On February 6th, the meeting of Soko Free Water District, there's an announcement before we go through normal business. Thank you. I just wanted to say that there's been some technology difficulties with getting into the IT room. So we have CTV and our audience filming on her phone right now. And that is going to transition at some point. We hope so. All right. So I'd like to call the meeting to order. Do we need roll call with everybody here? Director Balboni. Here. Vice President Lather. Here. Director Mithieu. Aye. Okay. Here. Director Richardson. Here. And President Jaffee. Here. No public hearing. And this is an opportunity for board members to remove items from the consent agenda. Do you want to remove? Um, yeah. Actually, I just wanted a quick question. So I wanted to remove item 4.4, annual water protection status report. Okay. We'll get to that at the end of the meeting. Thank you. Does anybody have a motion to move approval of the consent agenda at minus 4.4? I'll second. And you can just do a little, you can just do a little approval. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Aye. That's unanimously. Okay. That's an adopted just a quick reminder. Did we ask for public comment? No, we didn't. Thank you. Public comment. Sorry. Thank you. Good. Thank you. Perfect. So then before you say something, I guess we should begin after the public comment. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Weston, for reminding President Jaffee. And thank you, Director Baloney for polling item 4.4. I want to say regarding item 4.0, regarding the minutes, I think it's 4.1. There are, there's no video on your website so that people who were not able to attend can review that and verify that the minutes are correct. And in the minutes you only say one comment or a number of comments, but there's no way for members of the public to be able to go and find out what that was. So I wrote you about that this afternoon and requested that, because there has been no video posted on your website since the December 5th meeting, that you instead post directly the community television government on demand website. It's very good, and they update it right away. So it seems that staff is not able to regularly and quickly post these links to your website, send people to the community television government on demand website instead. I also feel that item number 4.5, there should be some discussion about kind of some wild rehabilitation. That's a big deal, a $1 million project. And I believe that it is in part being funded by grant money. I would like to see a little more discussion about that. I'm 4.9 putting out to bid to get a remodel of the center at the Pure Water SoCal project for a new education center. I think that because of the problems with the district's finances, you should not spend that money now. You've got a very nice interpretive setup at district offices. It could simply be moved and put there as an interim educational display. And I feel it is irresponsible to go out and spend a lot of money on an educational center remodel when you're trying to, when you're having to raise the rates. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, you should probably be the pessimistic guest. So the motion was by Tom and Michelle as the second. So all in favor of passing the consent agenda items except for 4.4. Yes. Hi. Hi. All opposed. None. I just want to say what the motion was again. Yeah. Just a note. Just as far as the question about kind of in Maine. I mean, that was part of the well master plan and the EIR was done back in. And years ago or more. So it's been planned and evaluated for quite some time. That's really human board members. I'll also note the board meetings are broadcasted live on community television. They're YouTube channel and Charter channel 25 and Charter channel 71. These meetings are posted on the community television YouTube website as stated usually that day or the next day. And there are links on our agenda to the community television YouTube website. Now that they're on our agenda, they're on our website at board meetings. And then of course we post them as appropriate at the district website. I just want to acknowledge that there are direct links to community television YouTube website. All right. Thank you. You're wrong. Okay. So that brings us to all in the community. So is there any member of the public who would like to address the board? Thank you. I have a number of issues I'd like to address the board about. Sorry, I didn't say any. If you already know that. Thank you. My name is Becky Steinburner. I have correspondence and that's not on the agenda. But there are some very good letters there that I do hope you read one from one rate care that is really upset that she has worked so hard to conserve water to the point that she uses only a little over one unit per month. And yet her rate, her bill is going to go up 45%. She's begging you and I'm sure there are others like her. I know her asking you to reconsider this rate increase. I listened to the webinar that the district had. At no point did staff say to the customers who were raising very good questions that they can file written protest. And I ask that your staff change that policy of not making it clear to people that they have the option to protest. Otherwise, it's a done deal. And it pretty much is anyway because you have to get over 7000 protests to change what your board has done already. So this is going to hurt a lot of people, a lot of people. And I ask you to reconsider. I also want to say that I have to question the truth of something that Mr. Duncan said in court. It was filed as a declaration February 20, 2019. And wherein he stated, and I'm going to give this to you for the clerk. The bond requirement for liquidation of funds under Prop 1 is that qualified projects must be constructed and online by spring of 2023. The last date for disbursement of Prop 1 grant money is February 29, 2020. Thus all project work must be completed by February 29, 2020. But the district would be required to surrender the $50 million grant. Now, did you have to surrender the $50 million grant? Mr. Duncan said you'd have to. And this is a declaration under oath and filed in court. So how is that fitting in with what your rate study is and has your staff been truthful? I wanted to in the last moment say that I attended the Santa Cruz City Water Commission meeting last night and heard a lot about ammonia treatment. And I have a lot of concerns about how the district is doing that the O'Neill will. Thank you. Any other public comment? I'd like to submit this. I'd just like to make a comment. This, since I'm sure there's litigation involved here that we can't comment directly on your comment, Becky. But I wonder whether you're putting things in improper context in your timing as well. I just wanted to call our staff untruthful. I take offense at that. I'm just saying I take offense at that. This is not a dialogue. You had your chance. I have my chance now. And I have found our staff to always be truthful. Okay. So anything from directors? Yes, just really quickly. I wanted to report back on the flood control meeting that was took place last Tuesday, January 30. We unanimously passed the draft for Santa Cruz County flood control and water conservation district zone five. It was the draft storm drain master plan update. And just to clarify, zone five goes from the Santa Cruz harbor and then just a little past new bright and state beach includes all capital, Tola city. The basic objective of this draft study was to identify capacity issues and project and project alternatives to mitigate flooding on the regional system. And just also quick note that the funding has not been determined. So the county city of capital and zone five will most likely gather more information before implementation. That was normal. Any other directors. So reports. There are no reports that brings us to administrative business. There are no conditional and unconditional service. And there's a presentation now 7.2. That's okay. Okay. Four years. Thank you. Tonight on this item for the communication and outreach annual report joined by the government, our public outreach coordinator and also Mackenzie Morris, our communication specialist. And we're going to go through a series of slides just to give an overview of the education and outreach that the district has reformed in calendar year. Just to kind of start off and remind the board and those watching that the outreach team works with our community and our standing committees on the outreach activities that we perform for the community. And they're basically formulated on three of the standing committees primary goals that were identified way back in 2016 when the initial public outreach standing committee was formed. And then to this day, they still seem to be the three tenants that we use to develop our communication for outreach plan. Number one is increased public understanding and awareness of the water supply problem and the conference nature of the district effort. Good evening, directors. So this first slide our district website, which is accessible to customers worldwide. You can see our top five pages viewed over the past calendar year have been our homepage, pay your bill, bids, jobs and the search module. And the top five search terms for bill, jobs, weeks, rebates and rates. People spend about an average of a minute and 20 seconds on all of our pages. We have an average user of 3,700 people a month. And I find it interesting still that there's 63% on desktops and laptops and tablets are really small 2%, but more so on the phones. Pure Water Soquel had just over 2,400 views this year and then a fun fact that our furthest visitors work from India. We released five press releases this year throughout the year. We have a monthly advertisement that we do in the Aptos Times and the Capital of Soquel Times. And this year we, for last year, we focused on Dr. Christensen's care theme that we started in our water wisdom column in January and carried that throughout the year. So collaboration, adaptation, resilience, and economics and environment. Times Publishing Group also has two, well, one magazine that they published twice a year, their home and garden magazine that we advertised in. And so this year we did ditch a grass and clean a rebate and then also stopped the drip and saved the day and promoted our leak guide that our department and water resources were filling to write together. Our water wisdom columns that we have every month, which is awesome. I hope you all read them. It's a nice way for us to get information out to our public in a different way. I need glasses, I'm realizing. I can't feel them over there. At an event, a customer came up to Mackenzie and I and was like, I read all of your water wisdom articles. I learned a lot. It's nice to stay updated on what's going on in the district. I read them all too. Thank you. And it's hard when it's print, right? We don't really know unless someone tells us, oh, I saw your ad or a venture article. We have really no analytics when it's print advertising or columns. Just one thing to note, to increase, I think, the broader readership of the water wisdom column is that we also run that in our monthly BPLAS as well as putting it on our website. Thank you, Melanie. Outreach just isn't in our department. The entire district does outreach. It doesn't matter if you're customer service or out in the field or managers. Everybody's out there doing outreach in some way and so WaterSmart, our customer portal, lives in our water resources department, but we work with them to also get that word out and their staff is always promoting it as well. So we have 66% of our customers registered, which, from what WaterSmart tells us, is really high. So we're doing really well on registrations and we try to promote that as often as possible. And we have an 82% average memory on those emails that are sent through WaterSmart, which is huge. I have never said anything like that. And we have about 3,500 average monthly visits. On our ongoing basis, we are always updating or coming up with new publications for our customers and putting them on our website. So just as a few of that we did this year, I think a highlight would be the ATU back sheet as well as the new water service charges is hand out. You know, spoke to get our tour guide for our tours. This was a collaboration between customer service and outreach. And we worked together to replace the old billbacker that was on our bills. It was hard to read. It would be heard from customers that was hard to understand. And so we worked really hard to look at what other water districts were doing and come up with a streamline approach with information that's important for customers out there. And so that got launched this year too. We also do something called a bill insert a couple of times a year. And so it's a, I don't know if that's the third of the sheet of 8.5 by 11 packets inserted with the bills or it's a link if you're an email customer. And so these are front and backs. We did two this year, the first one about the consumer comments report and then on the backside about the VWAP program. And then the second one was just all about the VWAP program. So the low income water assistance program that the city of California does. And so we did that in English and Spanish. Now we're going to pass it to Mackenzie. Thank you for that. I think this is my support. Good evening. So another form of our outreach that we do is our district heat blasts. And we have two that we are consistent with. One is quite such that it goes to, as you can see, over 10,000 people and we have an open rate of 50%. And just like that, our other heat blasts goes out every Friday. And that has an open rate of 55%, which is actually really exceptional for most government agencies. Other government agencies are getting about like 28% percent. So we're happy with that. Very proud. And I feel like we're getting a good amount of information out to our public about your wise locale and your district overall. And so we also have internal communications, hydration applications, which was accidentally released to the Cook Sips group. But it was a happy mistake, I think, as Bob Ross would say. So hydration applications goes out once a month to our employees. And so a way for us to all keep in touch and understand the work that we're all doing and how we are really supporting the mission of the district. And then our internet, which is the big hub of all our documents and resources that we need as employees. And then for social media, we are a lot of different platforms. I'd say that we mostly use Instagram and Facebook, but we do have a presence on LinkedIn. X, which is old Twitter, running Twitter. And then we have YouTube. And as you can see, we host like a variety of different social media themes and campaigns. And we've had a decent reach. And I think a lot of it also increased when we have different events going on. People like to stay in touch and see what's going on. So that kind of leads me into our outreach program. One notable one was the Water Harvest Festival that happened in October. I'd like to note that I raised $11,000 for this festival that sponsorship donations from like project partners and community organizations throughout Santa Cruz. So their donations really allowed us to provide ample entertainment and the raffle prizes and all the different activities. It was really coming together of our community. And it was a wonderful day. At that event, we were also able to provide the pure water kombucha samples. We had about 150 people try the kombucha that day. And we made that with Orange County Water Districts groundwater, well purified recycled water. And so hopefully one day we'll be able to do that. And for other community events and tours, we say very active. I've gone to beach cleanups and hosted different tours for the pure water soquel. But we've even had site tours of our wells and gone to Columbia Fair. So we were very out and active in our community talking about all district functions. And then we have had a highlight of an increase in pure water soquel tours. Over the past year, we had over 200 people attend our tours at the Water Purification Center around Chemiclair. And a whole host of different organizations and different industry professionals have attended. So we have also, obviously pure water soquel is a huge impact in our community. And so we want to make sure that everyone is consistently aware of what's going on. So we have construction outreach, which is one of those e-blasts I talked about earlier that goes out weekly. We also have a bi-weekly web page that we maintain for that. We've sent out postcards and letters. I even go out to businesses, talk to them, we do phone calls. So that's our construction outreach and generally overall for the outreach. It's web page maintenance. More of those tours actually I really get people connected with what's going on. And then we were just so lucky that BBC SOAR works wanted to partner with us and share our story. So that was a huge lift. And then our water education program continues. Becca and I both attended different schools. So Cabrillo and Sofo High School were the main schools we spoke with in 2023. And I think we're passing it back to Becca. So we have a very active water assembly program that we paid for. We have four performers that we rotate through. Last year, because this is calendar year, we have two different calendar year. Obviously school year goes through. So last year, school year 22, 23, we had Rockstar studied juggling. And he was in that time period of 2023. He did two assemblies at two schools, but he did overall 10 for this school year. And then they have one more left to schedule. So a total of 16 that we put into the budget for this year because we have 16 schools eligible for this program. And teachers, principals, we really love it. It's a great way to, in the assemblies, they talk about watersheds, water recycling, how to protect our groundwater basins. And so it's a great interactive program that they do with the animals and children. I think one thing to note. We did have one of our assembly performers do a short video on the groundwater model. And I really find it enjoyable from Becca. We should, we can send that out to you if you want to get out. Yeah. It is good video. We also do presentations on the cross the board to community groups, conferences at capital city council city councils were all over the place. And so this past year we did 13 specifically on pure water. So Cal and then just for generally on the district. And you think quite often where we get called and asked to do a presentation. So it's kind of because somebody's interested and wanting to share that information to their group. We also represent some creek water districts and several organizations around on the board of directors for water use California, as well as the water utility council. I mean, I said earlier she's vice president of water use central coast chapter this year. He's on the capital of some coaching for board and I'm the chair of the California water use communications collaborative. Thank you. As well, just kind of go over the outreach activities that we plan for and work into kind of our calendar of activities and events for outreach. But there's always the things that don't always to be planned for in this case, this is emergency communication. So last year around this time, we were greatly impacted by the storms and the weather related impacts for our community. And specifically there was the March 10th main break at North Main Street in Bates Creek. That required a lot of communication and coordination with the staff are amongst ourselves to our community to county EOS. And so it was a very concerted effort. We do have emergency response plans and communication protocols that we do try to make sure we're following especially in these kind of emergency situations. So similar to what occurred just about a month and a half ago, the outreach protocols that we did included, you know, maintaining up to date information on the website. Do the outbound calls to customers that were affected door hangers to those that are impacted information and communication signs on the streets, as well as trying to maintain and update the presence on social media. We also respond to media inquiries. And as you can see, I love this picture that's captured here that somebody actually put a note to us. That said, thank you to the accounting sectors and to concrete the matter of issue. This is, you know, just illustrating again, making sure that we have information available and we're accessible. That is one of the things that I think Ron has always managed to maintain over managers is to be available and present when the media calls and to be responsible. One of the main things that we're working on currently, obviously, is the outreach to the rate study and the efforts related to the rate modifications. So as we've been presenting over the last couple of months, supporting the activities related to the Prop 218 efforts, we've met and attended advisory committee meetings. We've worked with Raftellus and our staff on educational materials such as videos and handouts, maintaining a website. We include the Prop 218 rate study efforts in our E-blast and then just most recently we've been having webinars in our upcoming meeting and the open house. We also obviously put out the Prop 218 notice to all of our customers and we're continuing to maintain that presence on all of our social media. As Becca mentioned, you know, the outreach activities, I think that Mackenzie, Becca, myself, the managers and the board obviously really are that kind of front facing to many in terms of education and outreach. But it happens at all levels and with every employee in the district. So just to highlight some of the things that we pointed out in our viewer review video that we gave to the board last month. Customer calls obviously come in and our customer service department educates our customers and answers questions and last year we had almost 2600 hours of customer service support. We also still maintain water-wise house calls and business calls last year. We had 17 site visits which is less than normal but a lot of that I think was kind of based upon still coming out of COVID when we weren't even going into homes and our water resources department really changed their business model. And as you can see, while there may be some site visits, almost 100 to 200 phone calls and virtual consultations to customers to still help them in their work. And then of course service orders. They're the direct customer interactions that our field staff do. Last year just under 4,800 service orders were created that required customer attention from our field crews. So there is a lot of day-to-day interaction with customers. And again, that kind of concludes our presentation but I just wanted to reiterate what we've heard from so many people locally as well as statewide that the education and outreach program by the district is noticed. It has a very positive impact to what it really shows and has kind of created the district brand of information and accessibility. And we often get commended when we receive it and we try to share it so we're sure that we do hear a lot from people about our outreach so thank you for your support on that. And that was that. We're looking to question. Okay, let's do this with clarifying questions first from the board and then public comment and then forward comment. So does anybody have a clarifying question? I do. I'll start with the most recent thing, service orders. So by that, is that when somebody has a leak or is that when you're actually, you know, installing a meter or what's included in that category? There's many things that could be identified as a type of service order. It could be when a customer calls and wants to have some issue identified such as maybe low pressure, something their meters, you know, they can't access their meter. They have a question related to water quality. What's their water pressure? They may have just questions related to a potential leak. So it's when somebody calls in and they want somebody to come out that creates a service order work tag. Thank you. My next question I might have missed it but the water academy. I did I miss it was a presenter. So it is that still alive and I heard it was online. There are many people taking advantage of that in a way that's an outreach. It is it is and it's we're planning to we missed the last year we're planning to return it this year and bring it back into person, like maybe a hybrid type version. The page that shows the social media. I didn't quite understand what was being shown there. It might just be my poor vision. Yeah, so we have. Let's go through what it says so there we have a number of posts on Instagram we posted 58 times and on Facebook we posted 70. And each of those posts gave us a certain reach throughout the year. And so that reach means how many people interacted and viewed our content that was posted. And so you can see that on Instagram about 18,000 people interacted with our posts and what we are sharing and on Facebook about 31,000. And then visits is a little different. So that is when you get someone looking directly at your homepage is a little way to say it. So, like, if you have an Instagram, it's where you see your face at the top. And so our Instagram we don't have as many visits we have under 300. But on Facebook we have had more than 2000 people visit our so called Creek Water District homepage. And then followers on Instagram we gained 45 in the year. And Facebook, we don't call them technically followers. There are people that like the page. But and by liking the page they follow your content. And so 25 people liked our page. New people. Thank you. We think this seven is should not be there. So there's obviously four digits after that. Tom knew that. So so that seems like a big reach to me. It is my I don't know what to compare it to. I felt like it certainly increased over the past year. I noticed a large part of our reach increase with the water harvest festival. People are engaging with that content, especially because we had promoted different advertisements to get the word out. So that may have increased our overall reach and awareness of our district. But I think it's good. So there must be quite a few followers to have that type of reach. You just showing the new followers just, you know, roughly how many followers there are. Is it in the hundreds? I would say for Instagram, I think we're like at 300. So I don't think that's significant for Instagram. But for Facebook, I would say that we're just as. As followed as other agencies are in our area. On the hundreds then over hundreds, at least in the thousands for Facebook. I would have to get back to you on that information. I think one of the things related to the reach is the ability for others to share content or tag us. And so if they have followers that were tagged, then that increases that kind of exposure to a post. I've noticed on like what Mackenzie was saying related to the water harvest festival, when we would start posting things, they would share it with their groups or their followers. And so if one of the project sponsors, like one of the nonprofit agencies that attended the water harvest festival, had us, then it went to all of their group. And smartly, I think with Instagram, because you can use hashtags and you can do some of the other kind of catchy words, then it'll come up into people's feeds. So they don't necessarily go to our page, but they're seeing a post or they're seeing something that we've produced. And then the next two questions are probably related. Trends, you kind of show that there's an increase in followers in here, but overall trends in the outreach is it becoming more and more people becoming aware through our outreach and the rate of change, like from last year to this year. And the other just kind of broad what things should change, if any. I feel we're sort of consistent in terms of followers. It's really hard to get people to follow a government agency or utility company. I know when we tried to ask people to follow us or like what would make you follow us, because we do try to get a little bit of those metrics to build upon. One person kind of said, I don't follow PGD or I don't follow the green waste. And I'm like, oh, I get that. But I would go to green waste or I'd go to PG&E when there's like maybe a rebate, I know, or power outage, or I want to go to source of information. So I think people may know it's there, but they may not just become a member of our page or follow us. But I think that we still may be a source of information. I do think that with more collaboration that we've been doing with other regional partners and community groups and the ability that these platforms have to share, I think we're able to continue to utilize it. We learned early on, I think, when we did some of our initial community surveys and phone surveys, like what demographics and how they use their information. Social media wasn't really a high one. And we didn't really invest a lot in it. And we did more traditional means. But we are seeing the demographics of people utilize it more. And we're seeing that the tools have these features that we are seeing some increase in, I think, knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing. And other things besides social media or its outreach? Are there, do you see things that are becoming more effective or less effective, the trends in it? Or is that a big question, maybe? Other than social media? Yeah. I think our water wisdom columns definitely reach a lot of people. We always hear about those. I had someone come up to me and like, you look really familiar and we tried to figure it out. It was because she saw my face in the paper from that column. Kind of funny. I think WaterSmart is now reaching a lot more customers. Like I think what I think was 82% are opening their emails. And so that's another way that we're reaching out to customers. And I actually had a meeting with Water Resources yesterday about how we could utilize that more so in the future and what that would look like.  So it's a fine balance to reach people. And so I think that's why we try over a bunch of different ways, quick sips. We didn't mention what's on tap, which gets mailed. And so we try to keep the paper for the folks that aren't on social media or aren't web savvy and don't feel comfortable going online. Our newspaper ads is another way. I don't really know the reach on those. I could get that information from Times Publishing Group about how many people are subscribing. But I don't know. Do you guys like it? So when you're looking at the paper, probably sometimes if it's catchy and colorful, it catches your eye. I can share in the past like when we would run into Ad and Aptos time. I don't think I've shared this with you all. But you know, I would look and see where the rebate bump was. And it was eight to 10 people. So that was kind of the push that we would get out of that.  But that was like 15 years ago too. So they're doing a much better job. I also think that we've expanded the different types of events we've going to. Like Mackenzie went to two beach cleanups this year at Sea Cliff Beach. And so that just gets a different demographic of people as well. And we brought the education trailer and she interacted with a lot of people. So we're trying to expand and try different things to reach everybody. Any other questions, clarification questions I, I guess I'll open it up to public comment. Any comments? Thank you for that report. My name is Becky Steinburner. I don't use social media, but I'm always interested in the results of that. And I think it's really great that you can get a better handle on how many people are looking at your information. I visit your website quite frequently for different reasons. And I noticed today that the header on it changes now. And I think that's really a good thing. That's, I did see something about the rate study there and different things. So I think those sorts of things keep it fresh and interesting when people do come to the website. I also have signed up to receive the Pure Water SoCal construction updates. And I find those of interest. I know other people who have also, and they do it because they wanna know where the traffic is gonna be bad. It has really caused some horrendous traffic things. So that's been very good of you to put that out. Regarding the rate increase, I saw that that was also on your header. I mean, the rate assistance. And I looked into that a bit. That's only a one-time assistance. I don't think that was made clear at a presentation. I also read the Times articles in the Aptos Times. And I'm very grateful to the Times editor for giving the Water District that half-page space for Ms. Rubin to write her articles. And they are interesting. I have a question about the school presentation. Who writes the content for what gets presented at the school presentations? You mentioned something about a video or something that was created because it's very important that while it's entertaining that it's educationally, that it is accurate information being put out. So thank you very much. Thank you. Any other public comments? Staff wanna respond to anything? I'll just make an additional comment. You know, what the small but mighty team does in outreach is magnificent for the tools and the resources they have. You can see it from my chair. I especially appreciate the way that you enhance the other departments. It's not just outreach, you do your own thing, but you leverage them. And to take it to another extent, I was thinking how long ago was that? Well, my son's 23, he was 16, so seven years ago. I was at the DMV and helping him get his license. And our maintenance crew was out in the road there exercising a valve and my son said, look at those guys, they're working. He was attracted by that and the lady at the DMV goes, yeah, and they're working really hard. It looks like Soquel Creek is the truck was parked there. My point of that is that we try to, everybody's an ambassador to some degree, whether you're communicating directly or just standing there, they're watching us. And so I feel like the district does a good job of that. And that was a moment of proof to that, right? Every behavior, how we drive and everything. We try, in some sense, make it, we're aware it's somehow we're relating to the public. Just thank y'all for all the work. All right, any director comments? Oh, well, thank you. Actually, it's a great update. I wanted to let you know, I missed a lot of it this last year. I really appreciate what I missed. And also, yeah, I'm interested to see that video too, just to see, but I can also reflect, I happen to walk around town, at least in Capitola, quite a bit every day. And I see a lot of our workers out on calls, on doing things and always very professional, I have to say. They are a good ambassador of the mission. They can include them even on some of our posts, comments or something. People know those guys. Sorry, any other comments? I have one. Can you pull up the WaterSmart page again? I should have said something before you closed it. Amazing, 82% of people reading any email this day and age with everyone being bombarded by so many emails. So I think that's fantastic. The 66% is great, but I will not be happy until it's 100%. I just want to say that, that it's such a powerful tool just to see what your water use is. And you can get down to the hourly water use. I can tell when my daughter is back from college and taking hot showers. I can tell a lot of things from it. And of course leaks, if you can, it saves. I'm sure it saved the aquifer from having to produce more water because of leaks. But the average monthly visits seems low. So that's people like me clicking on to see what their water use is. So I don't know whether it seems low to other directors, but I'd like to see that go up because I think really with awareness of how you're using water, you have power then to change your habits if you want to or at least be aware of what you're doing. And it's a great presentation, thank you very much. Thank you, can I make a couple comments? Sure. I can find out what other average monthly visits look like from WaterSmart, from other agencies, I can look up that number for you. We also used WaterSmart to let all the customers know about the rate study in the open house coming up. I believe it was last week. And then our ad campaign this year is gonna focus on staff and what we do to keep the district running. So the first one that Director Likiu saw with Diane on the phone, so you'll see a series of those every month with somebody else featured at the district about their job. And then lastly, I was just gonna respond to Steinbrenner that we work directly with the performers on the content that they deliver to the schools. Welcome. I expected that. And when you're finding out how many visits other agencies have, if there's an agency with more visits, maybe you could reach out to them and find out what they're doing, whether it's just a different, demographic for their district or whether there's some way they're promoting, getting more visits. Of course, we'll do that. And I'll also add, we're constantly thinking, what can we do? So for example, we know as water rates potentially change and how does that impact other things such as our leak policy and then does our leak policy play into this to try to encourage, could the leak policy somehow be dependent upon, you have to sign up for WaterSmart. So we're constantly floating ideas like that. They haven't come to you yet, but we're aware of your desire to increase it and the whole board's desire and our desire, right? Cause it's an amazing tool. I'd like to also just elaborate a little bit more on Ron Beckins comment about the little, the outreach group, the little outreach group that could. I've been to a couple of meetings, statewide meetings and talked to different agencies about what their actual budget is. And it's, you know, because it really is important, especially with the changing nature of our water needs. You know, we have 71% of all communities and the world have depleted groundwater. This is a really serious change that all water districts are facing and provides sustainable and reliable water. So they spent a lot of effort, it's a serious effort, this outreach to, especially in California, but their budgets are just dramatically higher. I just, I don't even want to go into how much it would, you know, if we had a budget like Santa Clara Water District would just be, we'd be swimming in money, but we do a lot in the end. The team deserves a lot of credit for all that they've done over this last eight years. Just really impressive. Thank you. All right. Does a person have to be on water smart to get an alert for water use? No. If there is a leak, they'll still get an email or a call. One of my neighbors was concerned because her bill was like $100 more. She thought the piece had already gone up and I was like, no, and if they had, it probably wouldn't be that high because the next level isn't. Yeah, we strive, I mean, based on our water resources does, if it's a big leak, it's the email, it's the telephone call, it's to go out there if we get no response, you know, gauge it appropriately. We'll have to set her up on water smart and see what applies. Yeah. And she can call us too. We'll be glad to take care. But, you know, I will gush on for one more moment because I know I talked about O&M and I just got to do it. But when I, you know, I get the luxury of seeing things, you know, letters come to me, things from customers, you know.   You know, they really listen. It's, our people make that difference. You know, they do care. There is no doubt. And then the crew out back under water resources, going out, checking on the meters and leaks and that sort of thing. You know, of course I've had the privilege to work, would manage most of them when I was conservation manager. And they're passionate about what they do and the comments you get back. So I think that's what makes us who we are. All right, thank you. That brings us to 7.3 review and update with the special board assignment status report. That's you, right, Ron? Yeah, it's probably a combination of Emma, myself and maybe Melanie will chime in. But this was an item, Dr. Jaffee, he was board president, I think in your quest to continually try to improve and be more efficient. Ask for this item to come back for discussion. Cause it's on once a month. And what it is, it's our assignments at the board. Somebody might say, hey, can we look into that? And of course we put it on there. You know what it is. It's on the agenda for tonight under consent. It was created, I think what's important that maybe not all board members might not know, it was created 15 years ago. I think there was a question of were things slipping off or staying on. So it was a way to legitimize that process. And that's been going on since then. And so it's brought to you tonight to see if there's anything the board would like done differently from we don't need it to let's enhance it or frequency. I posed, I think five questions there just to kind of get brainstorming going. So we're all ears. Okay, public comment, seeing done. What's the pleasure of the board? I mean, I think it should be on for a regular review of whether we want certain items to be kept on there or modified. And so I don't know if we see it, but we don't like have it as an item to say to review. Like I said, just so we can, because there's some things on here, we may not want to have on there anymore. So maybe something that you can discuss like twice a year, pull it off consent and have it on the regular one for the solution or something would be good. Maybe if there's something you're considering removing, instead of black, make it gray or something like that to make us aware that the staff thinks that it's no longer should be on there. Okay. I like the color scheme, you know, red for new item. And the blue, I went back through an old minutes and there was a blue too. That was, what was the blue color used for? Well, one color, I forget the colors. There's red and blue. One is to didn't know. Go ahead, Emma. Red is new items. Blue is to be deleted. So we'll show it as blue and then bring it to you. And after the meeting is when we delete it. When it's been addressed. Yeah. And you say how it was addressed. I remember now. Like, so here's an example up on the screen to get this because it's this item that we're talking about is also in the consent. Be clear to the public. So, and maybe go down it. Melanie, see if you see any blue. There wasn't was any this time. Yeah. So there was nothing that we accomplished that we're removing on this one, just new item. Well, I mean, maybe the water audit validity score increase could have been in blue because it's been addressed as a frequency. I'm also interested. Do we just the board want to see it every month? Is that or do you want to see it more quarterly? We're going to keep it either way. But I almost wonder if it becomes like stale. We just kind of glaze over it if we bring it. Well, it helps me just because, you know, sometime between meetings, I forget what's been done. At the last meeting. So it's real helpful. Right. No, I think it serves a purpose to have it show up. The board meeting, even if it's on the consent agenda.  And I was like, oh my gosh, someone, board member mentioned something and there it is. It's listed as a to-do item. I was really impressed. But I didn't really make the connection to talk fairly recently. So I really do think it does serve a way to collect and keep from forgetting things that have been said. And I say that was a really good system. I find it useful and I think it should stay once a month. Yeah. Then review every six months is what I'm hearing. Yeah, so review every six months sounds wonderful. And what would the process be of removing an item? Usually, what you see on there is a date when it was assigned and a date when it's completed. And usually the date completed is when we discuss it at a board meeting. I think what's important to note is the board president has the authority to agendize board items. So the way I see this list and working is any board member, once something on the agenda, we put it here and then we discuss it with the board president and all y'all come through that. So that's how I mean the official, when we go and say, oh, we have time to work on it now and make sure that the board president deems it okay because they're the keeper of the agenda. Right, but any board member can. Yeah, any time a board member, we try to take note and put it there and then validate it with the board president. So with the time to remove an item, it's no longer perhaps needed or low priority. Would that be to pull the consent item for this and then discuss it? Would that be possible? We could, or at the six month interval. I mean here we got the reserve list and you know, like I think the name is the name change on there. Okay, after what we've seen go on about name changes, but more importantly, do we want to just take it off? If you want to do a name change in the future, the board can always put it back on, but it's ink, you know? Somebody teased me at a meeting. They said they had seen our agenda and said they had a name to offer us. This was back when the real was thinking they were inferring it would be caprio jokingly. But the, that one, I can't quite see him from here, but yeah, I mean, so the couple of there, I guess on the, from the point of view of staff psyche, I know like Shelly's like, you know, we've contacted WaterSmart. They're really apprehensive about an app. Melanie was working with Shelly, I think, in some way you can make a website kind of look like an app. So we're kind of exploring that, which would get us in there.  Cause it does, you know, I still think about that thermometer idea, which I think is number one up there, all to the base and there's just issues with it. You've got other things on your plate. We do, we do, yeah. I know that one, well, that one, it seems like that's going to be obviated. Right, right.  The problem is groundwater doesn't usually change that dramatically. So it's static. Do we think basically the reserve list would be evaluated at the six month intervals and then we could bump it up or remove it? Yeah, so we'll bring it every month. It'll be on the consent every month, except for two months out of the year, about six months apart. We'll bring it and put it in regular administrative business for further discussion. And we want to make that motion, or do you need it? I was wondering anyway. Yeah, I'll make the motion. That way it'll be official. So it'll be clear on it. Okay. Okay, I'll second. Can we take off the name change? That's a separate item. This is just that we're going to see it once a month and that's going to be every six months. Okay. Second. All in favor. Aye. All opposed. Passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, so we have a closed session and we do have an agenda item, a consent item that was pulled. Yes. So what's the normal? We do that before closed session? Before closed session. Before, okay. All right. You just going to present on 4.4 or do you want to talk about it? Yeah, we'll have Nick Imrat, our ONM manager, come up and answer any questions. It's quite a great report. I love the yearly status report. They put a lot of time into it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting, right? It's about how the well is performing at the park. Great to keep up to date. Good evening. Yeah. Thanks, Nick. I thought the report was awesome. I had a quick question on the chart on page 42 of the packet. No, at the bottom right of the packet, you might not have it. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't have the packet. I've got the report. Which section of the report? Table. It's a table. It says table one. Yeah, well on water treatment, WTP, maintenance summary. After the peak demand stuff. Oh, okay, yeah. Basically, yeah, it's under the last section called water treatment plant. There's a column titled last coding inspection. And all the wells say none or not applicable except for estates. And I understand that the coding inspection refers to the examination of the protective coatings that are applied to the well components and the casings, the screens and other infrastructure. And obviously to ensure that they're, you know, taken care of and effectively prevents corrosion. But I just don't understand why it says none or NAA. Yeah, so those are actually for the water treatment plant facilities themselves. So like the piping and the filters at the sites.  We just replaced a large section of the effluent piping at Garnett Water Treatment Plant, for example. So there's not been an official analysis of the coatings of the inside of some of these filter vessels. For the wells, anytime that we pull a pump out of the ground, anytime we pull the equipment up, it's our policy to video the well to do an inspection of the what's going on inside the well, looking at the screens and the status of the casing and making sure everything's intact. And if there's any sign of something that needs to be repaired, we address that as soon as possible because the wells are backbone of the system. So I can see that's a little confusing why you would assume that. But yeah, the casings are inspected anytime we pull the well equipment. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Okay, thank you. And we wish, yeah, good report. I guess we should open up for public comment for 4.4 only, yes. Thank you, Steinbrenner. Thank you again, Director Balboni for pulling this. I think it's a very comprehensive report and really should be a separate agenda item like you've done for us tonight. Thank you. My questions have to do one of them with the O'Neill Ranch well and the problem of the ammonia treatment there. I referenced that a little bit earlier in my comment tonight about what I learned with at the Santa Cruz City Water Commission meeting last night, they are also seeing ammonia problems in their belts 12 well, which is very close to the O'Neill Ranch well. And what they did was they brought in a 35 foot long by 10 feet diameter tank to treat water, to increase contact time with chlorine to reduce the ammonia. And someone on the commission asked, because they're familiar with the problem that your district has at the O'Neill Ranch asked how your district treated it. And it was said that you essentially put in the chlorine and it's expected that while it's in the transmission pipes it is treated. So that, I'd like some clarification from the gentleman that was here. Is that really the treatment for the ammonia problem in the O'Neill Ranch? And if so, that would explain frequent complaints that I hear from people in the Soquel Village area of very high chlorine in their water. I also think that it is interesting, the production on page 39, showing your biggest producer is the Main Street well, which is very much tied to the stream levels in Soquel Creek. I was thankful to learn about the connection between Granite Way and T Hopkins. Thank you, Becky. Any other public comments? Becky, I'd like to refer to you to a report that was done by Tom. I'm gonna ask when was that done? That looked at the pumping in the O'Neill well and the water levels in Soquel 10 plus years ago. I'll get that information for you and you can look at the report. And it does show that there's not a big connection at all, but you can evaluate that yourself. That's correct. But I'll send that to you, Becky. I'll send you the report and then, all right. Is there nothing from staff on that? Nothing from directors? I guess we move into closed sessions. So before closed session, open it up for public comment. Thank you, Becky Steinburner. I'm a little confused. The agenda that was printed out does not include reference to section 54957, but your online version of the agenda did. And I copied that, just copied and pasted it from the website. So I was, I'm happy to see it isn't here because it has to do, when I looked up the government code 54957, it has to do with a security threat. So I'm glad I don't see that here, but I just wanna point out that that code is on the website's version. At least that's what I copied and pasted. I want to just say that I did receive notification regarding my appeal in the Sixth District Court of Appeal regarding case 23CV02699 that the Sixth District Court of Appeal did dismiss my appeal. And yet it states in here that the justices were disturbed by some of the claims that defendants, your attorney made regarding some of the issues, the legal issues. So at this point, I am planning to appeal it to the State Supreme Court and I'm sorry. I would be willing to try to sit down at a table and talk about this, but there are many issues that need to be resolved yet and I will be appealing that case. Thank you. Any other public comment on a closed session? Not a public comment, but I'd like to make a comment. The Board will be considering on that item 8.3, a litigation threat from John Cole related to the proposed water rate adjustment. Thank you. I guess we're going to convene to closed session and after closed session, we'll return to open session. I can't tell until we have closed session. We're gonna ask public members to leave while we have closed session. Thank you.


Hello there. I'm Sandy Allnok. Welcome to my YouTube channel. I am really glad you're here today. I'm an artist and I work in all sorts of mediums and I work in all sorts of sizes on all kinds of projects. And the projects I want to talk about today are commission projects. I have not really taken on commissions publicly before. Some people have emailed me with their project they wanted and I have negotiated some commissions but I haven't really put it out there to everybody that I do that because a lot of them I do turn down. If you think about it an artist does their best work when they are passionate about it themselves. And I've had some people that have asked for things that I just knew I couldn't do justice to or that I wasn't at all passionate about and I wasn't going to do a great job of it. So I am going to try to marry some of my interests and some of the things I want to do during my sabbatical in December with some things that you might want. And if you're one of those people that jives with what I'm trying to do then let's get started on doing some commission work together. Before I start talking about commissions there might be some of you who want a piece of artwork but you don't want to go through all that of ordering a commission and waiting and all that. You are in luck because use the coupon code thanks and you will get 20% off everything in my fine art shop. Everything I just need to clear it out. Anything that's left in the shop is going to be removed from the shop. I'm going to put it in my physical sale at the art show in December and it's going to go away. So if you want anything now is your chance to get it for 20% off. Okay now let's talk commissions. All throughout 2023 I have been thinking about what I want to do with my sabbatical time because I always take some time in December at the end of the year to just recuperate from the whole year. It's a time when there's not that many people watching YouTube anyway so I can cut back on my content just a bit and start to work on things that I want to learn things I want to grow in or a project that I just don't have time for otherwise and then I also don't have to film it. All the technology and filming gets in the way of my creativity and I don't do my best work when the camera is on so this gives me the opportunity to really dive into something I want to do.  I thought she'd given me her whole collection. It was a lot of pastels and I had to use them somewhat but then she gave me the rest of them in September when I went to visit. It was a huge case and oh my gosh I got so excited and that led me to thinking for sure I would be working with pastels during December and then I also have been thinking a lot about wanting to get back to my love of drawing animals. Wildlife illustration was what I wanted to do when I was growing up. I wanted to be an illustrator and this kind of seemed like a good match. Pastels and animals and for about a month or so I've been practicing drawing animals in pastel and working a little bit on what my style is going to be. I'm a little looser I find than some of the people that I see out there using pastels for animals.  I do some of them but I really want the impression of the animal. I want something a little looser a little freer and maybe with a little more drama in the lighting. That's kind of my game. So combining all of these things is where my pastel pet portraits are heading. If you don't have a pet and you still want a commission you could request perhaps one of your vacation photos turned into a pastel painting or you could just choose an animal that you love. Maybe you're really into otters and you would love to have an otter rendered in pastel. I would love to do that. Anything that's going to help me grow in my pastel skills and make you happy with what's on your walls as artwork. Let me show you a few of the sample pieces that I've created. I wanted to do this in video so I could hold them up and you can get an idea of the sizes. Let me show you a few of the sample pieces that I created so you can get an idea of the kind of work that I'll be doing as well as what the size is and I did this in video so that you can kind of see with what I'm holding how large the pieces are. I want to start by showing you the second to the smallest size the 8 by 10 and yes this is wildlife not a pet but I did this one on a paper that I won't be using for your portrait so I wasn't able to get much detail in it but I showed you that just for the size. This one is on the good paper on the Clairefontaine pastel mat and it is a 9 by 12 too complex in the detail. I learned a lot from this one it's going to go to my friend anyway because it's her pup but I would blur out the background way more and just do a lot more to it to simplify it and leave the focus on the animal but here's one that I did that I loved and this is what I recommend for an 8 by 10 or a 9 by 12 is a head shot or head and neck with the animal nice and big get their eyes in there because the eyes are the window to the soul and you're going to be very satisfied with having something that looks very much like your pet with a nice close-up. I can work horizontally or vertically sometimes that will be dictated by the photo that we choose and sometimes that might be dictated by hey I just think this one needs more air let's do it horizontal so we can give more room around it rather than filling the entire thing with a giant head so we'll talk through some of that and you'll get a sketch before I start working as well. The photo reference for this little cute pup was with a white background there was nothing there and I invented a background that makes it just look like there's something in the distance perhaps a garden with a little bokeh going on just to create some interest but not take away from the animal itself and you can see the original reference photos for each one of these over on the web page that's where they'll be posted so you can see them for comparison. This guy I did he was so happy look at that happy tongue I mixed my green myself I just wanted to see if I could do that could I use a yellow a green and a blue to make my own green so I can kind of customize whatever kinds of colors you're looking for now if you have multiple pets there's a 20% surcharge for each extra pet so one is included and then 20% for each extra no charge for the bonus dog hair scene there sorry about that but a 9 by 12 is tight for three animals but 9 by 12 accommodates two fairly well now how big is a 16 by 20 I had to ask myself that question because I didn't know if I wanted to offer the option for 16 by 20s but boy I had fun getting into the detail on such a large piece and I know 16 by 20 is not that big for some people but for me it was a goodly size and it took a lot of time so be prepared for the cost of that but let me show you the piece that I created I loved it so much that I framed it it's Mount Rainier in the fall and it is huge you can see just how big it is just because I'm showing you this piece frame does not mean you're getting a framed piece when you get it in the mail because I am personally terrified of shipping glass I have nightmares thinking that there could be glass shattering and ripping the artwork itself so I'm going to ship it to you pack it up very carefully that's why there's an extra shipping charge and I want it to arrive well so you can go get it framed on your own with whatever works with your decor now if you're somebody who wants to do a commission piece but you don't want to do something big you don't have either the wall space or the budget for a large piece but you would like something I have a sketch option I'm not going to accept a ton of these just because I don't want to take away time from doing larger works but I also want to offer the opportunity for those who want something but maybe not as crazy as that and that's going to be a five by seven sketch I did find that I could get some very nice portraits done at this size they're not going to be done on the fancy paper and that means they're not going to have as much detail but they are really sweet little portraits and you can see I can still get a very sweet likeness of your baby and you could also maybe order one for someone else for Christmas of their pet these are priced in that kind of a range this one is a sweet little kitty that I just thought was adorable and very simple background and just a big focus on that yawn those are personality shots that I love to draw I also did this one in gouache because yes these five by sevens you could get alternatively in gouache paint and since that is something else that I'm practicing and learning I thought I'd include it I have two other portraits in gouache these are both eight by tens but I want to talk about the complexity of the photo if you insist on having something like that yellow blanket it was a real pain it took me longer to do the yellow blanket than it did the dog so there might be a little extra negotiated charge if there's something crazy like that you're better off in any of these kinds of portraits just finding something that has the focus on the animal itself and that one is much simpler it still has a sofa behind it but not the complexity of that yellow blanket but the gouache is only offered in the five by seven at this time there's also pen and ink as an option for the five by seven so it's pastel gouache or pen and ink in the sketch size and one of the reasons I even included this five by seven size in other mediums is to give myself a break from pastel because I get really bored when I'm just doing one thing a lot and I thought these would be nice projects to sit on the sofa in the evenings and work on a small sketch so if you're interested in one of those these are all from inktober that I did last month and all of these are going to be in my sale my in-person sale in december and then if they don't sell there then they'll get added to my shop as well as all the samples that you've seen in this particular video they're all going to be in the shop in december so make sure you come back for any of those new pieces that are going to be added because I want to refresh everything for the holidays now how is this commission process going to work so first you're going to go to the commission's web page and there's a link to in the doobly-doo don't go there yet link in the doobly-doo that page is full of all kinds of information much of what I've talked about here but there's pictures of some sample works that I've done and I'll add more to it as I get more pieces done as well at the bottom of the page there are two things for you to fill out the first thing is the form and the form tells me the basics who you are how to contact you what are you looking for what size what medium all that sort of thing then there's a message box at the bottom and I want you to write out a little bit about what you want if there's anything special and don't worry we're going to have plenty of conversation by email so you don't have to fit everything in that box because it has a character count limit on it and then you submit that form then separately there's a button that says upload photos and that's going to send your photos to my dropbox and that way I don't have any distortion from things going over the transom in email it's just going to go straight to dropbox now your photos need to be named so that I can pair them up with you so put your last name in the photo name and you're going to send multiple photos I hope for whatever it is you're requesting so name and number them in some way that we can discuss them so you know all knock one or all knock two all knock three or if you're sending in pet photos and you're going to have multiple pets name it with your your own last name and then the pets name and then number them so that I know which pet is which so when we discuss them I can actually have some conversation with you about the same photos you're talking about so once all that comes in within a couple of days hopefully depending on how busy I am or how many requests come in we'll have a conversation via email and we'll talk about what I think I can do what I think I can't do what I might adapt or if there's a different photo that you sent that I like better than the one that you think would make a good portrait we can talk about why that would be and once we come to an agreement and if there's any special requests you know if there were any additions you know complexities that added a percentage or something to the piece then we'll figure out the final price on it and then I will send you a Venmo or PayPal request for half down and then I'm going to put you in the queue as we go into December and once your turn is up and I start on your work I will email you to let you know it started so you can start praying if you want and then I can also send you some update photos I can send you some process pictures if you're interested in that or I can post them to social media if you'd prefer that and then when it's all done I'll send you a picture to approve and once you're okey-dokey with it then you can actually send me the rest of the money so that I can then pack it up and ship it and send it to you now if it is a Christmas gift you're going to need to let me know because I might reorder the list how things get done based on who's most urgent I want to be sure to get it done for Christmas but if it's a I can get it anytime thing then you might get pushed a little bit later just so that I can hit the Christmas ones first now commission applications are open through Thanksgiving so I want to try to get everything settled before Thanksgiving so I kind of have an idea what December is going to look like if you come upon this video past Thanksgiving and you want to find out what is the current status are applications still being accepted or is there a new applications window next spring or something whenever you find this video then just click on the same link down below that will be my commission's page all the time and I'll always have a note at the top telling you when the next commission window might open if you'd like to see some of my pastel work in action I'll continue producing videos for my patrons so you can go over there and see that I appreciate the support so much and now it's time for you to go to the links in the doobly-doo there's one for the sale on my fine art pieces and one for the commission's page that is about it if you would like to leave a thumbs up on this video I would be eternally grateful and send it to your friends who are looking for something to shop for for their holiday gifts I will see you guys again very soon take care bye


Hello there, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell here bringing you this video today a couple of days after Purim in Jerusalem. Always one of the most exciting and joyous days of the calendar here in Jerusalem. Purim is celebrated one day after Purim in the rest of the Jewish world and in the rest of Israel. It has to do with the technicality about the fact that at the time of Joshua as in the biblical Joshua Jerusalem was a walled city, which is why Tel Aviv does Purim a day ahead of us here in Jerusalem and of course on Purim it's traditional. There's lots and lots of people out on the streets listening to them, Agila being red, dressing up in costumes and this year I had a very very last minute choice of costumes because I visited the ancient Nabataean city of Avdat a couple of days ago for those who are interested in ancient civilizations and history Check out my video about Avdat. It's about three or four video uploads ago on this channel. Really interesting place The Nabataeans are much much better known for their famous desert city of Petra But the incense route actually traveled from Petra Actually, I'm for talking about frankincense all the way from Oman through modern-day Saudi Arabia. The BBC have an amazing five-part documentary you can find on YouTube for free It's called the frankincense route. I highly recommend it But part of the incense route to travel through what is today Israel and Jordan went from Petra in Jordan Stopped in Avdat, which is one of the stations on the incense route and then wound up in Gaza Which was then a seaport now it could still be a seaport, but it's under a military siege due to the political situation there, which we will also save for another day Because I was just in Avdat and thinking about incense and spices and whatnot I decided to go on a bit of an incense learning journey over the past few days and got a few costume accessories, but also came across a really interesting brand of incense products, which I decided that I would show in today's video So firstly if you're looking for incense in the old city, it is everywhere in the Christian quarter This is a tub of frankincense that I picked up, but I don't know much about the quality There are dozens of stores catering to you know religious pilgrims And it's it's interesting. I wanted I want to just unpack this a little bit in this video But it's interesting to me that frankincense and all these resinous spices, which were such an integral part of Jewish religious worship in biblical times in the times of the temple these days They're so associated with Christianity, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all I just think it's a pity that they really fallen out of favor and practice among Jews So in my quest to rediscover the world of incense and resin incense I picked up a supply of frankincense resin from Zach's Jerusalem Gits. I'm not necessarily sure it's the best place to buy it, but they have a Facebook presence I also picked up this little Thurible which my friend who's in who is into incense described as a Disneyland thurible But for the sake of poor him it did the part So I got that and I also got a little supply of Charcoals and that's where you the secret formula is you light your charcoals You put them in a metal incense burner like this something I learned from people more advanced in the resin Incense resin world of me is you're supposed to wait till the coals are nice and Gray and then you add Conservatively your frankincense resin which I have a supply to last a while for now However on poor him itself I met her someone a very interesting a friend of her friend and she told me about this guy called Yigal Adiv and he has a company called Desert sense and desert sense incense now just important to say firstly This is not promotion for Yigal I just met him for the first time in fact and it just seemed very fortitious that was my journey into incense I met someone else into Incense and felt the same way to me that it's a pity that the use of incense in in the Jewish world has completely fallen By the wayside there is a reason for that people are there's a prohibition in Judaism against Recreating what's called shaman Mashicha, which is anointing oil. It says in the Jewish Bible that Moshe Used a very very specific type of oil and out of an abundance of caution The practice of anointing oil has kind of fallen out of favor in in Judaism and alongside really with incense But there is a such a long tradition of it in this part of the world and desert sense in desert sent incense this guy Yigal travels around the world in order to source Quality incense because I understand that in the world of incense there is something of a quality control problem There's a lot of you know, dubious Incense in the market stuff. It's really bad synthetic ingredients. You don't want to be inhaling I will say that as a asthmatic I'm generally incense is something I reserve for very occasional use I think there are studies saying that it's you know If you have some kind of a respiratory condition, it's probably best not to get in the habit of using incense But now and again, I believe all things of moderation can be healthy. So this guy Yigal I also bought from a store this lovely olive Olive tree wood incense holder, which is just a slab of olive tree, but he's got a little Bolt here that fits his incense sticks and Really really nice guy and he's happy to talk you through the products He he sells he comes to the market in Jerusalem, which is the market on Beth Salel Street Every couple of weeks. He's got a Facebook and an Instagram which I'll link to again Not out of any vested interest to promote him or promote his stuff But rather because I think it's interesting that there is a Jewish guy in Israel Who's really into sort of source and quality incense and sort of bringing bringing that tradition back If you will so he also you got very kindly labeled it for 60 shackles Which is about $15 he sells you a box of 10 and he has them all laid out I'll add a couple of photos into this video at his market stall So you can pick out different kinds of incense and something I actually I thought was quite clever as well was on the incense box There's a little hole for you to put the incense So even if you don't want to buy a little ornate incense holder like he sells You can just use the box or you can use of course your own incense stick holder in order to Hold your incense. So what I got here is I Being interested in incense because of its connection to everything biblical I was I was opted very heavily for Frankincense, which is really what I was interested in Frankincense in in Hebrew is called Lavonna in Arabic. It's called. I believe and people can correct me It's a laboon So Bechur, which is the burning of incense has a big tradition in Arabic and if you go to the old city Jerusalem You'll meet a lot of Christian Arab merchants But it's often the case that words in Hebrew and Arabic are almost the same So I've gone here for black frankincense light black frankincense two kinds of incense frankincense incense with pine and cardamom White purification, which I believe has some white sage in it brown purple And I can't read I got a couple from my wife as well because she is not a she is not a fan of the scent of the smell of frankincense so we picked them out together and I went for like four or five frankincense and frankincense based ones and then a few more that she would find more appealing So I'm gonna actually go ahead and start out my incense here and show you guys the box that they come in Which is very nice and I'm going to go for one of my plain frankincense ones, which were black And I don't know how long these are going to burn for but he said it should be a decent amount of Time and as you can see it fits perfectly into this Piece of olive wood. So there you go the original Incense holder is this part of the world where perhaps people putting these incense sticks into olive wood And that's it. This is a beauty about using incense this way as opposed to you know, your whole Thorible charcoal resin setup is it's much more kind of user friendly. So I'm just going to go here and Light The incense I'm going to give it a bit more of a start here Trying to keep the blue part of the flame on the incense and there we go. We have our incense in operation here and I'm burning my first incense stinking incense stick frankincense from Desert scent looks like I might need a bit more a bit more time But you can see the frankincense very very strong starting to waft over and going to put it a little bit of at a At a distance and it's you can see it started to burn a so if you're looking for to get into the world of resin incense and incense in In israel There is a guy you got a div his brand name is desert sense desert scent incense And he said that he told he was telling me that he lives in the north of israel But he goes to these kind of what I would call uh from uh from ireland farmers markets these kind of artisanal markets Throughout israel. So he's very friendly. You can hit him up on a whatsapp or sorry on instagram Facebook or sent him a whatsapp his phone number is there and i'm sure he'll be happy to tell you When he's going to be next around your part of the world 60 shackles for this 10 pack of incense and I was able to Select them and he also gave me like advice on what what types I should try very very friendly guy and my friend who Forticiously I met over poor him swears by this as good quality stuff She doesn't trust any incense and says that this this stuff is top quality And I think that for artisanal artisanally made carefully sourced incense I think that 60 shackles for 10 which works out of course to 60 shackles per stick. I think is very Reasonable hope that video was interesting a break from the usual programming about general stuff around israel if you want to get more videos For me more topics coming up About israel and jerusalem and then subscribe to the youtube channel. Thank you for joining me today on this video