in the past well let me say there was a time when the district had five different rates it had tiered rates with five different rates and the one that paid the highest rate was the school district and and so over time we we managed to simplify the rate structure so there's only one rate at this point um so to go back to another system where there's tiered rates to me is a step in the wrong direction a step backwards um also please please think you know do we do we want to go back to having the school district pay the higher higher rate I guess the proposal would be to have two rates but then the school district would pay the higher of the two rates is that a good way to go um so somehow I think I'd like to see it as a rebate rather than a different rate and and I I'd like to see the rebate only apply to the basic rate not the water rate I think we did well to put a high price on water because it promotes conservation and it's also a way that lower income people can can essentially fight back because they can they can conserve more they can reduce their consumption if they want to reduce their water rate with their water bill so there is a way to adapt by using less water um so if there's a way to only apply this to the basic rate which I as I recall is around $30 a month um then I would I would favor doing it that way and having continuing to have one one rate for water for volume you know water by volume um AB 401 there was a report issued in February and it's kind of a lengthy report I would have forwarded it to you but it's a lot to read um one of the things that's said in there is that as far as the human rights aspect it's it's too much for any one district there's some districts in the state that were where most of their customers need some kind of assistance and so the district can't do it on their own maybe ours is in the middle and maybe we could do it on our own but um anyway there is a lot to absorb if you want to learn about what what they found from AB 401 um scott's valley apparently approved a program like this about a year ago and they're a similar size district you know right in our neighborhood so I think scott's valley would be the easiest one to look at or to compare um let's see with with respect to what uh director ferris said about the shutoffs you could run a pilot program and just target uh you know pick some number of of these cases that you're concerned about and just target them and and try them and you know offer them uh some kind of a offer them a program and see see if it would make any difference um and I I guess I also think I'd be sorry to see you run out of money you know start a program partway through the year and then exhaust the amount of money so somehow you've got to scope this I think so that you can at least do a 12 month period and and and see how it goes right thank you bruce I'm fed the time is up and we're going to move on thank you very well we'll be thank you um and uh oh there's another sin de zen sin zen you are recognized hi this is synthia zenzel um I want to respond to a couple of things that bruce said I believe that we have to help people stay in their homes but if we don't ask those who can afford it no one will have the water system we all need so it can't be a targeted program we have to rely on people applying for the program themselves is that correct jena uh first of all no program has been adopted yet so they're all just still sort of discussing it that's part of the proposal in the memorandum that the former flow folks whatever the new acronym is propose friends of san lorenzo valley water okay the people that qualify still have to apply it's not up to the district to say we want to tell that family over there we're gonna give them a break right no we don't know what we're gonna do nothing has been decided yet all we have is a proposal from this group right but I just heard bruce holloway say that he thinks the district should choose a few people and target them bruce is just commenting as a as a you know citizen he's not speaking on behalf of the district or any of the i'm just i'm just speaking to the idea that this has to be fair and open to anyone who qualifies rather than the district choosing winners and losers which i'm asking jena as i understand that was a problem in other ways of doing this um also i believe scott's valley only has one person who's participating in their low income rate payer program because they don't have a lot of low income rate payers thank you thank you for considering this i think it's really important and i think the people that can pay want to pay in order to have a district that functions well thank you very much okay back to the uh board for any final uh comments anybody has any i'd like to propose that we and suggest rather that we that we direct staff to and direct a separate special board of directors meeting to discuss this in greater detail uh taking into consideration all aspects and a larger increase the scope of this as well to increase a better understanding as bob keeps pointing out to uh with respect to unfunded liabilities etc so i'd like to schedule a meeting at the most next most convenient time when the staff can prepare some materials that are being asked for as well as provided enough notice for the public to participate in this as well whether in person or in this virtual world that we're seeing to be in so is that enough direction with respect to that it would be what information that you want to have at that meeting with your pen okay specifically getting a handle around the unfunded mandates and the other items that's going to take some time we don't have at this point i think if i can break in here i have multiple meetings to address this because of the interest and the passion you have direct faults is trying to ask a question steve i can i think i if i can have a conversation with rick tomorrow morning i'll uh i think we can actually do something faster perhaps than he might be uh might be thinking i would i would prefer the direction come from the full board not from a single board member because bob's land will be lengthy and we will not be able to have the time to get all that information together i i think rick if you would if you would to have that conversation with me you'd find it'd be a lot faster than you think i'm sorry bob i i'm bouncing between hearing everybody and hearing you so what was what did you say yeah sorry about that so um i believe that there is a way that we can uh come up with some um what i call back at the envelope estimates for some of these unfunded liabilities pretty quickly i think we have good numbers for a lot of them i think there's only a couple that we may have to uh take a swag at but i believe that this can be done actually very quickly and i'd be happy to share what i have with uh direct with general manager rogers uh here very shortly i just agree when we move in that direction that's the board's desire okay i i don't know how we have the conversation without understanding everything that's in front of us and how we're gonna allocate money we've we've been at this now for 16 months and um on a couple of key items we're no closer than i mean we're 16 months ago maybe on a key items bob but i think we've made substantial progress in the last well i think it's about what we're going to ask the staff to bring back and that is on topic i mean look if i think it's one of those things where one way or the other these topics are going to be introduced into the conversation let's see how about how about if i in you come up with that and i take bob's input bob creates a draft summary of what he what he thinks he's missing what we're looking for that i that i can review it's no i have no problem giving information it's just the level of information that bob wants is extremely time consuming from staff i mean i have no problem getting this information but he his level of information requests are very extremely if you would just hear me out you would see that is in fact not the case that is the conversation that we need to have and uh it can rick moran pop in here yeah just go ahead so i i think what i'm hearing you say steve is that there may be multiple meetings to have to happen and i think the most important thing is here uh is we consider the lira program first and then uh the questions that bob has that may require more staff time or a deeper understanding can be part of a second board meeting that it deals with this issue but we should get on to the specifics of a helping low-income people first uh and with the knowledge that bob's issues and the issues of unfunded liabilities are going to be part of this discussion but they don't have to all happen at the same time we can have this uh first part be the lira discussion at one meeting that's my comment thank you yeah i appreciate that rick and i don't want to kick the can down the road uh anymore or any further bob either so don't think that we're you know looking at doing that i'm just trying to figure out how to how to mechanically get uh get what you're looking for i appreciate that thank you yeah let's uh let's go ahead if we can do this if we can with respect to this uh objective which is to provide some sort of relief for you know uh low-income individuals and schedule a meeting to address that and all the material they've presented and the research that i'd started on it and can complete in a reasonable time if we could have a schedule special board being saved for the 30th of april that sort of weeks from now focus board meetings its availability we're doing it remotely so we can you know just the secretary are working on setting up especially for me let's okay then let's do that and let's see what materials we can put together for that meeting that addresses this and maybe some extra as well uh but this will be the main focus i don't want to tell you the scope is going to be you know this large right but it'll primarily focus on on this this issue we'll thank director ran for and it will we'll deal with the rest hopefully some somehow between now and then to some extent or to the extent possible okay so is everybody cool with that oh lou yeah you had a comment yeah i would suggest since you mentioned a specific date of april 30th i would propose that we move that out beyond may 5th because i believe that's the expiration date of the shelter in place executive order from governor so if we go beyond that date it's possible that we can have a face-to-face meeting which i think we desperately need that to truly get somewhere and talking about the subject that's i'm good with that i'm good with may 7th that's the the following thursday we can set that as a target and let holly do the coordination and she can harass us to return her emails and phone calls i'm fine with may 7th this is rick marine thank you rick everybody else good with that yeah for some funny reason my travel schedule is not uh is not happening so yeah so yeah that that should be good i think that's the regularly scheduled board meeting anyway so or would have been yes oh yeah that's right yeah okay so let's do that and okay so that wraps up low income rates for tonight you have one more request for public comment oh tina you got your three men died unrelated to the low income but um related more to your meeting timing is that gail newall has said that we may extend our own shelter in place a little longer than the governors so just keep that in mind and just you know of course watch for what she's giving out because it all depends on how we're doing in our county right so each county can determine to extend it based on how well they're doing and since we're in the bay area we're a little bit more of a hot spot so that may go a little longer here in the bay area yeah we'll see okay thank you julie noted okay uh what's next mr district manager moving on i do believe the city's what is the the minutes the consent agenda anything any director wants pulled from the consent agenda or from the minutes of the meeting of march 19th seeing no blue hands i'll assume nothing district reports department status reports i'm sorry i'm doing your job for your right again we have uh you have the department head should be still uh attending the meeting uh engineering environmental finance legal and operations i hope we can answer any of your questions okay hello directors uh from rick moran i have no questions okay um um you see your yeah just a real quick one um just for uh audience um and other interests what's the status of the bear creek construction rick and when do we expect that'll be completed is the director of operations still on james there's no audio for james there's no audio for james no uh the water line uh the water line replacement is going well we do believe tonight will be our last low closure all night work all night um they appear to be getting done the day early on the road closures so we'll have a press release and update tomorrow morning if all goes as planned tonight water line has been installed they're in the pressure testing in bacteriological testing now um we're almost uh the water line work we're just about completed and was that it was that installed on the other side of the road uh this time that was all on the opposite side of the the inboard side of the roadway yes perfect great thank you good good work any other uh questions or comments to the department heads that are all around very none there are no community so why would there be a report right this time uh directors reports anything from well this well this one that's a wrap right