President Swan. Here. Lou Ferris. Here. Great. Rick, do we have any additions or deletions to the agenda? The staff has none. Terrific. Because we have a relatively large agenda tonight and quite a few attendees participating as well, we're going to limit the oral communications to three minutes per person. Instead of the five minutes. So, at this point in time, we're open for oral communications. And this is where one of the attendees can bring up anything that's not on the agenda. And you have your opportunity. So, let's leave it stayed in this mode whoever's running this thing so I can see the attendees. Okay. So, I don't see any hands up in any of the attendees. Okay. We'll assume that means there are no questions. So, we can move on to unfinished business. Rick. I'll introduce the item and then turn it over to the finance manager. This is the low income rate assistance program. The budget and finance committee recommended that staff propose a low income rate assistance program. Lyric be presented to the full board for approval as follows, a one year pilot program to be funded in the amount of $25,000, funding to be appropriated from a reduction in operational expenses requiring a budget amendment and not funded through the reserve fund. And a letter of support for assembly bill 401. It's recommended that the board of directors adopt the attached resolution approving a one year pilot rate assistance program that's attached, funded in the amount of $25,000 and review and comment regarding the attached draft letter of support for AB 401. And the draft letter of support came out was posted to the agenda and I hope you all received it. We did have some issues with our website being down for maintenance through our providers. The district has been discussing different ways to implement a Lyra program for our district. Staff has developed a proposed policy that can work as a baseline platform. This can be considered a pilot program or to be the program based on the level of interest. The program could be expanded or modified in the future. The proposed policy is considered the baseline option. The district believes that there are approximately 1200 households enrolled in the PG&E care program. This could be increasing due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. There will likely be a high volume of interest the first six months, excuse me, along with inquiries on an ongoing basis. An annual renewal process will also take a portion of time each year. Based on review of other agency programs, staff feels a $25,000 and a 200 applicant program is reasonable for the district our size. The finance committee requested funding be appropriated from a reduction in operational expenses requiring a budget amendment and not from a reserve fund. Proposed account expenditure reductions are as follows. The finance department reduced professional service, computer equipment, postage and training, $14,000. The administration department, the Santa Marta Rita groundwater agency, annual contribution and training, $6,000. Engineering, a reduction in scanning services, $2,000. Operation or reduction in building maintenance, small tools, travel training and the amount of $2,000. Supply and treatment, a reduction in building maintenance and in small tools to make our total reduction is $25,000. If approved, staff will return with a budget amendment incorporating these changes to the budget. As part of the recommendation of the budget committee, the committee requested a letter of support for AB 401. This legislation was passed in 2015 that directs the State Water Resource Control Board to propose a plan for a statewide low income rate assistance program for water. In the agenda there and in the website attached to the review and comment is the draft letter. Now I'll ask the director of finance to introduce the rate assistance program, Stephanie. Hello, so the rate assistance draft program is attached based on, we kind of looked at the $25,000, the number of customers, how best we could efficiently implement and manage a program on an ongoing basis. This would make it so that it is set up to be $10 discount per regular bill for up to 208 customers. It would be on a first come, first serve basis. So as people submit a full packet, they get approved in. If we have excess of 208 customers, we would then start a wait list. And as people either move out of the area or when it's the annual renewal time, they do not renew or if they no longer qualify for the program, they're supposed to let us know. And then we would go down the wait list and then as those people were able to, sometimes it depending on the timeframe, they may have to re-show proof of eligibility and then they would be accepted into the program. So we're anticipating a high volume in the beginning. We're going to leverage PG&E's care program to essentially make that the process. If it is a tenant, they just have to prove that they do have a lease agreement with the owner. And essentially, this is set up to be a manageable starting point to where we could go upward for this. This is limited for it being individually metered, residential or multi-residential property, meaning that just because a complex has one person, but it's all ran through the main master account and not in that person's name, they would not, that would not be eligible. It would have to be individually metered, same person's name that's on the water bill is on the PG&E care program. And again, this is a draft. So I'm more than happy to answer any questions or clarify or if there's areas that we think we want to elaborate more. Definitely this is the time to do some of that. Thank you, Stephanie. Okay, do we have any questions from any of the board members or comments? How do we do this? How do we let you know we want to comment? Raise your hand, normal. Raise your hand, just like that. Well, Lois, since you're on the screen, I can see it, but there's a feature on your computer screen that allows you to raise your hand. But you're recognizing it. I can get in last time, so where is it? I'm not seeing it this time. It's not there. Yeah, you have to go down at the bottom and click on the participant's icon. And then when that comes up, the raised hand is in the lower right-hand corner. Okay. Do you see everybody's name on the right side of the screen, Lois? I clicked on that, but... We might want to do some training on this at a separate time. Yeah, so Lois, if you don't see everybody's name on the right side of your screen, correct? You don't see our name? See everybody, but I see there are pictures and stuff. No, no, it's a list of names down the right-hand side of the screen. It says participants. Push that. Click that. I pushed on it. Okay, now it came. Yeah. Now, as Bob says, the lower right-hand corner of that area, you'll see a button called... I see it. It says raise hand. Click that. Okay. Bingo. Now, do you see the hand next to your name on the right-hand side where everybody's name is? I see it. I see it by my picture, too. Okay, and that's what means you've raised your hand. So you can click it again to lower it after I said, Lois, you're recognized. Tell us what you want to say. Okay. Well, I kind of brought this up at the Budget and Finance Committee as a pilot program. And Stephanie was there and Director Foltz was there and our citizen member. And we decided that this would work best as a pilot program until we have an idea how it's going to go, how much it's gonna, how much time it would take up of staff, a lot of various things, but we decided to have it come to the board for the board to decide. That's it. Thank you, Lois. Anybody else with a comment or a question? I have a few things I'd like to say, but I'll wait till the public has time to participate. I'll wait till after, if that's okay, Steve. Okay, sure, that's fine. Any other comments from anybody on the board? Seeing none, okay, let's go to the public, which now outnumbers the board two to one. Do we have any questions or comments from any of our attendees? Okay, oh, great, okay. Let's start with Beth, you're at the top of my list, so unmute yourself and feel free. Oh, thank you. I just wanted to say that I very strongly support a program to help people in our community who have financial difficulty with their bills. I don't think that this is a program that's meaningful enough to really be of help, but I think and I think that if the board decides to go with this program, that it needs to really make a commitment to continuing the push on the state and continuing to not losing sight of this program a year down the road and letting it go. I think we need to really work hard to make sure that it becomes an effective and a program and one that's available to more than 200 people out of all of our community. But I do support there being a program like this. Thank you, Beth. Mr. Moser, you're currently muted. Can you hear me now? Yes. I just want to echo best comments. I'm very supportive of this as a pilot program. I appreciate the board's attention to this and I understand the need to test it out, but I hope the board will be committed to expanding this. This is an extraordinary time. On the one hand, water is a fundamental human right as the state has now recognized, but on the other hand, the cost of water is going up and many people have facing terrible financial crises and so this is a program that tries to deal with these two forces at our play now. So I just want to express my support and appreciation to the board. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moser. Any other questions or comments from the public? Mr. Ford, let's hear we go. Thank you. I just want to add my endorsement of this program for the same reasons that have been stated. I think it's really important to get a program out there and I think it also needs to be increased or perhaps lower for even for this trial period to lower it from 200 to 100 people so that you could double the amount of money that people would get. I think it has to be a significant contribution like Beth said. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ford. Any other comments or questions from the public? Okay, not seeing any.  Yes, I do. I think we should stay within our means. I like that. I wish that we could help more but I understand that the whole water district faces the same problem that certain individuals do as well. And so it's a good start. I was glad to see the reduction in other departments, other departments making adjustments to help during a time of crisis. So that's people within the water district pitching in. So I appreciate that. Though one thing, other thing is I think this needs an aggressive outreach program so that we make sure that this reaches the people most in need of assistance. So I would hope that this is what Chatterbox could be able to do but we need to make sure that people know about this program so they can apply for it. And that's my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. Director Fultz. Yes, I have a number of things I wanted to talk about. You know, at the high level in terms of state level policy, we are actually in a position right now where the state policy contradicts itself. On the one hand, it talks about water being a human right which is stated in the AB 401. On the other hand, it also talks about how water really needs to be the same cost for everybody and that the money that comes in from water actually cannot be used for doing these kinds of rate shifting and assistance. So that fundamental conflict is what needs to be resolved and if the legislature is really serious about AB 401 which is not exactly clear that they are, they need to resolve that conflict as quickly as possible and to back that up with the financial resources, the particularly really small districts like ours that do not have the scale of East Bay Mud or LA Water or anything like that can't necessarily take on. And I'm hopeful that they will recognize that going forward. I hear what folks have said about this needing to be larger. I do want to make sure that we all understand what that means. So if we were to take, let's say 1,200 people and apply $20 a month for 12 months, we'd need almost $300,000. That means that we would have to either find cost savings or rate increases or a reduction in the amount of money that is available for things like infrastructure in that same amount. And if it were a rate increase, we're basically looking at the other 6,800 customers of ours needing to pay an additional $40 or so a month a year for water in order to make up the shortfall if we wanted to maintain the margin that we can apply to infrastructure. And this is a very serious thing because it's not a question of the percentage of the overall revenue. It's a percentage of the margin that you have available for other things. And we have a topic on the agenda later to talk about some of those items. So in order to accomplish that, you'd have to be going into property tax revenue because which I believe Gina had said you could use since it's not directly related to water. So that is something for everybody to consider. We are in this place right now in large part because of the massive ramp up of operating expenses. And so that directly relates to the cost of water that we have right now. And make no mistake, 1200 to 1500 subscribers is somewhere around 15 to 20% of our subscriber base. So that's very significant. I share the concern that I'm not convinced that this is actually going to go to help the people, the 200 to 300 of our customers that routinely have issues paying their bills. There's absolutely no guarantee that that's gonna happen even with an outreach. And so when I look at that, I then have to go, well, what is the most fair and transparent way of administering this? And I don't believe actually that it's a first in, first come, first serve. Folks that are well informed and have been following this certainly have all of their information available. Others who may be in a different situation, struggling, trying to stay employed, trying to figure out what they're gonna do to support their family may not have that attention. And so I think we really need to take a step back here and look at a lottery system that would, in my, because I do believe this will be oversubscribed, and in my view, the lottery system, if we can't guarantee that it goes to the people that really, really need it, a lottery system is a fairer way to address this. It wasn't clear to me, by the way, if once you're in the program, you stay in as long as you remain eligible, but under a lottery system or a system I have in mind, I think that would be the only fair thing to do. That is you're not re-upping your place in line every year. So I'd like to see this modified to a lottery system. The last thing is I wasn't really sure, and I may have just missed this in the resolution and the program, but nothing in there said that this actually was a pilot program. The only place that we talk about pilot program is in the introductory page, but reading the resolution and the program, I didn't see that that was specified. In fact, it looked very much like this was being proposed as a permanent program. So if the board wants this to be a pilot program only, I think the language that gets voted on, that actually gets voted on, needs to make that very, very clear so that we're not setting expectations for our ratepayers at odds with what our intention is. Again, in the interest of fairness and transparency, we need to make sure we're very clear about that. As of right now, the way I think it's written is this is a permanent program, or anybody reading this that may not be involved in the details like we are will read it as a permanent program. And it's just a matter of what the funding level is from year to year. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bob. Lois, I see you have a- Yes. Lou hand up again? Yeah. Well, I know this is woefully inadequate amount of money. I get that, but we don't know how it's gonna work. I did mention it as a pilot program from the beginning, just to test the waters, to see the interests, to see how difficult it would be for staff to work on this and how time consuming. And yeah, we have a lot of things that the district needs to do. And unfortunately, we don't have money for everything we'd like to do. And I just felt like as a pilot program, we could test the waters, so to speak. And that I'm not suggesting it's a permanent plan. It would be nice if we could do it, but it's difficult for us to always know why people are having a problem paying their bills, why they're on the late notices that because that's just a way of life for some people, they pay their bills late. I know that from having worked with credit unions and making loans to people. It's just a way of life for some people. For other people, it's frankly, they don't have the money. So it's pretty hard to know why they haven't paid their bill in a timely manner. We just don't have the information to know that. Thank you. Thank you. I just had a question. If someone's on the program and they are on it for a month or two and then fail to pay their bill, do they get taken off the program? Does anybody know that? It wouldn't be simply if they didn't pay their bill, they would be able to go through the past dues process, but if they do get their water turned off for non-payment, they would be removed from the program. Okay. And okay, let's see, what do we have? Well, I'm gonna break with my rules. Go back to the audience and Beth, if you have something compelling to share, please recognize you and give an opportunity. That's your hands up and you're on mute. There you go.  Can you hear me, Steve? Yes. Okay, good. There was some problem on the phone. I do have a couple of quick questions. One is, if the intention is that they don't have their error and it sounds like the intention is there from board members who have spoken about this, if the intention is there to attempt to go beyond a pilot year, it seems like there should be work done starting immediately on figuring out how you would pay for it in out years. And I would hope that that would become part of the budgeting process and when you have the time to start working on that, unless somebody has a plan for that already, it doesn't, you know, I mean, the identified reductions in budgets have been identified out of this year's budget since we have only that budget to work with. The other question I had, because I just have such nightmares about being very vocal and transparent about offering this program and having, you know, 500 people want to take advantage of it and you can afford to give a $10 a month, you know, break to such a much smaller number of people. I'm wondering if anybody has explored whether through the CARES program there's a way of identifying the lowest income and doing reaching out to those people particularly. Thanks. I don't know that we have any answers to those questions. I don't know that anybody's worked at any long-term program thoughts on this for financing it. If we have, feel free to mention it. And I'm unaware of any planning that's going on. I think the reason we keep hearing the term pilot is simply to see what the response is, how many people are interested in participating. Seeing how many people qualify based on the items that have been listed, you know, to qualify someone and then see how the program works if they actually take advantage of the discount and continue to pay their bill or if there's other issues that crop up. So I think it's in the spirit of a pilot program which I don't know if it says it in there or not but we certainly are identifying it as such to see how it goes for some period of time and then adjust as we go forward. Okay, once again, I'll break with my own rule.  This will be the last comment from the attendees until we decide to vote on this issue. Go ahead Mark, you're on mute. Hi, thank you for discussing this issue. I think it's really, several questions and a couple of comments. One, I appreciate Commissioner Fultz's concern about not getting state involved in the statewide program. One, that's important. I agree with that. We should probably try to lobby our legislatures to get this implemented. Two, I am concerned about the issue that he's proposing talking about Commissioner Fultz doing a lottery system. I'm not sure how the lottery system would be to what extent of the people that are in the district being served by the district is how that lottery would be initiated and what criteria would you be included in the population that would be allowed to participate in the lottery? That can be done by strictly income based on the current criteria that's in the proposal before us. Those are issues that we need to discuss. The third item is, I think it is important to at least try to do a pilot program, try it out for a year using current cost savings from the existing budget. And even if we only have 200 people or not 200 people, the number that was actually less than that was serving the $25,000, only allowing $25,000 of the budget to be used. I think that's a good starting point. Try it out, evaluate it and see how it impacts the overall budget. I don't think it'll really have a main impact.  And I don't quite buy the issue regarding those people that are struggling and not paying their bills or not participating. We could be advertising using public information and take some time to unroll the program. But I don't buy that concern. And finally, I think Lois was right. Commissioner Lois, Director Lois was correct that we should try it out as a pilot program. There are a lot of people under duress who can't rebuild. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mark. Okay. Rick? I have one other comment, Steve, if I can. Rick Rogers is wrecking that too. Well, it doesn't matter, but I just wanna clarify what staff is proposing from the past meetings we've had just board meetings and budget committee meetings. We're proposing a one year pilot program to fund at the rate of $25,000. First come, first served based on the PG&E Lyra program. And that's what's being proposed and we can modify that resolution to state if the council doesn't have an issue with that that it is a pilot program. That's what's being recommended from committees and passport teams. Yeah, and if I could just put on that, the way the policy is written, it's correct. It doesn't say, you know, pilot right on the policy, but the way the language is written, it wouldn't continue after one year unless it were renewed with new funding. However, it could be renewed very easily simply by committing new fundings to the program and failing to discontinue it in another year. So I think it has a couple of advantages in that it doesn't automatically last beyond a year, but it could easily be rolled over for another year if it's for however many years the board wants if it turns out to work as written. Sure, thank you, Gina. Thank you, Rick. Rick, you had another?  Yeah, I wanna agree with Bob about the imperfections of first come, first serve basis. And I think what we're dealing here is neither one of them is perfect. The last time I dealt with the lottery, I ended up in the Navy for four years and going to Vietnam. So I'm not a real big fan of lotteries, but I understand that neither system is perfect. But the immediacy of this, at least at this point, would suggest that the first come, first serve highly advertised and when we see as this pilot program unravels here, maybe we can adjust how we do it with some forth with some 2020 hindsight here as we go forward. That's me there. All right, thank you. Yep, Bob, you had another follow up? Yeah, some very specific things. So again, I get the point about immediacy, but that in fact is what makes it unfair whereas putting everybody, if you're gonna have a limitation where not everybody who would be eligible under the PG CARES program actually can get a benefit, then in the interest of fairness, you really don't have an alternative because like I say, there's people that already have their applications ready to go. And by the time we would get any kind of widespread advertising out, it's I think it's gonna be too late. I would propose three amendments or four amendments under the purpose number one in the program. We state explicitly this is a one year pilot. Number two, we replace in section three, we replace first come, first serve with lottery and lotteries, I mean people run lotteries all the time, school districts, all sorts of things and it doesn't have to have the same kind of outcome as when you went through Rick back in the day. The third amendment is I'm uncomfortable with the notion of disputes not being able to be brought to the board. I mean, that's part of the petition that your representatives for redress. So I would add in that the person has the ability to appeal to the board. I believe we have that for the for other situations where there's a similar financial interest at stake. And the fourth change would be to strike section 10 in its entirety just to be very clear. I would like to see a program work. I just wanna make sure it works well for everybody involved. Right, okay. Lou, you're at the top of my list. Do you have a comment or a question? Lou, Lou, you disappeared. Yeah, could you hear me? Yes, Lou. Good. I'm having trouble with my computer right now it's saying network bad and with this low. So I've turned off my video and hopefully I'll be able to at least maintain my audio. The question I have for the Lyra program is the revenue source for the $25,000 is the cell tower rental fees that we collect. Is that correct? No, it doesn't look like it's made up of a number of things, Lou. Stephanie. That's where we're taking the money from our expense line. Where is the revenue line coming from? Because we can't spend rate payers fees. It is being funded by non-rate revenue. So since this is happening, I mean, yes, I'm earmarking the mobile lease revenue as being the steady source of non-rate revenue that we can essentially bank on for years to come if we wanted to continue this programming annually. The since this happened after the budget, this $25,000 essentially credit to revenue offset to revenue would cause us to have a reduction in overall reserves. So we had about $60,000 that was going to be going into reserves based off this budget. This would cause it to be 25 grand left. So the way that the committee proposed that we do it is that they didn't want to reduce the amount of reserves that the district had going into this next year's budget. And so the way to offset it would be to reduce operating expenses for this year. Then on the ongoing basis, if this program was desired to be continued, it would simply become part of the budget process to where if we expected a million dollars in revenue, but we were going to be offering a $25,000 credit program, then we would be having $975,000 in revenue coming in. And however it shook out and the rest of the stuff, it would just be what it is versus right now it happened after the budget. Yeah, I understand all that. I just want to make sure, and Gina helped me, we have to be clear that we're not using rate payer dollars for this Lyra program, correct? Correct, and that's what I had my hand up to address it. It is important that the program not be funded by rate revenue and that is set forth in the program or in the policy document. And Stephanie has assured us that the district has adequate non-rate revenue to cover the $25,000 commitment. So legally speaking, no particular district revenue is tied to this program, but there is an exclusion that prevents rate revenue from being applied to it. Money is fungible. Anything else, Lou? No, thank you. Okay, Lois, you had another comment? I do. I have to totally disagree with the idea that people wanting to participate in this program come to the board to present their case. I can't imagine anybody really wanting to do that. It's kind of like the big bruja that happens when somebody says, oh, well, I didn't know I had a water leak and it's a huge amount and you're only giving me half off. I want to go to the board and change it. That doesn't ever work out well. So I have to disagree with that. Say somewhere that, are you saying each applicant has to come before the board? I don't think that's written in there. No, it's not. No, Director Fultz said he wanted people to be able to come to the board and give their case. Steve, if I may. Go ahead, Bob. But not precisely, and if it wasn't clear, I'll see if I can make it clear. So this had to do with section nine, which has to deal with disputes. I'm very uncomfortable with the notion if we get into a dispute that the board members or that the public member, the community, the customer, the rate payer, the voter has no ability to come to the board to present their case around the dispute. We have that circumstance with leak policy today that if someone wants to bring it to the board, they can do so. And I just think as a matter of public policy, the people that are responsible to the voters, that being the five of us, need to make sure that we're available to deal with those kinds of things. If it can't be resolved between them and the district manager, that is our obligation is to take care of the community and they have grievances, they want redressed. Well, okay, thank you, Bob. I disagree, but, Rick, you wanna clarify a point? The way, my thoughts are on this is that anybody can come to the board for any reason at any time. Regardless of you say the district manager or finance manager has the final say, anybody can come and address the board and that's the way it should be. I would not recommend we make it an easy avenue or a procedure to bring such things to the board because it will tie up, it can serve the amount of the board's time and there's a time and a place to review policies. And just like we do with leaks and other things, the board does have a difficulty dealing with certain policies, not saying that they shouldn't. If there's an increase in issues, if five people come to the board complaining about our leak policy or even two or three, most likely the board would take it up. I just don't wanna make it an easy avenue, a part of the procedure to bring it, you got my step to the district manager then if you don't like what the district manager says, you can bring it to the board. I think it'll take up a lot of your time. I think it's unnecessary. Anybody can go to the board at any time, they can pick up the phone anytime, they can send you an email anytime. We would never preclude anybody from coming to the board. But I just don't think it's a good idea to make it part of the procedure. But I can either way, obviously. Thank you, Rick. I agree with you. Gina, you have another, something to donate here. Yes, thank you, President Swann. I just wanted to comment that if the board decides to adopt the resolution and policy presented here in the packet, there is one tweak that's needed, which is in section three of the policy, it has a blank launch date. So that would need to be specified in any motion to adopt the resolution to approving the policy. Regarding the other amendments to the policy that were proposed, they create a number of issues that such that if the board wants to pursue those amendments, I would recommend that we bring this back at another meeting where we can talk about the consequences of some of those changes. With that, so if the only change were to simply adopt the lottery policy as opposed to the first come first serve and say 30 days after announcing the existence of the policy or the program and advertising and promoting it for those 30 days, if we said within 10 days after the end of the 30 days, all of the applicants would be then pulled and a lottery would be performed to pull out the 200 whatever candidates or lucky winners that can take advantage of the program. Those changes are substantial enough that we would need to draft that and come back and talk about it. Staff needs time to discuss. One of the strong concern staff had that we wanted to take district staff out of the process of picking who was going to receive the reduced rate or be part of this program. We didn't want to have staff involvement. And that's where the Lyra first come first serve worked out. So I'm not saying that we're against a lottery type system, but I think we need staff needs to have time to see what that entails. Make sure we're comfortable with the checks and balances and so forth. We have to make these decisions who was going to be part of the program. And I don't think they would be with the lottery system but we'd want a time to review those changes. Yeah, and I second that. I'm not saying a lottery wouldn't work, but that language would need to be massaged and written and massaged and presented to the board. Okay, all right. Okay, thank you. Bob, you have another moment? Yeah, just final thought. I mean, absolutely lotteries and Rick, I understand your concern and I share that and I'm sure there's a way we can structure a lottery if we wanted to go down that where staff is not involved in that. And second of all, with respect to section nine, if in fact the intent is that anybody can come to the board at any time, then we shouldn't be saying things that make it seem like it's a finale. So rather than say anything at all, we can just strike that because clearly Rick, you know, we're not here to try to make it easy, but we do want to make sure that we're here for those people that wish to pursue it as is their right to do so. I agree. I mean, anybody should be able to go to the board at any time. Okay, thank you, Bob. All right, well, we've come to that point in our program where the directors have an opportunity to make a motion. Anybody want to make a motion regarding this resolution? So I don't know how I can word this into a motion, but what I'm hearing, all right, is that we need some time to double-check about this lottery and to include the pilot program. Striking the 10th clause, but keeping nine or striking both nine and 10, you know, that seems to be a little bit of a question. So if it takes, you know, I'd rather get this right. If it takes, taking it back to a committee one more time to double-check about this lottery system and to strike the word pilot in it, maybe that's the course that I would recommend. Okay, I'll just stop there. Rick? I would just recommend, I don't think we need a motion. I think you can just direct staff and Gina help me out to go back to the budget and finance and try to incorporate those recommendations. Or do you want a motion, Gina? Well, if it's going back to committee, then we don't need a motion because the committee can provide direction. But if the board were to want to have the policy brought back to them, then a motion of some sort would be helpful so that we know what types of changes the board wants to incorporate. Rick, you have another question? No, I'm, this Rick, no, I'm good. I'll just wait for your direction and I can go, staff can go either way, but we do want time to look into those changes and. Okay, let me ask the other, frankly, I mean, based on the way Gina's explained it, you know, it's essentially a one-year program. Call it a pilot, call it anything you want. It's funded for one year. So going back to put the word pilot in there seems kind of unnecessary. I do think the lottery kind of has some advantages, but I also think because it is a pilot and we're only doing it for 200 people maximum anyway, I don't know that we really need to adopt a lottery system and put that extra burden on people and have people raise issues about that. You know, it's $25,000. It's a small amount that we're offering. I think we're really investing a great deal of time in this that I don't think really needs to be there, but that's just my opinion. I see Lois, you have a question or a comment? Well, if it goes back to committee, it's just more delay. And I mean, certainly it can go to the budget and finance committee again, but we already suggested what we wanted and Director Fultz was part of that committee. And none of those kind of, he didn't bring up any of that at that time. So I don't see what we're accomplishing by going back to committee. I tend to agree with you Lois, that's where I was going with this. Would you like to make a motion Lois? And we'll see where the other directors sit on this. Okay, I can make a motion. First of all, I did, all right. I would like to suggest a resolution to approve resolution number 25, 1920, establishing a rate assistant program for eligible customers. And Director Henry, in conjunction with your motion, would you establish a launch date for the program to be written into the policy? A launch date. Well, what about the first, board meeting in July? Or we only have one board meeting in July? May I just interrupt for a second and ask the Director of Finance, I do believe she had a launch date in mind. Oh, okay. That maybe she would provide, Stephanie? Yeah, so it'll kind of depend on if you guys want to do advertising in advance of the forms and everything being available. That's kind of the only, you know, we're ready. I can have the form available on the website starting July 1st. It can be advertised and go that way if we wanted to advertise ahead of everything before making the form available to the public that way people can start to get ready. We can have it be August 1st, but I mean, essentially we can sit here and turn it on. You know, it's one of those things. We don't know exactly how it's gonna happen. Some places don't have it show up right away. Some places, you know, it took them a year and a half before they hit their max. We just don't really know what to necessarily expect but we are prepared for a July 1st if the board did want to move that quickly. Stephanie, how about July 15th? That gives us four weeks of advertising potentially or notice rather. July 15th would be fine. Okay. So am I muted or not? No, you're not muted. Okay. So that's, you want me to include that in the motion a start date of July 15th. Right. Right. I'll second that. All right. Director Fultz, do you have a comment? I have a question. The letter to the state legislature, is that going to be voted on separately? District council, that's listed as supplemental and I thought we would take that separate. Yeah, it's part of this agenda item, but it probably makes sense to have a separate discussion in motion for that portion of the item. That would be great. I would like to see that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Holly, would you like to record the votes? Director Moran. Yes. Director Henry. Yes. Director Fultz. No. President Swan. Yes. Director Ferris. Director Ferris. Is he muted?  He's muted. He's muted. Don't mute yourself, Lou. No, I think, did he disappear? He's gone now. He's gone. Well, we have three yeses, so the motion passes. Council, do you have any comments or any concerns? Well, I would recommend that we move on to the discussion about the letter and call the vote again once Director Ferris is able to join. Since he obviously intended to be here and participate. But even if he does, it doesn't, it makes no difference to vote, correct? It's important he'd be allowed to vote. Yeah, it's important that he be allowed to vote. So I think we should revisit the vote, call it again when he dials back in. Okay. Well, if we're gonna wait for that, then we should wait for him to hear the discussion on the next item, right? Well, I do believe we're gonna do the discussion on the supplemental 5A on the low-income rate assistance letter support for AB 401, is that correct, Gina? Was your recommendation? That's right. Okay. And I'll ask district council to present that. Okay, and I will momentarily, it looks like we just got Director Ferris back. I am here, I apologize. Chair Swan, would it be all right to ask the district secretary to call the vote again now? Yes, absolutely. Holly, go ahead and let's stage our vote ourselves. Call the vote again. Okay. Director Moran. Yes. Director Henry. Yes. Director Fouls. No. Director Swan. Yes. Director Ferris. Aye. Motion passes. Thanks very much for bearing with that. Okay, so the district manager asked me to discuss the portion of this agenda item, which is the draft letter to the state assembly regarding AB 401. And if you haven't seen the letter, it was circulated, I believe on Tuesday or Wednesday after the agenda went out and it's available on the district's website right under the agenda. The general content of the letter is that it encourages members of the assembly to implement the state board's recommendations that are set forth. And let me back up and give a little background here for those who may not be familiar with it. What AB 401 did? Was it required state agencies, including the state water board, to study how to create a water rate assistance program to help low income Californians with water bills. And the state board produced its report that was required under AB 401 in February of this year. So that report covers a lot of ground and they considered a lot of different ways to structure a statewide rate assistance program. What they came up with were recommendations for kind of three program components. One would be a water bill credit, a direct water bill credit. One is a renters water credit that folks don't pay water bills directly could take advantage of. And another is a crisis assistance for folks who have an urgent short-term need to help keep their water on. And I guess some highlights of the report that are important to an agency like the district is that the state board's report recognizes that local agencies like the district have difficulty implementing Lyra programs. For a lot of the reasons that were discussed by the board and the public in connection with this agenda item. One of the reasons difficult is Prop 218 which prevents subsidizing the water rates of low income individuals or households with increased water rates on higher income households. Another is just the burden that it would create on some small water systems where many members of the community need some kind of rate assistance. And they're just, the burdens can't be spread around in any way that would be fair or sustainable. So the report recommends that the state adopt a statewide program funded by some new taxes. And this is something that's been talked about at the state policy level for a long time but the state board report really goes into detail about how it could work. And I think it's fair to say from the district's perspective now is the time to do something like this. I mean, aside from the difficulties that some members of the district's community in California face in terms of increased cost of living and so on, COVID has really brought this issue into focus and made financial assistance more urgent for some folks. So the district prepared a letter urging members of the state assembly to move forward with implementing the state board's recommendations in the AB 401 report. You will notice in the draft letter that the addresses are bracketed and in italics and the reason for that is that typically a letter like this would be addressed to the members of a committee that's actually considering pending legislation but as far as we can tell there is no legislation pending right now. And so I've teed up this letter to go to all the members of the committees, the assembly committees that passed the original AB 401 that may or may not be the best way to address something like this. I mean, who we really want to get this is an assembly member or a state senator who would actually sponsor legislation related to AB 401 but in the absence of knowing who would be willing to take up the charge on that issue we simply addressed it to all the members of the committee that passed the original AB 401 and copied it to the local assemblyman Mark Stone and the state water board point of contact who is listed for the AB 401 report. But if there are other ideas as to who this might be addressed to who might be willing to take up the cause on implementing the state board's recommendations those suggestions would be very welcome. Thank you, Gina. We have any questions or comments that Gina can help address from anyone on the board? No. Okay. We're probably kind of the flea on an elephant's back sending a letter to anybody about anything about this especially since it's not even looking to get voted on. Anybody have any questions? Bob, I saw your hand come and go. Are you passing? No. I mean, this is the kind of thing that we absolutely need to do. And if anything, Gina, it might be more mild than what I think the situation calls for because the situation around cost of living for people of lower incomes in the state of California is dire. I mean, it is, in my opinion, approaching a real crisis situations. When we have a third of our community living on gross income, $50,000 to $60,000, and the kind of rate increases that we're likely to see, certainly advancing at multiples of inflation. When you start spending a couple of percent of your gross income on water, this is recognized as a massive disaster of the first order. And so I think you're very diplomatically worded it, but to me, the urgency of finding a at scale statewide solution that treats small districts like ours with the kind of attention that we need and not all the attention going the East Bay mud is just as urgent as it possibly could be. So if this is the letter that goes out, it's the one that goes out, but I think the situation is more dire than we're saying. Hey, Bob, anybody else have any questions or comments on the board? Lois, I'll pretend I saw your hand if you have something. Okay, thanks. Well, I realize right now, the state has a lot going on. And I think beating up on them wouldn't really help. And I've had some talks with Mark Stone's aid. You know, it's kind of like we're having a hard time too. Because getting business done with this virus, it's limiting, it takes time. I like the letter. I think it's a good letter. And I support the letter myself. Okay, thank you, Lois. Any other questions or comments? Mr. Rick? Mr. Point, I've spoken to the other water district managers in the county and there is a strong desire to send letters from each of the districts as well. Okay, thank you. Any other comments, questions from any of the directors or staff? Okay, let's go to our attendees. Do we have any public questions or comments about the letter? Okay, I don't see any. Okay, back to us. Anybody want to make a motion? There is no motion coming forward about the letter. Oh my gosh, do I have to make the motion again? Are you feeling overworked, Lois? Earn your pay. I've only begun to. Where did you put your hand up? I don't have to put my hand up. All right. Well, I don't have a motion number, right? Can I just move that we agree to send this letter to the state legislature? Gina, is that okay? Yes, that motion works. Okay. That was my motion. Thanks, Lois. Anybody want to second it? Okay. I'll second the question. Okay. Let's, Director Moran, second set. Holly, would you like to record the vote? Director Moran? Yes. Director Henry? Yes. Director Fultz? Yes. President Swan? Yes. Director Ferris? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. And I believe for those in attendance that have not seen the letter or would like an opportunity to see the letter, it is on the website. Correct, Holly? Correct. Okay. So we'll just pretend I read your minds. Okay. Well, that wasn't too bad. I tripped to the desk. Now, back to you. General Rogers. Okay, I am a specific plan. It's recommended that the board directors review this memo and give direction regarding the district strategic plan and governance training workshop. The district has been working on updating the strategic plan, the facility to updating the strategic plan that district engaged the services of manager and partners, Greg Larson. October 17, 2019, the board directed, agreed to have directors folks and Ferris work together in a draft plan for board and public review. On June 1st, director Henry requested this item be placed on the agenda for updating. The district has also contracted the services of MRG, Amy Hothworth to provide the board with governance training, working on contentious issues, which could be useful in moving the strategic plan forward. The district has scheduled a workshop that had to be canceled due to COVID-19 with managing or with MRG. Moving forward, staff is looking for direction in completing the government's training and whether to hold a video conference or to wait until an in-person meeting could be facilitated following county health guidelines for public assembly. Staff is looking for direction on moving forward. With that, I'll turn it back to the chair Swamp. Okay. Lois, you have a comment or? I do. I asked for the, thank you, President Swamp, because I asked for this to be on the agenda. And the reason I did was because Stephanie has many times requested that we get moving with the strategic plan. She has a guide on how to do the budget. And just recently, a member of the public asked me if it was possible to have a multi-year budget as Director Fultz had suggested in an interview with the press banner. And I told him, yes, of course, but we need a strategic plan if we want multi-year budgets. Budgets are basically our best guesstimate based on history and our plans for the future. We live in a very volatile area. I've lived here 49 years this month. I have seen snow that has taken down a million trees, floods that have killed people, an earthquake that caused tremendous damage and death. And now guess what? We've got the virus. So budgets are not written in stone, but we need direction for budgets if we're going to do multi-year budgets. Now, the previous board, let me give you a little history here. The previous board had a strategic plan, but the current board found that plan to be cumbersome and way too long. We didn't want to spend the money on a professional to write the plan. So the board voted to have Director Fultz and the district manager work together and write a draft strategic plan. What happened was Director Fultz wrote a draft strategic plan not involving the district manager. His plan was placed on the agenda and resulted in a big protest from members of the public, not all members, but a lot. I'd say the majority of the people who came to the meeting protested and some board members also had issues. Next, the board in all its wisdom voted to have Directors Fultz and Ferris write the strategic plan. What were we thinking? That was never going to work and it didn't. I don't believe a board member should write a strategic plan without input from staff and the public. We are a government agency, not a private business. Also, if you check around, you will find that most special districts don't have a board member write a strategic plan or even policy for that matter. We of course have a chance to say what we want and power to vote. And it is our responsibility to approve policy. Now originally the board voted to have the district manager involved in writing the draft strategic plan, but that didn't happen. So what do we do? Now the board did vote on a very long list of goals and objectives for the district manager. I believe that the district manager using those goals and objectives could come up with a draft strategic plan. I would like to make a motion that the board direct the district manager to prepare a draft strategic plan based on his goals and objectives established by the board of directors. Thank you, Lois. I think that was fabulous. So that's a motion that you're TN up, right? Yes. Okay. Before I second that, which I will, do we have any other comment from any of the directors at this point? Yes, Steve. Okay. Well, let's see.  So since you're on the screen, I'm going to go to you first right now. Okay. Give you your opportunity to share your thoughts. So I, you know, I understand Lois's history of this. Thank you very much for encapsulating that Lois. But one of the other components of that was, was there was some contentiousness that was expressed at those first meetings talking about the strategic plan. And I suggested that we received some training, governance training from a consultant, MRG, particularly Amy Hall, who is the director of this program, and we're going to talk about how, how worth. And that's the path that we were on is to receive some of that training. And because it's not only what we do, it's how we do it. And I've been the target of unfair criticism. And I didn't want to see that happen anymore. I just wanted to make sure that we, that we get this training and this was a perfect time to do that. Unfortunately, this COVID crisis has delayed that process. We had one meeting with that governance training consultant. Just before the COVID started. And we weren't able to continue that. I would hope. That we would, you know, if the. Staff is looking for direction that that would be the, it was the first step we wanted to do back in March and I, or February, and I still think it should be the first step we do before we go on to the strategic plan because we need to avoid the contentiousness that was evident at those first meetings. And so that, that is my recommendation about this that I unfortunately, not unfortunately, but I agree with you. The strategic plan is important and it needs to be done. And I know that Stephanie has a timeline that she'd like to achieve. Some things have been thrown in our way, but we still need this training on contentious issues so that we produce something that is. Tolerable to the public when we do this, we cannot have contentious issues being disruptive to the process that we're trying to do here. Thank you. Could I say something?  So you'll get to your turn. Yeah. Well, okay. All right. Bob. Well, I, I appreciate Lois's comments, but I really got a correct something that she stated as a fact in her. Introductory remarks. There was no board vote. On me working with the district manager on coming up with a strategic plan. I volunteered to write a draft for the board that the board could use, throw out, do whatever they wanted. And that's exactly what I did. And I talked to a lot of people. During that process. So to say that that was something that the board directed. To have happened and it never happened is just not true. I am, I am deeply disturbed by. The notion that we should. Deviate from what we had agreed upon. As a plan to bring the community into this process to the maximum extent possible as well. And in fact, the admin committee of which. Lois serves. Recommended. A process that. I believe we're still going down with the insertion of what. Rick said we, we should do, which is to get this contentious training. Done first. And I still support that. To do a process that does not involve the community. Being able to provide input into the drafting process. Is astounding. Lou and I have, have worked on the plan. We are. Have, have made a tremendous amount of progress. We have made a tremendous amount of progress. I think working through some of the. Comments that were made during the. Debate and discussion around it. I think this will be a very. Good process. I think it'll be a model for. What boards can do. To bring forth the policies. That the community. Wants to do. And by community, it's the broad community, including the voters who. Vote in each election. Want to see as part of their district's policies. So I would not support. This process of. Short circuiting the community from being involved. Thank you, Bob. Lois, back to you. Okay. For one thing, I was going to also. After we dealt with one thing. To mention that we need to do the governance training. As soon as possible. But I was trying to deal with one thing at a time. The other thing is. I was. Board president. In 2000. I know what went on. The board did vote. The district manager. And Bob folds. Right a plan. I guess. Well, the district manager. I'm not going to put him on the spot, but he might have to get on it. The other thing is. That. There is contentious. Issues. And. When Bob says he and Lou. Are on the verge of coming up with a plan. They've had a lot of time. They haven't come up with a plan. They haven't been able to agree. And again. I, I leave that. I'm going to have to leave that. To Lou to talk about. But I just want to get things done. We. Dilly Dally around here. And there's so much to be done. And yes, I want the government's governance training as much as you do. Rick Moran.  Yeah, I'll be happy to bring the facts. Regarding the action that was done. To demonstrate that there was no vote taken as director Henry states. That's no problem at all. You know, everybody can have an opinion, but. There's only one set of facts. I would support though. I think that's a good point. I think the notion of moving forward with this contentious training. Via conference at this point, I don't exactly know when we're going to be able to do something in person. And while it is not optimal to do it in this fashion, and we might want to. Consult with. Amy on that to see what she would say on it. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. The, the. The agreement that we had. As part of that. Is that we would have that training first. And then. Lou and I would bring. The drafts back to the board after that. For consideration and for putting it through the community process. There, there is no, and so given that there's a delay at the training. So I still think that that is the best process to do. And as, as we had originally agreed on, we would bring that draft back as part of the discussions with a community, which would be the next step in the process. Again, short circuiting this process. Is I don't believe in the best interest of the community. The rate payers or the people that are interested in this district moving forward. Okay. Thank you, Bob. I'm not sure that the perpetual delays that we're. Providing the community or doing the many good either.  On, on the contentious training, I have been in. I've been in touch with Amy and spoke to district council about how we could move forward. I spoke to some of the directors. And what I'm getting is that directors would like a face to face meeting versus a visual video meeting. One process to move this forward would be that the board could meet in the operations building. Practice social distancing. But not allow the public to enter the building. And broadcast the whole meeting. You know, via either community TV. Or, you know, one of the media outlets and allow questions and so forth, just like we're doing this board meeting, but the public wouldn't be in the building. We just don't have the room. And then the practice social distancing. So the board could meet if so desired for a face to face meeting. And we would broadcast live. I don't know if council wants to add to that. If that's, if she's got any concerns with that, but that I do believe that would be in compliance today with the Brown act. Yeah. And as we discussed, I mean, none of this is ideal, but giving the board members the option, if they're comfortable to meet in person, I think would maximize the value of the training. While also, you know, being as protective as possible is health and safety in terms of minimizing the number of people who are together in one place. Or we could have, we could move ahead to training. Just like this, a meeting like this. Not ideal. I think you lose something by not being in person on this kind of training. And discussion. But those are, I think, our two possibilities at this time. Or put it off until. You know, the California opens up on what stage three or whatever that is. And that, who knows when that's going to be. I think that would just be kicking the can down the road further. I will never get it done. I didn't think it was going to go this long. Once we canceled, I thought it would be short lived and we'd be back to our regular. Meeting type goals and schedules, but it's not happening. So I have a question for you. So would Amy be in person there? She would be, she would drive up. She would drive up. And she will have no problem with driving up. She's from. Everyone that would be, I think council, district council would be video. Am I right? Gina? That's right. Yeah. But the rest of the full board and the district manager would be there in person. That's just a proposal. Now. I don't know how the board feels about that. I think we can easily provide, you know, the six foot distancing, you know, mass, whatever the disinfection. And we can clean before hearing and after the meeting or, you know, however, so being followed, you know, we have protocol for meeting, which is in compliance with the county recommendations. So we could do that and put the board in the room and. It would be live and you would have, you know, the audience would be able to ask questions just like they're doing now at, you know, at certain times of the meeting when called on by the chair. So this would be the training about how to deal with contentious topics. This would not be a meeting that would address producing the strategic plan. No, it would not. Right. So, you know, let me ask. Stephanie a question, Stephanie. How much further and longer do you think we can wait without having a strategic plan before we can. You know, for lack of a better phrase, get our ship together. I mean, it's difficult. I mean, we talked about this over a year ago and we're going through the last budget process. The strategic plan is the backbone. To developing some of these other major initiatives and plans that we have in the pipeline. So getting them all to tie together is key. So I mean, we really need to get moving on the strategic plan in my opinion. Right. Steve, I would like to weigh in. How many successful plans do we see coming out of committees versus. You know, the alternative. I'm sorry, go ahead Lou. Yes, I would like to weigh in please. Sure, go ahead. First of all, I'd like to agree with director folds that I find. Some of what Lois was saying to be factually inaccurate. But I think that aside, the real issue is moving strategic planning forward. And I agree with Stephanie. That it is imperative that we get this done. And in my opinion, get this done by the end of the year. This will allow for coordination with water master plan, thereby providing district department heads. They're critical planning information to lay out appropriate practical goals for 2021. My second comment is in regards to my inability to provide effective leadership and moving the strategic planning process forward these past eight months. Well, I believe Bob and I have made progress in meeting three times and revising the draft plan each time. We are still not within reach of a final draft that will pass muster. This makes me wonder if we can complete the task by years and years and further, there are two more options. I would not recommend for getting the job done along the lines of strategic planning. The first is that we go back to the last finalized strategic plan from 2016 using it as some have suggested for forward planning. This plan is out of date. It is a bureaucratic behemoth and is a formula for veering off course. I base this on the fact that approximately 80% of the goals set forth in that plan are woefully behind their expected due dates. Lastly, I do not recommend using a consultant going forward while this was a reasonable approach last year when proposed. I believe it no longer feasible. The cost will be substantial in consulting fees which are not in the budget and more importantly it will require taking a step backward to bring the consultant up to speed as an effective moderator. I believe a finalized strategic plan would therefore not be ready by year's end. This brings me to what I do recommend. I believe finalizing the strategic plan should be placed in the hands of a single person. This person must have an innate vision of where the district should be in five years based on a comprehensive understanding of the district's inner workings. Further, this person must be versed in long range planning and be able to work on an abbreviated timeline. I believe this person should be district manager Rick Rogers. He is eminently qualified to see the big picture and is armed with long range goals which this board approved last fall. Therefore, I move that the board direct the district manager Rick Rogers to come up with a revised draft of the strategic plan using the last approved plan from 2016 and Bob's draft from 2019. Further, the resulting draft should be part of the board agenda packet the second meeting in August and after comments from the public staff and board manager Rick Rogers to come up with a revised draft that will be reviewed at the second board meeting in September. A strategic plan hopefully can be submitted and approved the second meeting in October. This will allow for marrying the strategic plan with the master water plan in November. If all goes well, optimal tactical goals for 2021 will be possible. QED. Thank you, Lou. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your blue hand was first, I think, or it's the first one I saw. Your turn. I'm sorry. I failed. Put my hand down, seeing as how I'm being branded as. Never mind. Doesn't pay to be vulnerable.  Well, I clicked on it. Okay. Okay. Okay. You're just waiting. Stop waving. Stop touching your keyboard. Okay. Lou, I love your, your suggestion. And I, and I believe that's in some ways very similar to what Lois was suggesting as well. I would. Well, I like it a lot. Do we have any other comments before we let the public weigh in on. The sub subject matter. If someone in the public with a quote comment, we'll go to them. Mark Lee. Share your thoughts. Thank you, president. Yeah. I want to comment that. We elected certain officials in the last election. There are representatives. We voted directly for based on their expertise. Government. You know who they are. And we expect them to represent us. And when they were developing, especially in developing a strategic plan. I'm not sure it's a good idea to go back to the 2016. Brian Lee regime. That was kind of disastrous. But I would like to see us move forward with the Bob folds. The director Bob folds in. Director. Blue. Faris's. Plan is a boilerplate to work from. And I think that the timelines that. Director Ferris's outliner are plausible and realistic. But I do think we cannot move forward without having public input. Perhaps public meetings online to get their input. And we need to have a strong lead time to review a draft. I'm not sure that the general manager. Rick Rogers has the time to do all this himself. I propose that we still use the existing. General manager. To hamper out a basic strategic plan that we can look at as a public. And make comments on. And then perceive with public public hearings. And then act to Lou Ferris's timeline. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So we have a. We have Lois and Lou both making. We have, we have Lois and Lou both making similar suggestions on direction. I'm off second motion. President's one we have another member of the public who would like to comment. Oh, we do. Sorry, Beth Thomas. You are free to roam. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, I have grave concerns about. No matter who the person is having one person put together a strategic plan. I do agree with Mark Lee's comment that. You know, I feel like this board has done a lot to try to move beyond some of the contentiousness and I think that that is appreciated as a member of the community. I think that it's a sign of at least goodwill. But with respect to the strategic plan, there is not just contentiousness amongst the people on the board. There is contentiousness about this issue in the community as well. And I think you can expect that so I agree that there needs to be some well thought out way to include the community. It's going to have to be in a different format, which I don't know maybe is positive thing, given the contentiousness issue. And I think the board's going to have to have a meaningful way to respond to that. But I do think that I think that the board that the board is elected by the community and the board has some responsibility to be a part of this process of strategic planning. I do think that the people who do the work always have a strong part in saying what that work means to be. And I would agree that having Rick Rogers and the, and the board members who are currently been tasked with it to complete the proposed strategic plan and then put it on the agenda and then find a way for meaningful community input will prevent some more contentiousness. Thanks. Thank you. Lee summers. Hi, can you hear me. Yes. Great. Well, I've my understanding I wanted to try to get a little bit of clarity about this so I understand that there's the old 2016 strategic plan, which is no longer viable. And then director folks wrote one last year, and it kind of got bogged down director, there is joined in and started to kind of come to another kind of make some changes but that's kind of stalled out. And what I'm hearing this evening is that director Henry is suggesting that staff make to make a new develop a new plan, and then director Ferris saying that Rick Rogers be the one person. And that that would that would basically compile a plan based on the, the previous work that's been done. And it sounds like this is a contentious enough issue that have one neutral person and I think Rick Rogers is a very, a very neutral person and be an excellent selection to take the current ideas that have been already laid down and compile them into a draft plan that can be moved forward. And I support director Ferris's suggestion, and I would like to see you forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Lawrence Lawrence Larry is that is that you Larry Ford. Yes, thank you. I'd like to second what Lee Summers just said. I think Lou Ferris who's extremely experienced in this kind of thing would have a lot of advice to give. I think Bob vaults has already given his advice. We have a whole, a whole draft of strategic plan that he prepared. I think that Rick Rogers would be the perfect person to do that and I don't think that he's going to object to that I think he can make time to work on this. And I think also that we do need to figure out a way to get the contentious issue training in before a community meeting. Hopefully that can be done in July and then in August there can be some kind of a community meeting itself. I think it's going to continue to be a really hot topic. And so I think it needs to be planned out sequentially like that in an efficient way. Thank you. Thank you Larry. Whoops. Yeah. Okay, great. Any other comments from the public. Oh, let's do I want to recognize director I mean Mr Rogers. Yes, I guess I will Rick. I think I'm on mute. You are now Rick, you're on mute now. Okay. Just kind of clarify a little bit of what that process would be. First off, it's because the sign of the district manager, the district manager wouldn't be the sole person district manager I would bring in the management team. And I believe that the plan that director Fultz and director Ferris have been working on. District staff would take and bring together and bring it back I think by having staff do it, it would be less contentious because we are not political for one. And I feel that we could take that plan that's that sounds like it's pretty close to being completed and put it together and bring it back. We would never want to bring it, or try to get something through that didn't have public review and plenty of ample time for the public that's that's the process I'm strongly believe in public process on the strategic plan. I think staff could move this along and bring it back in. And it would look probably very close to what the two directors have been working on. We, I spoke with some of my key staff, and we feel we can make these timelines we could have this wrapped up by the end of the year. Very easily because you know we feel that we're almost there. And it's we also feel that it's very important to get this document, you know, back to the board and prove. Thank you, Rick. Lois, is your hand really up or yes my hands really up. Okay. Actually, I, I could second ricks motion. I mean, sorry, lose motion. It's essentially what I said. Yes, to use the district manager, and the board is already approved. A whole long list of things. And so it would come with district approval. So I can second. Lose proposal. I can read the draw mine and second his but they're basically the same thing. I guess I'm in a totally different meeting than everybody else. We don't need to vote on this do is this just providing direction to Well, it doesn't technically require a vote. However, because there have been votes, providing in the past providing different direction, I think it would be good to have a motion. I recommend frankly, a fairly simple streamlined motion directing who is supposed to write it and perhaps a general timeline when the draft will be brought back for board and public review. If the two directors who have motions pending don't object to, you know, restating the motion in that way. I think that would be helpful. Okay, let's ask Lou since he had a timeline associated with his. Yeah, I thank you Steve I think that that the motion I put forth addresses all of the, the issues that Gina was just talking to at least I think it does. I'd also like to add one more thing that in terms of Mark was asking about, you know, Rick's involvement and what I didn't mention when I said we Bob and I had revised it three times. The third time the last time we revised it was basically to get Rick's input and to add his long range goals into the strategic plan so I agree with Bob. I'm not that far from getting it across the goal line. I just feel that the best person to finish that job is Rick Rogers, not just because of what I said before but also because he's got this calm demeanor and he's got credibility with the rate payers. And I think I'm a utilitarian I just want to get this done. And I think the best way to get this done and the shortest timeframe possible is to hand the ball off to Rick Rogers. For the sake of an analogy we'll call him Ezekiel Elliott. And if you will rephrase your motion Lou, I hope you had it written down. I do. Okay, please read it again you're making the following motion. I'm going to have to modify this on the fly but I move that the board direct district manager Rick Rogers to come up with a revised draft of the strategic plan based on and I'm going to modify this to just the third revision that Bob and I did with Rick's help just not that long ago. And further that the draft should be part of the board packet the second meeting in August in other words Rick Scott two months to come up with a hopefully a finalized strategic plan. After that there'll be a one month period for review by public staff and and the board again. Hopefully we can vote on and approve the strategic plan in October so it does dovetails well with the master water plan and creating tactical goals for 2021. Is that good enough. I like it. Lois you want to second that. Yes, I will. Okay, it's been seconded okay. Yeah, can I have a little discussion, please. Yeah. So, I like this motion as well. And one of the things that it does that I think director folks was trying to do when he presented a draft and it was only a draft, not a final document is trying to reduce the reliance on consultants and the fees they charge. All right, so we've done that by doing this and having it done in house, which is one of the goals I think I support for sure. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. Okay. Holly, would you like to record the vote. Holly, you're still there. You're on mute. There you go. Director Moran. Yes. Director Henry. Yes. Director Falls. I'm staying. President swan. Yes. Director Ferris. Hi. Motion passes. So we've been to the dentist and then the proctologist and now chair, chair, if I can, when we're still on this item, can we talk again on the training on contentious issues on moving that forward. Does the board have a desire to direct staff and how they would like to move forward on this training would you do you want a video meeting do you want, do you like the idea of an in person meeting. I agree that we need to move this ahead and I'd like a little direction. Okay. Personally, I don't want to meet in person because I can't say that I would definitely be here so I would have to opt for an option to include video conferencing. If all the rules and the California went to stage whatever. And you could all go back to normal. Yeah, I would, I would prefer to do it in person. But barring that then I would want the option of having a video method enabled. That's my thought and anybody else. I'll chime in. Thank you, Steve. I would support as soon as possible, a video meeting. Thank you. Anybody else. Okay. So I'm hearing, I'm hearing video meeting unless not unless somebody else says you know video meetings much easy to set up and to get all you folks there. If that's what the direction is, staff will move ahead and set up a video meeting and get this going. Steve, if I may add something. I agree that we should, we should pursue this to completion as quickly as possible. I would prefer to have it in person because I think you lose all of that that nonverbal communication when you try and do it remotely but I'm not against having a virtual meeting just to get it done. What I think is important though is that we decouple this contentious meeting with the strategic plan because otherwise you're going to slow down the strategic plan. I mean I realized that we did this partly because we wanted to have that training for the strategic planning but again being a utilitarian. I don't want anything to get in the way of getting the strategic plan done by the end of the year and I'm afraid this would have a possibility of doing that. I support that goal as well. I agree keeping the two separate. Period. And the meeting, like I said, until California goes to back to normal, which may never happen I would only support a video meeting. As much as I'd like to be in person. I'm not willing to risk anything. Staff will move forward on a video meeting. Get this going. Bob, you had a comment. Bob. Director Fultz. Question. I had a question. What timeframe were we talking about doing this in? I was going to see it's a video meeting. I'll talk with him. Hang on a second. I'm not necessarily on board yet with only a video meeting. If we were having an in person meeting, when would it be? I haven't got back with her for, for dates. And I would have to, we'd have to pull the board and find out when board availability was they get all five of you together. She probably be the easy one because she's not doing much right now. They would be the five board members to get some dates. We can put together some dates. I think I'd like to explore an in person meeting. Gina. Yeah, I just wanted to provide kind of a public service announcement that the board and staff are not monitoring chat. So for members of the public who want to provide comments on items that are pending before the board, please raise your hand during the public comment period. So that everybody gets the benefit of those comments. Thank you, Gina. Do we have a public comment on our contentiousness training? No. Okay. So are we, I still don't have clarity yet. Are we talking about in person or video only or mixed? I'm still waiting for that to I hear both from the board.  So I will only be available via video. At this point in time, unless, unless the, the, the state of California directs otherwise. If I could just jump in here, there is adequate flexibility under the shelter in place orders to conduct this meeting in a number of different ways, consistent with public health guidelines. I certainly wouldn't recommend that, you know, we try to require anybody to participate in person. There could be all kinds of reasons why that wouldn't be appropriate for an individual. Yeah, which is why he's asking about mixed if we could do it mixed. Right. I'd say yes off the top of my head. You know, I don't see why not. We can probably can we've done it before that way. It's just the audio. I'm not quite sure how that will work but we'll I'm sure Bob we can do it in this day and age. Well, let's ask Lou, do you want mixed or do you want one or the other. I would prefer to have it mixed. But at this point, I think it's more important to just get it done. And I think whatever we lose by not being able to read body language. And albeit, we can still have an effective session on content on contentious issues with with Amy remotely.  Right.  Well, you know, I want to move them both ahead. The contentious issues easy. I just tell Holly to work on dates. That's an easy one and she'll set that up. You know, strategic is the heavy lift, but we can move them both ahead. I think it's good to move them both ahead because there's never a good time to do this stuff. We need to keep trenching ahead. Well, in that case, and I would support what Bob said and try to do something that was mixed, if possible. And I think I've already expressed myself I think I know I agree with Steve. Thank you. And we do Santa Margarita meetings, the working group mix where half of us are in the room and the other half are on video so it can be done. Yeah, I'm willing to be flexible to that degree. We'll work on some dates. Okay, Rick. Okay, back to you for item five. Five C is the Santa Rosa Valley Water District Water Year 2020 stream flow operational gauging. The environmental planner. She will present these two items. Great. So, starting in water year 2014, the district entered into a contract with balance hydraulics to monitor stream flow salinity and temperature for both operational and ecological monitoring or purposes. This was kicked off in 2002 when CDFW the California Department of Fish and Wildlife approach the district about its diversions effects on fisheries resources. After five years of the program in water year 2019 a redefined scope was determined to establish baseline conditions and to continue to provide data to the resource agencies. Also in water year 2019 the district requested to separate ecological and operational gauging. The ecological data will be used to evaluate the potential impact of diversions on stream flow and temperature for ecological regulatory purposes for habitat and for potential conductive use studies. The operational gauging program focuses on to real time gauges on Clear Creek and Fall Creek which has been come important for operational management on the diversions for these two streams. The redefined scope also reduced cost from approximately $160,000 annually to approximately $73,000 annually attached below the memo or both the proposals for operational and ecological gauging proposals from balance hydraulics. Rick and I are here to answer any questions. Thank you, Carly. Okay. Do we have any questions or comments from any of the directors, Director Fultz. Thank you, Carly. Is this measurement a permanent thing going forward? That is, is it something that's going to be required every year or is there a point at which we know enough to be able to make some conclusions. I think earlier studies showed that we weren't really impacting things at all from at least the environmental point of view. And so I'm wondering where we go with this over the long term. Can I answer that, Carly? Great question, Bob. We've just been having these discussions with the Santa Margarita groundwater agency. As we are moving through that process, we're talking now about impacts of surface water. The groundwater has impacts on surface water and about stream monitoring. It looks like we're moving to move the stream monitoring into the county city of Santa Cruz and part of the JPA. So I want to say that it's coming to an end because the county will be taking over the monitoring most likely next year. And then it will be going back to the JPA to discuss how we're going to continue because there is going to be monitoring wells in the aquifer and there is going to be some surface water monitoring. So as far as the monitoring for fisheries and temp study and flows, I see that somewhat coming to an end solely for the district and to be to shared more. But I also see us picking up monitoring wells as part of this JPA and the aquifer recharge. I don't think it'll be a trade off because it's a lot more inexpensive to monitor wells that basically the district staff can do it. We can go out with laptops and integrity data loggers and get information very quickly in our own staff where the stream and temp flows are very, as you can see, are costly and time consuming because of constant recalibration in the streams and so forth. But we still will have the Fall Creek and we still will have the operational Fall Creek and the operational Clear Creek, which are requirements from our permit and easement. I understand. I mean, if the data is still critical and it needs to be used and there's a good return on it and all that, then we definitely want to do that. Just after the almost million dollars we spent on it already to prove basically what we've been doing for 80 years didn't have an impact or any material impact that's like how much further do you go. Now in terms of the other monitoring that we need to do is there a way to with some of the wells and that sort of thing is there a way to automate that through SCADA systems or other remote sensing devices.  You know, our other wells we go out once a month, and we do interrogation, it's not too bad. Areas where we have internet or communications, you know, we can piggyback right in and, you know, there's no expert cost to the district. And I miss and I doubt if they're going to place these new monitoring wells, you know, next to our other existing wells, you know, we're going to spread these out so right now, you know, I really didn't want to go towards SCADA because of the monthly costs associated with the data loggers and so forth. So it's definitely needs to be looked at. And we need to look at what's our best, our best bang for the buck. But the information we're collecting is still good because we are going to be addressing, we still are addressing our water rights and felton, talking about the point of use to change that we're reviewing water rights information. We've got the conjunctive use going on, and that data is being looked at and used so we're getting somewhat of a return on investment. And we scaled it way back from what we used to do and we used to spend considerably a lot more and we've cut it way back to just the bare minimum now. Yeah, no thanks for sharing. Any other questions or comments from the board about from the public. Mr Lee has his hand up. Mark Lee you have your hand up you're on mute. There you go. Thank you for your presentation. The other creek besides fall creek wasn't that one of the creek said was less impacted by salmon and still head runs by today that by the study that was earlier presented at the environmental subcommittee meeting. I don't believe so the two that on the operational or fall creek and clear creek. There weren't part of what we talked about fall creek today which was a great presentation, a lot of great information came out of that today but there are concerns on clear creek that were monitoring. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mark, any other questions comments from the public. Okay, back to the board. Then. So we, we have a, the recommendation is that we allow you to enter into the contract with balance hydrologies. So I'll make a motion that we direct the. District manager to enter into the contract with balance hydrologies to continue this work. I'll second that motion state. Thank you, Holly, would you like to record the vote. Yeah. Yeah. I apologize I couldn't find my spot. Director Moran. Yes. Director Henry. Yes. Director Falls. Yes. President swan. Yes. Director Ferris. Oh, do we lose them again. Yeah. Director Ferris is not on. So what do I do Gina. I'm going to move on to the next agenda item and then come back and recall this vote. When director Ferris joins the meeting. And then. We might ask him when he gets back on whether. You know, it's okay if he drops off again to move forward with those without him. Okay, let's do that. Go ahead. All right. Let's move on to five D please. And when Lou shows up, we'll take another vote. Rick, you're muted. Rick, you're still muted. Okay. We have our next item is the revenue impacts from COVID-19. We have the finance manager that will present this item to. So this is more of just an informational item. We have the revenue impacts from COVID-19. We have a budget and finance committee. That we discussed this and they recommended that we bring it to the board for an update on some of the more. And recent impacts we're seeing from COVID-19. Overall, our district is not being severely impacted by the pandemic. As some other neighboring agencies are. A lot of this does have to do with the fact that we are highly impacted. So, we're seeing some of these cities and counties that rely so heavy on commercial use and you know, the hospitality industry, stuff like that. They are seeing severe negative impacts where for the most part, we're not being remotely as impacted being mainly residential. The drive, February and sheltering in place have actually led to an increase in water consumption during the month of March through May. Further down that does show all of the numbers. When we look at consumption by type, that's kind of exactly what we're seeing. We're seeing our residential going up and the commercial properties going slightly down. Of the 7,900 connections, about 7,600 are some sort of residential. The increase in water consumption equates to about 0.8 units of water per month, which is about 600 gallons more per month, which makes sense if you think of the average number in the household, flushing toilets, more stuff like that. That essentially will attribute to that. There are also a lot of people that are doing more gardening or homestead activities that are likely using a little bit more water. The district's consumption going up does directly equate to increased consumption revenue. It still is important to note that the 2019 summer months that we had had lower than average consumption, so we definitely still want to make sure we're keeping an eye on some of this stuff. So that did sort of offset some of the increases that we recently saw in these more recent months. Property tax revenue, while there has not been any notice or talks about it, it has happened in the past for a couple of years where there was a major financial impact where special districts' property tax revenues were suspended. We're not there, we haven't heard anything. It's one of those things where, we're really just gonna have to deal with that if it comes to that. The district does receive about $800,000 a year in property taxes, so if something like that were to be suspended, even temporarily, it would have a significant impact on our district. Past dues, so during the pandemic, the district suspended the past due procedures. This has caused an increase in delinquent accounts and the fees associated with the collection process. Approximately $24,000 in lost past due fees. The district typically brings in about $6,000 a month in past due penalties. Delinquent account balances have risen, past dues typically are about 8% to 10% of the billing cycle and currently they're at 12% to 14%. So we're looking at, 50,000-ish plus more than what we normally do see. We do still have the long-term delinquent accounts that are making up about 120,000 on top of the zero to 90 days. Those will typically get repaid when properties do sell. The three main contributing factors to this zero to 90 past due, we don't know how much it's for each category, but kind of the things that we're able to get from talking to people is there's customers that who cannot pay their bills and that is why they're past due. There's customers that choose not to pay since there's no penalties involved. And then there are customers who rely on the past due process as their reminder to pay. So we're getting people that miss one bill, but then they get their next bill and see that there's a past due balance and try to true it up. There likely will be a higher rate of uncollectible account balances. We don't really know how much at this point, but for now the estimate is likely somewhere between 10 and $50,000. It's one of those things where until we kind of start some of the past due process again, we won't know exactly what situation we're in. So a lot of this is again, just informational to kind of let people know that obviously it can be assumed that our accounts receivable aging balance is gonna go on the rise when you do stop collection procedures. Thank you, Stephanie. Do you have any questions for Stephanie, Bob? Thanks, Stephanie, for the overview on that. So if we take all these numbers, convert the usage to revenue and all that, what's your net net on what we should see for revenue by June 30th? Is it going to be about the same as it's in our budget? Is it going to be under, over, and if over about how much? I think it's gonna be coming in about 10,000 units higher, which is gonna end up equating to about $115,000. Okay, so our revenue will be $115,000 higher than what's in the budget. Correct. Okay, and so the way that works is that extra money would then go into a reserve account? Is that the way that that would work? Correct, so what's gonna end up happening is we will be showing higher than expected reserve balance come June 30th, 2020. Okay, great, thank you. Any other questions? Any comments or questions from the public? Mr. Lee. Thank you, Stephanie, for all your diligence in reading the financial report. Well, it looks like we have the money now for the, the Lerner program after all. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Any other questions or comments from the public? None, okay, back to the board, nothing. Okay, there's no activity. Thank you for the update, Stephanie. Rick, we'll move along to 5E. Okay, 5E is a grand jury update and district council, Nicholas will give this presentation to the board. Okay, thank you, Rick. This agenda item was requested by a board member. And so I provided a summary of the background related to the 2017-18 grand jury report entitled Encouraging the Flow of Information to the Public. There's a link in the board memo to the grand jury's report as well as the district's response to the report and attached is a letter that the district received in spring of last year, requesting some follow-up information and also the district's response to that letter which was sent to the grand jury in June of last year. At this time, the grand jury isn't seeking anything further from the district, but there may be desire on the part of the board to take some follow-up actions. So the staff is seeking direction from the board in terms of what the board wants to do with respect to the grand jury report. Okay, Bob, you have a question or comment? Yeah, so this was something that I'd asked about and I think that in the interest of transparency and making sure that we're taking the grand jury process seriously, which I know that we are, I do think it's important for us to report periodically back to the grand jury as to what our progress is and whether that's every six months or every year, what have you, I still believe that we need to do that. I know we're very close to being done with all of the items that are in there, but I think having Gina draft a update letter with bullet points, just reiterating what we're done, what we're, where we are with the others would be very helpful. And it would also let the community know that we are taking this very seriously as well and are continuing to push forward to getting all of those recommendations completed. Okay, Bob, any other comments or thoughts from the other directors? I think that sounds like a good idea. I'll raise my hand if I can, Steve. Yeah, yeah. All right. I agree with Bob that the grand jury should hear back from us and it should be noted by the public as well. In the evidence of that, we just talked about the strategic plan and the contentious issue. This board is sincere in its efforts to resolve those questions that the grand jury brought up and I'm glad to see that. And I think it's all positive of what we've done in response to the grand jury. Thank you. Okay. Director Ferris still seems to be missing in action. Lois, do you have any thoughts or comments on this? You want to weigh in? Well, I think that there's some things that the Long Pico Oversight Committee has accomplished since the last time we reported. So it might be a good idea to report on that because that was a big part of the grand jury report was Long Pico. Wait a minute. Okay, great. Rick, you have your hand up? I agree that, you know, we'll move this ahead but we are very close to completing. I think we have three things left on our objectives to complete the requirements or requests from the grand jury. And that's I think is the training, contentious training, the annual newsletter for Long Pico, the LADOC committee, and then the third is the training for LADOC on certificates of participation. Maybe I think I'd recommend we complete these three and I'll ask Gina and then we can send a final completion letter to the grand jury. I don't know, Gina, your thoughts? Because we are so close. It wouldn't take long to bring this over the line. Well, I'm more than willing to prepare something to the grand jury. I guess I don't feel strongly about whether we do it now or whether we, you know, wrap up a few items and then just send a completion or prepare a completion letter. Might make sense to just do something once all the recommendations are completed, the implementation is completed. I personally, I would recommend styling it more as a memo to the file because the grand jury isn't asking for anything for us and they turn over every year and there's no reason to believe that they are interested in attention to this. But if we did something for our own purposes, it would dot the I's and cross the T's in case any member of the public or a subsequent grand jury or anyone else is interested in how we completed the response to these recommendations. So, but I don't feel strongly about any of these things and I certainly would take the board's direction in terms of how to document this. Okay, thank you, Gina, Bob, your thoughts? Yeah, Gina, I understand your point about, you know, memo to file, but part of this is also communication with the public. And I'm not sure exactly how the memo to file works on that, whereas the communication to the grand jury itself, I think, would help in that. Rick, what's the anticipated completion of these remaining three items? I believe the biggest hurdle is for training on, depending, and I haven't talked to Stephanie in depth, the training for the LADOC committee. And I'm not too sure how many folks we have left on the LADOC. But I would think that we ought to be able to get over the finish line within the next month and a half, month, month and a half. Well, I mean, I appreciate that, but the training for the LADOC committee has actually been one of those that has been, I think, maybe difficult for us to address. I mean, I know the committee wanted that training, like many months ago, and I don't know that we've necessarily found anybody to conduct that. And perhaps at the end of the day, that's one that just can't be fulfilled, even though we have every intention of trying to do it. And I think it's because of the uncertainty around that one that I'm suggesting that we provide an update. And then if that is able to get done within the next couple, three months or so, or six months or what have you, then we can write another letter to them saying we concluded it. But if we don't have anybody lined up right now to actually do the training, then I don't know that, I'm skeptical that it could be done in a month, month and a half, even with the best of intentions, which I know that we all have. And I haven't really discussed with Stephanie, but given the current situation where the assessment district funds have been spent, you know, I'm not sure if there's still a need, but I guess we could talk to the LADOC chair, the LADOC committee. I mean, the funds may have been spent, but the project has not been completed. The projects are not being completed. And until those projects are completed, we have not fulfilled the promises that we made to Lampica. Okay. Zephy, do you have any thoughts on, I know you did some research and possible training. So NBS does, I mean, they do specialize in assessment districts. They have a lot of literature around what assessment districts are. They did say that they could do a training. You know, it's kind of one of those things where each assessment district is different. So I mean, they don't provide legal advice or stuff like that, but they can go over kind of how assessment districts run. They are familiar with ours, so they can speak to some of the stuff around ours. But a lot of them are, I mean, it's similar to a road association or an HOA, it's more of a self-governing type of thing. But I mean, they do offer that type of stuff. And he did say, you know, he wouldn't physically come up here, but he would be able to host a remote session. Well, that'd be great. I mean, if we can commit to getting it done in the next month, a month and a half, then we can delay the letter. I just, this has been ongoing for a while. I agree. So do you feel confident enough that we can get it done in the next, you know, 45 days to delay sending anything now? With your strategic plan task. We'll get, we'll look into this and if it's gonna be a significant delay, we'll get back to the board for an update. But yeah, let's have an update at the next board meeting. That's a month away. So that would be good. If we could just put an informational item on the agenda, Steve, for the update. Right. Okay. Steve? Yes. I'm back online if you wanna take that vote. Oh, terrific. And could I suggest, I'm not sure we got public comment on this item. Maybe we could do that and close out this item and then go back to the vote on policy. Sure. Okay. Is there a, hang on Lou, don't hang up. Any public comment regarding the topic, sending an update to the grand jury. I don't see any hands coming up. So, so that's the direction. Then we'll wait to see where we are at the next board meeting in a month from now. Steve, I would like to make a comment about the grand jury report. Okay. Please do. Having worked in a highly regulated environment for several decades, one of the things that you definitely want to do after a major effort like this, where you've, if it's a legal or a regulatory issue and you spent a lot of time and effort trying to resolve issues, you not only want to finish what you committed to, but then you want to do a file review of everything that you've got to make sure, basically doing a, coming back around and reviewing one more time. Did we in fact cover everything and did we in fact do everything that we're supposed to do? And it should be contained in a separate file onto itself so that if anybody comes out, comes back years from now and says, what happened to the grand jury reports, we have everything in one place and can produce the information for somebody to look at. The call of the file review and even an effectiveness or an effectivity review before you close the file after you think you've completed everything. Okay. Good suggestion, Lou. Thank you. Okay, so Rick, so we'll revisit this in a month, see where we are with those three outstanding items. And then send or not send a follow-up to the grand jury on that. I'll work with council and Stephanie and we will get back to the board and get through the wrap up. Okay, Holly, would you like to rerecord the vote on item? I see. I think, yeah. I see you. I see, yeah. Authorizing the district manager to enter into a contract with balance hydro, hydro balance with balance. Director Moran? Yes. Director Henry? Yes. Director Fultz? Yes. President Swan? Yes. Director Ferris? Oh no. He's gone again. No, he's not. Oh, he's not. Yeah, but he's muted.  Oh, there he is. Okay. Take him where you got it. Okay, we got it. Director Ferris? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes. And President Swan, if I may, I just want to be clear that in this type of a situation we could mark a director absent for the time that they drop off and take the vote with somebody marked absent. We haven't wanted to do that. Certainly that's not something we want to do in this bizarre sort of Zoom meeting format. And we were able to accommodate it, but I just want everybody to know that that is something we could do. So, and we may need to if it were impractical to circle back to an item like we did this evening. Okay, is every director good with that in case one of us loses connectivity again or something? Yes. And I apologize for being a problem tonight. Yeah, and I'm sorry to put you on the spot. I don't mean to, but I just, I don't want to set a precedent that we have to, you know, circle back to items if it's not practical to do that for a vote. Yeah, I totally agree. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Good with that. Lois is good with that, aren't you? Lois? Yes. Thank you, Lois. Bob, you're okay? You're on mute, Bob. Yes. Thank you. Okay, moving along. All right. General Rogers. Okay, item 5F, Director Fultz requests for financial information. Recommended that the board of directors review the memo and attachments and give direction to the district manager regarding requests for financial information from Director Fultz and discuss moving forward as requested on May 28, 2020, received a request for information from Director Fultz through Chair Swan, it's attached in your packet, requesting financial information and a request to agendize liabilities and promises. The attached request speaks for itself. In an effort to comply with this request that believes this information request will take a great deal of time to complete and board discussion is needed. A lot of this information has been provided in there are documents such as the cost of service study providing some of the requested information. Staff have already explained that they are working on a lot of this in conjunction with the master plan attempting to provide this type of information ahead of the master plan is extremely burdensome and inefficient as consultants are actively working on a large portion of this. Staff agree that having a capital maintenance master plan can lead to a well informed financial plan. Staff has been providing related information during the budget process. We just recently provided water tank maintenance analysis to the board. We state all liabilities on our balance sheets as required, pensions and OPEC liabilities have been discussed and are on the books, the assets and related depreciation are also on the books. We don't fully understand concerns regarding promises. The water master plan will provide a considerable amount of information and is scheduled to be completed November, 2020. Staff feel that we can prepare the overall capital and financial reports by March, 2021. Staff understands the need for this information but direction is needed on moving forward. We need a long range plan starting with the streets plan and water master plan. The district's finance manager has prepared a roadmap to moving forward and I will ask Stephanie for her presentation. Okay, so kind of since you talked about some of these subjects a couple of times, we thought that it would be nice to put together a roadmap to kind of show how we are envisioning these different pieces coming together and kind of a timeline for those so that everyone can maybe get on the same page as to expectations. So what is a roadmap? A roadmap is a long view of where our district currently is, what we want to achieve and how we're going to get there. The purpose of the roadmap is to establish a strategic framework to help guide our district to its ultimate goal. Currently, the district has been working hard to get back on track. Honestly, there's been a history of circumstances that have hindered forward progress over the last five plus years. These have varied from natural disasters, contentious discussion, high volume of changeover and board members and district managers. All of these different things are gonna kind of cause a delay in a lot of these items that require a lot of collaborative work with each other. In 2017, the district did a cost of service study and it's in the process of completing the master plan. These are critical items to help us get to best practices so that we can have a much better long-term planning capability. At times there have been so many different plans and initiatives that it's easy to get slowed down and paralyzed with overplanning. There are basics that we want to get established. And once we kind of get these basics, that's when a lot of the pieces start to fall in line a little bit easier. Where do we wanna be? We wanna have a strategic plan that the district can align other plan objectives with to achieve the goals and mission of the district. We wanna have a manageable capital asset management plan that staff can continue to update and inform the board and public over the years as we go. The camp is gonna allow for a much better long-term financial plan. This will give insight into financial capacity for the best ways to plan and achieve the long-term objectives in the strategic plan. And then having all these pieces in place will allow us to do more forward projections, will allow us to do by any old budgeting and those types of things. First step is the strategic plan. I did an excerpt from GFOA's best practices for kind of what a strategic plan is. We're kind of all aware of it, but it does give, it does help show that there is a very important focus on our strategic plan to help align all of the organizational resources and goals to kind of build on each other. After that, the capital asset management plan. So we're in the thick of the district's master plan. It's scheduled to be completed in November 2020. This is gonna have a lot of the data that's gonna help hold the large capital asset together. We've seen things from the director of operations for some of the tank maintenance, the near-replacement program, all of those different types of things are going to go into this overall management plan. And that's gonna really help us focus in and plan out years one, years five, and years 10 of what to expect. Once we have that, then obviously we're able to pull the long-term full financial plan together with, we can have some different assumptions around operating expenses that are a little bit easier to forecast debt, that sort of stuff. The capital aspect is really one of the more fluid ones that can change significantly from year to year depending on what's going on. So what now? So strategic plan, we've already discussed it. We wanna get the ball rolling. It sounds like we are moving in that direction. We assigned tasks and a timeline and it should be completed before end of 2020. The capital asset management plan, the master plan is coming November 2020. We feel staff can take that and then integrate it all together by the end of January 2021. And then that's gonna lead us into the financial plan, hopefully being able to be formed by March of 2021, which will fit in line with, we could potentially have a draft by annual budget if all goes smoothly for the upcoming budget year and fiscal year 2021, which would get us through the 2023. So that would be a completion by June of 2021. So that's just kind of a timeline to kind of show some of that. It's hard when there's questions that board members have that we agree are valid and we wanna try and get them answered. We're hoping that kind of presenting everyone with the timeline and what we're planning will help show and keep us accountable to that progress to get us kind of these large, very, I mean, these are large complicated items to get us to the finish line with some of these. Thank you, Stephanie. Okay, any questions or comments from anybody? Bob, you're recognized. Yeah, I wanna thank Steve for getting on the agenda and Rick and Stephanie for putting together that information. I think these are, as Stephanie was saying, very critical items and I wanna make sure that the reasons and the backup of why I wanted to put this on the agenda are clearly understood. And it really has to go to at a board level, a policy level, understanding what is facing the district and what is facing the board, what is facing our ratepayers as a result of all the decisions that have been made up until now and where we are right now. We currently have approximately, and Stephanie correct me if I'm wrong, but we currently have approximately $3 million in what I call margin, that is the revenue minus expenses that are available for us to spend on projects that are facing us. And that $3 million basically has to go to cover the following items. And some of these items, regrettably, the nature of accounting doesn't really lead you to including these in formal balance sheets and that sort of thing, because those are mostly retrospective. But when you look at prospective going forward, Rick, I think we have about 160 miles of pipe, more or less, all told of all sizes. So, if we were to take an average of, let's say $300 a foot, and I think our current installation costs for California and Billside projects are closer to 400, that's approximately $253 million in replacement cost of our pipe, which if you look at needing to do that on a 50 year cycle, you're looking at about 6 million a year. Now, it may not be 250 million, maybe it's 150 million, maybe it's 200, but somewhere in that range, we're going to be looking at having to spend between $3 and $5 million a year just on prospective capital going forward. That doesn't count the capital that's retrospective, where over the last 20, 30 years, we've not spent nearly enough on infrastructure and so we're having to catch up in that. And that's probably in the order of another million to 2 million a year, which we would probably fund by taking out loans similarly to what we did with the five pipeline projects here recently. So, when you add that up, just those two things alone, you're looking at over subscribing our margin by anywhere from 2x to the 3x. That doesn't include the 10 million in tanks. That doesn't include the 4 million in meters. A lot of the meters are reaching the end of their life. I don't really have numbers on pumps, wells, generators, all those things that we have to replace. The PERS liability in our books is based on a number that the PERS staff puts out there, but it doesn't really reflect the reality of where we are. And at a board level, because these promises are so solemn, we need to be cognizant of the fact that at any point in time in the future, PERS could very easily come back and say, well, the real return on investment isn't 7%. It's more like 5.8%, which has been the 20 year average. And so your liability now goes from 3.5 million to let's say, you know, 5 million, 6 million. And that's a substantial jump up because PERS refuses for whatever reason to basically accept the reality that you're not gonna get a real return of investment, a real rate of return on your investment of a broad base, large fund like that, five or six points over real economic growth that's just not happening. And then on top of that, we have our other liabilities around vacation and OPEB, which are not nearly as big, probably in the order of a million to a half million. We have whatever we wanna spend on Lyra programs out of our property tax, 25,000 now. But I think we all have said that it probably needs to be bigger. We still have a lot of the Long Pico projects to complete. I believe that money's all been spent. So what we have to do now for what's left is we're gonna have to take that out of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District Pockets. And that's probably somewhere in the order of two to three million in order to keep those promises. We have whatever we're gonna spend in Santa Margarita over and above what we're spending now. And then we have special projects like the Lyon slide, three million plus, Loch Lomond water, the last estimate I saw was six million and that was a long time ago. So when you start looking at all these numbers and you start matching that up against the three million in margin that we have, we are at a very substantive crossroads. And so while I appreciate the methodical way that we outlined in terms of approaching this at a board level, at a policy level, we need to be thinking about the implications of what all of these numbers mean for the board, for the ratepayers and for the community at large. And I think we can actually move down the path simultaneously looking at estimates and other information as it becomes available like the tank information, which I thought was just fantastic to get that information. Not fantastic from the point of view of the number associated with it, but fantastic to understand what the liability is to the district because of the lack of maintenance over the last 25 years since a lot of those tanks have been installed. And these are the kinds of things that I think the conversations that need to take place in parallel with the master plan and all the other things because you're just not gonna drop on the community this kind of information without having a lot of in-depth conversation amongst us at committee level, how are we gonna deal with this? What is the goal and objective? How do we address this given historically what has regrettably been massive underfunding and infrastructure? So that's the reason for putting it on the agenda to basically make sure that we understand that these numbers are large. They outstrip our current ability to fund them. And at some point, we're gonna have to have very serious conversations about how this gets addressed and how this is going to get paid for. And those options are to basically continue what we're doing. It is to try to put in place and get well plans which are going to require additional funding. It may be that there's other grant programs or other infrastructure improvement funding that we can take advantage of though we all understand that over the last 20 years or so, the feds have really cut back on all of that. So at some level, this is our community and our community's responsibility to deal with these things. And perhaps on the next annual report, we might be looking at how to put some of this information on there because it's not immediately clear where that is currently in the annual report because again, most of the balance sheet, asset information and all that is based on historical which is a fraction of what the replacement cost is going forward. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have the budget committee start to undertake these conversations to try to start doing some estimates and getting some basic sizing of things that'll get more refined of course over time as we move through the master plan but starting the conversations about how we're gonna pay for all this as early as possible, we just can't start early enough. So I would still like to ask that we direct the budget committee to undertake this effort and get these conversations started. Thank you, Bob. Lois, do you have your hand up? Yeah, I'm really confused. What's confusing? In Bob's email to you, Steve, he says, Rick had suggested that the budget committee take it up immediately but based on how we agreed to manage committees this year I didn't think that would be a good idea. He just said the opposite. I don't understand. Okay. Well, I'm sure Bob will have a chance to explain that to you. Anybody else have a comment, question? No? Because it sounds like it laid out a road map for how we get, go through the various processes of accumulating the necessary data which is a time consuming process, very laborious in conjunction with everyone's day job and we don't have a massive staff or anything. But I think Stephanie laid out, as Bob mentioned, a very sort of comprehensive road map about how we can get to the end of the road and be able to answer and have a better understanding of all the data that's necessary for the board and the public to understand where we are and to be able to make those long-term planning decisions that the board's responsible for. But it also goes to illustrate, I think, where when we have a lot of, if the staff is receiving tremendous amounts of ad hoc requests for financial information on a regular basis, it can really, it skews things to the point where the day you're getting may or may not be that accurate. It doesn't have the prerequisites completed and in place and that it doubles the amount of effort of staff time, which is very precious. So, I think that's where a lot of the concern came in and I think that this roadmap helps clarify that we need to let the staff who are the experts in this area and who have their hands closest to gathering this information that's necessary be allowed to do their jobs. And I think Stephanie's roadmap helps illustrate exactly what they need to do and not be burdened with too many ad hoc requests for any and all data, whether it's financial data, whether it's maintenance data, whether it's how many miles of pipe we have, whether it's how many tanks are leaking and where the leaks are, let the staff do their jobs and not burden them, as I said, with a bunch of ad hoc requests for data and information. Bob, you have a comment. Yeah, and there's nothing in what I've talked about that requires massive time involved. This is all basically doing estimates based on what we know as best practices and based on what we believe these numbers are going to come in. Let's say, for example, our capital replacement cost for all that pipeline comes in at 150 million. Well, we still have to spend 3 million a year replacing it. That this is not a laborious time consuming process to start at a board level, how we're going to categorize the various things that we're going to need to look at because in the presentation that was given, it focused on a couple of areas, but it didn't focus on the district holistically and all the things I was talking about. Perhaps those will all be subtasks on there. That'd be great. But I think what we need to do at the budget committee level is go through, understand what these categories are going to be, understand where they're going to be and whatever the process is that we're going to go through and start talking about what those estimates are so that we can, as a board, start getting our hands around and our sort of minds around just exactly how large this number is. It is unbelievable, tens of millions of dollars that we are facing here and we're basically generating 3 million a year in margin dollars. Now, you know, there's various ways of being able to finance capital projects. I certainly understand that and this is also part of the conversations that we need to be having as to how that's going to take place. And I think all that needs to be done in parallel because at the end of the day, we're the ones that are responsible to our bosses and our bosses are the public and the people that expect us to be having these kinds of conversations on their behalf. Yeah, I totally agree with you but I mean, I think we have to let the staff and the district manager do their job. I mean, the board selects the district manager. The district manager selects the staff and we let the district manager and the staff do their jobs. And I don't want to be burdening them with hunting up a lot of ad hoc information and ancillary details that they don't need to be doing. Steve, I didn't ask for any of that. I basically asked for the budget committee to look at the categories that we're talking about here and start putting bread basket estimates around them just like you would do in any other environment. Well, I think we can agree on that, Bob. It should be in the budget committee. Okay, well, I just want this sent to the budget committee so that we can start looking at framing how we're going to be doing this and helping the staff with putting together putting together how we're going to do this. Okay, Lou, you had a comment. Can you hear me? Yes. Somebody's going to have to help me because it's not clear to me. I understand there's an issue here but I'm not really clear what the issue is. Is it that we're asking for too much from staff too quickly or asking for something that's unreasonable or they don't agree? I mean, what's the issue that we're trying to come to grips with here? To help me. So Lou, I think as I understand it is that we have a number of requests that come in continually for a large amount of information on a regular basis that overwhelms the staff. And a lot of the stuff is kind of like putting the cart before the horse because Stephanie had taken the time to put together this roadmap that shows how we can come to the conclusion that we're looking for financially to have all of the various answers to the questions that Bob's talking about. But to do so in this structured and methodical fashion rather than receiving ad hoc requests for X amount of data in detail that they receive from time to time. And I think that that can lead to a certain level of frustration and can distract them from their normal work, their normal day-to-day jobs. Now it sounds like Bob doesn't think that the information that he's been talking about is very difficult to come by and that it should be able to be gathered very quickly but I'm getting sort of a contradictory feeling from staff. Okay. Let me help you out here. So for example, on the tank spreadsheet that James put together, which was very helpful, basically if what we're doing is saying, okay, we got 30 tanks and the average cost per tank is $300,000, boom. We have at least a bread basket from which we can start having conversations about how we're going to finance that. This is not a lengthy drawn out conclusion. Now to get to fine detail, which is designs and RFPs and all that sort of thing, absolutely that requires all of the process that has been discussed about. But in terms of being able to get ourselves ready for what is coming, these are the kind of bread basket estimates that we need to be making and they don't require a lot of time. Okay. If I may continue, Steve. Sure, go ahead Lou. I think I understand the problem now and my comment is this. I have learned the hard way that being a board member is not easy. We walk