The last keynote speaker today is Kirby Ferguson, the man behind Everything is a Remix. And as I mentioned in the opening remarks, Everything is a Remix is a fantastic series of videos that really explain how culture builds on culture. And I love Everything is a Remix for a number of professional reasons, but I think the reason I love Everything is a Remix the most is for a personal reason. That's because working at public knowledge is really hard sometimes to explain to people what I do. I talk to our parties or I visit family members. They just, they don't get what's going on. And Everything is a Remix is something that I can give to someone. I say, watch these videos. I explain this to Congress all of it. This is what I'm trying to make them understand. So the professional reason I love it is a personal way to get through the explanation of what goes on. Thank you so much for these videos. Please join me in welcoming Kirby first. All right, thank you for having me. Thank you to Public Knowledge, probably good work you guys do. Between 2010 and 2012, late 2010, recently in 2012 I was working on a series called Everything is a Remix, Warp Parks video series that distributed for free on the web at the same time. You can check it out, just Google it and you'll find it. Warp Parks, about 10 to 15 minutes each. First one was about music, started music when I did a film, the second one. Innovation in the third one, which is a lot of what I'll talk about here today. And the fourth one I got into the law and that was about just a few months ago. So rather than over-explaining the premise, I think I'll just play a little bit from the beginning of part one. Remix to combine or edit existing materials to produce something new. The tune remixes originally implied to use it. It rose to prominence late last century during the heyday of hip-hop, the first popular music form to incorporate sampling from existing recordings. For the example, Sugar Hill Gang samples the bass riff from Sheeps and Goodtimes in the 1979 hits Rapper's Deluxe. Since then, that same bass line has been sampled dozens of times. Used in video photos, whatever, and distributed globally, pretty much instantly. You don't need expensive tools, you don't need a distributor, you don't even need skillets. Remixing is a folk art, anybody can do it. Yet these techniques, collecting material, combining, transforming, are the same ones used at any level of creation. You couldn't even say that everything is a remix. What does this mean? Remix is simply making new stuff out of old stuff. Forgive the technical jargon, but that's the basic idea. Making new stuff out of old stuff. So you take a couple of previously existing songs, slice them up, you put them together, you make something new, but the pieces of the old things are still recognizable in the new thing. Those little chunks are called samples. So remixing could be thought of as the arrangement and transformation of samples, but I think remix is a good metaphor for any kind of creation. So copying elements, combining them, transforming them, that, for me, is the basics of anything, any kind of creation. Now, this is in opposition to our myths of creativity. As a culture, we don't really have a realistic idea about how creativity actually happens when we have these myths. We have stories and they're good stories, but I think they fundamentally send us down the wrong path. Touch by the hand of God. This is, for most of human history, what we consider creativity to be. Humans weren't considered powerful enough to actually create something themselves. They were channeling the beauty of God, the beauty of nature. And we still have remnants of this idea now, not that we think creativity is divine, but some sort of an elevated, remissible accomplishment that is greater than other sorts of activities. A couple of years ago, the Romantics came along, Beethoven is an early example, and Romantics were, in many ways, kind of an opposite reaction to this very confining role that Artisa had before this. They claimed integrations as their own as the expression of their own unique voices and this is an idea that has also stuck. Real genius is the lone creator who bucks tradition, who goes his own way and does his own thing. Our culture likes this idea of a singular genius. We like the idea of a singular. Anything, you know, if you did it on your own without anybody else, we really like that, even though we know we can really do this. Light bulb, how could I talk about creativity in a presentation about showing a light bulb so there's the light bulb? Box six, it's done. This is our most popular visualization of an idea. So, you know, it's a metaphor for how it happens, happens fast, happens out of black. First it was darkness, then there was light, happens fast. Of course, this isn't a realistic idea of how creativity actually happens. It's a sprawling, messy affair, with a lot of usually a lot of small insights along the way. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm famous painting by Pablo Caso. Nothing like this had been seen before. This was painted. So, you know, this is, this sort of thing is still kind of gold standard. Great creators break the mold and create something unprecedented, something revolutionary. But of course, this was drawn from the influences of its time. So, African arts, classical sculpture, its contemporaries, Caso coaxed this creation out of this culture at this particular moment in time. Okay, so those are myths. What's the reality? How do we actually create? There are three basic elements. First thing you need is domain knowledge. You need to be grounded in the language of your field. So, how to get domain knowledge, copy, flat out, annihilation. You can't contribute worthwhile new works until you've internalized the knowledge and the techniques of your media. So, in order to create for culture, communicate with it, you need to speak the language. You need to speak like everybody else speaks. And you learn to speak by speaking like everybody else speaks. You don't start doing your own thing right away. You just learn words, learn grammar, and talk like everybody else does. You can see this in the career of any artist. So, Bob Dylan, for instance, his first song contained 11 cover songs, almost the entire album was cover songs. And early in his career, he mostly seemed intent on being Woody Guthrie, who was the previous generation's vocal icon. So, it didn't seem like he was intent on being the next to Woody Guthrie. He just wanted to be Woody Guthrie. He was doing his very best to be as much like Woody Guthrie's possible. Richard Pryor, influential standard comic from the 70s, introduced topics like race, sex, drug abuse, just stuff from his life into comedy, which with a couple of exceptions was mostly a fairly shallow deal of expression. But he began his career doing a not very good imitation of Bill Cosby. So, if you watch Pryor's early stuff, he's really doing like a second rate Bill Cosby edition. Hunter S. Thompson invented Gonzo journalism, so took the novelistic first person viewpoint, combined that with journalism, acknowledged that journalism is subjective, can't be objective. But before he did that, he was working as a straight journalist. And in his spare time, he actually re-typed books, a couple of books. He re-typed Great Gatsby and Power of the Arms, just word-for-word sat down, re-typed the whole thing, just to get the feel of writing a great novel. So, once you are grounded in your domain, it's then possible to create something new through transformation. So, taking an idea and creating variations. So using logic, intuition, streamlining, expanding, and burying, making mistakes has a lot of value as a creative technique. It's very time consuming stuff, if you do enough of it, you can potentially produce a breakthrough. James Watt, for instance, created a major improvement in steam engine because he was assigned for a pair of Thomas Newcombe and steam engine. So it wasn't like he was making tea one day, and by hey, he created a new set for mining, for weather, he was a gig. He was assigned to fix an engine that already existed. And he spent 12 years fiddling with that design to get it right. Christopher Laffer-Scholes modeled his typewriter keyboard layout on a piano. Early on, typewriters were commonly referred to as literary pianos, which I think is just a lovely phrase, I wish you'd sign that if you agree with me, but I wish you'd still use that, it's lovely. But this piano-like design slowly evolved over five years into the quartet, keyboard layout, which we still use for about our fourth sound. Thomas Edison, of course, didn't invent lightball. His first patent application was actually turned down, it was considered an infringement. The second one, which was ultimately approved and was the lightball, was called improvements in electric lamps. It wasn't called the electric lamp, it was an improvement on an existing invention. So specifically, he produced the first commercially-filed ball, that was his accomplishment, it wasn't actually an invention, the lightball. And he and his team did this by trying 6,000 different materials for the filament. So again, this is all very time-consuming self-taste place over the course of years. So these are all major advances, but they're not exactly original creations. So they're more like tipping points in a continuous line of invention by a lot of different people. So steam engines, typewriters, light bulbs, these had already existed before this. These particular ones were the versions that triggered major historical shifts. Now it's with combinations that we frequently see dramatic creative leaves. By connecting ideas together, especially when they don't seem to be related, this can produce radical innovation, what business people would call disrupted innovation. Other on-site, let's go to the formula E equals MC squared, but of course you didn't discover energy and mass at the speed of light, you discovered that they fit together in a surprisingly elegant, simple way. You'll have to do this pretty fast, this was invented around 1450. So the components, movable type, paper, ink, these have been around for centuries in Rome and in China. Pivotal element here is the screw press, which is what this guy is cranking on here, because it had nothing to do with printing. It was used for food production, for making, for squeezing things together, juice or oil out of it, like wine, olive oil, it was used for that, so it's a technology that had nothing to do with printing. That was the hidden element that brought it all together. So that's a common source of radical invention, integrating something from a foreign field into your field. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. World Wide Web is kind of the ultimate combination of technology, it's a hypertext layer for the internet, which is a network of networks, it's a bunch of protocols that manage to speak to each other because they speak open protocols, they all speak the same language. And Berners-Lee didn't even have to invent hypertexts, hypertexts that have already been invented, nerds knew all about it, you can see it in Douglas Animal Barrett's technology demonstration from the late 60s, hypertexts that have been around for a long time, so it was his fusion of these things and that they were distributed openly that came to the web. So those are three basic elements of creativity, copy, transform, and combine. You can see all of these are working arts plenty, especially as we all become more and more media saturated, I think you can see it more and more commonly as we can actually take the stuff, the actual media, and slice it up a few things with it, which is a fairly new thing, super common then, but it's been around a long time. And a good example from the 70s, I think it was the film Star Wars, which I nerded out in part two of everything's records. So George Lucas was a big, big film nerd and his influences found their way into his work sometimes in a very rightly conceivable fashion. So his clip is from part two of everything's records. Even now, Star Wars endures and the work of impressive imagination, but many of its individual components are as recognizable as the samples and a remix. The foundation for Star Wars comes from Joseph Campbell. He popularized the structures of Nick in his book that hero with a thousand faces. Star Wars follows the outline of the monomy, which consists of stages like the cult of adventure, supernatural aid, the belly of the whale, the road of trials, the lead with the goddess, and a bunch more. Also huge influences were the flash Gordon serials from the 30s and Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa. Star Wars plays much like an updated version of Flash Gordon, right down in the soft wipes and the opening titles design. From Kurosawa, we get masters of spiritual martial arts, a low-ranking bickering duo, more soft wipes, a beneath-the-floorboards hideaway, and a boastful baddie getting his arm chopped off. Come on, let's do a challenge and we'll put you in the lead. Just watch yourself. We want it big. I am the best systems on the world system. We want it big. We want it big. War films and westerns were also huge sources for Star Wars. The scene where Luke discovers the slaughtered family resembles this scene from the searchers, and the scene where Han Solo shoots Rigo, resembles this scene from the good to bad and the other. Lumactic air strikes and the Danbusters, 633-squatter, and the bridges that took over E, play very similarly to the run and the death style. And in many cases, existing shots or even used as templates for Star Wars special effects. There's also many other elements clearly derived from various films. We have a tin man, like the tin woman in Metropolis, a couple shots inspired by 2001, I grabbed a girl in Swing Scene, like this one in the 7th Voyage of Sinbad, a holographic projection, kinda like the one in Forbidden Planet, a rally resembling this one in Triumph of the Will, and cute little robots, much like those in Silent Running. So this notion that we are remixing the work of others has plenty of implications on our ideas about originality, which are now intertwined with ideas of property. Ideas are considered property, legally, morally, and this is understandable to me. It was like, I think Katie was saying it earlier, it's distal, you know, when you spend years working on something, you endure countless setbacks, failures, you've worked on it for a very long time, feels in your gut like it's yours, you're so familiar with it, it feels like it's yours. But it just isn't, not completely. We all take ideas from others, lots of them, it's mostly what we do, but this tends to not register because of our nature. Humans are more sensitive to losses than to gains. Behavioral economists refer to this as a loss aversion. Our minds are presupposed towards not losing what we had.  So what we're taking from each other, from our culture, from our domain, that doesn't register, the ones we have something of our own that we feel is worth taking, we tend to get possessive. A couple of ideas distorting our view here. The first one is this idea of individualistic creation, the romantic idea of the lone creator. This is an idea that's already in decline, from my perspective. I think a lot of people who do creative work don't think in this way anymore. But it's still a dominant idea in the culture. We think highly successful creators are extraordinary, highly original. So it's an idea that I feel is in decline, but with this project I'm kind of trying to pound another nail in the coffin. Ideas of property, this is doing not in decline at this moment. I think that it may be that first domino falls, that this one might also fall, at least partially. So this is a doozy, this is ingrained in our system of commerce, but it's a very recent idea, it's modern, and it seems leading, of course. Ideas aren't property, they aren't matter. You can't literally take someone's idea while you use coffee, in which case they still have the idea. So that's different, and I think it's important that we acknowledge that difference because it sends you down a completely different path of how you conceive of this stuff. So the metaphor of property for ideas is clearly inaccurate, and I think it causes trouble in our culture. Because ideas contain other ideas, that's how they are built. We build our new ideas out of the old ones. So ownership of ideas is complicated. Just to begin with, even in its minimal form, it's very complicated, but it gets impossibly complicated when we try to coordinate our little creations, you keep others out and delay planning to, you know, our little plot of creative land. It just, if you look closely, our works contain other people's works. This applies to everybody. Another demonstration of that, this is from Part 3 of Everything Is Remix. It shows how Apple built on previous technology, most notably that of Xerox. Eventually Apple got a load of the Alto, and later released not one, but two computers with practical interfaces. The Lisa and its more successful follow-up, the Macintosh. The Alto was never a commercial product, but Xerox did release a system based on it in 1981, the Star 8010. Two years before the Lisa, three years before the Mac. It was the star of the Alto that served as the foundation for the Macintosh. The Xerox Star used a desktop metaphor with icons for documents and folders. It had a pointer, scroll bars, and pop-up menus. These were huge innovations, and the Mac copied every one of them. But it was the first combination incorporated that set the Mac on a path towards long-term success. Apple need to merge the computer with the household appliance. The Mac was to be a simple device, like a TV or a stereo. This was unlike the Star, which was intended for professional use and vastly different from the cumbersome command-based systems that dominated the app. The Mac was for the home, and this produced a cascade of transformations. Firstly, Apple removed one of the buttons on the Mac to make its novel pointing device less confusing. Then they added the double-click for opening files. The Star used a separate key to open files. The Mac also liked to drag icons around and move and resize windows. The Star didn't have drag and drop. You moved and copied files by selecting an icon, pressing a key, then clicking a location. And you resized windows with a menu. The Star and the Auto both featured pop-up menus. But because the location of these would move around the screen, the user had to continually reorient. The Mac introduced a menu bar, which stayed in the same place no matter what you were doing. And the Mac added the trash can to make the leading files more intuitive and less nerve-wracking. And lastly, through compromise and clever engineering, Apple managed to pair the Mac's price down to $2,500. Still pretty expensive, but much cheaper than the $10,000 Lisa or the $17,000 Star. But what started it all was the graphical interface merged with the idea of the computer as household appliance. The Mac has a demonstration of the explosive potential of combinations. The Star and the Auto on the other hand are the products of years of elite research and development. They're a testament to the slow power of transformation. But of course, they, too, contain the work of others. The Auto and the Star are evolutionary branches that lead back to the MLS system, which introduced windows and a mouse to sketch out the first interactive drawing application. And even back to the menace, a concept resembling the modern PC, decades before it was possible. You can see a hypertext actually at work in that split-screen shot there, which is from the late 60s. There was hypertext, you know, 15 years before the web. I'll close with a quote. This is kind of at the heart of what I'm trying to do. By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves. We fail to recognize that we could go and do like-a-likes. Charles D'Abilly is a sociologist at Harvard. This is kind of, this is what it's all about for me. I'm not trying to diminish the accomplishments of any of the people that I talk about, but I'm trying to show that it's not magic, it's work, and anyone who produces a cute little remix video and uploads it to YouTube, you're dipping a toe in the same pool as all of these guys. I mean, it's very primitive what you're doing. It's incredibly early, but those basic techniques, if you just keep using those, who knows what you can accomplish? That's it. Thanks so much. Are there any questions? I have a quick question. You mentioned at the beginning of your talk that you made these videos for free, and I was wondering, and we always hear that copyright is sort of this necessary incentive so that people can get paid for doing creative things, but you obviously, that wasn't at the core of what you did when you didn't know anything about that. Yeah, cool. I had a job at first, so it's a part-time thing. I thought it would be easy when I started it because, you know, normally I shoot things, so I thought, you know, yeah, I don't have to shoot stuff. This is going to be a breeze. I'm going to just throw this together in my head, and then, of course, it took forever to do an incredibly long time to do it. But right away, it did really well, did a lot better than I thought it was going to do. So I stuck at the job for, I don't know, another six months or something like that. I put up the second part of it, and then at that point it was obvious through doing speaking stuff and commissions and sponsorships ended up coming up. That merchant accent, and I sold some t-shirts and posters and stuff like that, that by putting all this stuff together I could make a living, you know, at as much money as I was making at my job. So that's the route that I want to go down with the work that I do, and it's what I'll be doing with the next thing. You know, the need is free. It'll be even freer than this one because it'll be, you know, original stuff within copyright. All this one is gray, I think, with some of it. So people can take it and they can then reach up it and do whatever they want with it. They can sell it, whatever. After it's out of, you know, after it releases it's not like it's going to happen today. So, you know, I think, you know, the media is a great way to get attention, and then if you have some things outside of that that can generate income from your hard core people, you know, you can make a living. You got to keep it small, I think. You know, that's important too. So you're talking about, I guess, all the ways in which any group's house has tons of influences. What do you think about sort of the state of the law? What should or what does the law do or what should it do to account for, you know, that it's not the slow fire genius model? I mean, I think we basically had it right when it started. You know, it was basically just a way to keep people from getting ripped off. But there's a famous case with Pumple Tom's Cabin, which got translated into German, I think it was.  And they lost, because, you know, the idea was that's so very useful. And now German people can read the book and they couldn't before. So it was very, very confined. And I think that's all it has to do. I think, you know, a little protection goes a long way. And once you go beyond that, then you get into gray areas where people are not just blatantly ripping you off. And you end up losing expression that way. So I think, you know, you just want to get rid of the stone beds, basically. You want to target them. And then outside of that, you've got loads of hack work, loads of derivative stuff, loads of bad art. And that just comes as a trick. I think that's part of it. And that's fine. It's good. Sorry. So you're distinguishing between the bad guys and the hacks? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The difference between this stuff that is intended, especially if you're trying to make money with it, I think that distinguishes between a different lady. But yeah, I think if you have any kind of creative intent with it, even if it's meager, which is what most stuff is pretty meager, you know, if you just put the old twist on it and they feel like they've done something with it, I think that's fine.  You've got a lot of bad. And I think that's just the way that it's quite comprehensive. Anybody else? Michael? Sure. No? I have a question. Sure. Yeah. Could you stand at the mic, please? Approach licensing like Creative Commons. Creative Commons is interesting.  I mean, I think that's worth the really, that's what I'd love to see happen. I love Creative Commons. But like once you're in that world, you're in that world, and then you can't really mix and match between them. So that's my problem with it. That's why I didn't create a Commons license to this because it's not, you know, a lot of stuff in it is not actually in mind. So I felt like I, I couldn't feel it at the same time.  So I think Creative Commons is great as an alternative. But it seems like, I think it's a privilege at this point that it's kind of niche. Like I'm not sure that it's ever going to, you know, be that broadly successful. But I love it. I love that it's there, but it gives people the choice I'm going to use it for my next project. So that's my problem. Yes. So does anyone ever come after you for using Clips? No, never. It doesn't happen. No. The only stuff that I think would be where someone could get a toehold is the way I use the music. I think that's not actually, I use probably. Yeah, I can. I didn't say just five percent. Oh, sure. Yeah, right. Yeah, like George Lucas just doesn't like it. Yeah, yeah. No, it doesn't happen to you. I think, you know, that I do, it is educational and intense, and I think that helps a lot. And a lot of it is, I think it's pretty clearly compared to this. Like the stuff that I do with Apple stuff and with Led Zeppelin is in the first one. George Lucas has stopped the Star Wars clips. You know, that's all demonstrably very clearly compared to this. So I think I'm not a good target in a lot of ways. Anyone else? We're good? Alright, thanks a lot.


I T can we confirm my check? Here we good afternoon everyone I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the city Santa Rosa to order if we may have a roll call, please Thank you Board member right Here board member Watts Here board member Walsh Here board member Walsh Here here Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. You see you board member Walsh One moment, please Seems like the volume is really low Thank you for your patience during the technical difficulties. I will start the roll call over just so it appears or is heard on the audio Board member right here. Thank you board member Watts Here board member Walsh Here board member gray bill here Board member Badenfort She is marked absent Vice chair Arnone will be absent today and chair Galvin here Thank you Let the record show that all board members are present with the exception of vice chair Arnone and board member Badenfort Thank you again. Good afternoon everyone and I want to welcome our new recording secretary Dean Amanis So sorry you got up to a little bit of a rough start, but that's the way it goes sometimes But we're we're glad to have you so Reminder to board members to please mute your phones and your microphones when you're not speaking and to put away cell phones and personal computers Any abstainments of abstention by board members? All right hearing none. We will move to item 3.1 Which is a proclamation regarding our Now departing recording secretary Roberta, Atha, so I have the honor of reading the proclamation as follows Whereas Roberta Atha was hired on November 1 1993 as a senior clerk typist supporting the maintenance division of the Laguna treatment plant and Whereas during Ms. Atha's 28 and a half year career Roberta held many positions in the water department and city manager's office Including senior administrative assistant administrative secretary administrative technician and administrative analyst Whereas during Ms. Atha's career. She has been involved in many teams and specialty projects Including facilitating two multi-year steering team processes Helping to develop Santa Rosa waters new employee orientation and was an integral part of the city's employee fund drive serving as co-chair for several years and Whereas Ms. Atha is the creator and executive editor of what's on tap Santa Rosa waters treasured publications sharing information and celebrating accomplishments and Whereas Ms. Atha has been the lead of Santa Rosa waters woohoo waters ultimate hoopla unit Emceeing our annual event that celebrates water department staff and Whereas staff in the water department have an array of different questions Whenever that that staff of the water department have a ray an array of different questions and Ms. Atha has all the answers And whereas they miss Atha was the water department's liaison to the city clerk's office for city council items and Due to her outstanding work became the recording secretary for the Board of Public Utilities in September of 2020 and Whereas since September 2020 all BPU items are turned in on time because of Ms. Atha's strength of character to corral cajole and nag staff including the director to meet deadlines and Whereas Ms. Atha retired on July 5 2022 and will be enjoying maintaining her 1918 craftsman bungalow reading on her beautiful front porch knitting and walking and Whereas Ms. Atha has been a mentor friend support coach cheerleader and so much more to many city employees during her almost three decade career with the city and Will be greatly missed by all who had the pleasure to work with her Now therefore be it resolved that the Board of Public Utilities or the city of Santa Rosa Does hereby recognize command and express our sincere and heartfelt Appreciation to Roberta Atha for her 28 and a half years of outstanding service to the community of Santa Rosa and to the city of Santa Rosa that is the proclamation which I have happily signed and Congratulations Roberta at this time I At this time I just want to comment Roberta that You are the consummate team player and have been for your entire career here at the city and so happy to have worked with you here at the BPU for the last few years Can only wish you much great success in your retirement good health lots of traveling And all some of the other things that the proclamation says you love to enjoy to do so we're going to miss you But we know that you're going to have a great retirement and you deserve it. So congratulations I'll open up now for any other board member questions or caught. Excuse me comments a board member, right? Yeah, it's a long time. I guess associate and friend of Roberta. I'd like to congratulate you on your retirement I know you're gonna enjoy it and It's great seeing you Yesterday or a day before yesterday, whatever that was so happy retirement and I'll see you in retirement bill Yeah, we're member Gravel Yeah, I like to echo both chairman Galvin and board member rights comments and just express mostly gratitude Gratitude to you for teaching us, you know showing and leading by example Always doing, you know, not just the work behind the scenes, but also front and center and the publications Just an extremely Good for all of us to fall in public service and And in leadership on a team Especially one as robust as Santa Rosa water. So just nothing but gratitude and and I hope you have a wonderful wonderful retirement Remember what's I?  What do I do? You've just been such an important part of of this board and this department and you will be You will be missed greatly and I really hope that you're not a stranger and we can maybe see you on your your porch and just Keep in touch and you know, you really deserve a great retirement. So thank you Remember walls Hi, Roberto, I want to thank you for all the help that you've provided me as a new member We noted that you were orienting new employees and With respect to the board of public utilities, you definitely oriented one of the disoriented. So thank you very much for that and With respect to the employee fund drive, I know it's not easy to ask people for money to donate but I'm sure with your skills. We did very well in the nonprofits of Santa Rosa Sure, I'll express gratitude for your efforts. Thank you very much. I think we've covered all the board. How about director Burke? Thank you chair Galvin and members of the board. I did want to take a moment to Thank Roberta For all the work she has done for the water department I think a lot of us do refer to Roberta as the heart of the water department She's going to be greatly missed Really, you just want to thank you for all the work and all the support that you have given everyone in the department For your great leadership for your patients for your ability to get projects done in a very timely way, but also making folks feel very appreciated appreciative of Your encouragement for us to get those projects done. You're an amazing facilitator an amazing leader and I am very Glad to call you one of my good friends and so I wish you all the best in retirement and I know that I speak for all the folks in the water department to say thank you and Really have the best in a very well-deserved retirement Thank you before I open it up to public comments Roberta I'll give you an opportunity if you'd like to say some words to everyone Wherever you want chair Galvin and members of the board. That sounds so weird to say Thank you so much for this proclamation and all the kind words and recognition This is day two of my retirement and so far so good When I was growing up in Vermont my mom was the town clerk of the my hometown and My dad and my uncle ran the general store. So for me, it was a very natural Fit to work for the city government in the community where I live The last 28 year and a half years have been amazing Except for maybe a couple days in 1998, but other than that it's really been great I've loved working and getting to know all the different people that I've worked with over the years in the different departments I've loved all the special projects The support of this water team and the city manager's office team when I was there were Beyond wonderful I Really will miss the people. I won't miss the deadlines. I won't miss the email But I will miss the people because they were there what really made it great for me So Thank you and be well and I'll see you around We'll now open it up for public comments. If there's anyone in the audience that wishes to speak you're welcome to Alright seeing no one rise. We'll still open it up for public comments on Item 3.1 if you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone Please dial star 9 to raise your hand Secretary Manus do we have anyone there are no hands being raised via zoom Okay, all your friends are here or so All right, that will conclude item 3.1. So again, congratulations on your retirement Day three, I guess it is huh? four two All right, that'll take care of item 3.1. We have no study sessions Item 5.1 is approval of the minutes for June 16th 2022 We'll take public comments on the minutes approval if you wish to make a comment via zoom Please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand Secretary Manus There are no hands being raised via zoom minutes will be approved and entered then that'll take care of item 5.1 We'll move to item 6.1, which is a staff briefing regarding the water billing division overview. So director Burke Thank You chair Galvin and members of the board. Yes item 6.1 is our water billing division overview and Two of our newer managers in the water billing department Kenny Cook and Stacey Hatfield our revenue operations Supervisors will be presenting Thank You director Burke. Good afternoon chair Galvin vice chair and members of the board My name is Kenny cook and I'm one of the revenue operations supervisors in the water billing division I oversee the operations team and a portion of the administration team Earlier this year the water billing division moved from the finance department to the water department This was no small task seen as the water billing had 24 members Luckily our deputy director Kim believes you need to know welcomed us with open arms Even though it meant a six-fold increase to the number of employees under her direction Just cook. Can you turn your? Yes, your your video on please so we can see you. Yes, I just realized that thank you. Thank you I mean just a little bit of a difficulty seeing the presentation Chair Galvin I pardon for the interruption Miss cook if you could just go ahead and go through with your presentation, we will advance it for you on on The meeting. Okay. Thank you and the next slide, please The water billing division is comprised of five sections including operations collections field services administration and IT support Next slide, please The operations team includes one senior CSR Patty Stapleton and eight customer service representatives Samantha Elliott, Tonya. I'm at lanko Megan Deustreau Nina Langerica, Jody Tosti, Annan Draken, Deanna Contreras, and one position which was recently vacated due to promotion Operations answers the busiest phone lines in the city with an average of approximately 1,000 incoming calls per week They assist customers with inquiries relating to starting or stopping service high usage and assistance with using our online system among other things They also place approximately 75 outgoing calls and 50 automated high use notifications per week There are approximately 52,000 accounts that are billed monthly Billing staff runs reports after meters are read and investigates any meter reading that is flagged as being outside normal parameters by the software They review approximately 10,000 accounts during our annual account audit Which is performed January to June to ensure that our customers are being billed accurately Payments of all most eight million dollars are collected monthly from our various payment methods Next slide, please and then I'm going to return this over to Stacey our other revenue operations supervisor Can you hear me all right? I'm Stacey Hatfield one of the revenue operations supervisors I managed the water billing collections team and the water billing field services team Water billing collections is here to support their customers by assisting them in setting up payment arrangements Resolving delinquent account issues and facilitating disconnections when fully staffed we have five employees in collections one senior customer service representative Julie party and four CSR's Christian Amador, Maria Enriquez and two vacant positions Each week we answer around 300 customer calls and during regular operations sent over 1,000 delinquent notices Next slide, please Our field services crew has four employees. This includes one senior meter technician Ron regular and three meter technicians Ken Kiriton Ray Landis and Troy Moya They are our in-person customer service and eyes on the street They provide assistance to customers by locating water meters showing customers how to read water meters Identifying leaks explaining city policy regarding ownership of equipment Identifying if equipment is no longer functioning and replacing it as needed In addition to that work they turn meters on and off for account starts or stops Reset meters and fire damaged areas and maintain meter box accessibility Next slide, please The administration team assists with a variety of organizational tasks from budget to software administration There are two revenue operations supervisors. Can I cook in myself? two administrative technicians David Hansen and Kyle Comedina one senior CSR Tara Telemonte and one CSR Karis D'Amarg and of course we have deputy direct director Zinino overseeing the whole bunch Their work includes but is not limited to being point of contact for third-party software upgrades and tickets filling out water surveys managing the ALI programs construction meter billing and administering the help to others program Next slide, please Kathy Fisher is our technology application specialist and provides us with IT support for our water billing software or CIS program She assists with software upgrades pulling data Integrating third-party software and troubleshooting issues. She helps assure that we are billing on time and with accuracy Next slide, please Water billing manages to help to others program. This program assists our lowest income customers by paying the fixed fees in full The customer only need pay for their water and sewer usage It is also a way for water use efficiency to connect with these customers as part of the application process To confirm that they are efficient water users This program currently serves 647 participants and is fully funded with cell tower leases We partner with community action partnership to process the applications and verify continued eligibility through annual renewals sent out by water billing staff Next slide, please and I'll return you to Kenny cook Water billing provides two online tools for our customers use invoice cloud provides account services such as online bill payment and auto-pay enrollment via electronic checking credit card Evil registration and an on 18 month online bill history The water smart portal allows customers to view and track their usage history Set up usage alerts and compare their usage to previous time periods The water billing staff utilizes many different computer programs in our day-to-day operation in order to fulfill the needs of our customers The main software that we use is CIS which houses all of our account customer information I won't go into details for the rest of the programs But as you can see our employees must learn a large number of programs to provide the level of customer service But our account holders have come to rely on Next slide, please Water billing offers many different payment options to our customers They can pay using credit card or electronic check through our online system or auto-pay enrollment They can also use our 24-hour automated phone system to pay by credit card or the 24-hour dropbox behind City Hall annex for check payment We accept electronic payments made by the customers via our online their online bill pay through their financial institution 7-eleven accepts cash payments for a small fee And customers may also pay by credit or debit card check or cash at our front counter during normal business hours Next slide, please Water billing like the rest of the city had to adapt our normal processes due to the COVID-19 pandemic This included suspending all late fees and disconnections starting in March of 2020 Staff worked extended hours to secure over one million dollars in funding for our customers from the California water and wastewater average payment program We're preparing to participate in the low-income housing Or the sorry low-income household water assistance program Which will provide a one-time assistance of up to $2,000 for past due water and wastewater bills And we're now implementing steps to return to our standard delinquent processing Which began with the resumption of late fees as of April of 2022 Next slide, please And in closing we would like to thank you for this opportunity to share a small piece of what water billing does Stacey and I as well as deputy directors. You know are happy to answer any questions. You may have Thank you both of you miss quick and miss hatfield. We appreciate the presentation. It's always nice to Hear about how our billing system is working and all the people that are involved in it So thank you very much. I'll open it up now for any board member questions or comments Seeing none, I will open it up now for public comments on item 6.1 If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand secretary manis There are no hands being raised via zoom Thank you. That'll conclude item 6.1. Again. Thank you for your presentation We'll now move to item 7 the consent calendar We have uh Chair galvin Pardon me. We have uh item 6.2. I'm sorry item 6.2. Did I miss 6.2? Oh, I did. I'm sorry Sorry, mr. Prinz. It was all because of you Item 6.2 is our water report Deputy or director burk if you would go ahead Thank you chair galvin and members of the board Item 6.2 is our water and recycle water supply update and deputy director peter martin And deputy director mic prins will be making the presentation My apologies gentlemen Great. Thanks. Good afternoon chair galvin members of the board peter martin deputy director water resources here with a Water recycle water supply update. I'll begin this presentation off and hand it over to deputy director mic prins for the conclusion next slide so I've started to include this graphic that includes, uh, lake pillsbury storage for the request of board member battenford It's important to there's a lot going on in terms of some of the management of that reservoir and its linkage with the upper russian river As of july 4th the storage in lake pillsbury is about 50 000 acre feet The target storage curve for this time of year is about 77 000 acre feet This represents about a loss of storage of about if you can see that trend line of about 2 000 acre feet of the last week I do want to note, uh, you know, look at that black line storage is declining at a more rapid pace than last year, but in consideration overall The storage is considerably higher than this time last year As denoted by that line that's in peach, uh, I guess I'm going to call it peach color. That's about as close as I can get there Um, but I just want to point out that despite pgne filing a request in mid-may for variants from their FERC mandated flows in the upper russian river FERC has not yet made a formal decision on their request Just want to point out that some water estimated that if FERC had granted that variance early june as they had requested And reduced the flows down to the minimum five cubic feet per second Uh, it would have resulted in approximately 20 000 acre feet less inflow into lake mendicino this year Um, so it remains unknown when pgne or excuse me when FERC will make a formal decision on pgne's request But uh, if you'll recall both snow water and the water advisory committee To snow water submitted letters requesting that FERC considered the impacts of allowing pgne to reduce flows to propose drastic minimums that they had proposed um, and so That we'll continue to monitor that and provide this board with an update As that continues next slide uh, lake mendicino, uh, is currently at about 50 000 acre feet in storage, uh Which represents about 60 or so of their target, uh, water supply storage for this time of year Uh, overall storage is slightly increasing, uh, about 60 acre feet increased over the last seven days um Reservoir outflow is currently at about 75 cubic feet per second Um storage remains critical and simil water is taking significant measures to store as much water as possible And that includes urging users on the upper russian river to to reduce their water use as much as they can Uh, if you'll see those two trend lines again The black line uh is this year and the peach line is last year Storage is about 20 000 acre feet more than this time last year. So If you recall last year represented the second worst year on record in terms of historical storage and operations of that reservoir So that was pretty drastic last year Some limited curtailments of water rights in the upper russian river began on july 1st for some of the junior right holders Uh, not quite as drastic as last year Uh, if you'll recall significantly more users were curtailed Including some of the municipal and industrial water right holders like the city of hildsburg here and snoma county Next slide Outflows, excuse me. I'll talk a little bit about storage and lake snoma Current storage is about 130 000 acre feet Which represents about 53 of the water supply pool available This represents about a 1300 acre feet storage loss over the last week You know in in general as you can see the the trend lines there it's quite a Frequently pretty close to where we're last year. So uh, the trend seems to be falling pretty closely Uh with storage last year Um Outflows from lake snoma are currently at about 90 cubic feet per second Um, and snoma water did receive some relief in the form of a temperature change order It's about a week or two ago That allowed them to continue to better manage storage in both of these reservoirs earlier this month I'll talk a little bit more Excuse me last month. I thank you. I'll talk a little bit more about that in the next slides I'll be the next one. Thank you So if you'll recall snoma water's previous temperature change order, uh, was 180 days and expired on june 8th snoma water filed a temperature temperature emergency change petition on may 25th of this year And an order was issued by the state water resource control board on june 17th The order allows some water to operate the reservoirs under critical water supply conditions and reduce the releases from the reservoirs per their terms of their water rights Uh, that includes a 25 cubic feet per second Um in the upper watershed requirement and 35 cubic feet per second in the lower watershed Some of the terms, uh, as a part of this change temperature change order from the state Uh, require that the contractors are going to Ensure a 20 reduction in diversions. Uh, that's normal waters diversions And that'll last from uh, july 1st through october 31st when compared to 2020 Next slide So that means uh, summer allocations for snoma water contractors are in effect And those uh, per the order, uh, are going to match that july 1st through october 31st timeline Todd roadwell, uh, some of the waters Todd roadwell came online this week So some good news there that'll help offset some of those diversions through local groundwater And then there's several monitoring and reporting requirements for snoma water Many of those are related to flow diversions water quality and fishery health And then uh, some water Is obviously required to report a 20 reduction in diversions Um, and that's going to be july 1st to october 31st when compared to 2020 Uh, I do want to point out that could extend to when natural flows Return to 125 cubic feet per second at the high standard age. So Uh, let's hope for early returns on water again like we got last year Next slide So, uh, if the board is curious, uh, these are the allocations Uh for santa rosa and present this chart here um The allocations are in broken down into million gallon per day targets Over the month, um They are different than last year. Um, so in comparison to last year If you'll recall the water advisory committee unanimously agreed to a 20 percent Cross the board reduction for all the contractors And this was while the water shortage allocation methodology was refined and updated That water shortage allocation methodology was ultimately approved last year and has now Been put into use in this water year What is different is that that allocation methodology does take into account Things like conservation implementation by contractors and the resulting demand hardening from that As well as local supplies As you know, santa rosa has one of the lowest gallons per capita per day of all the contractors Therefore the allocations reflect that accommodation related to those factors and demand hardening. So, uh, a little bit more water This year as a result of not being presented with that 20 percent hard cut back Next slide Just very excited about some upcoming workshops that we have for the public Coming up in july and august of a drip irrigation basics webinar tree management and droughts and Laundry to landscape gray water Uh webinar Workshop, uh, folks can sign up at src.org slash workshops. Um, we're seeing a renewed interest in gray water systems. So, uh, and low water landscapes So we're very excited to engage the public on these items Uh, go to the next slide And just, uh, really excited, uh, we have zero waste week coming up at the end of this month Uh, the partnership is hosting a zero waste water webinar Um, and folks can go to the saving water partnerships web page at savingwaterpartnership.org To participate in that as well That concludes my portion of the presentation. I'm going to hand it over to deputy director mike friends for the remainder Good afternoon chair galvin and members of the board mike friends deputy director of regional reuse operations I'm happy to be here and give you my first update a little while This is a picture of the north end of pond d at the sub regional metal lane storage complex As you can see from the photo, there's evidence of declining water levels I thought it would was a good visual to show you that it's that time of the urban water levels are actually Dropping next slide, please This is a trend that I think you have seen before that our recycling water production Chart and it shows that uh earlier in the water year Last fall we were above our average The dark black line is obviously uh this year's trend and the gray line is our average I do want to point out that this curve or these curves are actually smooth monthly averages So this doesn't reflect some of the Substantial flows due to rain that we were seeing At the beginning of the water year in late october But it does show that while we were above average for a while there We did drop off pretty quickly and we're now pretty substantially below average Although the year is not out yet, but I suspect will be below average for the rest of this year next slide These are some Numbers to compare over the last few years and our average Um I suspect that even though right now we're only looking at 4.4 billion gallons of water for this year That is only to date. I suspect that we're probably going to be somewhere between 2020 and 2019 Volumes for the year again. I expect to be below the average potentially substantially But you can see there that we have been below by over a billion gallons a year for each of uh the last couple of years so next slide This this really paints a clearer picture of where we are in terms of supply And this is I think daily or possibly weekly data So you can really see the increase in flows or storage levels. I should say In late october at the left side of the chart The dark red line is our actual storage trend for this year There's a gray line that's shown and that's our average for the A pretty good chunk of time that's shown to be 2004 to 2017 And then the light blue lines sort of bracket the average those are our historical maximums and minimums and I think that paints a pretty good picture of how Earlier in the water year, we were substantially above Our our maximums that we have seen historically And then actually in april and uh may we were below our minimums So it's been kind of a kind of a little bit of a crazy year. I guess you could say I want to point out a couple of things. I did point out that we had quite a increase in storage in late october Again a pretty good increase in uh december We did have our geysers maintenance shut down At the end of may and I think uh end of may beginning of june somewhere around there And the geysers system has a pretty significant influence on the storage curve as you can see It did accentuate our peak for the year Had the geysers maintenance shut down not occurred then our peak would not probably have been as high Or possibly even as late as is shown there So that does affect where the trend starts to fall And you can see we're starting to decrease storage levels at approximately our normal rate Although because of our our geysers shut down, we are slightly above average right now This chart really accentuates. I think how weather dependent The system is in the the regional operation and how that's reflected in our our storage levels ultimately Keep in mind that throughout the course of the year Other than the geysers maintenance shut down the geysers pipeline is operating Continuously and as I said that does have a pretty significant effect on How that red line plays out over the course of the year Next slide please These are estimated deliveries Our average is shown as the first vertical column then last year just for comparison And then where we expect to be on the right hand side In terms of our different users Note we did not discharge in 2021. I don't expect that we're going to be seeing discharges in 2022 And our our total deliveries are going to be Better than they were in 2021. We predict although not as as robust as our average Um, I will also note that the 1.1 billion gallon Delivery to our ag Component of our customer base does include city farms, which receive I think right now we're targeting about 150 million gallons Next slide So here's an update on allotments for our ag customers In january we predicted that we would have a 900 million gallon allotment. That is pretty low Relative to normal. That's about 53 percent of normal Based on storage levels. We were able to increase that by another 50 million gallons in april of this year We did have our second all users meeting It near the end of april and those allocations are guaranteed until essentially the end of the water year End of september we are taking a hard look at our predictions for the year and if we can we are going to increase Ag customer allocations a little bit more We and it's always best if there's going to be any increases to determine those earlier as opposed to later Because our ag customers have to make business decisions for their operations operational decisions in effect And knowing how much water we think we're going to be able to give them affects the decision making Process for them. I want to highlight near the bottom of this list of bullets that there is a pretty significant project That's going to be going on this summer And that is how we're going to be connecting the geysers pipeline to delta pond The pipeline is very near delta pond, but it isn't really connected in a way that would facilitate much movement of water There's essentially a small diameter connection just used for draining the pipeline For maintenance related purposes, but we're going to be upsizing that connection so that we can actually use stranded capacity At the lano pump station or I should say unused capacity To have more ability to move water to delta pond from the metal lane storage area When conditions weren't doing that. It's a pretty significant project that requires us to drain delta pond Earlier than we might otherwise we are working with sinoma water to move water into their airport storage facility But this project may impact storage We are going through an operational scenario to minimize impact deliveries. Hopefully there will be no impact deliveries We can't guarantee that and construction is slated to begin august 1st So pretty significant project starting later in the season But cip has the schedule worked out. So we'll be able to work Even that late and into the winter Next slide So I wanted to show you a chart that maybe you haven't seen before Just to eliminate a little bit more about the system This chart shows The entire storage volume that we have in storage ponds in various locations in the regional system The large gray slice of the or light gray slice of this pie Is essentially unused capacity as of today the ponds are not full That's reflected in the storage chart as well but we have Two big storage areas the metal lane ponds are the blue slice of the pie and delta pond a single pond is Our largest storage single storage facility We have some storage on city farms and some other small ponds And I think staff might appreciate me highlighting the fact that really we can we can Move water between metal lane and delta pond as needed for operational purposes But the other ponds on city farms and and some other small ponds they're they're effectively one-way ponds We have one pond on City farms where we can move some water, but it isn't as interconnected with metal lane or delta But I wanted to just give you a picture to show the relative volumes Of ponds distinguish their their roles a little bit and then show you relatively in a different way How much of our storage is is not filled right now Next slide please So ultimately that's my presentation and Happy to answer any questions that any of those slides may have triggered and and deputy director martin would be happy to answer any Water supply questions. I'm sure as well Thank you both deputy directors and welcome back deputy director prince. Thank you very much. It's great to be back Good i'll open up now for any board member questions or comments Seeing none. We'll open it up for public comments on item 6.2 If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone Please dial star 9 to raise your hand secretary manis Chair galvin, there are no hands raised via zoom. Thank you. That'll take care of item 6.2 Now we'll move to the consent calendar. We have four items on the consent calendar I will entertain a motion I'll move the consent calendar I will second We have a motion by board member right and seconded by board member watts any Comments by the board If not, we'll open it up for public comments on item 7 If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone Please dial star 9 to raise your hand secretary manis I see no hands being raised via zoom May we have a roll call, please Board member right Here Was that an eye? That's an eye. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking Thank you Board member watts Aye Board member walsh Aye Board member gray bill Aye Chair galvin Aye That's a record show that motion passes or that resolution pass the consent calendar passes with five eyes with vice chair Arnone and Board member baden fort absent Thank you. That'll take care of the consent calendar We'll now move to item 8.1 director Burke Thank you chair galvin and members of the board item 8.1 is approval of agreement with gold ridge resource conservation district for expansion of existing rainwater harvesting rebate program And claire nordley our water conservation manager will be making the presentation Good afternoon chair galvin and members of the board As director Burke said i'm claire nordley water conservation supervisor Next slide, please Thank you. So this is an opportunity for us to be able to increase our rainwater harvesting capacity in santa rosa Basically gold ridge resource conservation district has the ability to pass through grant funding to us of up to $20,000 to expand our rainwater harvesting rebate program This is grant funding through prop one And through the county of sinoma's climate resiliency program So this would enable us to be able to double our gallon per Our rebate per gallon of rainwater storage installed. So Sinoma's water would still be providing 25 cents per gallon Gold ridge resource conservation district would be providing 25 cents per gallon And overall the customer would only submit one application and receive 50 cents per gallon of rainwater storage installed In order to participate in this funding opportunity, we do have to provide quarterly reporting Which we have worked through with the contract and should be relatively simple Next slide, please So just to explain a little bit about what our existing rainwater harvesting rebate is Is it's 25 cents per gallon stored currently We usually get about eight participants annually. So it's it's not a huge participation rich program, but certainly we have people request information about it regularly Since the rebate started in 2009, we've rebated over 176,000 gallons Next slide, please So this enhanced rebate program again would offer 50 cents per gallon of rainwater harvesting installed With the goal of installing 40,000 additional gallons of storage This increased funding for our customers would expire september 30th 2024 Or if the funding is expended earlier, it would end then The other great thing about this program is that Goldridge resource conservation district has Written into the grant application that they'll be providing more technical assistance to customers So they're going to be hosting hands-on workshops and technical information Webinars etc to customers to be able to help them Understand how to install a rainwater system and this is really exciting in my perspective Because oftentimes we hear from customers that a barrier to Adopting a rainwater harvesting system in their property is that they don't know how to get started So I think this technical assistance and hands-on workshops will be a really exciting component of this Santa Rosa water isn't going to be doesn't have to offer the workshops But we'll certainly do a lot of marketing to get our customers interested and signed up for those workshops Next slide, please So short and sweet You know our recommendation by the water department is that the board of public utilities by motion Approve the agreement for our rainwater catchment rebate program support between Goldridge resource conservation district and the city of Santa Rosa Thank you, miss Nordley. We'll open it up for board member questions or comments regarding item 8.1 board member grable Yeah, this looks like a great program. I just wanted to say thank you Because it's Goldridge rcd. Is this is there other geographic limitations on customers you can apply for the funding. What's what's the? um What is the geographic purview of Goldridge rcd with respect to this program? Yeah, thank you for the question board member grable Goldridge rcd is doing sort of a countywide rollout of this but in different cities They're offering different rebates. This is the specific rebate that would be for the city of santa rosa water customers So anyone within the city of santa rosa who's our santa rosa water customer would be eligible to receive this rebate Okay, and but the administrator of the The just so i'm clear the administrator of The rebate is us or Goldridge? So in order to simplify things for our customers. We wanted them to only have to Fill out one rebate application So they would our customers would fill out one rebate application The city of santa rosa. We would do our pre-inspection just as we do for our current rebate And then we bill Goldridge on the back end quarterly and then they reimburse us for the portion of the rebate that Is the 25 cents per gallon stored? Oh, not okay, is it it's 25 we bill back to them 25 and we supplement 25 is that? Exactly. So our current rebate is 25 cents per gallon They're adding an additional 25 cents per gallon So we'll still pay 25 cents and now they'll pay 25 cents in total the customers will get 50 cents per gallon Okay, so and that's how they'll be able to address because i'm sure So because they are an rcd They're also able to be a jurisdictional applicant for that funding from i'm assuming the state water boards or someone Yeah, it was prop one prop one. It's prop one funding. Okay, awesome. Um, and so For for our customers, it would be that partnership Do you know that do you know just for public information purposes because I've had a lot of interest in this just I think I like randomly posted about my rainwater cap capitation system at my home I have a 5000 gallon tank and just off of one little outbuilding it filled pretty quickly this year Um, and I just had all these questions like how do we do this? How do we get you know, is there funding for this? I said, I think so, you know, I was kind of um Just answering the best I could but so for people in the city We have the 50 cents because we're matching the 25 Do you know if people in the surrounding county and cities Have similar programs or for unincorporated? Is it just 25 cents? That's a good question. Um, each different area has a different rebate. Um, so I know goldridge rcd was talking about Funding much larger installations in more rural areas that aren't connected to different cities I don't know how much they're they're planning on providing to that Um, and then various different cities have different rebates. So I think for example, hildsburg is also 50 cents But petalumas may be different So I think it's different based on different jurisdictions But I do know that there is some funding for Rural land owners and the rcd will be managing those applications directly through them Do you know what who the point of contact for that is at our at goldridge rcd? uh Noel is her first name. I'm blanking on her last name, but I'd be happy to provide that to you in a follow-up Perfect. Thank you so much. Sure Thank you board member grable. Any other board member questions or comments? All right, then I will entertain a motion Okay, well, I'll move that the board of public utilities by motion approve the agreement for rainwater castment rebate program Uh support between goldridge resource conservation district and the city of san rosa second Thank you. We have a second uh for a motion by board member right seconded by board member grable I'll now open it up for public comments on item 8.1 If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand Say your turn manist There are no hands being raised via zoom for public comment. Thank you. May we have a roll call vote, please board member right Hi board member watts Hi board member walsh Hi board member grable Hi chair galvin Hi Let the record show this motion passes with five affirmative votes with Vice chair arnone absent and board member baton fort absent Thank you We'll now move to item 9 which is public comments on non-agenda matters If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand if you're dialing via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand Secretary manis There are no hands being raised via zoom and none in the council chamber. Thank you That'll take care of item number 9. We have no referrals. We have no written communications We have no subcommittee reports that i'm aware of Any board member reports Okay, no board member reports. We will move to the director's report Thank you chair galvin and members of the board. I have a couple things to share with the board this afternoon First, I just wanted to let the board know that uh last Oh, gosh a couple weeks ago now on wednesday june 22nd We were able to give a tour to our new council member diana mcdonald We provided her tour of the local and regional operations systems with our acting deputy director ron marin check Acting wastewater superintendent christian williams and our deputy directors Peter martin mike prince and shon mcneal giving the tour We provided her with an in-depth dive and system tour of our local operations Provided information on our water and wastewater system assets including pumping facilities water storage tanks groundwater wells Our emergency mobile equipment vehicles and much more but most importantly also got to introduce her to a number of the santa rosa water team Um council member mcdonald Also was treated to a tour of our west college sewer lift station where she was able to descend 32 feet below ground to see the pump room As well as a tour of our water station for and our farmers lane treatment plant Then we went out to the laguna treatment plant and she had a presentation on our regional water reuse efforts And also was given a tour of the treatment process Basically following the process from entry to the plant at our headworks through filtration and disinfection And she was also treated to a number of underground parts of our treatment plant as well She was very impressed and complimentary of the facilities and our staff and I did want to let the board know that For some it's been a while for some you've been brand new since covid But we are opening back up to provide tours of our facilities So if you uh any of the board members would either like to retour or would like to have a tour for the first time Please let me know and I'd be more than happy to schedule some time To show you our local water and sewer systems as well as get you a tour of our treatment plant if you are interested Next I wanted to let the board know uh that I am very happy to report the successful return of our water smart expo This was held on june 29th and was part of the wednesday night market After a two-year hiatus we were able to Bring this event back Thanks to the support of more than 25 staff within the water department We really had a great showing um residents and customers were given the opportunity to create a customized drought kit And in all 500 customized drought kits were distributed at the event Um our customers were also given the opportunity to sign up for the water smart portal And the water use efficiency team had several water conservation displays to help our customers understand how they can achieve savings and take advantage of our existing programs We also had a number of partners participate and show different water use efficiency products and things that could be done around homes Um members of the event were also able or members of the public sorry that participated in the event We're also able to speak one on one with our water use efficiency team And uh we saw quite an interest in rainwater and gray water systems So very timely that we have the gold ridge agreement coming before you today We also had a great children's uh booth and kids were able to make water conservation themed buttons As well as received a reusable lunch bag with other activities um a number of other teams Besides water use efficiency also participated including stormwater and creeks environmental compliance We had our local staff local operation staff at the hydration station Zero waste Sonoma and Sonoma water also attended and uh participated in the event So just really want to recognize this is a huge event for us Um typically we do every year and I haven't been able to do the last two years and really appreciate all of the hard work that staff did to put this event together And uh really make it a great success. It seemed like we had um really Probably one of the greatest amount of participation in our water smart expo and quite sometimes so Great job by the team And then last I just wanted to take a moment to uh say thank you To our current interim city attorney, uh, mr. Bob Maddow It's been a great pleasure as always to work with you. I so appreciate your guidance and Just uh, you know everything you bring to the water department. We truly appreciate all the work you've done Coming back for a second time So I wanted to say thank you so much and I wanted to introduce our new attorney Our new assistant city attorney. That's assigned to the water department. Who's here next to me today And that's morgan bigger staff and morgan comes actually from the firm that mr. Maddow works at And uh has a great uh bit of experience especially working in this area Um has been the attorney for the north marin water district So has a lot of of good experience and brings a lot of water and wastewater Experience to the department. So we're very excited to have morgan here It's been a couple of weeks and he will be leading The efforts in the attorney role starting with the next bpu meeting And that's my report and I'm happy to answer any questions that the board may have Thank you, uh, director burke. I too want to thank and express my gratitude to mr. Maddow for all of his work during two different transitions that we've had at the city attorney's office and Your expertise and ability to in particular follow Some of the ongoing efforts with regards to the potter valley project has been Very helpful to the board. So thank you again, and we greatly appreciate your service and I'd like to welcome Mr. Morgan bigger staff as our new assistant city attorney Thank you for joining us today. We'll look forward to getting the same kind of expertise and guidance from you And we will move forward from that I'll open it up now for any questions or comments by the board with regards to the director's report All right, uh, mr. Maddow. I see you've unmuted yourself. Did you want to say anything? Very briefly mr. Chairman and thank you very much for that opportunity I first want to express my thanks to City attorney sue gallagher and to jennifer burke for the two opportunities that were extended to me to provide interim service to the city it was um Something that I enjoyed doing a great deal and it's fascinating to me that in The combination of the two stints that I have had I've yet to have a face-to-face meeting with anybody on anything So someday I'm looking forward to the opportunity to make my way to Santa Rosa and perhaps greet many of you face to face for the first time even though my My time in the saddle there is is just about done I do want to say something that I want to address particularly to the board I've really enjoyed the opportunity to Um to observe this board in action. It is an extremely good board And I'm saying that based upon my experience having worked with a lot of different boards for a lot of different entities Over a long period of time. You have not heard me speak up very often Because as a very strong general rule, I don't have to because of the Quality of the work that is done by the water department staff They make it easier for the attorney Because they are so good at what they do And prior to the time agendas are framed up and agenda items are presented That's where we have an opportunity to work with them And I can say based again on my experience To the to the board members The department that Jennifer Burke heads is full of pros and you should be proud of them. They work well for you And uh, I think they are capable of great things and so To the board congratulations for having that great team Working for you to Jennifer You're one of the best I've ever worked with and I appreciate the opportunity and boy if you put together a good team Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Maddow much appreciated those comments At this time we'll open it up for public comments on item 14 If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone Please dial star nine to raise your hand Secretary manis There are no hands being raised for public comment on this item very good That'll take care of item 14, which is the director's report So it's now time for us to adjourn and obviously I would like us to adjourn in honor of reberda atha In honor of her retirement and her leaving the city and having a wonderful retirement So we will adjourn in your honor and see everybody at our next meeting Thank you Thanks reberda