Okay, I have that at 530. So with that, I would like to call to order this meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for September. First, Ali, would you like to call the roll? President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Ackerman. Here. Director Fultz. Here. Director Hill. Here. Director Smalley. Okay, are there any additions or deletions to the closed session agenda? I'm sorry, staff has none for the closed session agenda. Okay. And I, let's see. I'm just seeing if we have, we do have one attendee here. So I'll just ask, this is the time when we have oral communications regarding items in the closed session. And would anybody like to speak to that? If you do. End this up. It looks like that hand is up. Let's go ahead and hear what you have to say. Unmute. Now maybe you- There you go. You should be able to speak. Yeah, thanks for hearing me. This is a, I tried to get our application for a long line permit. Okay. Excuse me. Usually we like members of the public to identify themselves. Say where they live. Sure. And- I'm at- Yeah, I'm at. Yeah. And so the question is, is whether you really want to be talking to us now? Because whether your question has to do with the closed session agenda. I don't know if it does or doesn't. I don't think it doesn't. So I hate to put you off, but if you're talking about a long line installation, it really needs to come in the open session when we also have that 630, this thing sort of thing. The open session begins at 630. Yeah. Oh, okay. Thanks. Yeah, it's a little confusing, but that's when you should sign in. And we'll- Okay. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you. I'm sorry. No, I'll come back. No worries. All right. Okay. With that, we'll go ahead and adjourn to closed session. Then at 630. So let's go ahead and reconvene our meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Border District. Holly, would you like to take the roll call? President Mayhood. Here. Vice President Ackerman. Here. Director Fultz. Here. Director Hill. Director Smalley. Here. Okay. I would like to ask our district council, Gina Nichols, to report out what action is taken in closed session. Thank you, Chair Mayhood. The report out of closed session is that the Board voted unanimously to authorize the district's labor negotiators to give notice of the district's intention to engage in negotiations with union representatives regarding the classified employees' memorandum of understanding with the district. Thank you, Gina. Okay. Are there any additions and deletions to the agenda? Yes, Chair. Staff would like to remove item 11A authorization to shop for replacement vehicles. Staff wants to provide additional information that sinks to the Board that's pertinent to this item. We would like to be able to bring this back at our next Board meeting. Okay. So noted. Okay, now is the time for oral communications from the members of the public on issues that are within the purview of the district but are not on the agenda tonight. And I think we had one gentleman that we, who has now appeared an hour later, and this is your chance to go ahead and speak. Please identify yourself and where you live. Hi, Gail. My name's Randy Aigner. I live in Felton, but I'm actually calling on behalf of my brother who lives up off of Zioni. Okay, go ahead. We've been trying for, we tried to get like three or four days before your prior Board meeting to get a long line agreement in front of you for approval. And I think they're, for whatever reason, it didn't make that agenda. And then two weeks later, now it's not on the agenda today. So I'm trying to see if we could get that approved and in front of you. My brother is without water right now. They're well wet dry. So they've been trucking water and we've jumped through a lot of hoops to get to this point. And this is going to be the one item that's going to be holding us up now. We're actually in the middle of construction of putting the lines in. We've gotten permits. We've paid our Zioni Hills san fees. So we're getting two properties the next to go into this, which are actually coming on in six days or they're going in front of the board to be approved for that. So we've gone a long way trying to get this done. And I really didn't want to wait another two weeks to get approved on that. Hey, Brick, did you want to respond to that? Well, these, I think there's three or four services that are coming with this group. Yes, they do need long service land agreements. They also, a couple of the parcels do need annexation into the district. LAPCO is going, these services are going in front of the LAPCO board on the seventh annexation into the district. The service long service land agreements will be coming to the board at our next meeting. And we are moving this forward. Annexations and long service land agreements do take time to get through the process. We were unaware, at least I was unaware that the customers are out of water or hauling water because there are ways that we could have went to LAPCO and got an emergency approval to supply water outside of the district. But this will be in front of the board and we will get this scheduled. And if they are actually out of water, we can move this pretty quickly through the process to get it installed. Thank you, Rick. Bob? I just had a clarifying question for Rick. Does that mean, Rick, that you could go to LAPCO tomorrow and say that these folks are out of water, we need to do something emergency? We could. Yes, we could. Could we do that? But whether I can get that installed, I mean, they're hauling water, it sounds like, and we can ask this customer to give us more information. But I would not be able to get it installed tomorrow, Bob. It would be the first of next week. No, no, I get that, but we get LAPCO's permission tomorrow and install it Tuesday or Wednesday or something. We could do that. And most likely, because Joe Charano, the executive director of LAPCO, did send me an email beginning of the week and said that they were be hearing these on the seventh. I could contact LAPCO and they do have provisions to allow when someone is having a hardship that is out of water. Can I hear me? Can you hear me, Rick? Yes, go ahead. I'm not asking for something today. What I'm asking for is if we could get the long line agreements approved through SLB Water District, then we can get on their list to start doing the installation for the meters. But if I have to wait another two weeks and then it takes two or three weeks to get the meters installed, now I'm five weeks down the road. The last. I understand that. And it's my understanding that you've already are being in the scheduling queue of those in, you know, we anticipate the LAPCO will go through and I can't speak for the board, but I anticipate our board would approve these long service lines, especially that you've done all your sandhills work and so forth. I am anticipating that. So it'll move relatively quick. Then you all have some significant fees to pay as well. Brett. Sure, Mayhud. If I may. Please go ahead, Jada. Yeah. For Brown Act reasons, I recommend kind of curtailing this discussion since it isn't on this evening's agenda. The discussion has to be brief in nature. But thank you for reminding me of that.  Is there something quick that you just wanted to add? I don't think I would. I would just open up a new avenue and that wouldn't be appropriate. I think let's not do that. So I guess I would just suggest that Mr. Aigner, go ahead and contact Rick and tell him what the real situation is. Cause I think before tonight, Rick did not realize that anybody was out of water and that does change things a little bit. So he needs to have that information. Okay, onward. Any other oral communications? Okay. There is no president's report. So we will go ahead with our first unfinished business, which is the Outreach Contract Award. Rick. And the Environmental Manager, Ms. Blanchard, will present this to the board. We'll start with the start of it. Good evening everyone.  So as mentioned, this item is in regards to the district awarding a contract for a comprehensive outreach consultant for fiscal year 22 and 23. As in background, the administrative committee began discussions around the district's outreach in February of 2022. During these conversations, staff indicated that there were additional communication needs including polishing and house-reading communications, technical writing, event planning, social media posting, and best management practices, determining ways to engage customers, content development, and the ability for the consultant to represent the district professionally in both written and in-person communication. The work identified above would be in addition to the ongoing communications and social media, which are currently supported by the BUDS PR on a month-to-month basis. Those services include newsletter creation, social media content, and scheduling, and as needed graphic design at a cost of 3560 monthly. In May, the administrative committee recommended releasing a request for proposal or RFP for a comprehensive outreach consultant increasing the outreach budget from $35,000 to $50,000. At the May 19th, board of directors meeting, the board voted to move ahead with the RFP, but did not approve increasing the budget to $50,000. The administrative committee approved the RFP to be released in June, and the RFP closed on July 28th with three proposals reviewed. Attached are the proposals from DUDEC, Exhibit A, the BUDS PR Exhibit B, and Miller-Maxfield, Inc. Exhibit C. During the August administrative committee, the committee discussed all three proposals, but was unable to come to a consensus and opted to recommend both Miller-Maxfield, Inc. and DUDEC to be considered by the full board before making a final determination. References for both recommended consultants were positive, with each reference stating that the consultant performed within schedules, budgets, and were successful with their outreach projects. However, DUDEC's references were more project-focused and did not reflect an ongoing agency-focused public outreach compared to Miller-Maxfield. Staff recommends the contract be awarded to Miller-Maxfield, Inc., who best demonstrated a strong understanding of the local area, ability to understand local water policy issues, and the ability to meet all the needs outlined in the RFP. Miller-Maxfield is currently the outreach consultant for the Santa Margarita Downwater Agency, which the district is a member agency of, is working with other local, similar-sized water districts, and has experience working with the water district already. The recommendation is that the board of directors review this memorandum and authorize the district manager to select and award Miller-Maxfield, Inc. a comprehensive outreach services contract. Okay. Rick, did you want to add anything before I turn to members of the board? No, I think Carly pretty well summarized. You know, we have worked with Miller-Maxfield in the past doing district outreach. We do have a working relationship with them and, of course, the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency. And I thought what I really was impressed by Miller-Maxfield was his understanding of the different communities in the San Lorenzo Valley. I thought he hit that out of the park in his proposal that he understands our needs. And we'll have a unique area that we're outreaching to. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Chair. Okay. Let's go ahead and start with Jamie, since she chairs the admin committee. So I will be moving the staff recommendation to award the contract to Miller-Maxfield. The admin committee, and this is one of the downsides of being down a committee member, which we are still attempting to find committee members for admin committee if anyone knows anyone. But we're not able to come to a decision at the most recent admin committee meeting. There were two clear proposals that stood above both Dudek and Miller-Maxfield, I think put together really compelling proposals and both have clear expertise in the industry. But the reason that I prefer the Miller-Maxfield proposal is severalfold. One, Miller-Maxfield is working in our communities doing this work. And Dudek, even though they do technically have a Santa Cruz office, their Santa Cruz office is not where their communications work is being done, that's being done out of an office in Southern California. And so that staff that would be doing that work would not necessarily be local. And I really like the idea that Miller-Maxfield has employees who are here in our community. I think that that's really important when you're doing community outreach. I think it's vital when you're trying to do a community-oriented event, like we've talked about wanting to do with some of these big issues coming up. And so for that reason, I gravitate towards Miller-Maxfield's proposal. And then secondarily to that, I think that they just really understand our community. They have done work that spans the spectrum from political work to more straightforward education and informational kinds of work. And that really sort of depends on the needs of their client from what I can see. I know there were some concerns about that they do do political campaigns. And so we didn't want to leave the impression with our ratepayers that we were hiring them for political reasons, but I'm really confident that with the direction of staff, of Carly and Rick, and of course, our direction is bored, that they will not be, that they will take our direction in terms of the message that we want them to communicate to our community. So, you know, but going beyond that, they have established a real understanding of what influences our community. And I would point to the most recent No On Measure D campaign, which Miller-Maxfield ran and the San Lorenzo Valley of all of the parts of Santa Cruz County that voted against Measure D in this most recent round, San Lorenzo Valley came out strongest against it. And I credit some of that to the work that Miller-Maxfield did. So I think that that's further evidence that they really understand our community. So with that, I think I'll turn it back to the rest of the board. Did you want to officially, you sort of said you wanted to move something, did you want to move it now? I will move the staff recommendation that the board authorize the district to select a new word, Miller-Maxfield, for the comprehension of the Outreach Services Contract. Okay. I'll second that. Okay. That doesn't mean that I will put it up for a vote yet, but we just, we're required if we have a motion to take a second, and now we can still have discussion of it. Okay.  But the motion is now on the table. Bob, let's go to you since you're the second, you're the other board member that's on the admin committee. Yes. And I think the main issue that we have in front of us here that requires community, involvement in education actually plays much better into due dex strengths as a company. Miller-Maxfield is, and I have a much longer history, perhaps with them than other board members, maybe not Jamie, I think you might have worked with them before, but I do not see them as being able to adequately address those particular items, that's particularly around the raw water supply pipeline. I think they are mostly political in their approach. And I also have concerns about some of the ways in which they manage their projects relative to change requests, additional funding, that sort of thing. I'm highly skeptical that they'll be able to meet these objectives within the context of the budget that was presented regardless of what has been put in front of us. And again, that's based on history. My main objective personally for this next phase is to make sure that we are providing the best educational information we can to our community about what needs to happen to restore a raw water pipeline. And I just don't believe Miller-Maxfield is up for that. I don't believe, by the way, buzz is either. I have serious concerns about buzz as well. I believe that organizing the community events that we're talking about, it can be done by them and it doesn't require people to physically be here all the time. We do a tremendous amount of work remotely now and where necessary, people do travel to where they need to be or they get people locally to do that. And they indicated their commitment to making sure that can be done. So that's why I supported Dudek in the committee discussion. By the way, I do think as an aside, it was a very good discussion. It's the kind of discussions that we should have in committee. I thought that Jamie led the discussions really well. And I think all the points came out during that committee meeting. So yeah, I think it's now to the board to make that final decision. Thank you all. Jeff? So I have one question here on Miller-Maxfield at the moment. I noticed in their work that they've done work for several, what I would call local water agencies. Are they currently doing any work for anyone other than Santa Margarita? And is there any opportunity or possibility of a conflict of interest if they're doing a neighboring water district? They do do work, I do believe, for Scotts Valley water. And they do do work on and off for the other local water districts. Soquel Creek. Soquel and Santa Cruz. Yeah. So do we see any opportunity? I guess, Jeff, my response on that was I actually am less concerned about that as a potential conflict of interest as just the opposite in that because they're doing this kind of work for other agencies and I have looked very closely at what they've done for Santa Margarita is they know a lot and they know a lot about the issues. They've got a lot of the diagrams already cooked up. In other words, we're in a position where we can, given that we're talking about a contract where we're putting at a maximum of 50,000 and we're basically paying them on an hourly basis. If we can piggyback on work that they're essentially have already created for other agencies, that's a plus in my mind. So I don't see where there's gonna be a conflict of interest especially because, well, I don't see it and I think it's potentially a positive. Jamie, I think I interrupted you. It's okay, we were speaking to the same thing. I wanted to just speak to the conflict of interest concern because I have hired a lot of these kinds of public affairs firms in a public affairs role and often there are always fewer firms like a Miller-Maxfield that serve public sector kind of agencies and interests than there are typically like private sector PR side kinds of agencies and it is very common that you have a public affairs firm that's kind of done a piece of work for the city of Santa Cruz, the city of Capitola, Soquel, I mean, that is very normal. The conflict of interest would only come up if we had some kind of like a crisis that maybe involved Scott's Valley, some main break, I don't know that maybe impacted some of their property or something like that, right? That that would put them in kind of an issue where maybe we don't wanna have them be the person to speak to that because they also work for Scott's Valley, but those kinds of things are like really rare and highly navigable and they have to sign all kinds of paperwork for us as part of the contracting process to ensure our interests when they're working for us. So I would be very comfortable that there wouldn't be a conflict of interest concern but I did also wanna speak to the concern about Miller-Maxfield and whether or not they could adhere to budget. I'm not sure exactly where that comes from, but I appreciate that the district has done work with them in the past and perhaps there have been times when they've had change orders on the contracts. I would say that it's very likely that had we gone out and interviewed Dudek's clients, we would find that they too have change orders on a number of their contracts because that's just a very typical process. So I'm not sure that that's a compelling reason either way and I would also say that Dudek overall, their communications arm is a subgroup to their engineering and environmental services group. That's the main thrust of what Dudek does. They are not a public affairs agency, they have a public affairs arm of their organization that does some of that work, likely in concert with many of their engineering and environmental projects for clients, but Miller-Maxfield not only is a public affairs firm but they're a local public affairs firm. So I just wanted to speak to those issues. Hey, Bob, I'll come back to you after everybody's had a chance to speak. Mark? Yes. To the education point, they worked on the groundwater information session that was put on at the Felton Community Hall in 2019. I attended that seminar that was put on, I was extremely impressed by the level of information that was being presented by the organization, by the speakers that were there and I counted no less than 135 folks attending that session. So I thought that that was very well done from that perspective. Miller-Maxfield's executive summary describes the valley, unique aspects, they focused it on the valley versus Dudek's, I found it to be generic and I think you could change a few words as to the water district as to Santa Clairv or San Lorenzo Valley Water District and make it Santa Clair Valley Water District and Dudek's proposal would have equally applied. In addition to that, Dudek's lead, Jane Gray, says right in their proposal, she's based in Encinitas. So I got the feel from reviewing both proposals that Miller-Maxfield was the better of the two. So that's my two cents on it. Thanks. Thank you. I read all three proposals when they were presented in the admin committee packet and so I'd actually sort of already tentatively made up my mind before I eventually watched the tape of the admin committee discussion and I feel very strongly that Miller-Maxfield is the group that we should be hiring. I think we've all noticed that Buzz just is not up to the mark in terms of their technical ability and I guess one of the things I expected going into this was that Dudek, because they're an engineering firm, would have an especially strong grasp on the technical aspects of this and so when I read the proposal, I had very much the response that Mark did. It's over 30 pages long, but all of it except one page is generic, it could be any proposal. But what alarmed me most was I'm just gonna read you one sentence here from the one page that's on San Lorenzo Valley and I could do more that shows that they have no understanding what our current system situation is and if they can't get that right for a proposal, I just can't imagine how this is gonna go forward. So the sentence I'm just picking here is the primary district water source has historically been surface water untrue. We've been 50-50 groundwater and surface water. However, due to the fire's adverse effect on surface water quality, the district now primarily relies on groundwater, not true. As soon as we brought the water online in the Norse system, it was good enough to use. We're not mostly dependent on groundwater. We only switched over to groundwater in June. So this shows that they do not have a grasp of what's going on in technically and that was where I expected them and then they go on and say the groundwater, the reason we shouldn't use it is because the aesthetic aspects of that it's got more dissolved solids, when the real reason is because of Santa Margarita and the rules that have to do with sustainable groundwater and they don't even mention that. This is a huge issue for us is how we are engaged with Santa Margarita. So I was shocked that an engineering firm could be so off the mark on this. I have paid a lot of attention to what Miller Maxwell has done for Santa Margarita because I've been watching Santa Margarita since those first meetings that you described Mark that I went to that I thought a lot of the diagrams they produced were very effective and the whole thing was pretty compelling. But what I've really liked about their work is that it's technically accurate. It's visually appealing and it's appropriate both at the level of who we should be pitching this at but also the scale, it's not overly glitzy. I think that people in Santa Lorenzo Valley actually get a little bit nervous or if something's too glitzy, it needs to be at the scale that we operate on. And I think what we're seeing with Miller Maxwell is they understand that because they've really showed an accurate in-depth knowledge of the district, the actual workings of the district and they've also really shown as other people have already mentioned an understanding of the sort of socio-political landscape that we have to navigate as a water district. And so I came away after reading all of these proposals very strongly that I thought Miller Maxwell was the one that we should hire. Bob, I said I come back to you. Well, I appreciate that. There are a number of things in there but I won't belabor the point too much. Yeah, you know, I was at that same meeting in 2019 and I don't recall much of the content that are actually being produced by Miller Maxwell. There were a series of presentations from experts who actually produced the content. I think they organized the event. In fact, I think there were a couple of them. Okay, I mean, I see where we're going. I am skeptical. I guess we will see. We'll see how that all turns out. Miller Maxwell is a sales organization and I am concerned that the information we're gonna put together is gonna be more of a sales job as opposed to an education. And I think what we really need to do is make sure we're educating people about what the situation is. So as a community, we can reach a consensus. I don't know that Miller Maxwell was up for that but I guess we will see. I go out to members of the public. We have, oh wait, Josh, well, if you're not a member of the public, you should be in the money. I was gonna say, why is he in there? Anyway, we have both Cynthia and Mark Doleson. So Mark, you've got your hand up. Let's go ahead and hear from you. There we go. There you go. I think I've successfully unmuted. I thought I would say a few words because I'm a public member of the admin committee and I don't think you really require my input regarding your decision, but I did wanna share a little of what transpired at our two August meetings on this topic because I personally found it frustrating and would like to call a little more attention to the process. So from my perspective, there were really two key issues that I would like the board to be able to consider and one is definitely who should the contract be awarded to but the other one is, how is it that the admin committee spent two hours on this question without producing any real useful guidance, at least any decision? So with regard to the first question, I would say that staff did in the admin committee meeting initially recommend Miller-Maxfield. There was a motion on the table to approve that recommendation. Director Ackerman voiced concerns about duty similar to what she stated tonight and Director Fultz voiced concerns about Miller-Maxfield similar to what he stated tonight. I found the concerns from Director Ackerman persuasive and not the concerns by Director Fultz. I voiced concerns about the staff's assessment process particularly with regard to the first admin committee meeting but I said at the second meeting that I was now satisfied with their recommendation I was prepared to cast a deciding vote in favor of Miller-Maxfield. So if I were on the board I would similarly be voting for Miller-Maxfield tonight but what really surprised me was that in the midst of all that staff suddenly changed their recommendation from Miller-Maxfield to either Miller-Maxfield or Dudek and I found this to be really the most troubling aspect of the whole process. But I did go along with the other two committee members in approving that new recommendation. So that really brings me to my second question which is, is the committee responsible for vetting the candidates or is it responsible for vetting the district's vetting process because it appears to me there was a lot of confusion on this point and this confusion ultimately wasted two hours of the committee's time. I believe that it's the district's responsibility to vet the candidates and make a recommendation to the committee. I think the district fell seriously short of this responsibility both in failing to initially provide an assessment and then in that last minute reversal of its recommendation. So as a committee member, I believe that my principal responsibility was to oversee the assessment process and I think the assessment process was ultimately adequate but I don't think everyone else was necessarily on the same page. Okay. Thank you, Mark. Jamie, did you wanna respond to that? I just wanted to add something and I appreciate your comments, Mark and that was right on the money in terms of some of the challenges that we struggled with as a committee. I think that what I would add, I didn't see the offer of the change in position at the second meeting so much as the staff changing their position directly as much as the staff was trying to seek a compromise as my interpretation and my understanding of the way that that unfolded at the meeting. What happened just for a little bit of context for the rest of the committee members is that right now we are down on committee members so we have four committee members. We had one committee member who was supposed to be there and then due to personal reasons was not able to be there at the last minute but communicated their preference and that created a little bit of confusion about how we wanted to proceed because we didn't have because there was a difference of opinion and so I think that staff was trying to find a sort of elegant way to bring that to a close because we were gonna lose our quorum and we hadn't come to a final vote yet and so I appreciate Mark is right that at that point staff made a suggestion about going a different direction and it sounded like that was gonna be the best way to get this to the September 1st meeting so that the board could then consider it in my view at least in terms of how that unfolds. Bob? Yeah, I also wanted to address something that Mark said by the way, if this is not the right time I'll do it after public comment but I did have something to address I think his second point which I do think is a very good point to consider. No, I think I don't see any other hands up among the public so I think now is the time. Okay. You know, Mark's asked a question about what the process is and what the committee's role is and since I participated in the admin committee when it selected the attorneys, well, attorney in this case, Nassim and we went through a process that was actually very lengthy. It was actually I believe more than two meetings that involved a series of interviews in person at that time, we could do that and it involved an extensive discussion on the part of the committee and it wasn't just the committee overseeing the process of how the staff went about making a selection of recommendation, it actually was the committee itself deeply involved in helping make that determination. And this may be something obviously for a different meeting it's not directly in the agenda today but I wanna acknowledge what Mark brought up and said that if there is that kind of dynamic on the committee between are we there for job X or are we there for job Y? Perhaps it does need to be clarified at least with respect to the selection of consulting assistance like legal public relations audit firm if it ever came to the admin committee or budget committee, that sort of thing. I think that's actually a very good question to ask my view is that the committee would be involved in actually making the suggestion not a recommendation, not just overseeing that the process was followed correctly. I agree with you Bob, it's an interesting question is our committee is there to vet a process or are they there to be more actively engaged in the vetting process itself? And I think that that's Mark wasn't sure. And I actually don't know the answer to that. And Gina, if you have any legal things to pop in or whether that's really more a philosophical question that the board should consider how they want their committees to work. Well, I think it is more philosophical in the sense that the board policy manual doesn't address it and the board policy manual is our policy handbook for what the committees are supposed to do and how but the other thing that I wanted to interject briefly is that I'm a little concerned for Brown Act reasons of continuing to discuss the function of committees under this agenda item. Okay, all right. We can come back to that as a separate agenda item at some other point if we want to. I think it's probably worth talking about. Okay, we do have a motion and a second on the table to adopt the recommendation by the staff to, let me just get this right, authorize the district manager to select and award Miller-Maxfield in a comprehensive outreach services contract and I've added here for an amount not to exceed $50,000 a year. Is that okay? I added that from- I would accept the friendly amendment to my motion. I just wanted that to be clear because we're already sending a certain amount on buzz and I don't want people to think this is 50,000 on top of it. It's, this is replacing that and this will be the total budget. Okay, any further comments or questions about the motion? I think, Chair Maynard, I do believe Miller-Maxfield's proposal is for 50, is it 53 or do I have that wrong, Carly? It's actually 55. Yes, it's 55. I would ask that you amend that to not to exceed 55. Is that okay with everybody else? The board added earlier just dropped at 50 so that was the number. I guess I had assumed that we paid them by the hour in any case, right? And then it would- I'm gonna bump up against that limit. I don't believe the board ever approved the increase to maybe we were waiting to come back with the proposal and to adjust the budget amount to the proposal. Okay, we didn't say specifically that that's why we didn't dock in a new budget was so that we could see what the proposals came in at. Okay, so what you would like me to say is for an amount not to exceed $55,000 per year. Is that correct? Correct. Okay, so that's the motion on the table. Any comments or questions from the board? Any of the people in the audience? I'm seeing any. Okay, then Holly, could you take a roll call vote please? President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackerman. Yes. Director Fouls. No. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Motion passes. Okay, we move on to the next item of unfinished business which is the remote meeting authorization under AB 361. We're doing this a little early because we're not absolutely sure that we'll, well actually now after this discussion of the long line maybe we will absolutely have to have a next meeting but that was the reason we did it now just because we were thinking we might not need the next meeting but is there any reason not to continue with this, Gina? No, there's not. I mean, you can't do it too often. It's better to do it too often rather than not have it as well. Okay. Okay, you may disagree that we can do this too often as we found it. It feels like it sometimes. Okay, all right. Any questions or comments on this from the board? How about members of the public? Okay, then I will suggest that the board ratify resolution number 42122, proclaiming an ongoing state of local emergency and authorizing remote meetings for another 30 days during the COVID-19 pandemic. Is that suggest or move? That was, I'm sorry, that was, I was moving that to ratify, motion to ratify. Hold second. Okay, a second. All right, any discussion by members of the board or the public? Seeing none, Holly, would you take a roll call vote please? President Mayhood. Aye. Vice President Ackman. Yes. Director Fulse. Yes. Director Hill. Yes. Director Smalley. Yes. Okay, motion passes. That moves us to the consent agenda. We don't have one tonight. We don't have any district reports except for the district managers report. And I know that Rick wants to give a short report having to do with power outages in hot weather. Just a little quick update here. I think as you all know that the state of California or the whole West Virginia United States is in a extreme heat wave and we're looking at triple digit temperatures through the three-day weekend with Monday being the hottest day. PG&E has already sent out notices to be prepared for outages, rolling blackouts, et cetera. Although we have generators, but these outages cause our large pumps problem switching over back and forth. So it's very staff time and consisting of traveling from site to site. The operations department has moved into the emergency response is making sure all equipment is up and ready to go. We've increased our social messaging to inform customers that during PG&E outages and during the heat wave to be really conserved water we've also have programmed our changeable message lines to be deployed if needed in case of a emergency which are the big road signs that ask people to conserve water. Like I said, social messaging, we've updated. We're making sure that we are prepared. This is especially concerning due to the fact that CZU fire has limited our surface water and all of our water into the North Boulder Creek area has to be pumped up through what we call the Irwin booster. Now one choke point facility, that facility has been overhauled. Both pumps are functioning. We've had reps out and looking at it. We've tested both pumps work. Normally we only use one pump to pump about 350 gallons per minute. But the second pump, we've tested it, it's functionable. We can almost double the production up into the Boulder Creek area. But power outages are a huge concern. And so is fire moving into the three day weekend but we are going into it with our storage at 100% or as close to it and hopefully ready if anything was to come up. Oh, that that's. Thank you for doing very heartening. I'm, thank you for that, that report. Any questions or comments on that by members of the board? Okay. We don't have any written communications. So with that, without objection, I will adjourn this meeting for this evening. Okay. Bye. Bye. So I show that is 715 adjournment. And thank you very much for your help. Did a great job.


This study examines the potential benefits of using cloud-based computer-aided design, CAD, systems in the professional and practical training of future mechanical engineers. It also evaluates the feasibility of selected cloud-based CAD systems for use in such training. The study focuses on the selection of automated design tools that can be used in future studies of mechanical engineers. The paper concludes that the use of cloud-based CAD systems in professional and practical training of future mechanical engineers is feasible and could provide significant advantages over traditional methods. This article was authored by M. V. Rasevitzka, N. A. M. Striak.


Vint Cerf, first of all, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. Let me ask you, in terms of ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. government, what are some of the key points that stand out in your mind? Well, setting aside the long history of the Internet's relationship or the government's relationship to the development of the Internet, when we get to ICANN, there were preceding activities starting around 1996 that led to government interest in the ICANN idea. That was a consequence of John Postel's effort to manage the domain name system, IP address allocation, and editing the RFCs, the request for comments, which document the standards for the Internet protocols, and also managing the various tables of parameters that were needed to exercise those protocols. So John did all of that. He had some help at USC Information Sciences Institute. But as the domain name system became more and more commercial, which is post-1992, there were increasing amounts of potential risk, at least as seen by USC and their lawyers, that somehow this commercialized activity and disputes over domain names would somehow draw the university into all kinds of commercial. So risk litigation wise you mean? Risk of litigation. So I think they put some pressure on John to look for a way to institutionalize the activity outside of USC. On top of that, I think John recognized, he'd been doing this for 25 or more years, that someday he wouldn't be able to do it and that he ought to have an institutional setting for this to continue, because if it was going to do any good, it had to go on for an unknown amount of time. And the irony, of course, of all this is that starting in 1996, John begins this exploration of how to institutionalize it and then passes away in 1998. So part of the institutionalization exploration involves something called the internet ad hoc group or committee, I guess, IAHC. IAHC, yeah. And that, you could see watching the various interactions that there were dollar signs in people's eyes, and it was clear that there was a certain amount of greed driving the debate back and forth. Ultimately, two things happened. One of them is that John attempted, I think, in response to the IAHC to consider creating an institution in Geneva. After all, that's the home of many international organizations, and this surely even then was recognized as an international phenomenon. And the second thing is that John was, this is at least my interpretation, John wanted to test the root zone management system to make sure that if the A route wasn't the one that was feeding all the rest, but if it was B or C or something else, that it would still work. Now, that's one explanation. Some other people asserted that John asked to change the feeding primary root zone just to exercise his power. I don't believe that, because that's not John's style. He was worried about making sure that systems would be resilient. But as soon as he made the change to have the root servers fed from a different server than the A route, all hell broke loose, and the government stepped in. There was also already some stirring in the Congress about a possibility of the control of the internet escaping out of the country to Switzerland. Let me interrupt you for one second. That incident that you just related to me when John had done this and the consternation it caused in the U.S. government, I had heard, and tell me whether or not this was true, that magazineer had actually threatened John and said, if you don't switch this back, U.S. marshals are going to be at your door. Is that true or is that a fiction? Well, I don't, I don't have primary knowledge of that. Have you heard it? That story has been around. And I think at least the part about Ira magazine or contacting John is almost certainly true. You may have a chance to ask Ira about that in the course of these interviews. And I think that would be an interesting question to ask. I'm pretty sure that that sounds real. Whether he threatened U.S. marshals or something else, I don't know. But it is often thought that that action triggered Clinton's request of magazineer to go figure out how to deal with this problem. Who is going to manage the domain name system and the address allocation? Who is going to perform the IANA functions if it's not under contract to the U.S. government? Did the government, the way you're talking, the government immediately understood the value of the DNS. It sounds like there was no education necessary. They got it. I think in the Clinton administration, very senior people got it, including Al Gore. And certainly, I think Ira was tasked with figuring out what to do. And there was also a belief that responsibility for internet should migrate towards the private sector. And this had been going on for some years well ahead of this particular period of time, way before the IAHC. What was the genesis of that belief? I mean, was it there automatically? Did you guys help push that? Did John push that? Or was it just there? Did everyone accept it? John was not particularly interested in commercializing the internet. But as far back as 1988, I was. At that point, I had been away from the government for about six years, because I left DARPA in late 1982. But by 1988, you could see the significant beginnings of commercialization. By this time, Cisco systems existed. Maybe Juniper, by that time, certainly protean people making equipment that would let you build pieces of internet. There was a show called Interop that was founded by Dan Lynch, who had been the guy running the computer centers at USC, ISI, and before that, SRI International. Interop was an exhibition that allowed companies to show off their hardware and show that it interworked on the show net, the ethernet, and also just teach people about how to write TCPIP and other protocols. So it was actually a very successful enterprise. At some point, he filled the Moscone Center with 50,000 people. So by 1988, this is an ongoing and thriving concern. And I remember walking in to Interop Show in 88 with Eric Benamu, who at the time was the CEO of 3Com, a company founded by Bob Medcamp. And I saw this giant Cisco display. And I turned to Eric, and I said, how much do those cost? And he said, a quarter of a million dollars. And he said, that's not counting the people that you have to pay to man the booth for a week. And I just stood there with my jaw dropping, thinking, my god, some people think this is going to make money. And then I thought, how the hell are we going to get internet into the hands of the general public? Because as of that moment, it was only available to a significant portion of the academic community, especially supported by NSF, and the military. But the general public didn't have access. So at that point, I started pushing for steps that would allow the internet to become a self-supporting commercial enterprise in the expectation that the only way the general public would get access to it would be if it had an economic engine driving it. And by good fortune, by 1989, we managed to break the appropriate use policy limitations that said no commercial traffic on the government backbones. NSF actually allowed me to connect MCI mail up to the internet while I was working with Bob Khan at CNRI. So and as soon as we did that, we announced it, all the other email carriers said, well, you want to be connected. And then three commercial internet services popped up, UUNET, PSINET, and Surfnet on San Diego. So by 1989, we're starting to see commercialization. By 1992, we're starting to see commercialization of the domain name system, because network solutions asked for permission to charge for domain name registration. And the National Science Foundation, under which contract the network solutions guys were operating, recognized that they were spending research dollars on what really looked like a commercial enterprise supporting the private sector. And so they said, OK, you should charge for that. Nobody knew quite how much to charge for it. They said $50 a year for two years. And if there was any excess money, it would go into a fund that would be used to support further research on internet. Well, the Republican part of the Congress didn't like that, because they claimed it was an illegal tax. The then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Sensenbrenner, argued that it was an illegal tax. And the National Science Foundation didn't have the authority to do that. So there was a lot of hu-ha going on in the policy regarding internet well in advance of the IAHC question. So there was visibility about internet and its commercialization and oversight well ahead of this. Then the IAHC, two years worth of turmoil and proposals to go to Geneva happened. And John does this swap, and it triggers what, in effect, is an avalanche and what comes out is a green paper from Ira Magersiener's office, followed by a white paper. Explain the green paper for those who are not familiar with it. Ira consulted with a lot of people, including me, and then produced an outline of what the transfer of authority to the private sector could look like. And so the green paper was a proposal from what that would look like. And there was lots of comments which led to the white paper, and the white paper was the basis upon which the ICANN organization was proposed. And so Ira is sort of being the midwife, if you like, for the birth of this organization. Now there were competitors, if I remember correctly. Here I don't have a clear recollection of who else was competing. But ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, was one of the competitors and was selected to perform this function under contract to now the National Telecommunications and Information Agency. So we're seeing a transfer of responsibility for this from the National Science Foundation and research community to part of the Department of Commerce. And this is in keeping with the recognition that this is becoming a highly commercial activity. But there was, it sounds like the way you're talking, what I'm hearing is there was a general consensus of this needs to happen. It was form and function that was being debated and a variance? Well, yes. Let me say that the parties who were engaged in the Had Hock group had one model of this, which was complete commercialization and independence. The government had a slightly different view, which was the government hangs on to control of this with contracts, with verisign, with contracts, which had acquired network solutions, and contracts with the new organization, ICANN. And in fact, it was a cooperative agreement with verisign and a memorandum of understanding, plus a contract with ICANN. And all of that comes to fruition in 1998. And by September of 1998 or October, ICANN is formally created. How specific was the White Paper problematic vent? I mean, how specific was it in helping you guys maneuver to this new territory? Well, it was very specific with regard to the way in which the organization would be run. It said nothing about funding, which I found to be problematic. And it had dictated a certain amount of structure to the organization. So it was supposed to be multi-stakeholder, but the stakeholder groups were defined in the White Paper. The process by which board members were elected was also defined in the Paper, including that half of the board should be elected by some kind of a global election.  How do you qualify the electorate? How do you reach them? You can't rely on the Postal Service. You can't rely on the internet. And that sort of detail was not there. It was not in the document. The detail of implementing it wasn't. But the assertion that in order to assure that the constituencies, the so-called special interest groups, would not dominate the board for their own benefit, they insisted that their civil society have half of the board. Let's back up over one thing. You touched what I think and kind of skimmed over. It seems like a major point. There wasn't a provision for a funding model. There was no funding model, none. So I ended up, I was not involved in the formation of ICANN. I was present at the first board meeting during the period when they were trying to find a CEO. And I was there to, in fact, endorse Mike Roberts as the first CEO of ICANN. So I sat in on that part of the meeting. There was no funding model. And I remember undertaking to try to get funding. I donated money from MCI, where I was senior VP, IBM, and at least one other. Maybe it was digital. I actually don't remember who all the three parties were, but I think they put money into this organization. It was a tin cup model at the beginning. And then there was this struggle, which Mike Roberts and Louis Tutan, the general council and others, had to go through in order to figure out what business model would make sense. Where would the money come from? Would it come from the registries? Would it come from the registrars? Would it come from the IP address allocation community, Aaron and Ripe NCC, for example? And so eventually, with a great deal of effort, a funding model was developed. But at the beginning, the government offered no resources for this organization at all. It was a zero-cost procurement contract from NTIA to ICANN to run the IANA function, the thing which John Postel had been doing. And everything else was left to the organization to figure out. So the white paper's done. What is magazineer's role after the white paper's done? Did he step out? Is he still? My understanding is that Ira stepped away. At that point, the NTIA was the responsible government agency, so he had handed this off from the White House. This is sort of Bill Clinton says, get this off my plate. Ira does the green paper, the white paper, and finally hands this thing off to NTIA inside of the Department of Commerce. So the undersecretary, or the assistant secretary of NTIA becomes the responsible government authority. Prior to that handoff to DOC, and I assume you're talking figuratively, but how high up? I mean, we all know about the famous phrase of Gore saying, I invented the internet. How high up in the Clinton administration was this situation being monitored? Was there concern? Or do you know? I would have to, well, speculate, but I also need to correct the assertion that you just made. Al Gore never said I built the internet. He was misrepresented in that campaign, and I will withhold the rent that I normally go through on this point. He actually helped a lot. When he was vice, when he was senator, he helped the past legislation that funded the National Research and Education Network, which turned into an NSF man. This is something which connected 3,000 universities in the United States, and paid for international connections to other similar research and education networks elsewhere in the world. So he should get big credit for his actions as a senator. When he was vice president, he helped the past legislation which allowed the flow of commercial traffic on government-sponsored backbones, the thing that I had gotten permission to do in 1988, but only as a sort of one-year experiment. And so Al gets credit as vice president for helping to give birth to what is today the internet. Remember that he answered that question in the year 2000. This was during the Dot Boom period from 1995 when Netscape Communications had its spectacular IPO to the Dot Bus in April of 2000. He was asked during his campaign for the presidency what he had done as senator. And he said, I took the initiative in creating the internet. And he's referring to the internet of the present, which is a consequence of his actions, both to fund the NSF Net backbone and also to allow this commercial activity. It sounds like from the get-go, the concept of the privatization, allowing the private sector to have a leadership role in the management of the DNS. Sounds like everybody bought into that. What I'm hearing you say is there wasn't a lot of opposition to that concept. Well, actually, so now let's go back in time. It's 1988. I'm arguing that we should turn this into an economic engine that's self-supporting so everybody can get access to it. And my colleagues in the research community are mostly saying, are you crazy? Why would you let the refract onto our thing? And my reaction was, they will benefit from it and they will contribute to it. So we didn't agree on that. On the other hand, certainly at the top of the administration during the Clinton years, there was belief, I think, by Bill and by Al and by Aira and by others. Aira had written a paper on digital commerce or something or electronic commerce, which in a sense outlined the importance of networking and computer communications to electronic commerce, e-commerce. And so it was, and that was a piece of work commissioned by Bill Clinton. So I would say that at the top of the US government, there was awareness of the potential here. You heard Al talk about the information superhighway. He's remembering what his father had done with the 1954 act that created the Interstate Highway Act, which you may remember was a military act intended to allow us to move missiles around on the road system to keep the Russians from targeting fixed silos. That was never used for that, but it initiated this gigantic economic boom. And I think Al saw at the time the potential for this information superhighway to do the same thing. Interesting. Throughout, from the beginning, when ICANN was formed in 1998 up through present day, what was the most problematic points in your mind in the USG's relationship with ICANN? Oh, so you're asking about the relationship as opposed to problematic things for ICANN in general, which is fine. Let me try to answer that and then we can go back. So with regard to the relationship, I think that the most troubling thing in my view was the nature of the procurement contract under which ICANN functioned. It was as if ICANN were the supplier of pencils. Literally, the contract had this character that it was like, for no money, $0, please supply us with IANA functions, and which meant inventing new processes and procedures, growing the staff in order to support this, dealing with the explosion of demand for domain names and internet addresses. And also, by the way, working in a very complex environment with multiple organizations having responsibility for various parts of this system. ICANN allocated, for example, big chunks of the internet address space to the regional internet registries, BrightNCC in Europe, Aaron in the US, and later three others, LACNIC, NAPRNIC, and APNIC. And so ICANN had to work with these other independent institutions in a cooperative way in order to make sure that the domain names and the internet addresses got uniquely allocated. So this was a hard thing to do. It's global in scope. This is not just a thing in the US. And there was no model to follow at that point, correct? No, they're plowing new ground, as far as I can see, especially the multi-stakeholder model, which has morphed over time, as we've learned more about how to make that work. So I think that the view from the Department of Commerce of this as a procurement contract made it much more difficult for ICANN to function. There would be arguments of the forum, well, I'm sorry, we can't change this contract, or we'll have to recompete the contract if you wanna change it. Recompetition of this complex thing, I think, would potentially be incredibly damaging to the internet's function. So I thought that was a testy kind of interaction. Until Larry Sturkling comes along, who still has his own form of testiness, but he was the most articulate supporter of the multi-stakeholder model and of ICANN, of all of the assistant secretaries. Because he believed in it conceptually? He believed, I think he absolutely believed that this multi-stakeholder model was the right way in which to deal with policy for the internet. And he put his career on the line, in my opinion, during the period that he served as the head of NTIA. And he argued forcefully and loudly in international settings, including the Internet Governance Forum, and the W, what's it called, Wicked the World Conference on Information. Yeah, Wicked, yeah. So he was a huge friend, even though he was a tough friend, but he was a huge sponsor. That was probably the most positive period of relationship that I can remember. When we talked to Larry Sturkling, he said that the Wicked meeting in 2012 was to him a sort of wake-up call that the IANA stewardship transition had to occur, that it was time. Do you see it that way? Absolutely. I think what happened there is that there was a constant drumbeat from the non-US participants, both in ICANN and in the ITU, for the US government to relinquish its special responsibility or special authority over the internet. And it was just, it was a, the ITU had a leader at the time who really wanted to take responsibility for internet. He was gonna deliver that to the ITU. This is Hamadun Turei. And so there was a persistent theme coming from the ITU to invade the territory of responsibility that was at ICANN. And the usual excuse for this was why should the US government have this special role compared to all other governments? And that was getting in the way of State Department negotiations on other matters. So it had resonance. So it absolutely. And so during the Wicked meeting in 2012, it was evident that there were attempts being made by particularly the Russians, the Chinese, the South Africans, even the Brazilians and maybe the Saudis to capture more control. And then the end result of that meeting was a disagreement, a split between 89 countries that signed the treaty and 55 that didn't. And there could not be a more visible schism in the international community than that. And I think that the crux of this was the US special relationship with ICANN. And I think putting words in Larry's mouth that that caused him to recognize the need to make this transition. And then the question is how to do it in a way that didn't harm the internet and didn't harm US interests. Was the controversy that surrounded dot triple X a sort of test of the USG's relationship with ICANN? It has been argued by some, I'd like your take on this, that the government, some say more harshly, some say very subtly, tried to influence the decision on dot triple X. How do you see that? The government, well let's say NTIA in particular, since they had a very direct relationship with ICANN during a Republican administration was inundated with objections to the creation of a dot triple X top level domain. And to be fair about it, there are other parts of the world who also didn't think it was a good idea. So it's not like the US or NTIA was unique in that respect. Yep, there was pressure of varying sorts to try to get that decision not made or to try to prevent the dot triple X from being assigned, including there was a possibility that if dot triple X had been approved that the US government in the form of NTIA would actually force it to be removed from the route. This would have been an absolutely horrible precedent to set, it would be the worst possible precedent that you could ever have happened because as soon as that happened, everyone else who complained that the US government could do that and would do that would say C, that's what we told you, they didn't do that. And I think it was wise not to because it would have given credibility to the argument that the government would, for example, decide, well let's pull, are you out? Or we don't like what Iran has done recently, let's pull them out of the route zone. And so thank God they didn't do that. But you could see scenarios unfolding which would lead to really serious problems. That whole controversy, this issue, dot triple X was fairly well publicized. Were there other times when the US government or DOC had a sort of difficult time with ICANN or vice versa that are not so widely known? Actually, I don't think it, well there were stressful moments as we worked away through the DNS sec, the cryptographic signing of the route zone, working through the details of that. The particular mechanism that was finally agreed, in my opinion, was less secure than if ICANN did all of it but they split the functionality between ICANN and Verisign. And I didn't think that was the best security solution but I didn't have the vote at the time. So that's one thing. The other thing which was a struggle was the Treasury Department's OFAC, the Office of Foreign, I forget what the AC stands for, but it has to do with any transfer of funds to foreign governments, any assistance that you might give to a government that was on the bad list, terrorist list for example. So OFAC had the ability to intervene and inhibit any action by an American corporation that would be seen as aiding terrorism. And so as an institution that was supposed to cater to the entire internet, including the country codes of countries that were labeled terrorist companies, you would run a file of this, an argument would be made. I'm sorry, you can't update the pointer to the iranian.ir top level domain because that's assisting the foreign government. Our position at ICANN, at least the one I took, was that this is a global system and we owe integrity to all of the participants in the system regardless of what the US government might have thought. And I remind you that even in the course of the tense relationship between the US and Cuba, the US permitted telecommunications to occur. There was a contract, MCI might have been one of the contractors, but there was always a way to communicate and in my view, this is a very important diplomatic channel and the internet is another one. And so to arbitrarily cut that off for some political reason is a big policy mistake in my view. And did you win that argument? Well, I don't think I was the one making an argument with OFAC. I think in the end we managed to get through all of the controversies and as far as I know, nothing got blocked indefinitely but there were periods of time when things took a lot longer than they should have. Interesting. When Strickling made the announcement in 2014 that the IANA stewardship transition was, they wanted the community to come up with a proposal to make that happen, there was a lot of talk about ICANN's maturation. ICANN had matured to the point where this should happen. Is that an oversimplification? Had, in fact, could it have occurred earlier or is that an accurate statement? That's a really interesting question. ICANN is a very complicated organization and it got more complicated over time. This is theorem number 206, everything is more complicated. And ICANN has had the ability to amend its operation, to change its organizational structures and its procedures. It creates new entities at need and so it ends up being kind of a barnacle in crusted ship and so it's a complicated object to deal with. It has had to change its mechanisms over the course of the 18 years or now 19 that it's existed about 18 and a half. So could it have happened sooner? I think the answer is yes. I think that the transition as we now see it with all the various elements that went into that, including new functionality and new authorities, probably could have happened sooner. But it would not have happened and could not have happened had Larry Strickling not decided that it should happen. Strickling was instrumental. So I think absolutely, I mean this would not have happened if he had not asserted that he was prepared to support that if a proposal came back that met the criteria that he had established. That raises an interesting issue. We're talking about the US government's relationship with ICANN, but predominantly we've been talking about NTIA, the executive branch. The Hill, Capitol Hill, has always seemed concerned about letting ICANN go if you will to use a vastly oversimplified phrase. Why? So the simple explanation for this is rooted in another example, which I'd like to offer you. When the World Summit on the Information Society was proposed by the ITU, it was convened as an intergovernmental activity in 2003. And the first question that the delegates had was what's an information society? And somebody said, oh, it's kind of like the internet. The next question was who's in charge of the internet? Because they didn't believe anything on that scale even in 2003 could possibly operate without having central control. So we all said, well, actually it's distributed. Nobody's really in charge. Then they discovered ICANN, which has this responsibility for allocating internet addresses and domain names in a unique way to make sure the parameters of the internet are uniquely allocated. And so they decided ICANN must be in charge of the internet. Then they said who's in charge of ICANN? Of course, I'm chairman of the board at the time. But they also noticed that there is this contract between ICANN and NTIA. Oh, so it's the US government that's in charge of the internet. So that's the international view coming out of the World Summit on the information society. And to make that particular story a little shorter, after two cycles of this World Summit, they still can't quite figure out what does internet governance mean. And so they have this working group on internet governance, which doesn't come to any conclusions after two years. So they create the internet governance forum, but it's created as a multi-stakeholder forum where civil society and the technical community academics and governments in the private sector all meet and have essentially equal footing in the debates and discussions that ensue. That was dramatic, because that's gone from the Intergovernmental World Summit to the internet governance forum, which is multi-stakeholder. That was a very important thing. And that's been going on now since 2007, or 2006. So now to take that point about who's in charge of the internet. I think that the US Congress had this view that the internet was created in the United States by the US Defense Department. And therefore, somehow the US owns the internet. Even though when Bob Kahn and I did the original designs, we handed them out freely with no constraints, no patents, no other intellectual property claims for very good reason. We wanted this to be accepted with no barriers to adoption. So the members of Congress, especially the more conservative ones, see the US as the creator and owner of the internet. We made it, we own it. And yeah, we made it, we own it. And therefore, handing any authority for it out of the US government control is somehow an abrogation of our ownership and our control, as if to say that the US control the internet, which clearly does not. In that context, let me ask you this question. Strickling announces 2014. What a proposal we want to make the IANA stewardship transition happen. It's concluded in 2016. Let me pose the question to you that I posed to Strickling. At any point between that announcement and when it finally happened, did you ever think, this is just not, I know you weren't directly involved, but you were part of the community. You follow it closely. Was there ever any point where you thought this is not gonna happen? Yeah, pretty much every day. It was very clear that, first of all, it was getting, it was very hard to get the community to come together. It split into three parts. The technical part, the internet engineering task force was ready instantly. They prepared all their documents to have them ready to go. The registries with a little more work also prepared documents that showed how they would operate in the absence of the NTIA presence. And so they didn't have any direct interaction with NTIA anyhow. They were dependent on ICANN handing out these big blocks, but that was it. So that wasn't too bad. So it's five different organizations had to agree. So they got their work done on time as well. The domain name world, however, is rife with all kinds of incentives for various and so many policies to be adopted. The domainers, the people who own millions of domain names have one view of it, the other registries have another and the registrar has yet another. It took months and months way beyond the deadline to get that all sorted out. So while that was in a great state of flux, I would think this is never gonna happen because it was so hard to get that part of the agreement done. And then, of course, right up at the end, we had attempts by attorneys generals and by Senator Cruz and others to try to block the transition from happening. And so those periods were really tough because it wasn't clear whether their actions would have traction or not. And so it was a miracle when it went through. Final question. In summary, how would you characterize the historical relationship between the government, the U.S. government, and ICANN? I think that from the period of formation in 1998 to the time of Larry Strickling's ascendance as the Assistant Secretary for NTIA, that it was either largely neglected because there were other issues that NTIA had to deal with. They have a much broader responsibility than just overseeing ICANN, to serious interference with the ability of the organization to get its work done. And so I always found it to be a problematic relationship and not a very supportive one. And in spite of that, I am proud of the fact that ICANN has managed to survive in spite of all that. And again, it's not a perfect organization by any stretch and there's still a good work to be done that can be done because even under its current structure in the post-transition, there is room for improvement and there are mechanisms for improvement and it's capable of doing that because I oversaw several major changes to its organizational structure. That's great. Vint, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Pleasure.