I have 530 so we begin with the special order of the day which is Holly administering the oath of office to our newly reelected reelected or elected members of the board. I was just going to make a suggestion and that is like I thought about this after everything had gone out is it kind of defeats the purpose of having it when there's no one you're watching it and I was wondering about that maybe we should do this the first part right after we reconvene instead what is that a possibility Gina can we do that but everybody's done it at the start of the meeting because I mean it doesn't really make a big difference this year but traditionally we've done it at the start of the meeting because if anybody was turning over we wouldn't be able to you know have a closed session then do the oath of office and so for consistency we thought we would just do it the same way to avoid confusion but I don't have a legal objection under these particular circumstances to doing it at the start of the meeting if if that's I leave it to my new members to decide um is anybody from the public going to care only if your mother is there and wants to see you on the screen she's not attending all right then why don't we just go ahead and do it with the way we want to do it yeah okay so um repeat after me I state your name do solemnly swear or affirm hi Bob folks I do solemnly swear or small I do solemnly swear in the firm gonna be great you should do this one at a time what do you think I solemnly swear to burn now that I will support and defend that I will support and defend try to get around the constitution of the United States the constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of California and the constitution of the state of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California and the Constitution of the State of California. I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. I have one question since Jeff was on mute the entire time. Does that matter? Well, he's going to take the oath again when we get together. So yeah. And you know, this looks very much like the old I took in the army. So I think it's nice. Okay. Well, with that formality finished, then I would like to convene this meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for December 15, 2022. Holly, would you take the roll please? President Mayhood? Here. Vice President Ackman? Here. Director Fultz? Here. Director Hill? Here. Director Smalley? Here. There he is. You moved. Are there any additions and deletions to the closed session agenda? Right. Yes, General Hood. I would like to remove item 5B of Public Employee Annual Performance Evaluation for District Council. We have a lengthy closed session agenda tonight and I would like to move this item to a January 2023 meeting. Okay. If there's any objections. I agreed with this. As soon as I saw both the closed session and the regular session, we were going to be here until 10 o'clock and I'm getting too old for that. So I think that's a good idea. All right. This is the point in the meeting where we have oral communications from members of the public regarding items in closed session. I don't see any attendees out there. So I guess we will not have any public communications. So with that, we will adjourn to closed session. Okay. Are you ready? Yes. Is everybody's ready? We will go ahead and reconvene this meeting. Holly, would you take the roll please? President Mayford? Here. Vice President Ackerman? Here. Director Falls? Here. Director Hill? Here. Director Smalley? Here. Okay. There is nothing to report. No actions were taken in the closed session. The board did not complete the closed session agenda. So we'll reconvene after this open session to complete the closed session agenda. It will not reconvene again afterwards for another open session because there will be no actions to report. There will only be discussions in the closed session to follow this one. Are there any additions or deletions to the agenda? Staff has none, Chair. Okay. This is the time for oral communications from members of the public who would like to comment on issues within the purview of the district but that are not on tonight's agenda. Would anybody like to comment? See, we have four attendees, but nobody has raised their hand. So I will. Oh. Okay. Jamie, you have your hand up. I do. I didn't know where it was appropriate for me to just let everyone know that I do unfortunately have to leave a little early tonight. So I would be departing at 7.30. But I actually will probably be able to come back for the closed session. So I don't know, Gina, if that's an issue for me or not, if I have to step out of the meeting for a little while and then come back. That's permissible.  I don't really think it's a critical issue. I think we can forward that. I'm just going to rule that stepping out for a short meeting does not constitute an absence. She's been, she'll be here by the ultimate and that's good enough. All right. So on to the president's report. I just want to report that yesterday the Santa Margarita groundwater agency submitted a $2.6 million grant proposal to the department of water resources for implementing projects in the groundwater sustainability plan. And this is the one the board heard about at its last meeting. It includes about 300,000 to advance conjunctive use and our access to our Loch Lomond allocation as well as in addition funding for ongoing monitoring activities of groundwater wells, streamwater and other things that were sort of mandated and committed by the Sustainable Ground Water Act to do. I want to thank Carly for her efforts in being our representative on developing this. And we're keeping our fingers crossed when the awards are announced in June that we'll get a favorable response. I'd also like to take a moment of personal privilege here because this will be the last president report that I have of this term. And, and we'll be turning over to a new president. And so I just want to say that for the last two years, I've been honored to preside over these board meetings. And I would like to thank Rick and Gina and Holly, who I think initially had to make some adjustments because maybe I was a little bit more hands-on and assertive than some of the previous chairs were. And the rest of the staff too. I can see Carly smiling out there. And I appreciate how you all did it so very graciously. And I'm especially indebted to Gina because my first few months as I kind of got up to speed and figured out how things worked. We're pretty rocky and she saw me through it. And so I really appreciate that. I think that over these two years we've seen an increasing professionalism in the level of the board. And I guess I especially want to comment now since basically the gangs all back together, people were elected or re-elected. And to express my optimism for the upcoming term, because I think that, you know, especially over the last number of months, we've really, I think have worked really well together. We often disagree about things. We don't agree on everything, but I think there's a level of mutual respect that allows us to get work done and get it done expeditiously. So I just want to express that optimism and to thank the rest of the board for making these last little bits of me being president very enjoyable in that regard. So with that, we will go on to there is no unfinished business. And under new business, it is my last duty as president to entertain nominations for president and vice president. And once we elect them, we will, I will basically turn over the virtual gavel to the new president. Jamie, do you have your hand up? I do. I wanted to make a nomination. Okay, go ahead. I have really enjoyed being vice chair. And I, you know, I'm thrilled to, that we're going to be continuing as a group that I think has really worked well together, as Gail said, to be, you know, to be civil, to find solutions and be a more professional board than perhaps the Water District had in the past. I, as vice chair, I don't know if I would have received any nominations for chair, but if I would have, I probably would have had to really politely decline because I'm just going to have a really busy year in front of me professionally. And so I wanted to make a nomination for Mark Smalley because I think that he would be an excellent board chair. I think he has been incredibly pivotal in some really important conversations with our community. And I think that as board chair, he can continue that work. So that's my nomination for chair. Okay. Is there a second? I second that. Okay. We have a nomination and a second. So we can now have any discussion by members of the board. Would anybody like to discuss this? Bob? No, thank you. Okay. Mark. No, thank you. Okay. Well, you, it might be worthwhile to say that you were, you will, if nominated, you're willing to do it. Yes, I'm willing to fill this role. Thank you. Thank you. If nominated, I shall not run. If elected, I shall not serve. Thank you. Right. I got the quote wrong. Thank you, Bob, for fixing that. Okay. Then I think Mark would do a great, great job. So I, but like, now I would like to go out to members of the public. Are there any members of the public that would like to comment on this? Elena. Okay. You're, you're, you're okay. I just, I just wanted to say that I completely agree with this and working with Mark Smalley. So we've been working with hogs, we've worked with the Committee and the Council and the entire committee of the past two years on the engineering and environmental committee has been an amazing experience. And I think he's a wonderful leader. And I would really like to see him in this role. Thank you for that nice. Of confidence. Elena. Any other comments from the member of the public? Okay. President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smolley. Yes. Okay. It's unanimous. All right. Next we elect a vice president and I don't know how far this tradition goes back but in general, at least when I've watched it for the last about four years, it was, the president was sort of allowed to express a preference for who they might want to be vice president. And so I would like to give Mark that opportunity. Okay. I've had contact with all of the board members over the last, what, eight months now that Mr. Hill is our most recent board member and I believe that Jeff thinks a lot like I do and I would like to nominate Jeff Hill for vice president. I'll second that. And I will accept the nomination. All right. Any other comments by members of the board? How about members of the public? Sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Wouldn't Mark be conducting this? Sorry. No, no, I turn it over after this is done. Is it? Okay. Yeah. Members of the public, I don't see any hands up. So, Polly, could you go ahead and take a roll call though, please? President May. Aye. Vice president Ackman. Yes. Director Fultz. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Okay. And with that, I happily turn over the virtual gavel to you, Mark. Okay. It's gonna be a rocky one tonight then since this is new to me. Let's see. Excuse me, Chair Smalley. I will be a little more hands-on in this meeting than I might typically and I hope you'll excuse it. I'm welcoming that assistance, Gina. And one other thing. I prefer Mark. Leave it at that. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, the next item on the agenda is the annual comprehensive financial report. And I'll turn that over to Rick. Are you leading that? Just kidding. I will be asking the finance manager to present the memo to the board. And I do believe we have representatives from our audit service here tonight as well. So with that, Kendra. Yes. Okay. I mean, everyone, district staff with the assistance of our auditors prepared an annual comprehensive financial report for fiscal year 2122 in accordance with guidelines established by the government finance officers association and generally accepted accounting standards and principles. Tonight, we have Jonathan Avedesco with Fedoc and Brown, our audit firm to present the financial statements for fiscal year 2021 and 2022. It is recommended that the board of directors review this memo, receive the presentation from the firm, Fedoc and Brown and approve the SLDWD financial statements for fiscal year 2021, 2022. And with that, I will hand it over to Jonathan for his presentation. Yeah, Kendra, thanks for that nice introduction. So with further ado, on behalf of our firm, I'm here to present tonight the financial statements or audited statements for fiscal year 22 for the district. I will share my screen. Can you all see my screen? Yes. Perfect. Okay, so the firm issued an unmodified or clean opinion where the financial statements of the district is in compliance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. Or gap. So the next two slides will show the financial highlights of the district. The first that is shown on the screen is your statements of net position or your balance sheet. So I just wanted to point it out that your total net position increased by $2.8 million as a result of your ongoing operations. Okay, so this next slide is your income statement or the statement of revenues, expenses or changes in your net position. So this slide shows you that the total revenues of the district decreased by $2 million, as shown in the screen, which is primarily due to your capital grants decreasing by $2.6 million and your, which was offset by your total operating revenues increasing by $770,000. Okay, so moving along. So do you have any questions so far with the report? Jonathan, if you'll go through the entire report and then we can come back to questions on any of the specific pages after you conclude. Yeah, thank you President Somali. Or Mark, sorry. Thank you. So this slide will show your total expenses for the year where there was a decrease in your total expenses of $840,000, which can be attributed to your salaries and benefits, decreasing by about $730,000 and your professional services decreasing by $240,000. Also on your board packet, I believe there's a management report that was issued to the board and the management report only concludes that we don't have any difficulties in performing our audit test work. We don't have any disagreements with management and we did not consult with other outside CPAs or independent accountants. Also when we perform our audit test work, we did not find any material weakness or any significant deficiencies in your controls. So I just wanna commend the district's team from Rick, I'm down the line to all the staff. You all did a great job. Your controls are operating as intended. So, okay. So in summary, the district received an unmodified or clean opinion. Your net position, it increased by $2.8 million and your total revenues, it decreased by $2 million and your total expense decreased by $840,000. And that concludes my presentation for tonight. Any questions that the board may have, I'll be happy to answer those. Okay, let's go through questions. Jeff. One question, if you could go back one slide. One slide. There's a lot of numbers here and it's hard to deal with large numbers of numbers in a presentation like this, but where you have the net position increasing by $2,828,000 as a result of ongoing operations and then the revenues decreasing largely because of a decrease in capital contribution, that basically appears to be a swing of about $4 million, am I understanding that correctly? Not necessarily because this net position is your ending net position. Okay, so that's all in the net position then. Yes, I agree. Okay. That's it, Jeff. That's it at this point. Okay. There's a lot of numbers here and digging through them one by one is gonna be difficult. Okay. Bob? Question or deal? Yeah, thanks. Yeah, just a few things. I mean, Jeff, you know, the net position, if you're used to dealing as I am with regular finances, it's a very strange concept. I tend to focus more on operating margins and non-operating margins and total margins and that's not really part of this report. And so just, you know, quick calculation because of the increase in revenues and the decrease, significant decrease in operating expenses, which is really nice to see. Our operating margin looks to be close to 3.6 million, non-operating margin, about a half million. So together, that's the 4 million in total margin, which would be pretty significant. You know, in 2017, the rate increase was done in such a way to try to target 3 million in operating margin that could be applied to capital expenses based on the estimates that were in place at that time that the district needed to spend about $3 million in capital. The state, and that's kind of how those numbers came about. So, I mean, I'd like to see operating margin in these, but I know it's not really part of their remit. Maybe in the future, it could be part of the supplemental information, but you know, it is what it is. The other thing about the documents, which I think are very clear and do present, you know, good information as far as it goes is it doesn't delve deeply into all of the unfunded liabilities that we have, some of which are off books, particularly our tanks, tank maintenance, and that sort of thing, which are in the millions of dollars, potentially upwards of 10 million if you include tank replacements. This is a significant amount of money that somehow we need to start capturing in the financial statements that we have so that we're dealing with some of this off balance sheet type thing. I did have a couple of questions. Let me just pull up the document. Right, it gets to the right place. If we could go to note eight on the defined pension, defined benefit pension plan. I just had a comment there that it looked like our pension liability went down significantly. I'm assuming after looking at CalPERS website that that was based on the fact that the stock market did really well in 2020 and 2021 up to the point of June for both of those years. Is that a fair statement? Yes, Director Fox, that's a fair statement. Actually with CalPERS their measurement date is, they're using the June 30th, 2021 numbers. Yeah. So last year, the entire CalPERS pool, they earned four billion in investment income. Yeah, no, in 2020 and 2021 were really good. Yes. 2022, on the other hand, there was a negative year as it was, I think for everybody, certainly for me. And the funded status went from what I think to almost ever of 82% down to 71%. So I'm expecting that these numbers may creep back up, but it would certainly be nice while it is at this level to see if we can whack away at that some more because I really don't like paying their loan sharking interest fees on the outstanding liability that we have. A question I had about on page, it's still in note eight, but it's the last part of note eight. I wasn't sure I understood the difference in the two tables on page. It's got 85, 53 and 79 of 124, so take your choice. So which page is it, page 53? Yeah, it'd be 53, that's a good number. Ah, okay, so yeah. There's two tables here that talk about the district's pension liability and they have, of course, vastly different numbers. Okay, so if you're looking at page 53, let me show you that page. Hold on, I will show you that page. I'm assuming it's just a difference in time. So is this the page that you were looking at? Yes. Okay, so this is an acquired disclosure by Gatsby 68 where he wanted to show the readers, for example, that what will happen if the current discount rate of 7.15%, is brought down by minus 1%. So it just signifies that your net pension liability will increase by the 3.9 million dollars. However, if the discount rate will jump to a plus 1%, it will be a net pension asset. I understand, I guess if we could get 8% every year, that would be really great. I'm not necessarily expecting that. Okay, so basically this is a sensitivity analysis on the current pension liability, looking at what happens in either direction if things get better or worse. Yes, okay. And I like your analysis, Director Falls. Thank you for bringing this up because you are the first one, I think, from all the presentations I have that brought this page up. Thank you. Oh, well, okay, I looked for unfunded liabilities. So just my financial nature. Okay, let me go back to, thank you. Let me go back to the next one. Okay, we got that. This one just a comment for the board and the community. It's in the supplemental information, I did wanna point out that between 2021 and 2022, the water sales went down substantially, I think as we all know, 10% down. So what that means is that our community, unfortunately, we're almost off the page in terms of the peak usage. But if you go back to 2013 and 2014, particularly 2014, when we used almost, when we sold almost 2,000 acre feet, we're down under, right around 1,400. You know, that's a significant, that's more than 25% drop. And I think that reflects the fact that our community, when asked to conserve water, you know, does a really good job. I think you can also see from the numbers that when it goes down, it kind of only creeps back up a little bit. So depending on how we're doing our forecasting going forward, I'm not sure that we can necessarily guarantee that we're gonna pop back up into the 1,600s, you know, right away, it may take a while to get there. And so I think that has substantial implications for rates historically over the last five years that have been more volumetric based rather than fixed charge based. And basically in terms of what has to be charged, if you wanna continue to maintain the operating margins necessary to address the district's capital infrastructure along with of course operating expenses. So congratulations to the community, good job in saving money or saving water. But it also does have a financial impact to the owners of the district as well and their role as well. And Director Faltz, I just wanna comment about the operating margin. I think in maybe for next year, we can consider adding a table or historical table in the stats section. Yeah, that would be really great. Yeah, we will do that, you know? Okay. Well, I mean, it's not just because I'm asking for it, it would only be if the board, you know, as a whole thinks it has any value. Yeah. Yeah, so please let me know so that we know what direction to take for the future effort. Great. Well, thank you for putting this together. Before we move on, I wanted to conclude on that offer to include that additional table on the operating expenses. I think I saw Jeff's thumb up on that. Am I correct, Jeff? I agree with Bob on that. We definitely need to have operating margins looked at. Okay, and I would like to see that in there also, so. Great, and if we could include non-operating margins as well, that would be fabulous. Yes, Mark, Jeff, Bob, we will definitely do that, so. Okay, thank you. Okay. Other director's comments, Jamie? No, thank you. I will give it to our financial reform board. Okay. Gail? No, I don't think I have anything to add. Okay. If I may just, were you about to go out to the public? Not quite yet, Gina. I have a question and then I wanted to at least point out the motion that's in front of us. Before we go out to the public. Got it, thank you. If I may interject just before you go out to the public, I appreciate it. Okay, all right, sure. Jonathan, on page, I believe it's six of your, no, it's the financial highlights in your section. My presentation? On your presentation, yes. Where we see the capital contributions dropping by an order of magnitude from 2021 to 2022, being a little more than $3 million in, yes, the capital grants. A little more than $3 million in 2021 and just under $400,000 in 2022. What's the significant grant that's part of this? This is related to the FEMA grant that was received by the district related to the fire. Okay, all right. So that's the FEMA is the reimbursable amounts that we're getting on projects where we've already incurred that? Is that? Yes, I believe this revenue was already incurred by the district. Mark, I can jump in here. Please, Kendra. Back last fiscal year for fiscal year 21, those are the expenses that we incurred that we intend to submit to FEMA for reimbursement. So we had to book it on our books as the revenue earned and the offset to that was we created a grant receivable account that's on the balance sheet now. So once we start receiving those funds for the expenses that we've already incurred, it'll just reduce the grant receivable account. And then the 397,000 includes expenses that we incurred for FEMA related projects in the current year, if that helped explain it. Yeah, that explains it for me. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, Kendra, thanks for confirming my assertion a while ago. Thank you. Okay, that's the questions that I have. Before we go out to the public for comments, I do want to put the motion that we have in front of the board so that the public understands what that is in the event that they haven't seen this, that the board review the presentation, receive that and approve of that for the fiscal year 2021-22. Mark, are you, are you making a motion or are you just explaining it to the staff? Yes, yes, I would, yes, I would like to make that motion but not vote on it yet until we go up to the public for comments. I can second that. Okay, thank you, Bob. Okay. Gina, you said that you wanted to comment before we go out to the public. If I may, thank you. I just wanted to, Mark, since you're the new chairman and I know you're going to develop your own sort of style for handling public comments, but just a quick reminder that the best practice consistent with the board policy manual would be to give each member of the public who wants to speak the three minutes unless you decide in advance to make it longer or shorter, let everybody speak once and then close public comments and determine which items, if any, from the public comments you as chairperson want to direct to staff or the consultants for follow up, we're going to rather than engaging in kind of a back and forth during the public comment period would be the typical. Okay, all right. And without having thought of any other plan, yes, that's what we're going to do tonight. So thank you, Gina. The three minutes is something that we've used in the past and we will continue. So comments from the public. I see Cynthia until. Good evening. I just have a quick question. I think it was a page labeled section four that we just looked at that had water produced and water sales for each year. And then another column said water losses. Are those losses due to leaks? What are those losses due to? Cause I understand it must be the difference between water produced and water sold. So if I may ask you Cynthia, so what page are you looking at? It was two or three slides back. I'm not sure Jonathan is the right one day answer. I can answer that question. Thank you, Rick. Please go ahead. I think this is. This is James. James. So the water losses is flushing and leaks throughout the year. That's what those total gallons for water loss is leaks and flushing. Okay. It was 27% I believe on the last year recorded. Could you show that slide? And does that seem unusual? Oh, I'm not really unusual. No, not for us. Right. Not for us. Not for most water districts. It depends on the state of your district. We have all the infrastructure. I have to agree. Okay. Moving on then, Bruce Holloway. We can Bruce. Thank you. Thanks. I really only had one particular question about the. There's a on page 43. There's a note six is talking about a certificate of participation. And I discovered this I guess in the summer. And so when I was in the summer I was referring to the previous financial statement and the same note has been there for three years. It was this third year. Anyway, this description in the very first sentence where it says a rate ranging from 4% to 5% that does not fit the table. And eventually this morning I got a look at the loan document and I would characterize this differently. I wouldn't say four to 5%. I would probably say more like three to 4%. But actually what I would think would be the best would be to say that it started at three and three quarters and it goes down to 3%. So this particular detail about the 4% to 5%, I don't know where that came from, but it does not match the, it does not fit the table that's right there. Can I answer that question? Please, Jonathan, yes. Okay, so yeah, Bruce. So what you're referring to about this note is we have reviewed again the documents this morning, the loan and the rates should be from 3% to 5%. So let me show you that screen, okay? So back to the screen. Mr. Can you see this screen? Yeah. Yes, yes. Well, this is from the trust agreement and it says, you know, so from the lower 3% to 5%. That doesn't go with those, well the table that's in the note that shows the actual number of dollars every year. This doesn't correspond, this doesn't correspond to the schedule of payments. And what I'm particularly interested in is this year and the next five years, I think it would be fair to say that the cost of this loan for the next five years is 3.6%. So I think these descriptions that say four to five or if it was gonna say three to five, that does not give the information that somebody needs to know. And I wanna point out that it's a huge loan. And so even though we're only talking about 1% or something, it's 1% of a $14 million loan and so a lot of money every year. And that's why I'm making an issue of this. I've struggled with it for quite a while since last summer. All I can say is that the description there, the characterization from 4% to 5% that does not fit the schedule of payments. And the schedule of payments appears to say 3.6% for the next five years. So regarding your assertion, I agree with you but for the disclosure of the financial statements, we only base off what is verbatimly stated on the district's documents. So we can just say that based on the debt schedule or based on our calculation or the district's calculation that the rates is decreasing from 5% to 3% or 4.1% to 3%, we cannot just say that because the reason why because accounting standards or auditing standards requires us to make sure that when we put something on the financial statements, it's being corroborated by physical evidence, which is this. And this 3% to 5%, this is the time that where or the rates that were prevailing and when you negotiated or signed for this loan way back in August 1st of 2019 or 2019. So I think what we have here is based on the trust agreement, which is here. So I don't see any. Well, this table here that says 2049 and then there's $6 million at the bottom. That does not fit the schedule of payments that's in the note. The note doesn't say that, I guess I, Bruce, every amortization schedule, normally the interest rate will be higher in the first year and it will go down to the, going down the line. No, I'm sorry, but I have to point out the other loan. There's another loan on there for $15 million. It's called an installment purchase loan from Erika. The description of that one says 2.4%. And I understand perfectly the other loan, the characterization of the other loan is just fine. It matches the table, the schedule of payments. I have no quarrel about the other loan. I'm only, and I've spent a lot of time and we've discussed this and I'm sorry to be taking so much of your time but the note to say 4% to 5% is a mischaracterization of the loan. So I'm gonna stop it here and I think that there's an inaccuracy and I don't know what's else to say. Yeah, Bruce, I think of the other loans, you know? The rates are, let's say for example, for the Felton safe drinking water loan, those are all consistent in working. Jonathan, I think that you've adequately explained it at this point and Bruce, I believe, has made his point on this, that he feels that that is incorrect. I did see, I believe two of the directors looking to comment, Bob. Only that I thought that we could probably take this offline to staff if you wish, that the board wished, otherwise I think we need to move on. I agree and I think we should do that. So, Gail? I was simply gonna say the same thing and that I know that he's had extensive conversations back and forth with Rick Rogers about this exact thing so this isn't a good use of board time. Okay. Other members from the public that wish to comment on this? I see that Cynthia has her hand up but Cynthia, we've already heard from you once. So I'm looking for anybody else. If not, I don't see any other hands up. I'd like to go back to, oh, I'd like to go back to the motion then. Rick? I thought you were wrapping this item up. I just wanted to thank Kendra, this is her first audit and she came straight back from leave and dove into this with the auditors and she did a splendid job moving this hand. I just wanted to thank her. Okay. Bob? I had one comment and one question. The comment was, I just wanted to remind the board and the community that the top line revenue number for operating revenue has the CCU surcharge bundled into it, roughly $1 million. So when looking and that money is not able to be used for anything outside of the CCU recovery. So when looking at the actual revenue number, you need to take a million off. And that actually is relevant to getting to the operating margin because I've used that one million as even though I know technically accounting-wise it's part of the operating margin and it really isn't from the point of view of what we can do with it. So that's something to keep in mind for the future. I didn't want to ask you a question about what accounted for the reduction in operating expenses which seemed to be pretty substantial between 2021 and 2022. I think that either Rick or Kendra are probably the appropriate ones to address the question. Kendra, do you want to go ahead? I do believe it was labor cost. Yeah, I'm sorry. Can Bob, can you repeat your question? Yeah, no worries on the operating expenses which went down substantially from 2021 to 2022. I was wondering if you could characterize what the major items were that accounted for them. The major items with the difference between 21 and 2022 was a decrease in salaries because of our vacant positions and also a decrease in contract professional fees. And what accounted for the decrease in professional fees? What is it that we didn't do or that we did the year before? I'm trying to get a handle on that. I believe last year we had more CZU related expenses compared to this year. I can delve into it more and get back to you on the exact... Just looking broadly, if you think that's what it is, that makes sense to me too. Thank you. Okay. And also, sorry, dear board members. So I was looking at the working trial balance that we have from the district. So the other notable change was there was a CalPERS pension adjustment based on the entire pool. So there was a decrease of about $486,000 in operating expenses because of that. Oh, that was due to not having to pay their loan shark fee for the outstanding balance. That's really great. Yes. So that's the reason why the total net pension liability also decreased. Yeah, right, no, I understand that part. Great, because I think we pay like 7% or something like that. Of course, with inflation, maybe it's not so foam sharking anymore, right? Yeah, but next year we anticipate... Oh yeah, we're gonna get banks. Expensive share. Yeah, big time. Yeah, big time. That's why it'd be great to try to figure out a way to get that number down lower. Okay, great, thanks. Okay. We do have a motion on the table in front of us. Any further comments from board members on that before we go out for, take a vote on that? Seeing none. Holly, would you take a welcome vote? The motion will be... President, sure. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Which is unmuted. Yes. Sorry. Director Ackerman. Yeah. Director Falls. Yes. Director Mayhood. Aye. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Moving on to the next item, the committee appointments for public applicants in 2023. Rick, is anybody from the staff leading this or am I? It's a pretty self-explanatory. Okay. As for a board policy, committee appointments will be reviewed by the full board at a board of directors meeting in December of each calendar year, or as soon as thereafter is practical. Applicants to serve as a public member will be available after just for a couple of years. They will be available at the district office and they were available online. Public members applications will be reviewed by the full board. Each committee member shall be appointed by a simple majority of the board. The district's 2023 standing committees are the admin, two board members and three public members, budget and finance, two board members and three public members, engineering and environmental, two board members and three public members, and then the LADOC liaison, one board liaison and no more than five public members. So in your packet, you do have the applications for each of the committees. We received eight applications from the committees, five are currently serving on committees and three are new applicants. We did not receive any applications for LADOC and we'll address the LADOC committee later at beginning of next year.  Okay, all right, thank you. So for the admin committee, we have Amanda, the Jesus, the Mark Doulson for the budget and finance committee, James Baugh, Monica Martinez and James Moser. And then for the engineering and environmental committee, Alina Lang, Michael Murphy and Kevin O'Connor. I wanted to see if board members have any comments or questions on these? Nina has had her hand up for a while now, Mark. I think maybe she wants to say something. Okay, thank you, Gil. I just wanted a process suggestion for this item, which is that it's typical to let those committee applicants who are present for the meeting to introduce themselves prior to board discussion. Of course, you don't have to do it that way, but that's a common approach. And then when we get to the stage of making a motion to vote, there is a couple of different ways to do it. You could vote committee by committee or you could do the entire slate of candidates, which may be easy enough here, given the number of applicants, but it is important to clarify in the motion how many members there will be on each committee with the appointments. So just for example, if the motion were to appoint all of the public applicants to the Admin Budget and Finance and Engineering Environmental Committee, it would also need to state that that will make the number of the admin committee for the number of budget and finance five and the number of engineering environmental five. Okay, thank you. So I will take your suggestion then to go out to members of the public who have submitted applications to see if they want to say anything about themselves. And I see that we have two. Mark Dolson, would you like to either introduce yourself or provide any information to us? Hi, am I on muted now? You are. Thank you. I'm applying to serve my third consecutive year on the admin committee and I think my application speaks for itself. I don't know that I want to take up any more of the board's time right now. Okay, thank you, Mark. Alina, I see that you're on also. Would you like to offer any comments? I wasn't expecting to speak tonight, but yeah, I'm Alina Lang and I've been serving for the past two years and I would like to continue for a third year on the environmental and engineering committee. I have attended every meeting and I'm committed to this position and I feel that my environmental background will continue to serve this committee well. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So I see a couple of board members, Gail. Yes, I'd like to make a motion. Okay. I would like to move that, well, first let me just preface it by saying that basically the, as it's stated in the memo from staff, we've appointed everybody to their first choice committee, which seems like the logical thing to do and everybody that's applied has been given a position and I've read all of their CVs and they're all well qualified. So I think we're lucky to have them all. So I'm going to formally move that we appoint Amanda DeJesus and Mark Dolson to the admin committee and that the admin committee is constituted by four members, that we appoint James Vaughn, Monica Martinez and Jim Mosher to the budget and finance committee and it's constituted by five members and that we appoint Alina Lang, Michael Murphy and Kevin McConnor to the engineering and environmental committee and that that committee consists of five members. Okay. Before I go out for any other public comments, do we have a second on that motion? Second. Okay, thank you, Bob. Any members of the public with comments on that? I see that you see none. Okay. Mark Lee's hand has gone up and then come down. It might be our mother or mother. Okay. Mr. Lee, do you have comments on this? The appointments that we're making? I support the motion. I think all the candidates are excellent. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mark. Okay. I also want to express my appreciation for the members of the public that are willing to do this. Thank you. And particularly those that have served for several years for us already and are willing to continue to do that. I'm grateful. Bob, did you have another comment on this before we? Yeah, I just wanted to comment since 2018 when we instituted moving from one public member to multiple, we've seen a tremendous increase in the participation, the skill sets, the energy that has been brought to the committees. And I think it's been great. And I really want to thank everybody that's served in the past year and willing to re-up for another year as well as the new committee members. I think it's a great way to get much more public participation in an agency that they're co-owners of. Thank you. So thank you all for doing it. Okay. Jamie? I wanted to add my thanks and also to say that in particular, I think the admin committee is really fortunate even though we are small, we are mighty, Amanda and Mark are great and really dedicated public committee members and are so thoughtful about the issues that we have in front of us. And I just wanted to also thank Mark because he's taken up the recent role of doing some writing about water district issues locally. And I think that that's really just an important thing that he's doing. So I'm excited that they are going to continue on. Okay. Thank you. With that, Holly, would you take a roll-co vote for us that we approve all of these applicants? President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackerman. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Moving on to the next item. The peer review of the cross-country pipeline constructability study. Um, Rick. Josh, will the district engineer will start this off and then I will probably come in with a recommendation. Go ahead, Josh. Okay. And, okay, before we do that, I need to step away from the camera for two minutes and I will be back, but I've heard a lot of this at the engineering and environmental committee meeting. So Josh, please proceed. As you wish. So the peer review of the five mile cross-country pipeline constructability study has been received from heroin casunage. The peer review was intended to go through the rather lengthy constructability study with an eye towards ground-truthing, essentially. The idea being that with any large professional study more eyes are better. And in this case, we were privileged to have access to the eyes and brains of John Kasunich and Mark Fox, who really are just the creme de la creme for people who know about the geological conditions in the Santa Cruz Mountains and specifically on Venlo and Mountain. As a point of reference, John Kasunich was the geotechnical engineer who did the geotechnical investigation for the original construction of the raw water pipelines. So he is the pro from Dover, as they say. Currently, the peer review has been presented to the engineering committee and discussed there. In that discussion, one specific question came up that I would like to address sort of preemptively here, which is the question of should Frager and Loretta, who prepared the original constructability study, have done more in terms of survey? And the thing I would say is that, as we discussed in the engineering committee, Frager and Loretta performed survey appropriate to the scope which we asked them to perform. The additional work that is needed was described in the constructability study by Frager and Loretta who said, the next step needs to be, we have to learn more about the exact conditions, moving from constructability or can we do this into design or should we do this? With that, I have prepared the memo, which is in the board packet, along with presenting the peer review. And I'm asking that the board of directors review and accept the peer review and instruct staff to proceed with the next steps outlined in the memo. With that, I will take questions. Okay, thanks Josh. As the chair of the engineering and environmental committee, I do wanna reflect on the committee discussed this report at some length for over an hour earlier this week. And we agreed that this peer review should be forwarded to the board for discussion here at this meeting. There was some discussion about the next steps that are listed in here and on whether we should be proceeding on all of those now. But I don't wanna go into that at this point just that we did not concur on all of the recommendations that were listed there. So with that, I'd like to open it up to questions, comments from the board. Bob, as the other member of the E&E committee, I'd like to get your thoughts first. Appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I'm more of a recovering engineer than an engineer. So I guess on reflection after the discussion, I kind of viewed this, I guess, not so much as a formal peer review, but a peer review with some augmentation, right? It seemed to me that the biggest difference between what F&L focused on and HKA had to do with the level of detail on the survey and the more quantitative analysis of the slopes that are there. I think there was one other major difference, but it slipped my mind right now what that was. But by and large, it seemed like outside of that, the conclusion of HKA was similar to that of F&L that there's work to be done, but definitely feasible to proceed though perhaps with more consulting work, more engineering work upfront, because the regulatory environment and environmental requirements have certainly changed from when the pipeline was originally constructed. With respect to the recommendations, again, on reflection from other meeting earlier this week, I really want us to think about focusing, moving forward as rapidly as possible on the p-vine reconstruction, recognizing that the Clear Creek and Sweetwater may take a little bit longer. And by getting p-vine back online, I think we get ourselves up to, is it 60% of capacity, Rick, 55, somewhere in there? Whereas I think with Foreman, we're at about 35 to 40 somewhere in there. If you look at historical trends. So, and by the way, it doesn't mean we can't move on them in parallel, but p-vine definitely needs to have, I think, more focus because I think the issues with p-vine are less than with Clear Creek and Sweetwater. But yeah, outside of that, I thought HKA did a great job. I thought it was a great augmentation of F&L. I hope they view it as a constructive addition to what they did as more of a collaboration rather than a competition, anything like that. Because I think they both made great contributions to what we need to do, which is to get this pipeline rebuilt. I also didn't see anything in there though that dissuaded me from what I believe is the right thing to do, which is bearing the pipe as absolutely much as possible. I think we can't do that. Then we need to use pipe that is not going to interject the VOCs in the event of another fire. Thanks. Okay. Other comments? Gail? Yeah. I was very glad to read this report. I thought that, as Bob said, the greater detail and the more quantitative efforts and especially when it comes to actually drawing their cross sections to scale so that you could really see what the slopes look like and the amount of fill that would be moved around and what would happen to the retaining walls. And so I think that the main thing that I didn't like about the previous report was that I thought that it greatly underestimated the difficulties that were going to be found with maintaining the benches because the Ben-Loman fault zone is right there.  And so anytime you do any cut that is more than a few feet tall on the side of Ben-Loman mountain, you're in the position of triggering more landslides. And I guess the most poignant example of that is the failure of the road, the lion tank, which I went up there when I was first appointed to the engineering committee. And it was immediately apparent that the landslide that happened there had actually been triggered by the road cuts that had been constructed to build the road in there because they built it on an old landslide and it failed. And if they hadn't messed with that slope, it probably would still be there. So my concern was that I thought they were grossly underestimating the slope stability problems. And then on the other hand, in the so-called basement rocks, that is the granitic and the metamorphic rocks, the cost that there would be of excavating a 12-foot bench was going to be a lot in the harder rocks. So I was, you know, I just came away with thinking that what they were advocating was going to be very difficult for us to maintain in the long term. And it also was going to expose us to liability issues because if we have landslides that go into creeks and then turn into reflows and end up in people's backyards down near highway nine, it would not be a good thing. So I greatly appreciated this report, which I thought was much more detailed. And you're right, Bob, in the sense that they are complimentary in a sense because I thought that the previous one is essentially advocating that we do something that was going to cost 50 or $60 million or something like that. And this is, and I suspect is going to cost us a whole lot of money and consultants to try to explain to us how we're going to actually get vehicles and excavation devices and things into these areas that are hard of access and to choke points. So I come away with thinking that although, you know, intuitively, it seems more sensible to bury the pipe and maybe we should in those areas where the slopes are small enough that the amount of material that we move around is not too great. And that might be the case, for example, at Peabine on the steep slopes, the environmental damage that we would do and the cost would not justify it. That's all. Jeff, questions, comments? Also, let's decide Karen. So I listened in on the Engineering Environmental Committee meeting, as you know. And I was impressed by the level of the discussion and the pointed questions that were raised in the whole process. I agree with what I've heard here tonight. Also that this study is far more detailed about the exact locations and the problems that will be brought into light. I always had the feeling that the first one was sort of, you know, textbook stuff rather than what's really out there on the hillside. And I do think we need to proceed with this. The clock is ticking and I think we need to proceed. And I think we need to proceed in steps. I'm not sure that I'm qualified to say which of these steps in this memo are, you know, what the sequence is, but they make sense. And I think we need to get some people out there on site who actually are in the construction business who would be doing some of this and have practical experience in how do you get out there and get equipment in there and how do you dig these trenches and stuff like that and get some opinions from that type of expert. And generally I think this was a good move. We have a much better understanding of what we're faced with here and I think we need to move forward. Okay. I agree that this report was more detailed in a number of areas than what we saw from Farron Loretta. In particular, I focused in on the comments related to steep slopes and choke points with those two being emphasized a number of times in there and the need to figure out how to get pipeline past those areas. And equipment also, if we're taking equipment in there in an attempt to either bury or otherwise be able to work with that pipe. And I understand from the discussion at the E&E committee meeting with Josh that the aspects of getting either contractor input or input in the field from engineering firms or other experts was something that you were capturing under a couple of the bullets on your next steps. Am I correct in that, Josh? Yes, that is correct. Okay. And specifically prepare the RFP for the survey of the pipe alignment and prepare the opinion of probable costs as defined by the study. I think that those were the two where you were trying to capture other experts' input. That is correct. The intent was that those would happen sequentially first determining, first completing the survey then as part of preparing the opinion of probable cost get construction professionals experienced in building on the side of the hill in with the survey in front of them as well. Okay. Okay. The one task or next step on here that I can't agree with at this point is the RFQ for the environmental impact report. I strongly feel that we do not have a well enough defined project at this point and a project description for us to proceed with soliciting environmental professionals at this point to do the EIR. So with that, I see that Bob have some further comments. Just some thoughts about this and I'm sure Rick is gonna have some as well. Mark and I walked about half of the p-vine route before we turned around and went back. And I was actually surprised at how much of the bench was still there. I mean, there were places where it wasn't or wasn't enough but a lot of places still had that. And it seems like in talking with Rick that the p-vine route might be something that could be done faster. Is there a possibility? And this might be a question for Rick of being able to look at these two and maybe parallel paths with trying to get p-vine up and up and running faster. And if that's the case, would an EIR on p-vine be appropriate in something that could be moved ahead faster whereas I think on Clear Creek and Sweetwater and I'm with you Mark, I'm kind of uncomfortable doing that at this point without more information about the survey to really inform that. I mean, it's almost like they need to be done in parallel but I think the survey informs the EIR. Rick, I don't know if that's possible but getting more surface water capacity back online faster is I think really a paramount important. Rick, you've had your hand up also in addition to the question that Bob's asked. What comments do you want to answer on this? I think I'm unmuted. You know, definitely I would like to have a goal having p-vine back online this summer and that goal would be to replace p-vine in kind which is above ground the same way it was constructed. You're not gonna get enough to bury in my mind and what you do bury will be a maintenance issue to keep it buried and you will not keep it buried because maintenance up in the watershed, difficult to do. There is no access. Given that I would like to see us our next steps to continue with the bullet points, put together a scope of work. The staff is still developing environmental review to the level that we believe it is needed. You have meetings scheduled with our environmental consultants to discuss the level that's needed for p-vine. We move on p-vine first and we follow back to back with the five mile. Five mile will be a much lengthier process because of the length of the pipe and the terrain. But I know the board has concerns, the biggest concerns whether to bury or to leave exposed. You're not gonna be able to protect that pipe. The VOCs will become an issue.  You're not gonna change the type of pipe from HDPE to a welded steel due to cost installation and so forth. One thing that we need to do, we need to come back with a project scope, an outline of how we would like to proceed, we still need to consider having a public outreach session as we told our consumers that we would bring this back to make sure that the public had adequate time to understand the project. So that's still another step in this. But I think we need to move on this at a high priority and bring this back through the engineering committee. Through the engineering committee one more time and to the board with the project scope and to find the project, how it's gonna be constructed, the stages that we're going to do, the steps and a timeline and bring it back. But with and for pvine and above ground pipeline with HDPE and then get this one back online. So am I hearing you correct, Rick? Focus on pvine, focus our efforts on that at this point. For whatever the next step is, there are five or six of them listed here in this memo, but focus on pvine first. Okay. And for the labor pool and so forth, we are discussing internally, we're looking at doing this pretty much as a district contractor project. I understand, I've heard that in the E&E committee meeting. I don't know that the rest of the directors have heard that other than Bob. But the next step is for you to bring a proposal to either to the committee or to the board on what you think you wanna spend money on as far as the next step. So I think we can leave that with you. I see that both Gail and Bob have their hands up for further comments. I'd like to go to Gail first and then I'll go back Bob. I just have a very quick question for Rick as background information is, do we know whether FEMA is willing to pay for something that's different than putting it back exactly the way it was? In other words, will they pay 90% towards burying the pipe? And because obviously if they wouldn't, that like this discussion is over and we don't even need to go there. So what do we know? We know that they will consider that. They will not consider paying the full 90% of the cost of say just the burying. They'll pay 90% to replace the pipe and so forth but the burying will be a different cost share and it will take some time to get that determination out of FEMA. That would probably add considerable time onto the project for them to evaluate. We would probably most likely move ahead and do that and then roll the dice with FEMA and hope that they covered it because the time it would get in and answer back from FEMA is considerable. But they look at the cost differential from putting it back the way it was to the new. So it was $200 to bury and $100 to put it in the way it was they will pay a percentage of that second $100. Not the 90% but they will have the first part. Thank you. Okay, Bob. Yeah, I might be a minority in this but I'm not prepared to move forward on above ground for Pivine. I think the notion of protect, I mean, we did protect and bury the foreman free flying, right? Right. We did, Pat. And I think the notion of at this point getting somewhere between 55 and 60% of our surface water supply protected against the next fire is an important thing to do. So I won't be looking at supporting above ground without a analysis of both and a fair one. Not one that's colored with the fact that it appears you've reached a conclusion already. I'm deeply concerned about this. I think our community will be as well. This is part of what needs to be communicated to the community in a fashion so that they can understand why we wouldn't be doing. Okay, thanks, Bob. Jeff. So I was going to touch on what Bob just said there. If we're doing community outreach on this project, which I believe we absolutely must we have to consider how they are going to react to above ground versus below ground, et cetera. We have to understand that most of them are not engineers. Most of them are not construction experts. And so we have to give them the information to make a clear cut, a clear decision in their mind with our outreach program. But we're going to have a lot of pushback if we don't do something to protect the fire. So that's a life. No, I don't get that. We're not making any decisions tonight on how we're going to construct this plan. Well, what was that, though? I mean, what Rick was talking about made it sound like we actually are making a decision based on how he wanted to move ahead. I disagree with Rick's. We're just going to go ahead and put this back on the ground. No, I don't agree with Rick's statement on that. So I think we need some of the information that Josh just putting out in front of us here. In particular, the opinion of probable cost for option one. We don't have that yet. What does it cost us to put this back in with option one or alternative one as referred to in the fair and the red study is just putting the pipe back on the ground as Rick is describing it. I think having that cost helps inform decisions on how we move ahead. So I think we need that before we can move ahead with this. And that's one of the next steps that Josh is recommending. So, Gail? I guess I'm still a little unclear of what we're being asked to decide tonight, but I guess one question I would ask would be whether this isn't absolute. In other words, maybe it's possible that there would be, I don't know the details of the p-vine, but maybe it wouldn't be impractical to bury it there, but then take a different approach on the steeper terrain on the five mile segment, where we would just simply say that the environmental effects would be so bad or the consensual for landslides and debris flows. And so there we would put it on the surface. I guess I don't buy that we have to decide that it's either or. And that maybe different parts are different. Now, I do get Rick's point that if you have, you can't sort of mix and match because as soon as one part of the pipe burns, then the stuff gets sucked into other parts and contaminated. So that's kind of a foolish idea that you could somehow manage to just put it in some places and you'd be okay. But I just wonder, maybe I just like Rick's response of whether he, and Josh's too, whether he thinks that there's quantitatively a difference between p-vine and the rest that would justify us thinking about two different approaches. I'll jump in first. I don't believe so. You know, it'll take to bury the pipe. You have to go in there and do something more similar to the FNL's proposal. And when you look at Kasut's proposal, which is more reasonable and really understands the mountain, works with the mountain, that is an environmental disaster to try to bury 100%. If you can't bury 100% of that pipe and the maintenance that you will create, trying to bury it and keep it buried, it's not worth the time. And then you start looking as to Mark's point, the most cost effective, the least expensive method will be putting it back like it was. And then you'll be able to take those numbers and look how many times you'd be able to replace that pipeline when you look at the cost of it to bury the FNL. You're looking at retaining structures or sometimes the retaining structures to try to bury. You do not want retaining structures on that mountain. Because if we have retaining structures, you're not maintenance. But that's farther down the road. What I don't want, I can tell you the EIR process with burying it is going to be quite lengthy. And then that will put us, which I don't want to try to sacrifice, protection of the pipe, if that's the way the board wants to go, but it will take probably quite some time. And we're planning to figure that out. We're working with our environmental consultants now, what it will take to get through that EIR process if we look at a bury with retaining walls. I think you're going to be considerable and maybe even challenged by environmentalists in the San Lorenzo Valley who understand that mountain. Okay. Josh, do you want to? Love? Or? Let's just, Oh, okay. Thank you. I don't have a whole lot. I don't have a whole lot to add to that. I would say, sorry about the dogs. They're a little excited. The wife's out of town. So they're right here. I would say that if we cannot protect 100% of the pipe, we probably shouldn't protect any of it. And the reason for that is the VOC issue. I would hate to protect most of the pipe and then just have to dig it back up. And while I'm on record as being 100% behind, this pipe should be protected, whatever we have to do because well, I'm the engineer, not the finance guy. So that's where my opinion comes from.  Thank you. Okay, Bob, did you have further comment? Yeah, I'm deeply concerned that it seems like we've already reached the conclusion at least at staff level. And I'm concerned about how that's gonna impact and color the analysis that comes forward. Yeah, this is, we are in fact, at this point, whether we think we are or not, if we proceed down this path, I think we've already made that decision. It's going above ground. I cannot support that at this point. Sorry. So I'm not sure exactly how to vote here because first of all, it's still not clear what we're voting on. Second of all, I think the conclusion's already been reached even before we go out to public outreach. Okay. Since I've heard from more than one board member, you're not sure what we're being asked to vote on here. I'd like to propose that staff do further work on what the next step or next steps are and come back to either the committee, preferably for the board with, here's our plan. Here's what we are proposing to do because we have one to the five different items here that are next steps. And I don't, I'm not hearing concurrence on all of those next steps, nor what is it that we're being asked to do? So. We're just being asked to the board to accept the Heroka Student Report tonight. And we can come back to the agenda. That's not the way that I'm reading the executive summary. Yeah, exactly. And it's and instruct staff to submit to the full review for what the next, yeah, it was asking us for a recommendation on what the next steps should be. So if we agree that I want to make the motion, then let me do this. I want to make the motion that we agree to accept the peer review report and request the staff to come back to us with further description on what the next step or next step should be. I'll second that. Okay. Further discussion of this? Mark, this is time to go out to the public. I wanted to hear from Gale first, since she has her hand up while I was trying to make this motion. I realize that the, that there was this request to both accept the report and then the next steps. But when I look at the next steps, I think really the only one that's problematic is the one that you identified already, Mark, which is that it doesn't make sense to do the environmental impact report until we know which way we're going, right? If we're going to bury it, then that's a whole different thing than if we're going to put it above the ground. But the other part of it is prepare an opinion for the probable cost of option one or option three B, which is burying it everywhere, including at creek crossings, strikes me as a perfectly reasonable instruction to the staff. So I guess what I'm saying is to me, the next steps minus the RFQ for the EIR is would be acceptable, but that's all. Okay. After thinking about that and looking at this again, I could concur with that if other board members could agree that the other four bullets in here or the other four items are something that bring additional information back to us for further discussion, but that we're not deciding on which way to go at this point. Bob? I disagree. There's a very significant difference in what's being requested. If you look at the option one, that is prepare an opinion of probable cost. And the next one I'm burying is review it and look at see if it's feasible and maybe prepare a revised opinion. No, that is not specific enough. And I think there's lots of different ways of being able to approach burying the pipe and my concern is that we'll also try to look at this from the point of view of what's the worst case as opposed to what might be more feasible and basically reject it right out of hand after the review. So no, I mean, I'm not prepared to go along with those four bullets the way that it's currently written. But again, it could be a minority opinion here and that's fine. Okay. I do want to comment on what you're saying there, Bob. I think that the Fair and the Rather Report did look at a number of options for how to bury different, different, let me finish, different hyping types that could be used in order to prevent damage being the welded steel and also using the HDPE. Bob, you admitted that you and I both walked that pipeline and yes, the, I will call it a goat path in a lot of the areas was still accessible. Gail, you're laughing. That's about what it was. There were a number of places where I had to use both hands. Oh, I believe you. To get over some of these areas and this is where the pipe had been. Taking equipment in there, I think will be difficult, but I'm not saying that we can't do that. I want to see what the cost on that is. Well, I mean, again, there's lots of different ways of being able to bury things, I think. I disagree with that. I think Fair and the Rather captured that. I don't think they did actually, but at least not the range of options that are there. I mean, cutting the kind of roads that they had in there and the kind of size of equipment and whether you do it all with equipment or whether you could do some of it with hand digging, since we're only going down a bit. Look, I think the conclusion has already been reached. And so I'm, and whether it's been reached before we're even going out to public opinion and doing the rest of it, I think it's very clear that the path we're on right now is above ground and that's it. And everything else will be made to look really bad so we don't want to do burying. I think it's important to at least get 60% of our surface water supply protected against the future fires. If we truly believe in the climate change issues that I think we're going to have, fires every 50 years may not be the case. They may be much faster than that. And as you could see from walking up there, at least I could see it, there's still plenty of fuel up there. It's not something that, I mean, it doesn't have a high rating from the new fire estimates, but it's still pretty, it's still a lot of fuel to burn. Agreed. Okay. Rick, you want to comment? Well, I'm just a little bit confused because it, you know, we did go through the process with FNL and we did go through with the process with Errol Kasunic and we do have knowledge of the pipeline and pipes and material and we did install it. And I think it is staff's responsibility to make a recommendation. And believe me, Josh and I went through many recommendations together before we got to this point, it's not. And the board makes the final decision. So it's not like this has been just, you know, done behind closed doors. I mean, we've been working on this for a while and at the engineering committee. So I'm kind of taking back that, you know, you don't expect a recommendation of staff. That isn't what I said at all, actually. What I'm concerned about here is that we've already reached the conclusion that it's above ground flash, they can have said and anything else is going to be looked at in the worst possible light. And I just think we're missing it, can't support moving forward that way at this point. But again, you know, ripping four to one, that's fine. Okay. Thank you, Bob. Gina. Yeah. I just wanted to provide a Brown act reminder that public comments take place before during the board discussion. And so I just want to make sure that takes place before we get, you know, to the very end of the discussion. Thank you. Agreed. Okay. So given what I've heard over the last few minutes I would like to amend the motion that I was making and suggest instead that we approve the staff moving ahead with the four of the next steps listed in the memo prepare the RFP for the survey of the pipe alignment, prepare an opinion of the probable cost for option one, review option three B with Farron Loretta and HKA and then present the above information. Okay. The last one isn't the, it's prepared the above information to the committee but not the RFQ for the environmental report at this point. Can I just make a friendly adjustment to that just to make sure because this is recorded is that the third item there in addition to reviewing option three B also says then prepare a revised opinion at probable cost. You didn't read that and that's important. Okay. Then please. Because basically it's probable cost of both options. Yes. Right. I hate to admit all but the revised motion didn't include accepting the report but I assume you meant to do that, Mark. Yes. Yes. To accept the HKA peer review report. Thank you, Gina. I'll second that motion. Okay. Bob will come back to you for a minute. Now that we have a more formed motion out there I would like to hear from anybody from public then come back to the board for other comments. Let's see. Members of the public, Alina. Hi. Alina Lane, Boulder Creek and also, you know, sit on the environmental engineering committee for the past two years. And when we started down this path, I was with Bob. I really wanted to see this pipe buried but through the discussions and everything that has been presented in the environmental committee, I think my opinion has definitely changed on that. It's really hard to say without having the costs kind of laid out in front of us to kind of make those final conclusions. But I think really the most important thing right now is to get our surface water back online, the ability to arrest our wells. And you know, we can't really easily get that groundwater back in but if we do have another fire we are capable of building the pipe again. So that's kind of where my mind is at right now. I just feel that, you know, the environmental impact is going to be too great. And if we can't get 100% buried, there really is no purpose because of the VOC contamination. And I think you're just gonna have to have a really strong public outreach on this and everything that we've been presented to an environmental engineering committee and also here at the board level, you know, explaining that, bearing our raw water pipes up in the mountains does not protect us from a future fire and having water availability to fight the fire and just making sure that connection is really clear for the public. And also if we can come back with that cost analysis, you know, when I was out campaigning I heard from a lot of people, you know, first the fire and then second, we don't wanna have to keep repain for this pipe again and again when the fires come through. So if we can show them, you know, like how much greater the cost is to bury and just show them how much we're saving.  But so anyways, I think that's all I really have to say about that. And I'm sad that it looks like we're not going to be able to bury it, but I think it's probably what's best to get our surface water back online. Thanks. Okay. I don't see anybody else. Let's see, Mark Lee.  You wanna call it? Yes, thank you, Mark. I read the whole report and I'm quite amazed. This is like a jar, this is like doing a Rubik's Cube from an engineering standpoint. I agree with the general method, the proposal, the motion that you propose, but I don't think we should jump to conclusions yet on whether we should bury the line or keep it raised on structures where it's appropriate. Also, I think it's gonna be, it's gonna be a hybrid approach. This could be an engineering solution where we may need welded steel in certain places that are exposed and the HDPE in other sections. And I think that's gonna be based on our analysis of cost and their ability to actually get in there in each segment of the construction project on just PVE line. And remember, there's four other areas we've gotta look at. I think we should generally take this kind of as a general motion to look at alternatives, engineering solutions, and it's not gonna be either or, I think it's gonna be both methods for alternative one or three B to be realistic. And let's look at the cost, let's look at the engineering. Generally the framework looks good, but I think we don't wanna put an RMP out yet until we get that follow on analysis back to the engineering committee and back to the board. And then think about how we wanna parse out the environmental impact statement for each section. Thank you. Okay, thanks Mark. Next to Cynthia, Denzel. Thank you. I just wanted to say I appreciate Alina's statement and unless there's a way to partition off different sections of the pipe so the VOCs don't travel through the whole pipe if one section is burned, then there doesn't seem to be a reason to use the welded steel unless there are mechanical conditions. Yeah, so thank you very much for all the thought you're putting into this. I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Okay, I'd now like to go back to the board for any further comments before we take a vote on this Bob. Yeah, my first question, which I wanted to get in was I'm unclear as to what the language is in bullet number one, two, three, four. What is that language again in the motion? The review option three B with both Farron Loretta and HKA to refine required retaining structures and areas infeasible for burial of pipe and prepare a revised option of probable cost. So is there any reason why we just couldn't say prepare an opinion of probable cost for option three B? We already have their probable cost in Farron Loretta's report. Well, we have one for option one as well, right? No, we don't. They didn't give us one for option one. What? They, it was informal and- Yes. Well, was everything informal or was there, because I mean, I recall that the difference between burial and above ground was not substantial. Josh, do you wanna explain the differences in this for us rather than- I mean, basically what I'm trying to do is get to where we're using the same language for both so that we are looking at this identically for both. And I understand that I understand that what you have to do for above ground versus below ground might be different, but we don't say in the bullet three review and refine required support structures, et cetera. We just say prepare an opinion of probable cost for option one. I want it to be, I'm looking for it to be the same. Yeah, the consistency. Yeah, and that the same diligence is used in both options. Right, okay. Josh, will you address that for us? Certainly, first I would like to address Director Fultz's final point regarding diligence. As you can probably tell Rick and I do not always agree on things and as a result, everything gets looked at thoroughly from both sides. So that's as an aside, I suppose. The reason that I wrote those two bullet points in the way that I did is that option 3D was presented in the constructability study with an opinion of probable cost, which was broken down by unit cost. Option one was not. Option one, well, in an effort to reduce expense to the district, the scope of the constructability study only included a cost estimate for the option or alternative as they were calling them, which was recommended for further study. So we don't have the same level of detail in option one and option three B in terms of cost. So what I thought process of writing these was we need to build an opinion of probable cost for option one, which is built in detail. To do the same thing for option three B requires, or perhaps I should say gives us the opportunity to refine some of the assumptions that F and L made based on data that has come out of the HKAP review. And then refine their opinion of probable cost for option three B, so that we are comparing apples to apples. And you'll be as creative as possible on looking at the options for burying this. That is minimal environmental impact but still getting it buried. That is my intention. Okay, great. Well, then I'm happy to hear that. I did have one other question. Rick, as of this week, what percentage of the district is being served by surface water? This week 100% is being served on surface water from two sources, Foreman Creek and Fall Creek. And how long do we expect that we would be able to serve the district on surface water from those sources into the future until Pevine? Well, how long can we do that under our current situation? I'm not sure of understating the question, Bob, under the current situation with this current last rainfall? I mean, in terms of our ability to use surface water in general to serve the entire system. That all depends on rainfall. I get that it's rainfall. Assuming we have plenty of rainfall, how long into the future can we continue to serve our entire system from those two surface sources? So with the good rainfall year, we usually go into about May, 100%. I'm talking about- With the bad rainfall year, we can be done as soon as March. I'm not asking about rainfall. Rick, this is a question for you, I think. How long into the future are we able to use these two surface sources to supply our entire system? Assuming that the rainfall is there. 2023, 2024, is there a milestone? I'm sorry, I'm not understanding your question. I don't understand your question either, Bob. I don't understand it either. I'm confused also. Let me ask this. Under what conditions are we able to use fall creek water outside of the Fulton system? Okay, right now we're using that outside of Fulton due to the fact that we are still in an emergency with the CZU fire. And we still stay within our fish, our bypass requirements. Of course. And when will that emergency situation be relieved to the point where we would not be able to use water from Fulton unless we change their water rates? Right now I can't answer that because depending, that would be decided by public health fish and wildlife. If we start getting, say, we've got P-vine online, they may reduce to get us back within our requirements. Yeah, but still be able to supply surface water to a hundred percent of the district, even if it's reduced due to the fact that P-vine's online. Not all the time though. I mean, it's a window of time. I'm having a tough time answering your question. I think what Bob is trying to ask you is when, and the answer is the emergency ends when the pipeline is built. Which pipeline? Well, that depends on how the regulatory agency sees it. I mean, I'm not sure how they will see it. There's a lot of moving parts here with fisheries and the repairs. So I'm having difficulty. Yeah, no, fair enough. So I mean, based on what you're saying, Rick, is that we could potentially be able to use surface water from all sources to all customers until we get all the pipes back online, or it may be a reduced amount, or as soon as we get P-vine, they may say, hey, you can't use Felton water anymore, Fall Creek water anymore, and the rest of the system. I think that's what you're saying, is that they have the discretion to determine that. I think we're speculating. I understand that. All I'm saying is getting P-vine online is not, doesn't, we're already on surface water 100%. Yeah, it's without P-vine. But the big thing you're missing here, Bob, without P-vine online, we had to shut off Foreman Creek and our surface water treatment plant, so we have enough water to operate this year. I understand that. So, you know, not only we can't use P-vine, we don't have a pipe, but it also took Foreman Creek offline because of the flows were too small. I understand that, but this is not a binary thing between without P-vine, we aren't on surface water. That's all. It's not this time of year, it's the fall and the summer, it's the summertime. I'd like to get back to the motion in front of us, the motion in front of us, the peer review, accepting the peer review and the next steps as described in the motion. So, without further hands up or questions on that, I'd like to put this to a vote. Holly. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackman is absent. Director Falls. I'm trusting you, Josh. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Motion passes of four to zero. I don't know whether that's unanimous or... Okay, moving on then. The next item is the Blue Ridge Tank Replacement, the initial study mitigated negative declaration. Yes, and the environmental planner will present that to the board. Great, thank you. The district is seeking to replace an existing 40,000 gallon redwood tank known as the Blue Ridge Tank with an 160 gallon tank providing 120,000 gallons of effective storage. The project is in the community of Boulder Creek, south and east of Blue Ridge Drive and north of Short Street. The existing tank is currently undersized in linking. The district prepared a draft initial study and mitigated negative declaration or ISM&D to meet the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act analysis for the project. The draft ISM&D was circulated on October 14th, 2020 to, or a 30 day public review period to alert the neighborhood of the project and the draft ISM&D staff hand-delivered letters of notice to homes surrounding the project, posted project descriptions around the neighborhood, made social media posts and added project information to the district's website. The public review period ended on November 14th and two comment letters were received. Comments were addressed in Appendix F of the ISM&D linked as exhibit A. No significant public comment was received and staff is recommending adoption of the ISM&D. Once the board adopts the ISM&D, the district will move forward with selecting a construction contractor. Staff and Jessica Coteen from Panorama Environmental Inc, the consulting firm who completed the ISM&D analysis on behalf of the district are both prepared to answer any questions the board or public may have. Okay, questions on this topic? Gail? Yeah, it's pretty straightforward and the only thing I would comment is that when I downloaded the report, I noticed that on that figure two, which is page 21 of 246, shows the tank site literally on top of somebody's house. And having recently gone through what happened with Fountain Heights, I just looked at that and I went, and I'm hoping that there's some problem with registration of the diagram over the Google Earth image, but there's something wrong and please fix it before. They need to get their reference points lined up with Jetbeer GSA before. Yeah, I mean, well, it's a little weird actually because you can see where the roads are a little bit off, but even if you put them back to that, it seems like the thing would still be like basically right next to somebody's house. So could you, I just really think before that needs to be fixed on the site and if it goes anywhere, because if anybody sees that, I mean, if I were that homeowner, I would have totally flipped out, but obviously they didn't take a look. Which, could you tell me which figure that was again? Yeah, it's figure two. And you refer to it on page 12 of 246, but there it actually comes up as error source, reference not found, but then when I go in the text, and then when I go and look at it, figure two on page 21 of 246, the red line showing the tank is on somebody's house. Yeah, so we actually updated the link. So if you refresh, it should have corrected all of that already. But I looked at it like literally an hour or two before the meeting. Yeah, I think I updated it. I just got the updated version from our consultant. All right, all right, that's it. She caught that. Okay, it's fixed. It's fixed. It's not enough. Okay, I have nothing more to say. Okay. Bob? Yeah, currently for the benefit of the community that may not want to go to the report, who were the people that responded to the ISM? Yeah, so we had one community member respond, and it was mostly around the parking and traffic control was the comments. And then we also had the, I believe it was the State Water Resource Control Board, Jessica. That's it, yep. Yeah, and they had some clarification questions on sort of where the temporary tanks would be placed. And then also they wanted to clarify that there was a permit that would be required through the State Water Resources Control Board. So they just wanted to clarify and point that out. That was a pretty straightforward letter. Yeah, no, great. I mean, it continues almost the pattern of, I guess in this case, 50% of the response is being mostly from other agencies as opposed to community. Although I am glad to see one person did. Yeah, actually, could I correct that, Carly? Because I just read it and her concerns were, how are we gonna fix the roads after they were torn up? And you changed something in there to say how we would do that. So we addressed it. David. Yeah, okay. Great, thanks, Carly. Jeff. No questions. Okay. I have a couple. Who signs this environmental declaration, which is the first page of the ISMND? Is that us? It'll be Rick or I. Okay, all right. So that's internal. There are surveys that are described in here for butterflies, bees, amphibians, bats. Is there one biologist that we get from, or do we need four different people to? No, yeah, you would have one biologist that would go pre-construction survey, whether it'd be like about two weeks prior to any ground disturbing. So yeah, it seems like a lot, but we have to clarify and break them all out, but one biologist. Right, okay. And to Gail's point on the figures being referenced as air in the document in bold, I didn't go back and look have those been corrected also? They have been, yeah, I caught that when I was reviewing the document about an hour ago. I saw that when we PDF did it, kind of made the error, so that's based. Okay, all right. That's all of my questions. So the motion on this was to accept the ISM-ND, or the Blue Ridge Tank Replyz? Yeah, you adopted the ISM-ND. Okay, to adopt it? Yes. Okay, I'll make that motion. Second. Okay, let me go out to the public to see if there are any. Everybody who wants to comment, I don't see anybody's hand up. Wait, Mark Lee. Been going up and down again. That's who I was getting once attention. On page, on the mitigated negative deck, it looks like there was a page, looks like page M-ND, page 29, the last section, section F, it said there's a conflict with the provisions of the Adopted Habitat Conservation Plan, Natural Community Conservation Plan, and approved. So what was the finding? Out of all the findings, there was no impact, right? Are you talking about, oh yeah, so conflict with the provisions of an adopted HCP, is that what you're referring to? Yes. And then there was no impact. Yeah, because the project doesn't conflict with, I don't see anybody else from the public with their hand up. So, Holly, would you take a roll call then? President Smalley? Yes. Vice President Hill? Yes. Director Ackman is still absent. Director Falls? Yes. Director Mayhood? Hi. Hi. I don't see anybody else from the public with their hand up. So, Holly, would you take a roll call then? Okay. That concludes the new business sections. Now I'd like to move to the consent agenda. It has two items on it, the board meeting minutes and the annual disclosure report of capacity charges. Does anybody want to comment on either of these? If I may just briefly mark first, just as a reminder, these items are deemed adopted if nobody pulls one and there's no vote. But if anybody wants to discuss either of these items, it should first be pulled from the consent agenda for regular discussion. Oh, okay. Well, I see this. I think I've said that kind of poorly, but we want to first pull something from the consent agenda if it's going to be discussed so that that way anything that remains on the consent agenda can just be adopted by silence. Okay. So first we have to find out what Bob wants to discuss. Am I correct? Yes, I'd like to pull the 12-1-22 board of directors minutes. Okay. So we can by consent agree that the annual disclosure report is accepted. Yes, yes. Correct. Since no one's pulling that, that'll be adopted by consent and the meeting is now become essentially a regular agenda item for discussion. Okay. And then the board meeting minutes from 12-1-22 that Bob wanted to pull, do we discuss that now or? I have a, yeah, I have a sentence I'd like to add after in the leak adjustment notice of appeal. Let's see, that would be 11 C. I'd like to add a sentence to number two. So the sentence would read staff stated they were changing the leak adjustment of leak and leak adjustment appeal processes to include owners and not tenants. I'm sorry, where does this go, Bob? Yeah, this would go under 11 C. Leak adjustment notice of appeal number two, which is under Jean Nichols commented. So there's one, two. And at the end of that comment, I wanted to include staff stated they were changing the leak adjustment of appeal processes to include owners only and not tenants. If you're making a motion to that effect, Bob, I would second it. Yes, I'm sorry, I am making a motion to add that sentence. Thank you, Kale for reminding me. Okay. I don't have any comments on that. I don't see that Jeff is either. Can we proceed with a vote on this? No, the public has to comment, I think. Oh, okay. Let's see. I don't see anybody from the public wanting to comment on it. So, Ali, can you take a roll call vote on this one? The amended minutes. President Smalley. Yes. Vice President Hill. Yes. Director Ackman is still absent. Director Fouls. Yes. Director Mayhood. Yes. Okay. Moving on then, the district reports, the district managers report. Rick, you're muted. Yes, I did want to report that the district is 100% on surface water as we spoke earlier tonight. From the rain, we got close to six inches, I think 5.8, 5.9 inches here at the district office. It did bring up flows in our streams and we are 100% including our South system on surface water until this, if it drops back or the next rain and then we'll continue for a while. Good. And I'm blanking on the name of the individual that you pointed out in the report that did all of this work to leave the effort to- Does he got her? Yes. Does he got her? Yeah. Kudos to him for being able to get this done. Yes. It's quite an undertaking to turn the system around from summer to winter and they were short staffed and they have some new staff and he's did a fantastic job. Okay. Next, we have the department status reports. Do we have any questions from board members on those? Ron? Yes. Did you want me to go through them all at one time on all the reports or yeah. Okay. Yeah, hopefully these are sort of, you know, quick heads. This is on the engineering report. I was curious how many attendees at the Fall Creek Fish Ladder project meeting, bid meeting, pre-bid meeting. It was a fair number. If you give me about 30 seconds, I will give you an exact- Yeah, was it more than five? Between people who are there and people who made other arrangements to view the site at another time. Yes. That's great. Hopefully we'll get some really, hopefully we'll get a lot of bids on that one. Do we have an idea of the lion's slide replacement road cost yet? That cost is, it's been kind of all over the map. Well, the old road replacement was 15 million. I would, the new road replacement. Hopefully it'll be less. We are looking at between nine and 11 million to be refined more once FEMA tells us whether or not they're going to accept the project. And that's on the new route still. Correct. Okay. And that was my next question. Is FEMA going to cover it and how much? That is a question to be determined. Okay. Did the walk with the county that took place two days ago go well? Are we done with Quail Hollow? We are done with Quail Hollow. Fantastic. And I was a little confused about the Redwood Park tank project. Was the RFP just for the pipe? Correct. The RFP was just for the pipe. The reasoning behind that is that we're going to allow the contractor building the pipeline to use the tank site or staging because there's nowhere else in the area for staging, which prevents them from doing it all at once. Okay. Good question. I think we have a question on the environmental report. Harley, it looked like your report got broken. The columns got pushed off to another page. Would it be possible to get that report in electronic form so I can look at it all on the same line rather than trying to flip back and forth? Sure. I'll work with Holly on that. That would be great. Question for Kendra on the finance report. The reddit agency is on past new bills. We only report to collection agencies on delete accounts that have not paid their final bill. Great. Thank you. On the operations report. I noticed that we aren't including well. Elevation reports anymore. Are those available somewhere online? I do include those about every three months now. We were told to take them off of there. have them on there every report. And I do believe that was you, Mr. Fultz. You didn't want to see them every report. I don't know that that was me so much as asking for perhaps a different way of presenting the information because when we are on well water, I do want to see the well elevation levels or I would like to see those. When we're on surface water, I don't think we need to see it as much when we're on surface water. I agree. I just had it in my October report, I do believe. Okay. But I noticed we're still, as of November anyway, we were still pretty heavily on wells. We were somewhat all wells, yes. Yeah. I mean, I- I can put it in the January report. Okay, great, thank you. And on that, it looked like we were pumping some water from Fulton or actually from, looks like we were pumping some water from Scotts Valley and Fulton to the North system, correct? Well, yeah, the water, well, not from Scotts Valley, but from the Paso Wells, that is a bleed line that we keep to keep the pipeline fresh. So we do that every, that's a continuous thing until we start moving water the other way. Okay, so that million gallons going from South to North is just to keep the line fresh. That's correct. It's not for consumption. That's correct. Well, there was a little bit of consumption on that, Bob. I take that back when we were doing the construction project and we had to shut down. Now we were doing the change over the pipeline. Okay. So there was a slight amount of that, but yes, most of that is just a 15 to 20 gallon a minute bleed to keep the pipeline fresh. And that would also count towards the difference between water sold and water produced, right? Yes. Okay. All water that is produced out of a well or out of our treatment plants is all produced water. Right. But I mean, what we talked about before was leaks and flushing, but there's also this kind of water that might also be used as well. Right. Well, that 15 gallons a minute that we use to keep the water fresh in the pipe is going to consumption or leaks. This is going into them. It's going into the distribution system. Oh, well, that's what I was asking is whether that was used for consumption. Okay. Yeah. So it is all used for consumption, except for a little bit. Yeah. Whatever we lose with leaks and whatever went on it. Right. Okay. And the same thing for Felton, we pumped about 4 million gallons to North and that's all for consumption as well. That's correct. All right. Great. Thank you. Did we lose Mark?  Jeff, any questions on these? Yeah. Okay. I want to go back to one that I asked two weeks ago and again at the engineering committee meeting earlier this week. It's regarding the invoices that we've received for the Bracken Brain Forest Springs from Sandus and the status of beginning to submit those to DWR. And Rick, you said that you'd do some research on that this week. Yes, I did. I did hear back from Mr. Bannister, Josh and I both sent in questions to him. We cannot submit invoices as of right now because we don't have the funding agreement, but we need to just turn back in an exhibit and he will process funding agreement and then we can submit those invoices. So what's the exhibit that they need from us? Oh, I'd have to, I'll have to dig it up, Mark, for you. Okay. Well, then, and when do you think that will be submitted? I just got this email back from Mr. Bannister's 15th. This year? Yes. Yeah. I want to discuss with Josh because there's a couple of things in here that we don't want to go on before I respond back. But yes, this year. Good. All right, those are my questions at this point. Okay. Moving on then, trying to see is there anything else we need to cover? Committee reports, I don't think so. Does anybody else disagree? If not, Bob? I had a question for Gina about the letters that are submitted to us that I think is the last item. Are we able to comment on those or those just for informational viewing on them? It is appropriate to comment if there are comments that can be made under that agenda item. I do have a comment on the letter. Okay. This letter is from Deb Lone, I believe. And she makes a point here about, you know, SLV's median household income and how I think that's been used in the past as sort of the basis on affordability. And she mentions 23% of the SLV households have an income under 50K. That probably means something like 40% or maybe more are like under 80K. So I would caution us as a board to make sure that we're looking at more than just median household income when it comes to determining affordability on any kind of rating that we might put into place. That's all, thank you. Can I respond to that, Mark? I responded to Deb Lone's letter and in part in response to her letter, both Jeff and I at the recent Budget and Finance Committee agreed with her that it was important that we include demographic information about the valley because we're a little bit different than the county. So for example, in the financial report, you know, we have the averages for the county, but our district is different and it probably has a different income as distribution as you suggested, Bob. So we intend to incorporate that and whether we put it together ourselves or ask the consultants to do it, we'll have to figure out, but we will do that. And I did reply to Deb Lone to the effect of what I just told you. No, I appreciate that, Gail. I think that's great. And hopefully they won't charge too much to look at the census data. Well, it's not very much. I mean, exactly. I could sit down and do it in an hour and four hours. Exactly. Yeah, great, thanks. Okay, all right. I have a question for Gina. I see that one of our members of the public has his hand up. Do I take other public comments at this point? Yeah, I'm not sure if the hand came up on 13, the reports or if it came up on 14, the written communication that I recommend allowing. Whichever, yes. Okay, good. All right, Mr. Lee, Mark Lee. Yes, yes. Are we on the agenda item 13? Okay. Let's go to page 260. It's 12 on 24. It's on the financials. My answer is one there. We'll get there, but go ahead and ask your question. Okay, so we have all these accounts that are sitting in the county. We also have Wells Fargo, Santa Cruz County fund, under operating accounts and operating balances. One shows it at $6,831,587. Then you drop down to the restricted accounts of several different accounts that are loans, essentially. We have residing at the county treasury in the CCCF fund, totaling essentially $21,468,307. So some of those are large funds and it looks like they're only earning 1.12%. I think we talked about this at the last meeting, finance. Are we going to explore getting some higher yields on these accounts and perhaps by investing in the laddering into six month and one year CDs with no fees or consultant fees? This is my question. So we need a better yield. We're losing quite a bit of money. I think we talked about this, that you're losing about $30,000 per $1 million in revenue compared to the outside market. Today's six month T-bills are issued at 4.65. It vacillates every day, of course. But once you lock in, they can become very valuable, especially as people began buying more CDs during a turn down. So that's my general question. Can we start exploring, looking at some brokers that would provide us that sort of investment opportunity and pull that money out of the county? And I'm just going to put around that caution here because item was not agendized for board action, including providing direction to staff. And so a brief response would be appropriate, but I just want to caution against getting into a board discussion of the merits of that. That's fine, that's fine. Can I just as the chair of that committee acknowledge that we did hear from Mark at length and I would like to turn it over to Rick to just give a brief response. Okay. Make sure I'm unmuted. Yeah, a brief response. We are looking into that and we'll be bringing that to the budget and finance committee for further review. We are also looking through our projects and seeing which funds we could. The ideas behind those loans were to do construction projects and for several different reasons. Those projects have not moved forward. So it would be prudent to look into this and we plan to at the first budget and finance committee in January. So the answer is yes, we'll look into that but we'll also have to balance with cash flow needs. Okay. All right. Thank you then. Well, I think that concludes this public meeting. Without further comments or objections, I'd like to go ahead and adjourn. Your closed session. Yeah. Yes. Mark, could we have a five minute break reconvene it? Certainly. Nine, 10, thank you. Okay, thanks. Okay, see you there. And for any members of the public that are still online, I just wanted to clarify earlier, it was said that there aren't any reports that are gonna be expected out of closed session and so we won't be coming back into open session to give any reports because there won't be any. So the meeting will just adjourn once we leave the closed session.