It's important. Of October 2nd to order, Col will show you have Jeffy and Tom and me and here comes Carla. And that's what we have. We have a public hearing, first reading of Ordinance 1802. So tonight, we're bringing back Ordinance 1802. Well, actually, for the first time, you're seeing Ordinance 1802. But it is intended to supersede Ordinance 1801, which was brought back to you for adoption in early September. And this is just to commemorate the change in the fire service charges after the final writ of mandate was heard by the Santa Cruz County Court. So the fire service charges for a two inch fire service are being changed from $18.93 down to $14 even. And so that's the purpose of this ordinance is to adopt that change. And all of the attached amended schedules are the same as they were under Ordinance 1801, except for the fire service schedule schedule. Any questions? Any public comment on this? Open the public hearing. Move. We close the public hearing. Second. Motion is set on the second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That's unanimous. All right. This doesn't seem very complicated. I'm going to move approval. I will second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? OK, we're done. Doesn't seem to be a real call. And so that's adopted unanimously. Yeah, so it's going to be brought back. Yeah, for a second. Reading, yes. OK. All right. We have another public hearing, 2.2, request for variance from leak adjustment policy. So tonight, we have a request from one of our customers, Robert McCormick at 227 Treasure Island Drive in Aptos. And Mr. McCormick had a leak in June and July. And the leak covered two consecutive billing periods. And he was offered an adjustment for those two billing periods. And Mr. McCormick would like a larger adjustment on the grounds that he believes that we should have shut his water off when we were at the property on reading his June bill. Now, the reason we didn't shut the water off at that time is because internally, we have a procedure where customer service field crew go out. And if they identify that the leak is a small leak, which is like a half a gallon a minute or less, then they don't shut service off because of a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is it can cause plumbing issues if somebody's got a booster pump somewhere on the property. Another reason is sometimes we have customers who have medical needs and have medical equipment running. So disrupting their water service can cause more harm than not.  In Mr. McCormick's circumstances, he actually was not home during the period of the leak. He was hospitalized. And so he did not get the notification until about seven days later. I'll just make the note that often when you're out in the field, you're not even sure it's a leak. It has that appearance, but there's not absolute proof at the time. So there's even a question when you're out in the field. Any questions of staff? Open to public hearing. Anyone wish to address us on this item? Move, we close the public hearing. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That's unanimous. And it seems obvious to me we should deny this particular variance based on everything I've read. So I'll make that motion. OK, I'll second it. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? That's unanimous. OK, so we're done with public hearings. Now we go on to the consent agenda. There are just two things there. Anyone wish to pull anything? Anyone in the audience wish to pull any of these? I would just like to state that the 3.2, the final report, has some things missing and some things that are wrong in it. There was a few little things. I just didn't think it was worth it. For example, there are no indications of what illustrations are. There's no title underneath them that says this is illustration one, two, or three, even though the text refers to them. So if we ever use this for something, we probably want to fix those. OK. I'll make a move. Well, I'll move approval of the consent agenda. OK, I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right, this is the time for all communications. So anyone who wishes to address us on any item, not on tonight's agenda. This item is not on the agenda, not AMI. Hi. Hello. My name is Randa Salock. I'm a customer of your district. And we, your customers, want to know if Soquel Creek is ready to take the water that Santa Cruz City is ready to give on November 1st or thereabouts. Two questions. I know you're not allowed to talk to me during this, but you could nod or, you know. One, did you get the permit from the State of California to take the water from Santa Cruz? That's the first question. And the second one is, do you have your monitoring program in place so that you can see the effects of this pilot of transferring water? Two simple questions. Maybe, hopefully, yes. Water for Santa Cruz County went over the figures. Locke Lowman is now at 90%, which is 15% over what they estimated in their April water plan. That's great news, which means that there is an extra 450 million gallons in surplus water sitting in Locke Lowman. Santa Cruz City said at the water commission meeting last night that they're ready to send the water on November 1st or close to it. We want to know if you're ready to take it. Customers are watching. So maybe somewhere you can include the answers to that. Thank you. Anyone else? Wireless microwave radiation endangers the public and wildlife. And I don't recall if I gave you copies of this health impacts. How dangerous is non-ionizing radiation? This was an interview in August with Dr. Martin Paul. And I understand he's the author of the 5G appeal of scientists and medical officials calling for a moratorium or a halt of the rollout on this 5G technology and infrastructure, which is taking over the public right of way everywhere. And some of the effects, just to read you a little bit of this 5G, over 230 scientists from more than 40 countries have concerns regarding the ubiquitous and increasing exposure to radio frequency microwave radiation generated by electric fields, wireless devices, already before the additional 5G rollout. And you have been provided data repeatedly over a number of years of the harmful biological effects. They refer to the fact that numerous recent scientific publications have shown that EMF affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines. Effects include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damage, structure, and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts in general well-being in humans. Damage goes well beyond the human race as there is growing evidence of harmful effects to both plants and animals. So knowing that this is harmful, you as responsible elected officials on the Soquel Creek Water District Board should be doing everything to see that you are not harming the public with these wireless devices. Popularity has no relationship to proof of safety or proof that something's helpful. Thank you. And did I give you this last time? I've got a couple of these. I'll pass out. Time's up. Thank you. Plus, Martin, one page.  I'm sorry. Of Martin Paul's work. That's it. Here you go. I only have four of those. Thank you. Anyone else wish to address us? Is there anyone? Any director comments? I just want to bring up something for a future agenda. And that is what are things when I came in, first was elected four years ago to this post. I was amazed at the workload necessary to prepare for these meetings. And they happened every two weeks. And then I was at an aqua meeting. And the Scots Valley manager was sitting next to me. He said, here were the Soquel Creek Water District. How do you do all the work just getting ready for meetings? So I'm raising the issue in oral communication because it has never really been on the agenda to discuss it as a future item on the meeting. And possibly to direct staff to analyze the workload and how they could maybe pace meetings farther apart or take more months off where we only have one meeting at a time so that there'd be more of a three week hiatus between meetings or something like that. Just some way to, I think our meetings have now become more efficient and more to the point than when I first came on board here. So it seems like we could, barring an emergency, we could. Well, we'll bring that up. We'll put that on the agenda and discuss it. That's all we're requesting. Anything else? OK, so we're done with oral communications. We now go to reports. Item 5.1, the board planning calendar. Yes, two items. On Tuesday, October the 9th, there'll be two standing committee meetings. We will have the public outreach standing committee from 10.30 to 11.30. And then the water resource management infrastructure standing committee from 4 to 5, even though the two primary directors will be out of town for that board meeting, the alternate director Christensen will be there. So we will have the meeting. We think it's important to keep the continuity, and especially since there's some newer members of the public that are on that committee, we have things we can get them up to speed on. OK, any questions? On the calendar, I just wanted to mention again, because I think I wasn't sure Carla was here last time. When I was mentioning that I won't be available for the November 15th Mid-Counted Groundwater Agency meeting, so I just wanted to see if backup was available. Yes, so far. I know it's good to get ahead of time, but. It's the East Coast reception for my son's wedding. I've got to go. I'm not going to cancel that. Nope, not going to cancel that. All right, I'll just mention one more thing if I may. Right now, we have the December meeting, I think, as potentially being counseled. We're having to look at that just because there's a lot stacking up on the second meeting. So is it listed there? December? No, we don't have December. It's just November, we don't have December. OK, I thought that would have already been out there. OK, item 5.2, water loss audit. Lots of good work. Yeah. Good evening. I'm pleased to bring you the 2017 water loss audit. Our audit is shown, excuse me, pages 68, 69 through 71 are the attachments. And I wanted to start with the water balance, which is the core of the water audit. And that's a breakdown showing the water losses as you move from left to right, from the system input to a breakdown on the far right side, revenue versus non-revenue water. Our numbers, in comparison to last year, we've now had two validated water audits, the 2016 calendar year and the 2017 calendar year. And on page 65 of the packet, you'll see how our performance indicators measure up to the Water Loss Technical Assistance Program audits that passed high level filter criteria to remove any audits that may have contained errors. Unfortunately, last year's audit, because we had an ILI Infrastructure Leakage Index below one, which is the technical minimum, our audit was not part of that subset of the Water Loss Technical Assistance Program in 2016. But this year, the district's Water Loss Audit in 2017, we got just right at the technical minimum with our Infrastructure Leakage Index. So we are going to be counted in that pool if they do a comparison of water audits for 2017. For the most part, it was very similar to last year's audit. And our recommended areas of improvement are the same volume, the volume from our own sources, customer metering inaccuracies, and billed metered consumption. That's about it. Do you have any questions? Questions? What's the difference between billed metered consumption and customer, not all just the customer meters? So let me make sure I understand your question. Billed metered consumption would be all of the customer meters as opposed to unbilled metered consumption, which would be like the polo grounds or our own internal usage. So it's billed but, excuse me, it's metered but not billed. So metered means not billed then? No, no, no. There's basically four categories. You can have billed metered, billed unmetered, which we don't do any of that. And then you can have unbilled metered and unbilled unmetered. So there's, if you look at the water balance on page 68, on the far right, you'll see those four categories. Obviously, the billed metered and the billed unmetered are revenue water and then anything that's unbilled, even if it's metered or unmetered, if it's unbilled, it goes into the non-revenue category. I guess I get it now. So what effect do you consider the catastrophic main breaks that happened? How much have they contributed to this? So they did contribute. 2017, we had quite a few main breaks and you'll see the attachment for, shows you the water losses in green. I don't know if it's printed in green. So last year we had, you can have water losses are, they're combined with apparent losses or real losses. The real losses are like the main breaks, the service leaks. So we had an increase of our real losses. But we also think that a lot of water loss control has to do with pressure management. And so because our pumps are running more frequently, they're cycling on a lot more. That can kind of cause pressure spikes in the system. So I think that contributed to the increase in the water loss on the real loss side as opposed to the apparent losses. Because how does this now fit in with the, I know we were down a little bit, the percentage is down. But I heard one time when Christine presented the report that it was 8 to 10 was considered the industry standard. So is this significant that it's increased a little bit? So 8 to 10% water losses as a percentage of the production. That is, they can vary pretty widely, but that is generally our range. Last year I think we're 8.9%. This year I think we're 9.9%. And as Carla might be able to explain, the industry has gotten away from using percentages, so that's why we didn't include them here. But the trend in the water, real water losses does seem to mimic the trend in the production. So as Carla was saying, also the more you produce, the more you. Yeah, because the pumps are on more often and so the pressure is higher in the distribution system. So that's a theory on why that might occur. And the amount of known losses per main breaks, if you see that our water loss was totaled 106 million gallons last year, our actual known losses are a tiny percentage of that. Maybe somewhere around 6 million, something like that. So everything else is unknown leaks, like from the distribution system, from slow leaks on fittings, the service line leaks, main leaks. They could be leaks that don't surface. So we do do acoustical leak detection when we have free time. And we kind of slowly move around the distribution system. But since I've been in this position, we haven't really found any significant leaks with that. So yeah, you know, it's good to stay on the ball because, you know, regularly at aqua meetings, someone presents a paper on, you know, that as a possible new water source is actually reducing the leak level in your system, your water system. So it's hard to, yeah, you can't just even see where the leak is. It's hard to have control over that. Right, and because we're at the low end of the infrastructure leakage index, which is that ILI that I mentioned, what they consider the denominator of that is the unavoidable real losses as opposed to your current real losses. So if you are at that technical minimum, it means that you're basically not losing any more than what's unavoidable, right?   So, you know, we are on the low side, and that's not to say that every connection is leaking, you know, 2.15 gallons per day, but that's kind of like just a number, kind of like gallons per capita per day of consumption, you know, and not everybody's using 50 gallons or 55, but, you know, somebody might be using 100, and somebody's using 25. So it's not that every service connection's leaking that much, it's just across the board of metric, and then, you know, we are also, and the real losses in gallons per service connection per day per, you know, pounds per square inch. So the pressure, we're also on the, about half of what the rest of the state was compared, comparatively. So no potential savings there, in other words.  I was just thinking almost out loud about whether the eventual repair and replacement of the ailing water mains that we have, whether that would make an appreciable difference, but it's, we're actually pretty lucky, it sounds like, in what we've had happen here. Yeah. Thank you. Or it's not luck, it's just the staff has been working hard at this in a long time. Oh, you know, everybody's working full, full, full time, but, you know, it's, it's just sometimes a matter of luck that it doesn't happen in the middle of the night all the time. Any public comment on this? Okay. At the. So, I didn't explain the data validity grade very well, or at all. So the data validity, excuse me, the data validity grade is based on data validity inputs that we put on each of our volumes that we input into the software. So if we know that, and they're not all weighted the same. So a data validity grade on water produced shows it holds a lot more weight than maybe, oh, let's say systematic data handling errors. So even though we do really well in our billing and software systems about handling all of our, you know, billing and getting all of everything paid for and things that are kind of like the apparent losses, we may not be up to par on what the state thinks that we can do as far as like water, like production meters and things that score more heavily. So because we got a 60, it's not to say that we're getting a D or, you know, 60%. It's just that basically shows that there's room for improvement and we're not quite there yet with all of the, we can't put a, the data validity inputs are one through 10 and we can't put a 10 on something if we're only certain about our input. And so we give it a five or a six or a seven. So that's how that kind of breaks down. Comparatively with the rest of the state, we're doing pretty good. We're right on target and they don't, when we did the water loss technical assistance program when we went through their training, they don't expect anybody to really be above, let's say like a 70 or a 75. I mean, it's kind of almost unlikely that you would be, you know, 80, 90 on a data validity score. So I hope that answers your question. Are there any one or two things that would get us higher on that score? Yes, there are and those are listed on the improvement steps. Okay. Volume from our own sources and we kind of, we ran through about how that's difficult because we're Need a long stretch. Yes, exactly. So, thank you. Any other public comment? Seeing none. I think this is just an informational item. So there is no item 6.1. We go to 6.2, which is generating offsets for the water demand offset program with AMI. Yeah, and before Shelley launches into this, I just want to make a differentiation because these two items are so close. The leakage that you just, the report that you just heard is anything before the customer meter, correct? So anything in our system and with AMI, what Shelley, the type of leakage you're talking about is anything after the customer meter. So they're two separate leakage categories. All right, Alyssa and I are gonna be making a presentation on item 6.2. So switch it over, kick this off. This item's a follow-up to our initial proposal that we made at the August 21st board meeting where we requested the board consider approving automated metering infrastructure or AMI as an offset generating project under our WDO program or water demand offset program based on the estimated water savings expected from the project. I wanna acknowledge tonight that we do have some members of our customer service field crew here. We have Chris Freels, Joe Antos and Jacob Arnold. They collect our monthly meter reads, maintain our system and work with the customers on a daily basis in regards to leaks, high water use and other customer service issues. So their input went into our water savings estimates here and it really helped us bring home some of the more general information to be more applicable to our particular service area and situation. So thanks you guys for coming tonight and for your input. We initially covered a lot of background on our WDO program at that last meeting and the AMI technology itself. So tonight we're gonna try and keep it simple and just give a little bit of an overview about the purpose of the WDO program and how we think that AMI achieves the goals of the program. So this slide is shown in red on the map on the left. Our groundwater basin is impacted by seawater intrusion all along the length of our coastline and the coastline below our service area. And that intrusion is a result of historical pumping by us and other users of the basin in excess of what natural recharge we get through rainfall. If seawater reaches our production wells, they become unusable and so we have a multifaceted community water plan with different actions to prevent this from happening, including conservation and within conservation we have the WDO program. The purpose of the program is to prevent new development and the associated increases in water demand that you would typically see when somebody comes onto our system from exacerbating this intrusion. As shown in the program WDO program signage on the right, new development must offset two times the amount of water that they are expected to use. As a result of that 2.0 multiplier, our program goes beyond being a water neutral development program and actually achieves a reduction in overall water demand. Development project applicants meet their offset by funding conservation or supply projects that the district implements. And that brings us really to the heart of tonight's item, which is to propose an upgrade to AMI as an offset generating project, generate water savings and offset credits that would in turn be sold to development project applicants. Okay, so at the August meeting we heard that you needed more information on how AMI meets the WDO program and the board selection criteria for offset generating projects before you were able to decide whether to approve AMI as a project. And so tonight we're gonna be demonstrating that and more detail could you bring in that first one by showing you how it does that. Secondly, we heard that you needed more data and studies on the water savings potential of AMI and Alyssa's gonna go into detail on that. And we also are requesting tonight if AMI is approved, we're asking you to consider pausing new water service applications for a few months and we'll give a little bit of basis about why we're asking for that later tonight. So in addition to those requests, we are also providing information on a tentative implementation plan for AMI as requested last time around and potential changes to the offset program administration to best accommodate a return to selling offset credits. So the key findings, just to put everything in perspective because there's a lot of information here, we feel that the first finding the AMI project meets the board selection criteria for offset generating projects. Based on the data studies and input from our staff, we feel confident that AMI can easily save 5% due to the leak detection, early leak detection and notification alone. And there's some other things that can add to that as well. And lastly, if AMI is approved, changes to the WDO program will be needed. So let's get to the basis for our findings and I wanna start with the adherence of AMI to the selection criteria for offset generating projects. There were fewer questions and discussions last time about four of the criteria and so we're not gonna touch on them a lot but I did just wanna run through them quickly. Starting with cost, the cost of credits from an AMI upgrade is under our current offset price of $55,000 per acre foot. So it meets that cost threshold, doesn't require supplementation from the district and the cost estimates are really right in that same ballpark of 55K per acre foot. Measureability, AMI provides high measureability due to metered water use. The availability of consumption data really down to the hourly level and the leak notification capabilities of AMI. Benefits to customers, I don't think we need to go into that too much. There's a lot of benefits of AMI that we've shown in the past and the last one being permanence. Can we count on the water savings from the project every year for 20 years or prorate it based on an estimated lifetime of the project and in this case, we have prorated the savings. We'll get to that in a minute. Where there was an uncertainty at the last meeting was in regards to the additionality criteria. And additionality means, is the project something that the district would have done anyways in the next 20 years due to just process changes, regulatory requirements or other reasons. And if not, then the project meets the criteria. And so in the next slide, we're gonna address how it meets this criteria. So, well, AMI was something that was on our radar to do eventually. This chart shows as in the upper green bar that it wasn't something we were considering for about another 10 years or so. So that puts us in around 2028 or 2029. That coincided with when we expected to have to replace the majority of our meters. And so it wasn't even on our radar until 10 years out. If we implemented AMI in 10 years, transitioning to it 10 years earlier, meaning right now, would still result in 10 years of additional water savings in the years zero to 10. In this case, as shown in the upper bar, in the orange, water saved in years 10 through 20 would not be considered additional. And as a result, we've prorated the water savings of 172 acre feet per year by half to meet the additionality criteria. So we've made that adjustment and we think that that adheres to the criteria. So what we're asking for tonight is the board to approve 86 acre feet per year of offset credit. And Alyssa's gonna now give details and background on how we arrived at that number. Thanks, Shelley. So real briefly before I started, just wanna touch on some differences between our current AMR system and our proposed AMI system. With the current system, monthly consumption is read once a month when a member of our field crew drives by it with a receiver. So this means that we're only able to detect leaks or any other unusual high usage or unusual usage at all on the meter once a month. So we could have a leak going for 30 days or a leak going for one day. And the customer has no way of knowing during that time. So with AMI, consumption is communicated automatically to the district several times per day. This means we have much more granular data. We have hourly versus monthly and can detect leaks as they happen and inform customers much earlier of any issues. And customers will also have access to a customer portal where they can track their usage and set personalized alerts. With the new tools provided to us from AMI, we see three big areas of savings. The most obvious and probably most impactful is in leak detection, but we also think we would see reductions in incidents of high usage that are not considered leaks and water savings associated with a more engaged, connected and informed customer. And as I was mentioning, we think that faster leak detection with AMI can result in significant water savings for the district and is a great benefit to customers. And so to get a realistic idea of just how much we can save, we first looked at some comprehensive industry recognized studies, such as the residential end use study, which we've used that study before for toilet data, and the California efficiency study. And these looked at a huge range of leaks from leaks below 50 gallons per day, which are quite small, to huge leaks from burst pipes. These studies estimate around 12 to 18% of water use is attributable to leaks. This information was further complemented by data on leak frequency that we collected from San Jose Water Company and the Environmental Protection Agency. But we realized that the scope of these leak studies may be a little bit broad and maybe capturing leaks, which are not easily detected or are quite small. So we looked at some more specific studies and narrowed down our estimate to look at leaks that are a little bit larger, generally greater than seven and a half gallons per hour. For reference, the smallest leaks we can detect are somewhere around three to four gallons per hour. The goal of this more targeted analysis, it was to identify how much water is lost to leaks that we can consider kind of our low hanging fruit. So this is larger leaks that are most reliably detected and which, if addressed quickly, could provide the biggest savings. From our research, we can see that those leaks contribute around six to 10% of demand. Yeah, and if we may pause for a second, Shelly, if you can shift the screens. The data that Alyssa is just referring to is summarized in attachment three and I think it's just important to show it. I just wanted to take a moment. So on this page studies, you know, kind of the summary conclusions and then AMI pilots goes on to the next page. Then we have another page summary information here of studies reviewed and then it continues on. So I just want to make sure it's clear that that data is included in the report. Thank you. Yeah, and kind of the whole point of us collecting all of this information is that we really wanted to take it and find the things that we felt were most relevant to us and so that we could really make an informed decision that way. But getting back to this, from the six to 10% estimate, we whittled it down even further to by multiplying an estimate of demand used by these larger leaks. In this case, we used 7% to align with the Sacramento AMI study that we included as attachment two. And we multiplied that by an expected percentage reduction in leak duration and ended up with an estimate of just over 5%. And so getting back to this, we estimate that faster leak detection can save us 5% of demand. However, this is only part of the equation. We also expect that we'll see some savings from decreased high use incidents which are not considered leaks. Some situations that may result in high usage include intermittent leaks at irrigation systems which are set incorrectly and are going off all the time. We see that quite a bit or a hose being left on. We have approximately 800 incidents of high usage a year and those can waste considerable amounts of water just as leaks do. And more frequent leak detection and the ability to break down. The usage by hour should really help customers and the district to identify and correct those situations more quickly. We also think that increased customer engagement, especially through the customer portal, will lead to savings by educating customers about their water use. When customers have more information, they're able to see where their water is going and are able to make better decisions about how they wanna use water in the future. We think that an additional 5% savings from these categories is realistic and maybe conservative. However, in lieu of more studies and better data on the subject, we're choosing not to recognize these savings for this estimate and are including those as kind of a soft savings. So in summary, even though we think that we may realize higher savings, we're proposing a water savings achievable by AMI as 5% of demand. This expected savings is quite a bit more conservative than other agencies' estimates, which are included in attachment three and only consider savings from the leaks that we feel most confident we can reduce using the new technology. A 5% demand reduction is equal to 172 acre feet per year which we then prorated to count for additionality, as Shelley mentioned earlier, to result in the final offset credit of 86 acre feet. We feel that with the proration, granting offset credit for 86 acre feet is faithful to the board selection criteria and that all in all, the conservative approach, staff and the board have taken assures that the AMI project ultimately meets the WDO program goal of protecting the aquifer. So now I'll pass it back to Shelley. Okay, that's a lot of information. So we've discussed additionality and how AMI adheres to those criteria and how the water savings estimate of 5% was derived. The board also expressed interest at the last meeting in knowing about the proposed implementation or rollout of AMI and any changes needed to the WDO program before you wanted to make a decision on the water savings. So the next couple of slides covered those issues starting with the implementation plan. We envision a two-year rollout with two phases. Phase one to include installing AMI and about 3,000 services in the middle of our service area there, which is represented in the map and the red circle kind of highlights that area, that general area. Major components of phase one are listed and they're also included in more detail in the memo. Once phase one's complete, we envision a full rollout, district wide rollout or phase two. Let's see, moving on to proposed key changes to the WDO program administration itself. To accommodate a return to selling offset credits, changes are needed to our new water service process. Identifying the pathways for applicants that are already under a couple versions of our WDO program, the old program, which was in place from roughly 2013 to 2016. And then the current program, which took off in 2016 and we're operating under right now. And we also want to establish a transition plan and schedule for closing the current program and opening a brand new program where credits can be sold on a first come, first serve basis with some limitations. Our key proposed changes, again, are returning to a two step well served process, so a conditional board approval and an unconditional approval. That's the same general process that's been in place for the majority of the program's lifetime and it really does work well when we have offset credits available for sale. We are also proposing a 10 acre foot limit on the purchase of offset credits from the district's bank to ensure that all development project applicants have an opportunity to purchase credits. So anybody that needed more than 10 acre feet for their project would need to go out and perform their own conservation or supply project with board approval. Other changes are identified in attachment for the memo and we can certainly take a look at those if you want more information. Let's see here. The attachment for also includes a figure which details how we would handle the existing applicants that are in the old and the current programs and how we would transition to a new program. In regard to getting approval for potential administrative changes, we're looking for some feedback tonight on whether you want us to bring those changes back at a subsequent board meeting or if you prefer that we schedule a special public workshop so that we can take a closer look at some of those things until we can get approval for any program administration changes and to best serve the people that are already have already applied and are in the process as well as update program materials on the web and written materials and consult with land use agencies about any changes. We're asking for a temporary pause in accepting new water service applications. We wanna make sure that when we roll this out as a return to selling credits that we do it right and everything goes smoothly. So it's approximately three months of pausing that we're looking for. So that concludes tonight's presentation and the board actions are shown here and in the memo for your consideration and we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. Questions of staff? I have one question right off. I have. That was just the, do you have you, have we paused the building out of the? Will serve. Might escape me. Just the unconditional, unconditional permits. Have we ever suspended those in the past? We haven't closed the program temporarily to new applicants but there was a period of time in 2016 when the shortfall was eminent and the offset credit bank that we were still bringing projects and the board said we're putting all of these on hold. We were still letting people apply and they were theoretically getting added to the wait list at that time but we didn't close the doors to accepting applications. This is different. This is different and I think it provides a cleaner transition to a new program. If you close the doors and just say we're working on all the details, we don't know what it's gonna look like quite yet and we need to hammer those things out before we start providing people information. So I think it's a cleaner approach and it's more transparent and understandable to the applicant. So would the 86 acre foot of credit with that, what would that do to the current list, wait list? So attachment, I think it's attachment one attachment one lays out the memo here. Thank you. I know it was in the packet but I thought it'd be good to. There we go. The actual offset shortfall right now is 5.36 acre feet of water, roughly five acre feet of water and that's from people under the old program that have already paid for their offsets and people under the current program where half of their offset went towards this long-term conservation project. We still are looking at an additional nine acre feet maximum needed for 16 projects under the old program. And then under the wait list, we have, let's see here, is it 35 acre feet of water that those projects on the wait list would need. However, that's a maximum and it's probably high by about 10 to 15 acre feet because we do have one large project right now that is in process for doing their own fixture retrofits and that's like a nine acre foot and then we have some others that are doing the same. So I think at the end of the day, we're looking at needing about probably 30-ish acre feet for the people that are already in process whether they're under the old program or the new program. And so that leaves, once we get those 30 people through, then if 86 acre feet was approved, we'd have 56 left to sell and returning to the two step will serve process. People applying under a new program would not buy those until they actually go through their planning process and either get a tentative map for a bigger project or a building permit for a smaller project and then they'd come back and purchase those. So new program applicants would probably be a year out before they started actually purchasing the credits, if that makes sense. Any other questions? Just two quick ones. So the pausing of the program is primarily because it would slow down the new program because it would take staff time. That's part of it. Right now, we need to work on what are those changes look like if you approve AMI? And so either coming back at subsequent board meetings or having a workshop would take some staff time to put that together. I totally support the workshop, but the question I have is pausing the applications. What's the advantage of that? You wanna go ahead? Yeah, I mean, from an applicant perspective, when they are applying during this weird transitionary period, they're very confused. And so we think that just pausing it until we really have our feet under us is it's not only beneficial for us, but ultimately it's gonna be a lot more beneficial for those applicants. Yeah, I'll say, you know, we struggle with that a little bit and we consulted legal counsel so that this in no shape, form or way, looks like a moratorium or anything like that. And it's not that, you know, there is a big light at the end of the tunnel. What we're asking is give staff just, you know, so these people aren't going, what's gonna happen at the end? At the end, there will be credits available to purchase. We just need the process clean to serve the current customers and the potential future new ones. And then the other question is a simpler one. The customer portal, that's phase one. And are you confident that you can get that going fairly quickly? So in phase one, we would get the AMI infrastructure in, fine tune the operation of that and our internal processes. And then we would roll out the portal to those customers in phase one. And get that all squared away while then we're moving to phase two. So it'll be the end of phase one. It'll be the end of phase one. So something like a year from when it starts. Yeah, probably, I was probably looking at about a year. Maybe a little less. It's 3,000 services and, you know, it's about a fifth of our service area. So hoping to get that done as quickly as possible. Okay, public. Anyone in the public wish to address us on this item? Thank you. Good evening. My name's Becky Steinberg. I'm a resident of Aptos. I'd like to hear your district's definition of what would qualify for a water demand project that these monies could be used for. All right. I will make your comments. And when you sit down, we'll look to the board. Okay. All right. Well, then I will repeat from your documents when you declared the system of having water demand offsets and taking money from people and using that money to do projects, the criteria for using that money was that it was to go to doing conservation projects that would not have been done otherwise. And I may repeat that that would not have been done otherwise. Your district has budgeted money for the AMI project already. This is a new shift in using the WDO money to fund it. And I am proposing to you again that funding the AMI project with your WDO money does not fit your own definition of what you can do with that money. I also want to ask that you have looked into the information that Ms. Nina Beatty drove here from Pacific Grove to present to you about the legalities of smart meter in this county. This county has had a lot of activism regarding smart meters and the county was responsive.  I would also like to see your district do a pilot project in an area where you have had the most leaks and really verify that your water savings is true. True. I don't think it's fair to include a large percentage of the 3000 as the Aptos Village project which is what is part of phase one because that's all new construction. I think you really need to do a pilot project in an area that is problem prone and really get some good information that way. Again, I want to voice my protest to having widespread EMF increase in an area that I have no control over as not one of your rate pairs. And again, to protest that you would consider using rate WDO money for this project. Thank you. Also noting you're doubling the application fee for those coming in. Anyone else? Mayor Linkara, resident of Aptos, part of wireless radiation alert network. I concur with what Becky said. This sounds like improper views of your finances.  And there's a quote in there by Burson Mars Teller, one of the public relations firms selling products for companies. The role of our communication is to manage perceptions which motivates behaviors to create business results. And I must commend you for the presentation of doing just that, managing perceptions to motivate behavior to create business results. The facts computer generated that you have presented, I find very questionable, but there are omitted data or omitted facts that are crucial in your presentation like the elephant in the room that you will be increasing mandatory exposure to radio frequency, microwave radiation that is known to be damaging, for instance, around cell tower submitting radiation. Over 17 studies show consistently increased cancer incidents, people experiencing insomnia, memory loss, heart irregularities, fatigue, depressive tendencies and the list goes on. Now, since you know of the dangers and you have been presented repeatedly with printed material and videos, this seems to me like intentional harm. The carbon footprint is huge on manufacturing all these products, transporting them, the e-waste that you're not talking about, no consent form has been given to people that they give their informed consent to increased radiation that the World Health Organization labels as a possible carcinogen. You have received the smart meter brochure from the stop smart meters. Fires have happened with these so-called smart meters. You have received copies of Dr. Poking M. Cung's report, the former county health officer on health risks associated with smart meters. Time's up, thank you. Yeah, I'm opposed to this. I'll give you this half sheet that you should check out again. Thank you. This should not be passed. Anyone else? Seeing no one, I'll bring it back to the board. Can I just say, thank you for coming back with all of what we asked for. Thank you for organizing the studies and adding the justification for additionality. So thank you.  I was gonna say that one of the reasons this came back to the board was because of the question of additionality. And that has been addressed satisfactorily to me anyway. I don't know how the rest of the board feels about that, but that idea of additionality is okay. I think you've adjusted to that. So we have a number of motions that we can make. Right. I would actually like to make the motion number four with directing staff to schedule a public workshop on proposed changes to administration of the WDO program. Well, that doesn't make sense. We don't do the first one. So maybe we should. Well, we could actually talk about administration before you approved the program. So if we think that we need to have the administration all resolved before we approve the project, and I think it does make sense, but. That's just, I don't, I think this issue is complex enough that a workshop would be the correct forum for this. And I don't think we should be spending our time tonight on this. I agree with that. I agree. So. Do you have a date in mind or timeline for that? Well, we defer to something that works for the board. I mean, take a while to get it together, I'm sure. It may be one of the November, the earlier November meeting look a little lighter. Is that right? The six of the 20th of November. So maybe we could schedule like a 5 p.m. start date on that. And if the board, it's a double header, but kind of light agenda. I think that's probably okay. I don't think this is one that needs four hours or something like that. I really, I think I'm, I think we're not that far off. Well, maybe we should take them in order. Yeah. All right, back again. Well, let me make the motion. Motion number one, we approve the funding of the AMI upgrade with WTO funds. Okay, I'll second. Okay. And then I'd just like to ask one more question though, but also just some of Becky's comments on the, the funding, the original funding and explain what happened that. So the, any, almost any WDO project we've done, you look back at the toilets, we had to fund that and then we'll recoup it in the backend as the projects come in. So otherwise we're waiting on development. We have to stop, get the money and move forward. That just doesn't make sense. So you fund the, the district funds it and recoups those fund, those funds spent to do that. So whether we would, you know, it has to be funded through us, or that's the way we've done it in the past, all the toilets, the thousands of toilets when we did direct install, we funded that, we sold the credits. I think more importantly, it's just that it's the timing. Like if we were planning on doing it later, but this is accelerating it by 10 years. And so, and the reason it's on that and the reason it's on the budget is because of that potential decision. Yeah, because staff was thinking that this was gonna happen and it wasn't something that was budgeted prior to that. In additionality, Becky walked in late and missed that, but maybe she can go back and look at the video to catch that. So if we didn't approve number one, I think we would not do the AMI program. We in fact would wait for 10 years. It wouldn't be workable. Right. Okay, so we have a motion. Yeah, and the, what for a WDO project to qualify, it has to save water. Right. Bottom line. Yeah. Whatever, and this. So by approving this motion, your green, it is additional. It is additional. And the 5% is an acceptable savings. Measurable. Measurable savings, yeah. Although, yeah, we'll be able to tell whether it actually happened or not. I'm actually, yeah, we can talk about the amount on the next one, but yeah. Okay. So there's a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay. So on the second one is the details, whether we approve the 5%. No, that's embedded in number two, the 5%. That's what he's saying. Yeah. 2% is embedded in number two. So I still think fantastic effort to bring all these different studies forward. The Sacramento study, I did look up Sacramento and their charge for a unit of water is a little bit over a dollar. So I don't think there's as much of an incentive there to define leaks. And on their website, they still do have that there's unmetered services. So again, where the cost for water is $61. I think it's, I'm not even sure it's per month, but I think we've been conservative enough that the 5% will be there, especially if we roll out the customer portal. Portal, sorry. So I'll make that a motion to prove it. So that's setting it at the 86? At the 5%? 5%, yeah. Okay. The 86, or is it really the number? The number's the 86. Yeah. At the 5%? I'll second that. At the 5% 10 years. Okay. Okay, well, I'll second your motion. I just did. Oh, you did? Oh, okay, good. Any discussion? I'm good. All in favor? Aye. And it's not unanimous. Two. I don't think we need to do three because we're doing four, I think. Yeah. Right. I'll make the motion for four to schedule a public workshop to propose changes to the video program. I'll second that. Any discussion? And we'll, with the staff to do it, probably in November, right? Okay. Question at the end. No, no public comment right now. That was over. Okay. All in favor of that motion? Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay, five is the pause motion. Yeah, I don't like pausing. I understand it's gonna, it'll be confusing knowing that this is coming out, but applicants have the discretion to just not submit an application till the new program is rolled out. Since it's gonna be fairly soon. You don't think they can conceivably like regret the application if there are some changes that came up? We could address the pause at a workshop too. That is actually it. And keep it going until the workshop. Well, an advantage to not doing a pause is by taking them as they come, you're getting them in order. I mean, if there's any need to have, you know, I'm first and you're second and someone else is third. This allows it to get otherwise, you know, people run in after it gets on pause. The door will open. Yeah, one day and people are trying. Oh, I'm a better you and I think. Well, I'm open to hearing more discussion on it. So I like your idea, Tom, of discussing. Can we just keep it going until the workshop? Well, can I add a couple other points? So the wait list, the people on the wait list have a different agreement. They have a four year will serve approval. If the project doesn't go through, we give them back 90% of the offset fee because they're paying it up front. We were also proposing in the transition that the people on the wait list be given an opportunity to, if credits are available, just purchase the credits and because we would be doing away with the wait list. Yeah, I'd like to discuss that in the workshop. And then all new people would go toward the new program, which is the two step conditional unconditional. And that means that those new applicants wouldn't be purchasing their offset credits up front. They would be going through planning first. We would allocate the credits to their project so that we have a good accounting of them and we don't end up in a shortfall again. So I think just administratively, it would help to kind of close the current program right now so that we just work with those applicants. I understand that if I'm building a family home and I want to see whether I can get water and I've been told that the program is paused, that's a concern for me. So that's why that's... Yeah, and... We're saying that we'll resume taking applications on January 1st when we have more details about what the new program will look like and we can better communicate those requirements to the applicants. So we're not telling them... Not an indefinite cause. Yeah, it's three months. I still would be concerned myself. I mean, you can take the applications and just tell them that we're rolling out a new program and you'll be in that program and more details will be forthcoming. Could we just make a... So yeah, and kind of the other point is that we do get a lot of inquiries about new services and those inquiries are an extensive... They take a lot of staff resources and I think if we leave it open and we're gonna be getting bombarded because people are gonna be trying to get in the door or they're worried about something and it's just gonna detract from our ability to I think make the changes to the program, roll it out. We're also would be working on AMI implementation at the same time and so we're trying to be most efficient with our staff resources and this really gets us there. I heard you, Sharon. I heard you saying the other directors might not feel the same way. I had a suggestion. Yeah, yes. You could pause until your November 6th meeting so that you don't have a rush to the door and you have a workshop where you spend some more time really discussing the differences between the programs. That's a month away. I mean, I personally, I'll just put my opinion, I don't think pausing for until January 1st is gonna be a big stress on people if they know there's really something there rather than it's not just saying, oh, there's a pause. Oh no, I'll never get my house. It's just like, hey, we're reorganizing it. Well, you put you on the list to let you know as soon as we know what the program looks like.  Well, I'm just saying. You're taking their names. I mean, if they, there's, I mean, we don't have anything to tell them specifically what it'll look like. That's the whole point.  Till we have a specified, a new program, the old program is in effect. Yeah, well, they just finished saying that that created a lot of work also, just doing. And there's how many people on the waiting list? 40, 46. So... Yeah, I mean, here's the dilemma. The reality is they're not gonna get anything happening if it, with the current program for a long, long time. Right. So waiting till January for the new program this doesn't seem like a long wait. Yeah, maybe, maybe another option is to take appointments when we get the program, the con, take, take appointments so and, and call those people up or email them when we get the program in order. I mean, the whole thrust behind this is not to make people worry or anxious and it's to serve them the best we can, as quickly as we can. We're concerned that if we get straddled with trying to wrap up an old program, implement an AMI program and create a new WDO program, which is really hard to get it on the mark that we're gonna do a poor job across the board. It'll take you longer, if you don't pause. Yeah, it'll take us longer and. There's no doubt about that. Yeah. Yeah, and then. Again, it pauses a red flag. Okay, and I, and I, that's fine if you wanna go that way but the other, the other kind of quandary is if they're under the old program, then they're gonna really wanna go to the new program when it comes in. Of course. We can talk about that at the workshop. So, I'm okay with the pause myself but we could wait and decide at the workshop if you want and just keep it going till then. We don't, it's up to you. If you, if you think a pause is necessary, I won't vote for it, but you can make the motion. All right, I'll make a motion. Let's see what happens. That we have this pause starting now and then I don't know if it'll be officially January 1st but no later than that that then to when we can institute the new program. I'll second that. Okay, we have a motion to second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Okay. We're not having a workshop. We'll let you know when there's a workshop. We'll let the public know when there is a workshop. So I wanted to respond to some of the public comments. I mean, I guess people don't realize that we now have these automated meters almost in every one of our meters in the entire district. The only change is by going to AMI instead of sending out a signal every 11 seconds, five times a minute, is that we will do it, I guess once an hour, something like that. So that's 300 times less signals. It's actually once every 12 hours for the consumption data, but it's hourly data that's sent. Okay. If there's a leak alert, then it's sent as soon as the leak's detected. Okay, all right. So even more savings in the electricity. So you're basically objecting to something that's gonna make things better. We currently have AMR, which goes every 11 seconds throughout the entire district. And we're not liable to say, let's just pull it all out because it does help just find leaks. And so it's like about almost 8,000 times a day versus two, that's the difference. That's pretty good savings. So now you know. Transmission. You're arguing against something that I think is a benefit. You can continue doing that if you want. Okay, so let's move on. Did we vote it on a workshop, right? Yes. So, and then we can talk about a pause after that. Yeah. Right. I think we should talk about it at the workshop. Yeah. Okay. So 6.3 approvals to the district's leak policy. Sorry. So item 6.3 is bringing back the district's leak adjustment policy at the last board meeting on September 18th. We posed some questions to the board to get some input on how that policy should be revised. And so tonight we're bringing back the revised policy. A lot of it remains consistent with our existing leak adjustment policy. The policy frequency will still be once every three years. But we did go ahead and memorialize a variance that was granted to a customer last year. That if they do have two leaks within that three-year period that they can choose to take advantage of the higher of the two leaks and pay for the smaller leak. The other thing that's consistent with our existing leak adjustment policy is that the adjustment will be available for two consecutive billing periods because often customers experience leaks that cross billing periods. So the changes to the tier adjustment policy or the leak adjustment policy would be to expand the scope to include any unintentional water use. That would be available once in a three-year period. The other change is to update the tiers so that they're reflective consistent with ordinance 1802 that will be brought back for final consideration at the next board meeting. So those are the changes that are incorporated into this revised policy. Any questions of staff? Any public comment on this? Good evening. My name is Cherry Maurer and I appeared before your board back in August with an appeal on my water bill. And it was for unintentional water use. I indicated in a letter to your board that I had been out of the country during the time that a reported $908.22 bill was mailed to my residence $847.74 of which was not explained. And I appealed to your board for some kind of solace or rate reduction, bill reduction, and your response I believe was to direct staff to relook at the leak adjustment policy to address unexplained water usage in addition to leakage. And I have looked at the revised policy and tried to apply it to my situation and I am somewhat befuddled. And I am wondering if staff might be able to walk me through how my particular circumstance would be affected by this revised policy. In particular, in looking at the example that's presented with the revised leak policy there's an A through I mentioned as an example and for the life of me I cannot figure out G in that example. And so in trying to apply this formula to my particular circumstances if I don't understand the components of the formula I really am at a loss as to whether I feel personally I can support or not this revised policy. Well we're not gonna do that tonight but you can go in tomorrow and talk to staff and they can talk you through it as you asked. So please do that. I think I expect it would probably apply to you but the staff would probably have a better feeling for it. Now go ahead and reach out to me tomorrow. We started doing this after your appeal. Right, so. I understand that, sir, thank you and I appreciate that. I think it should apply, but. Right, it doesn't. Okay, thank you. Any other public comment? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the board. I'm assuming this will need to be adjusted with new rates, right? We will need to reconsider this once new rates are in place and if they are adopted in the spring. Thank you for coming back with us. For the time being, I'm up for it. I'll make the motion. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed, that's unanimous. And we go to 6.4. Receive written and oral public comments on the draft initial study. Give us just a minute why we do the shuffle. And let me talk about this item. This is a very special item. This is not the board doing this. This is getting public comment to the preparers of this. Right, we're just announcing it. Negative, yes. The mitigating negative declaration. So if you come and talk to us, we're not going to respond in any way. Instead, that will be recorded by the preparers. Initial study, negative, negative, negative declaration. So many acronyms. Hi, yes, thank you, Dr. Daniels, for pointing out that item 6.4 really is about public comments to be received tonight on the initial study mitigated negative deck that has been prepared for the pilot well efforts at the Twin Lakes Church site. ESA, who is our consultant, has prepared the initial study and mitigated neck deck. And we have a couple of slides and then I'm going to turn it over to Alisa. Basically, we'd just like to give a quick overview on the project. What is before you on this item tonight give you a kind of a quick overview of the purpose of this pilot project. The overview of the project and describe what the components would be. And then of course, your take comments. So as you know, our continued theme of our efforts here as the water district is to address the groundwater overdraft and seawater intrusion problems that we're facing. This is one of our maps that we've been using a lot lately to illustrate that to tie in the seawater intrusion issues that we have here in our Santa Cruz-Mid County area in the red, which was just recently confirmed with the SkyTem data along and accompanying our monitoring sampling that's done. Below that is all of the seawater intrusion that is detected south of us in the Pajaro, Watsonville, Salinas and Monterey area. So from the Pleasure Point area all the way down to Monterey, the Monterey Bay area is challenged with this. The Twin Lakes Church Pilot Recharge Well project is a project that has been identified in our Prop 1 groundwater planning grant that we received and was awarded in January of this year. Really it is to better understand the characteristics of the recharge well that we're proposing in the area as part of the proposed Pure Water Soak Health project. Specifically, this recharge well is designed to help us identify and better understand the recharge capacities that we've estimated and assumed in the groundwater model. We'd also like to understand and get a little bit better understanding on the geochemical characterization. Brown and Caldwell did do a study a couple years ago where they did take well cuttings from samples from neighboring monitoring and production wells in the area, but this would give us core samples that we could better characterize so that we can plan for if purified water was to be put into the ground at this location, what kind of conditioning would we need to do for that water. So the project defined in this initial study on mitigated negative deck is a pilot recharge well that we would drill at the Twin Lakes Church site. This is one of the sites that we have identified in the Pure Water Soak Health project. The ISMND, which was released last month, and this is the document right here, outlines that the project is defined in this red-bounded area here, which is kind of a more woody area next to a parking lot. It also has a field. There's the children's school and a gymnasium. We saw, go ahead and turn it over to you. Thank you. Thanks for having me here again tonight. Scooting up a little closer. Thanks again for having me here tonight. As Melanie mentioned, we've helped the district prepare the environmental documentation for the proposed project before it can move forward. What we have done is prepare an initial study considering the describing the project and considering the environmental setting as well as the potential for impacts to occur during implementation of the project, including both its construction and the testing period. And what we have found through that study is that there are not known sensitive resources within the project area, but in the absence of, or in caution, we've requested some mitigation measures to be prepared or implemented for biological and cultural resources to ensure that substantial impacts to those resources, any potential resources are avoided. Other than that, we have not identified any other potential for substantial impacts and have, based on that assessment, prepared a mitigated negative declaration for the project. That negative declaration has been filed with the state clearinghouse and at the same time, a notice of availability of this draft public document has been posted at the project site as well as an email notification has been sent out to adjacent properties and agencies. And also the district has provided input to the press, created a calendar event and a dedicated page for the project on your website. With the filing of the ISMND, mitigated negative declaration at the state clearinghouse, we've begun a public review period that started on September 12th and will go through October 12th and during that time we were taking public comments from public and agency comments. We are tonight taking oral and written comments and also will be continuing to take written comments through the end of the comment period at five o'clock on October 12th. The bottom of our slide here presents the locations that comments can be submitted to other than the oral comments that we'll take tonight. And if anyone is interested in getting close to that, we can provide that information. I think with that, we will turn it over. Do we turn it over to questions? Yeah, I think just to reiterate again that at this point, once Elise, I think you're done, we do invite anybody in the public who does want to provide an oral comment to come up to the microphone, state your name. These comments are going into the CEQA process. This is not really a comment to the board. There is no action of the board tonight except to just have our consultant receive the comment. So is there anybody here in the public that would like to provide a comment? Thank you, Becky Steinbruner, Resident of Aptos. I found out about this in an article, a very good article written by Jessica York at the Santa Cruz Sentinel. I looked on your website for information and saw nothing. I looked again on the website and saw nothing. Now, maybe it's there if I go digging somewhere, but it's not on the very first page that comes up when someone does a search for SoCal Creek Water District.org. It's not there. It's not in your what's on tap. So at least not the copy that I picked up today to your district office. So I think that there has been insufficient noticing of this process and I would like to ask that the comment period be extended 30 days and that having a sign at the site is really quite invisible because it's in the trees at a parking lot that you wouldn't see unless you go to the church or unless you're a student that parks there. But for the general public, it would not be seen. So I think that there needs to be better noticing and the comment period needs to be extended 30 days to allow for better public review. I did get a copy of the report here with your district packet and I do have some comments. I want to make sure that the 14 inch pipe that would be part of the well be capped in the document. It looks like only the four inch pipes adjacent would be capped and I'm concerned with in essence a portal 1,000 feet deep into the drinking water supply could be open to contamination and possible sabotage. I want to know the location of the temporary. Am I only limited to three minutes here? All right, I'd like to know the location of the 22,000 gallon tank. I'd like to know if there's going to be a pump to pressurize the water at 500 gallon GPM. I'd like to know what private wells near the estates and new Brighton wells that will be the monitoring will have if those have been considered. And if those owners, if they are there are being notified, I assume there will be some sort of a tracer chemical and put in this water to check for water flow. And I want to know who's going to pay for the 6,480,000 gallons of water that's going to be used for this. Will that be on the backs of the ratepayers? And I wanna know how many oak trees are gonna be removed. I see that one of the mitigations is regarding bio and removal trees, but it's not specified how many trees in their location and exactly what would be done with those trees. I will try to submit written comment later. Thank you for my very limited time here. You can submit anything in writing to anyone else? Okay, thank you. Close the public input. One thing I'd like to say is that this has been mentioned as something for pure water, but I would imagine if you were doing the city's proposed or thought about aquifer storage and retrieval that this will could be used for that too. I would assume it's a proper environmental review and that sort of thing was conducted. Okay, so we move on, 6.5, approved scope of work for professional hydrology. So this item is a contract amendment for hydrometrics which is known as Montgomery. As mentioned in the staff memo, we currently have several contracts with some consultants who are supporting the evaluation and feasibility that is underway for the Pure Water Soquel Project. The tasks related to general hydrology were still being identified at that time when we were identifying those scopes. So today what is before you and item 6.5 are the tasks that we have associated with needing and requesting some professional services from Montgomery. Those specifically include five main topics or tasks that are outlined in the scope which include the grant support. Cameron and his team have been helping quite a bit as we go forward with applying for the Prop 1 implementation grant. And heavily at this point we've been working on the Prop 1 planning grant activities which has actually I feel increased in terms of some support. A lot of the questions that are being asked of us to for them to better understand the characteristics are coming from Cameron and his team. Also we've asked that they continue to help support us as we go forward with the environmental review process. Again with the close of the public comment in August our team is now going to begin reviewing the comments and helping ESA prepare the final EIR. The third item is the regulatory and permitting support as part of the Prop 1 planning grant activities. They have identified a technical advisory committee and we've asked that Cameron and as a representative from Montgomery sit on that. Number four is the phase two groundwater modeling. There were some modifications to the model that were done for the MGA that we've now included those efforts to be redone so that it could be a part of our final EIR. And then of course the fifth one is general support and advisement. As we are going forward with this project we are seeing that we may need some time to have Montgomery assist us on other tasks not yet to be a defined. And so we've asked that we have a little bit of extra funds that we would possibly need and of course it would be a not to exceed amount and if needed. A one thing to note with the Montgomery task items is that all of their efforts that they are doing are in support of the Prop 1 planning grant activity so 50% of it is coming as a grant reimbursement. Any questions? Any public comment on this item? Thank you. Becky Steinbruner, resident of Aptos. I just want to point out again that your district is spending an additional almost $100,000 here for a project that you still say you haven't exactly chosen to do. So I want to point out the disingenuous attitude that the district has regarding public and that you are very much committed to doing this project. I would like to see an equal amount of dollar and zeal toward a stormwater and hopefully with the new golf course owners, they will be agreeable to doing that. And to the water transfers, I was at the Santa Cruz City Water Advisory Commission meeting last night and it looks like it's on track. I'm hoping you will keep that up and that you will accept the water come November 1st. The reservoir is at a very good level and it looks like that could go and I hope that you accept that water. Thank you. I would rather see that than this, really. I'll pull it back to the board. I guess I just, you know, I think saying that it's not putting money into an environmental impact statement in support of that environmental work. That is very valid use of funds to see that it's a, which is the most environmentally superior alternative. So that's all. Okay. I'll make the motion that we authorized the board president to carry on with this. All second. We have a motion to second. All in favor? Aye. That's unanimous. Okay, that's, we have no written communications and the next item is a closed session. So I wish to thank everyone who came.


This systematic review found that while there have been studies on the role of platelet-rich plasma, PRP, in bone grafts, teeth osteosynthesis, and wound healing, there is limited peer-reviewed evidence on its safety and efficacy in treating hair loss. The available evidence has shown low quality and controversial results about PRP's effectiveness in treating non-psychotritional alopecia, including androgenetic alopecia and alopecia areata. Further randomized controlled studies with larger sample sizes and standard protocols are needed to investigate the efficacy and safety of PRP in treating hair loss. This article was authored by Azin Ayatollafi, and Hoseini, Jaila Ghulami, and others.


Hello and welcome to the session in which we would look at the licensing and disciplinary system that applies to CPAs. This topic is covered on the CPA exam and there are four parties that we need to be concerned about that can overseas the licensing and disciplinary actions towards CPAs. One is the State Board of Accountancies. In my opinion, the most important, the American Institute of Certified Public Accounting, the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the IRS. Most likely if you are looking at this recording, it means you are studying for your CPA exam. If that's the case, please check out my website, farhatlectures.com. I don't replace your CPA review course. I don't replace your backer, Roger, Gleam or Wiley. I can be an alternative. I'll explain the material differently, no better nor less, no less, differently and slower and more in depth than your CPA review course. Therefore, I can add to your understanding. Therefore, I can add to your points on the CPA exam. Understanding the material is the key to pass. Here's your risk. One month of subscription to try. If you like it, you keep it. If not, you cancel. You lost one month if you don't like it. Your potential gain is passed in the exam. Are you willing to risk one month of subscription? That's my question to you. If not for anything, check out my website to find out how well or not well your university is doing on the CPA exam. I do have those results. Please check out my website for additional accounting, tax, finance and audit courses. Connect with me on LinkedIn and you can review my LinkedIn recommendation where people actually use my material to pass the exam. Connect with me on YouTube, on Instagram and Facebook as well. So starting with the State Board of Accountancy. The first thing you need to know is a governmental agency. Governmental agency in contrast to a private agency, to a private organization. Now here's what you need to know and this is important. The State Board of Accountancy is the only party that can grant you the license. And most likely, if you're studying for the exam, you must be registered with one of them. Since that's the only party that can give you the license, it's the only party that can suspend or revoke your license. So that's extremely important. Now they cannot do it arbitrarily. They will do it through some sort of an administrative process, board hearing. We'll talk about that shortly, but I want you to understand this important concept here. So they also set the requirements for licensor. For example, your education, your experience, so on and so forth. Now it varies from state to state, although the exam is uniform. It's the same across, not the US, it's across the world. The exam is administered by the AICP. It's the same. But the requirement to become a CPA is a little bit different. One is to pass the exam. Obviously you cannot be a CPA. Most likely you are studying to pass the exam as you are listening to me right now. Now educational requirements, experience, residency, CPE, continuous professional education to remain licensed and peer review if you have your own firm. Okay. Now again, those requirements, you're not being tested on them on the exam day, but you need to know that those are the requirements and they vary. They're very similar, but they vary from state to state. Now you have to understand we have state board of accountancies and we have something else called state CPA societies. They're kind of a little bit confusing because they start with the word state. State CPA societies are voluntary private entities that can suspend or expel its members from the society itself. That's it. It's a private society. If you don't want to join the your state society, you don't have to. I strongly suggest you do, even though you are still a student or not a CPA yet. They have membership for non CPAs. Why would you do so? Networking. Networking. And this is one of the meetings that I, you know, this has happened to take this picture. This is me in case you don't know who I am.  And this is how you grow your career and expand your network and expand your mind. Make sure you attend, you know, attend CPAs. If you have the option to go online or in class, go in class because you have the chance to meet people. And this is what those state CPA societies for part of it is continuous professional education.  They cannot revoke your license. They cannot revoke your license. They can make recommendation to the State Board of Accountancy to revoke your license, but they cannot do it themselves because they did not give it to you. Okay, so keep that in mind. The only party that can take your license is the only party that gave you the license in the first place. Now, disciplinary action by the State Board of Accountancies can go under three broad categories. So they can come after you for negligence, fraud, or dishonesty in performing your accounting duties. They can come after you for criminal conviction, for example, committing a felony, failure to file a tax return, or committing some sort of a crime relating to the practice. They could also go after you for misconduct outside the scope of accounting that could impact your accounting work. So this is a little bit on the edge, but they can do that as well. Now, they cannot just take away your license. There is a due process. So the accountant is entitled to a due process of law. I mean, think about it. You studied at least two years for your CPA. You went to school for four years. You work hard to get your experience.  They cannot just take away that license from you.  But what I'm trying to say is there is a due process. So first they may investigate, not they may. They will investigate and they will conduct a hearing to see exactly what happened. Now, all what they have to show is more likely than not that you committed that misconduct. They don't have to go beyond reasonable doubt, like in a criminal case. They just have more likely than not. And if you are fine guilty, they may impose some penalty on you. And the worst one is if they suspend or if they revocate your license, they take away your license or they suspend it. They could ask you to pay a fee. They could reprimand you or censor you. They could put you on probation or they could ask you to take additional CPEs. They're all serious, but this is the most serious.  Remember, be ethical because you could always get a job. If somebody asking you to do something illegal or an ethical, don't do it. Don't do it. You could always find a job.  Now, we're done with the State Board of Accountancies. Let's move to the second party, the AICPA, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant. It's a voluntary, private entity. Voluntary means whether you want to join or not. It's up to you and it's private. It's not government. It's like the national state society.  Why? Networking. You expand your network. This is why you do so. And you'll get discounts all the time. They'll send me all sorts of discount. The AICPA, they have no authority over non-members directly. So if you're not a member, they have no authority over you. However, most state, they adopted the AICPA ethics rules. So you are affected by them, although you may not be a member of the AICPA. You could be also a member of the, for example, I'm a member of the PI CPA. I'm also a member of the AI CPA. So look for your state and join the national. Those are both societies, private societies. They have a professional ethics division that investigate any ethics violation by any member and impose sanction in less serious cases like, you know, CPE courses as a remedial measure. Just, they'll ask you to take more courses, usually from them.  So notice everything that they do is at the end of the day, you would lose your membership with them. They cannot take away your license. They can't because they never gave it to you in the first place. Okay. They administer the AICPA exam. They write the questions, but they don't give you the license. It's the state that gives you the license. Okay. It may also take disciplinary action like remedial or corrective actions as it deems appropriate. Now the joint trial board, basically we need to talk a little bit more about this. What they do, they publish a CPA letter, public, publishes information about suspension and expulsion. And I still remember when I was a college student, when I was at Bloomsburg University, my favorite professor, Professor Mike Shapiro, and if you went to Bloomsburg, I'm sure you heard of him because you cannot graduate from Bloomsburg without meeting Mike Shapiro. He's a great guy. He's my basically I consider him my mentor. So he would always bring that CPA letter and especially he would look for names that he knew, and he will, you know, read us their story and we would all laugh in class, but it was a good lesson. You know, and I always remember he would always say, be ethical.  So you don't want your name on this letter or any obituary, right? Those two places you don't want your name on in there. Okay, so a decision of a trial board panel may be appealed if you don't like the decision to a full trial board, but once that's done, you're done. That's the final decision, like the Supreme Court of the accountant ward, right? All right. So upon the member exhaustion of the legal appeals, okay, once you're done with this automatic expulsion without a hearing result. Notice when a member has been convicted of what has received an adverse judgment for if you committed a felony, they could let you go. You don't have to have a hearing willful failing willful failing to file a tax return or filing a fraudulent tax return or aiding in the preparation of a tax return. Okay, expulsion from the AI CPA or state societies does not bar the individual from practicing public accounting. So if they kick you out, it doesn't mean you lost your license. You can kick you out. They don't want you. They don't want to associate with you. That's fine. However, if you lose your license, you are automatically out. If you lose your CPA license, then you're automatically out. But if they kick you out of those societies, you don't lose your license unless the state, remember, the state will take away your license. There's something called the Joint Ethics Enforcement Program. The joint means it's two groups. Well, the AI CPA is one of them and the state board, the state societies. So they will conduct one investigation. It's an agreement between the two parties, the AI CPA and the state society that permit referral of an ethics complaint, either to the AI CPA or the state society. Usually, the AI CPA would handle matters that involving more than one state, okay, because it's a national level. They can also promote cooperation between the ethics committees of the AI CPA and that of the state societies. As I told you, most state societies, they follow the ethics committees rules of the AI CPA anyway. Again, when they expel you, they don't have to have a hearing. There is no due process if they told you to leave our organization. It's basically they can kick you out of the club. They can suspend your membership. So it's not the end of the war. You don't want that, but it's not like losing your license. Okay, let's talk about the IRS. The IRS can they also prohibit you from practicing before them. And that makes sense. They don't want you to practice in front of the IRS. If you are incompetent, you don't have a good reputation. You don't comply with tax rules and regulation. They simply don't want you. Now, bear in mind the IRS, they can have criminal penalties, not crime, criminal penalties. They can impose criminal penalties for fraud on you. And this means you could go to jail. Here, the burden of proof is on them, and it has to be beyond reasonable doubt. This is a criminal case. They can also obviously impose civil penalties. One of the penalties is they will prohibit you from practicing before them.  And most importantly, what they like the most is impose fines. They want money. That's that's what they can do. The SEC. The SEC may sound very powerful. It's a powerful organization. It's a federal government organization, but they can only impose civil penalties. They cannot impose criminal penalties on you. They can turn the evidence to the FBI to the US Attorney or to some other authority, but they cannot do it themselves. They may also seek an injunction from court to prohibit you if you are violating the securities laws, that they can do. They may conduct also what's called quasi-judicial proceeding. And those quasi-judicial proceeding, they're not basically official court, but they can suspend you or they can take your license and practicing in front before the SEC, including the right to sign any document filed by the SEC registered. And that's a big problem. Why is it a problem? It means you cannot sign the audit report for publicly traded company. And for some firm, that's a huge revenue. It could be millions and millions of dollars.  It's when they suspend you from practicing in front of the SEC. Also, they could suspend you if you don't have the qualification to represent others and you are trying to do so. You lack character or integrity or engage in ethical or unprofessional conduct, willfully violated or added in the violation of the federal securities law. Basically, you violated their laws. They can kick you out. Think of it this way. More about the SEC, they could also suspension by the SEC also may result from conviction of a felony or a misdemeanor, including moral turpitude. So they can just suspend you because of that. Okay? Revocation or suspension of a license to practice. If you lost your state license, they can get you out as well. In violation of any federal securities, we talked about this. Now, bear in mind, those proceeding, they don't only go after the individual, they may go after the firm itself. By doing so, that firm can no longer practice can in front of them, which they might lose clients that file report with the SEC. And that is a big deal. You're losing a lot of money there. Okay? So the SEC may order a violator to account for and surrender any profit from the wrongdoing and issue cease and desist order for violation. And obviously, your favorite thing is to impose money just to put fines on you. At the end of this recording, I'm going to remind you if you're a CPA candidate, please check out my website, farhatlectures.com. I explained the material differently than your CPA review course. I don't replace them. I don't intend to do so. I can do so. I would love to do so, but I can't, but I can be a useful addition to you. Your CPA is important. You know, make an investment. Get that extra help from my website so you could move on, focus on your career. And most importantly, stay ethical. If you're going to remember anything from this recording, stay ethical. Oh, yes. And one more thing. Join those societies.  It's the best thing you can do. Network, network, network. Good luck, study hard, and stay safe until we get the vaccine in our hand.


I'm a Christian, but I don't condemn you. And I'm sorry for every time a Christian appointed themselves judge and jury over you. The truth is, I'm no different than you. I've struggled with the exact same things. I've committed the exact same sins. I've had hatred in my heart. I've given in to lust. I've lied. You and I are not much different. At one point, we both stood guilty before God because of our sin. But what you have yet to see is that that judge who stood on high ready to execute justice stepped down into the muck and the mire of our world to subject himself to torture, accusation, and death, that in his atoning death, we might find eternal life for all those who would receive him. He gave the right to become children of God. You and I aren't much different. We're both beggars looking for food, but God has shown me the bread of life. And I can't wait to share it with you. Follow for more Christ centered content.