A group known as Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, is calling for the total eradication of genetically modified beings because of its harmful components to human health. The group said this in the Buja as part of its sensitization program, and the health houses associated with genetically modified organisms would seem to be an acceptable mode of farming in most parts of the world. Emmanuel Higiene completes the report. The Executive Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation, Nemo Basi, has called for a moratorium on genetically modified beings due to its health and other socioeconomic implications. Basi has also taxed the National Assembly on the need to come up with a legislation that will regulate the importation of GMOs into the country by greedy and fertilized donors. Why this is so critical is the fact that Nigeria is the center of origin of beings, and when you genetically engineer a crop in the center of origin, it means you are completely overturned what nature has done, completely, because when it's gone in the center of origin, unless some seeds are saved in the seed bank in Norway, which is buried underground in Norway, unless you go there to buy some seeds to replace one you've lost, it's lost forever. Other experts pointed out the danger for Nigeria if it allows itself to be used by this Sherlock businessman to infiltrate and destroy Nigeria's ecosystem and the sub-region. They also gave a scientific analysis of how the intended aim of bettering seedings for agricultural purposes can have counterproductive implications on the health of humans. Before you plant that, you have to go to them to buy the beans because if you don't, I mean, I have my colleague here, TJ, she can tell you anything they have a patent in it, if you take it, it's a criminal suit. They will sue you for it. It's their property, quote, unquote, for something they never created. They were not there when God gave us beans. They've not gone to add some things inside it and say, no, it's their creation and they created it. And so the farmers will go to them. And most of these, we call them a terminus, you plant them once, you cannot plant them again. The fact that what you spray is able to take out life because you consider it plant means there are unanswered questions about its activity. And therefore, is that the most sustainable means for weed control? That's the question that has not been answered. If I alter the gene of a plant so that when an insect eats it, that insect will die, I hope you know that the whole, the concentration of that pesticide in, in parentheses, which are put in that plant goes and comes to my table and it enters my system. I consume them. The general consensus by all the stakeholders present is that GMO is dangerous to health and the ecosystem and should be discouraged by the government.


Quaking aspen. Thin white bark, yellow in the fall, leaves that tremble in the slightest of breeze. That gives it its Latin name, populous tremuloides. Tremuloides! We like them. Unfortunately across the west our aspen stands are on the decline. It's because we have vigorously fought wildfires for decades. Protect conifers from fire for a long time and they outcompete aspen. Fire rejuvenates aspen stands because of their unique ecology. Take a look at a prescribed burn here near Soda Lake in Sublet County. The aspen trees that we see are only a portion of the living organism. In fact aspen clones are the largest organisms in the world. The aspen's competitor is the conifer forest. A stand of conifers is hundreds of single plants.  The aspen organism's root system however shoots up thousands of new shoots. BAM! Meanwhile the conifers have to start from seed. The way fire interacts with differences in plant ecology. That is why fire is a good thing for an aspen clone which is being strangled by conifers. From the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service, I'm Eric Peterson.


Hello there, welcome back to Understanding Design. This is our sixth session and I do hope it has been a stimulating journey for everyone. Last time we spoke about the concept of sustainability in design. In our session today I am collaborating with Mukesh Patel in a discussion on Yes, Design and Collaboration. Mukesh Patel is a practicing information designer and currently the Dean at the Indian School of Design and Innovation in Mumbai. Thank you for joining us Mukesh. A pleasure Nina. Let's begin. Please share with us your views on collaboration. Well, collaboration really means that as a group we are creating something better, something greater than it would be possible for us to create as individuals on our own. The ability to work effectively in groups is considered a necessary skill in design practice today. Collaboration is about designers enhancing each other's work in a harmonious way. It means that the collaborators follow a smart plan to avoid confusion and waste. Like we are doing here, bringing different people with different skills to share their experience in this course. Exactly, collaboration is a common feature of teamwork in any organization. One team member may have excellent writing skills, another may be good at math and another may provide strong leadership. By collaborating on a project, we expand the pool of resources and skills that the project can draw upon. You mentioned strong leadership, but everyone is an expert in their own field and sometimes there can be different perceptions leading to conflict and creative people can be quite individualistic. Do they accept working with leaders easily? Well, if rigid protocols are forced into the creative design process, design collaborations can be challenging. This could happen, for example, in a large companies that may have strong controls built into their processes. The key is to get the best out of each member. In my work as an exhibition designer, I get opportunities to collaborate all the time. Remember we worked on My Land My People in 1986? This was a festival of India exhibition that traveled across the former Soviet Union. It was a huge collaboration between the two governments, diplomats, designers, photographers, filmmakers, fabricators, printers, craftsperson and performing artists. It created a huge sensation. That is why we speak of setting out common aims and goals. The thing to be designed whether a product or a service or a system has its own requirements and calls for a certain range of skills for which specific collaborators are invited. Also, successful collaborations means give and take. A good manager or leader must work to ensure that the different creative people work together smoothly. Does the leader always have to be a manager? A leader does not always have to be a manager. They could be designers, engineers, scriptwriters, in short anyone who has a good understanding of the subject and more critically must have the ability to work with people with various skill sets. So it is an interdependent process, right? Each one has its own expertise and the team members accept the given guidelines. Each one has their own expertise and the team members accept the given guidelines. Of course, but if someone has an out of the world idea that the others love, it may well be accepted without trying very hard. Let's watch a success story that demonstrates the power of teamwork.


A few minutes before tonight's meeting, the budget and brief as well as the 2020 executive budget was posted to the city's website. So all the details associated with my presentation are available for your review and consideration. As council members, you have received a copy of the budget and brief. And again, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Marty Haverson, director of finance or key members of our management team who are substantially present here tonight, including Eric, who's probably hiding behind me if the camera's on him. Tonight I have a series of slides and I will go through some of the key elements associated with this budget. One thing to mention is that this is the first year that the city has used a budgeting software module. This directly utilizes information from our enterprise resource planning software, Munis, because this is a beta version. We probably have some tweaks that will continue to be made prior to you as Common Council taking action on the budget, typically at your first Monday meeting in November.  Any budget for the city really begins with our mission and vision statement. So I put together that for your reading. Next is the vision statement. Both the mission and vision statement were critical as the city considered back in 2017 its strategic plan included in the strategic plan, our six focus areas of which, again, we attempt to build on and implement through our budgeting effort. In addition to our strategic plan, reality sets in as far as dealing with state mandates. The two key mandates are tax levy limits as well as expenditure restraint program. The budget that's being presented to you does keep intact several local or Common Council based guidelines, and that includes an equalized tax rate at CPI or lower. Also, another guideline is to have a minimum general fund fund balance of 25 percent. Of the city's proposed levy, again, this budget conforms with state law. The city has restrictions on how much the city can raise. It's typically based upon the new tax base as well as a limited consumer price index. For the upcoming year, we had only three million of additional tax base to work with. All the other construction in the community was located within a TIF district. So for health insurance, wages, utility increases, all that was working from only a three million dollar tax base. Also, as you know, the city has imposed or increased our debt service. And again, every year going forward, of course, we need to pay back the bondholders. The 2020 budget tax levy overall for operational and debt services 1.38. For the city's expenditure restraint program, again, this is a state mandate. If the city wants to participate in this reward program, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue allows the city to increase its general fund operations, which again is where most of the city's salaries are located. This year, it's 0.6 percent of the city's tax base, which is our net construction plus a 60 percent of our net construction. And then we get to add 1.8, which is our estimate for CPI or consumer price index. This amount will not be known until probably the last week of October, but prior to you considering it possibly taking action on the budget. So overall, 2 percent, if you add those percentages together, 2 percent increases allowed in order to remain eligible for the expenditure restraint program. A year ago at this time, we were looking at 2.6. 0.6 tens is a lot when you're considering developing a budget. The reward the city received this past year is $744,000. So again, it's critical for the city to maintain its eligibility for this program. Equalized tax rate. Again, this is a local decision by the Common Council. With the consumer price index being again estimated at 1.8, the executive budget recommends an equalized tax rate decrease of 1.55 percent. The 1.8 percent as it compares to prior years, a year ago, we were looking at 2.4 prior 2017 is 2, and in 2016 was actually just 3 tenths of a percent. So 1.8 is roughly average of what we've seen over the last five years. As I mentioned, the recommended equalized tax rate is a decrease of 1.55. That is $0.14 per thousand less. Equalized tax rates takes into consideration properties appreciating or depreciating. This past year, the average property in the city of Sheboygan appreciated at roughly 3 percent. If you were to consider a property that has not changed in value from last year to this year, no building permits, no additions, no new construction associated with it, so looking at what people wrote their checkout for from one year to another for property taxes, that tax rate would be would be 15 cent increase. So approximately $105,000 is the value of a typical residential property in the city of Sheboygan. So that means a $15 increase in taxes for city purposes. Next slide. This shows again that tax rate increase and the change over the last five years. As I mentioned, a 15 cent increase from the again, these numbers are off a year purposely. So in 2019, the tax rate is approved for funding the 2020 budget year. So everything is off by roughly a year. A year ago at this time, we were considering a 17 cent increase the prior year 19 cents for comparison purposes. Next is fund balance. Again, a guideline approved by the Common Councils to maintain a fund balance at minimum of 15% of the general fund. This is to create a financial financially responsible safety net for unanticipated expenses. This is a key consideration by Moody's credit service in their annual review as the city issues debt. The 2020 budget executive budget fund balance is approximately 44%. So we substantially exceed that minimum 25%. At the end of this year, it's expected that we will go as high as 50%. But again, I'll discuss a little bit later the need to use some of that fund balance to in essence balance the 2020 recommended budget. Next is a chart showing that minimum 25% fund balance as a goal or guideline, and then showing the actual fund balance. So the blue is in the front, which is the target and the gray in the back is our actual. So you see that again, we substantially exceed again for 2020 executive budget. 44% is what is estimated to be end of 2020 after all the purchases and revenues are received. Next is the city's budget facts. This is really a one page synopsis of what's going on as part of the 2020 budget in your budget brief packet on page 14. Again, I know this is kind of hard to read with a small font, but on page 14 is that summary. City of Sheboygan overall, the recommended plan is $103 million worth of expenditures for 2020. This is a composite of 95 individual budgets. So the city's accounting process, our activities are varied and ultimately complex in that it makes up ultimately 95 individual funds. It's probably easiest to describe the change and again the change being the amount of increase or decrease in a budget or the levy associated with it to fund the operations. You can see under the change column that the levy required for the general fund, the recommendation is to increase roughly $173,000. The levy required, additional levy required in the special revenue fund category is roughly $24,000. This specific dollar amount is going toward the library to help them additionally. Under debt fund expenses, the additional levy that's being recommended is approximately $120,000. Capital improvement fund expenses no change in the funding level as it pertains to levy, property tax levy, fiduciary fund expenses zero is assigned to this account. And then the last is proprietary fund expenses. Under this category, only transit receives property taxes compared to the other funds located within this account. And a very slim additional amount of little over $5,000 is my recommendation for their operations. So all in all, again, $103 million recommended for expenses. The approved budget for 2019 was $123 million in change. So a $20 million decrease, roughly a 17% drop. The next is a stacked bar chart which shows which, again, which categories of our activities or funds received funding support. You can see really not a lot of changes from one year to another. The red bar, which represents general fund, again, which is our operation fund, is increasing slightly over that time. The rest of the funds, again, are receiving limited increases over the five-year period of time. So red is general, green is special revenue, pink is debt, blue is capital, and orange is transit. For the tax levy itself, overall, roughly $322,000 increase, approximately $175,000 is coming from existing property taxpayers. Only $27,000 is coming from new construction. So again, with that roughly $3 million of assessed valuation limited coming from new construction. As you know, during calendar year 2018, the city had a lot of construction, but most of that construction was within a TIF district, not eligible for funding our general operations. And for existing properties, specifically assigned to additional debt service, roughly $120,000. Again, overall, $322,000. A year ago at this time, the levy increased by 446, and in 2018, $1.2 million. So again, a lot of development was occurring outside TIF districts in calendar year 2017 to support the 2018 budget. Personal changes for 2020, an additional full-time grant coordinator in city development, which will be substantially supported by non-property tax dollars. A lot of our special funds will underwrite the cost of that position. And another position that will not be property taxpayer supported is a distribution technician. This full-time position is supported by the water utility. Some reductions, one full-time equivalent network administrator. Originally, this position was planned to be filled July 1, 2019. And two and a half position, reduction in public works, maintenance worker level two positions. Last is I want to identify, again, we have a major change in service and where that service is funded. As you know, we discussed approximately five, six months ago, the movement as far as a base funding from the general fund to its own to its own proprietary fund. And that is the planned recycling changes going to a cart system in 2020. So two positions have been transferred out of the general fund to this new proprietary fund, which is logically identified as the recycling fund. Overall public works in 2020, we'll see a two and a half position reduction. 2020 general fund revenues. Pie chart probably is the best way to describe the major activities within the general fund revenues. Blue and purple are the number one and number two. Roughly 43% is property taxes and blue and purple. It's approximately 38. Intergovernmental revenues between the two, these two categories represent 81% of our revenues bringing in funds, again, to fund our operations. The next table again gives you a comparison of 2019 to 2020 request. What's interesting is, if you look at the changes as far as major revenue sources, some of the changes that are part of the recommended budget on the next slide is again the property tax increase in the general fund 173,000. The recycling grant is actually dropping in this fund because we're reallocating a portion of the recycling grant into that new recycling fund, which is a proprietary fund. The applied fund balance, I'm recommending a $354,000 increase over what you approved a year ago. Interfund transfers $140,000 in change coming from Minnesota court and I'm recommending an increase in transferred funds from the tourism fund. My goal is that 10% of the room tax received, 10% of that those funds should be transferred to help the general fund operations and this budget incorporates that concept. Next is a pie chart. Again, red and green are the largest two pieces of the pie, red being public service or public safety at 57% and public works at 24. So between the two, almost 80% of our budgets, our general fund expenses are associated with these two large service categories. On the next slide, if you compare 2019 to 2020, again, you'll see not a significant change as far as how the pie is allocated as far as major categories. Of the changes in the 2020 budget in 2020, of course, we have planned elections, including a presidential, so we're going from two elections to four. Transfer of again, as I mentioned, transfer recycling to a new fund. This by comparison purposes reduces the general fund by roughly 319,000 and then property tax refunds. We have a couple claims by some of our big box commercial developments and I wanted to plan for the possibility of a refund and so I recommended an additional 65,000. I think 15,000 is currently in the 2019 budget. Next are some of the other specialty funds, special revenue funds, and again, we have a series of these, roughly 16 individual funds within the special revenue. Park Forestry and Open Space is one of those. The goal is to build our construct Evergreen Park Bridge. This is funds received from the National Resource Damage Assessment. We think we'll receive roughly $205,000. This activity is associated with the Schwoigen River cleanup and again, damage assessment the city anticipates receiving. Next is a brand new fund, Neighborhood Revitalization Fund. This is as a result of fairly new state legislation, which allows communities to hold open for one additional year beyond the normal sort of termination date of a TIF district, a tax incremental district. By the city holding open TIF district number 11 for one additional year and transferring that excess increment into this new Neighborhood Revitalization Fund, the city will have additional $712,000 of funds to use. The requirement by the state legislature is that it should be used for residential or neighborhood revitalization. In the 2020 budget, roughly $420,000 of that 712 is identified as potential uses. Upper floor rental rehab, residential facade grant, public improvements such as sidewalks and crosswalks, and then overall administration of those programs are proposed for 2020. Next, Park Impact Fee Fund. Again, this is for those elders that have been here several years. There is a $547 per residential unit, a fee that was imposed I think in 2017 or maybe late 2016. This fund continues to grow with the activity expected yet in 2019 and the additional projects that have been already publicly discussed within construction anticipated to commence in 2020. We expect to be close to a quarter of a million dollars worth of revenue in a fund balance to gain use for park projects. In 2019, 293 residential units are expected to pay into this fund and in 2020, 275 additional units, so a lot of activities occurring in our community. Uses for the projects, 25,000 for additional ADA-related walkways in our parks, and then 25,000 dollars associated with a new playground in Moose Park. Another major source of city's tax revenue is funding and supporting the Mead Public Library. The recommendation is to increase our funding levels to approximately 24,000. This represents a slight decrease of additional levy that was added to their funds in 2019 budget where 63,000 additional dollars were recommended and approved. Again, I'm recommending an additional 24,000 above and beyond that for 2020 budget. Tourism Fund, with the payment, full payment or payoff of the Blue Harbor Conference Center debt, all room taxes now is available to share with visitcheboygan.com. With some new hotels that are coming online, we expect the room tax amount to grow. So 1.4 is the amount we expect to receive in 2019 and up to 1.7 of additional room tax dollars in 2020. City gets to retain 30% of that. So we expect our share to increase by almost 300,000 dollars. Uses of that Tourism Fund, as I mentioned previously, transfer to the General Fund and additional 170, roughly 175,000, which is roughly 10% of the room tax estimated to be received, and then transfer to debt service to help with our debt service payments, 320, almost 330,000 dollars. The next special revenue fund is Harbor Center Marina. The recommendation is to transfer an additional 225,000 in calendar year 2020 to help reduce the debt that is in the Harbor Center Marina. To give you a sense as far as, I guess, the success we've had in transferring money and trying to reduce the debt, in 2016 there was $6.8 million of debt still on our books, and by the end of 2020, we hope to be under $5 million. So we're slowly making progress, and this was one of the items mentioned by our auditors as far as a large amount of debt still outstanding for that fund. But again, it's not going to be erased overnight, and as long as we're making progress, I hope you, the community and the auditors, will feel we're making substantial progress. The next category is debt service fund. Again, to give you a sense as far as the amount of taxes needed to support our tax levy, I thought it was helpful to identify of our tax rate what per thousand is being used for our tax service, our debt service from taxes. $1.30 is the equivalent debt service that's being allocated to the debt service fund. This is similar to 2019 and 2018 tax rate, and again, this is equalized. In 2020, the recommendation is to issue $3.6 million of non-TID-related debt. If you add TID-related debt, it's approximately $3 million additional or overall $6.5 million. This is substantially less than the amount of debt issued in 2019, it was over $10 million. Debt service as far as net debt outstanding, you see from 2017 to 2020, it's increasing by roughly $15 million. But when you look at our ratio of net debt capacity, it's going from roughly 21 to 29%.  Next, I'd like to discuss capital projects. Superior Avenue, $2 million. This is North 29th to Taylor, Boots & Sports Complex, again, $590,000. This funding source originally came from Tourism Fund or Room Tax Money. Union Avenue, $500,000. Georgia Avenue to Taylor, this is associated with upgrades to the approximate area where the hospital, Aurora Hospital will be constructed, so just east of Taylor to Georgia Avenue. Geely Avenue from Calumet Drive to North 23rd, $700,000. And last is a $750,000 new roof at Shoreline Transit, of which we expect half will be funded by the federal government. Next, identify some additional larger capital projects. Fire station number two improvements, $318,000. And last is $195,000 for HVAC and security-related entry systems at our police station. Tax incremental district, which are typically projects to leverage new developments by the private sector or to shore up some of these areas that are in need of revitalization. In tip 14, $50,000 is identified for branding or wayfinding signage. This is primarily in our downtown area. Badger State Loft redevelopment project on the former tannery. This roughly three and a half million is our estimates for improving Illinois, Maryland, and South 11th Street. Tip 17, this is part of the Innovation District along Indiana Avenue with the expectation that there will be an innovation hub or fresh tech hub, roughly $300,000 to construct a surface parking lot. Also, that general vicinity is to purchase a former railroad, Union Pacific Railroad right away, referred to a shoreline 400, and roughly 1.3 is the estimated purchase price. On Niagara, east of 14th Street, so this is adjacent to the future LTC classroom site, half a million dollars to make that improvement. So this is again between the former boat doctors and Bitter Newman. Internal service funds note changes in workers' compensation, liability insurance, health insurance fund. Recommendation is for a 5% increase for health, as well as a 5% increase in dental insurance, and the elimination of HSA contributions at a savings of $229,000. Wastewater Utility Fund, $750,000 for additional reconstruction relining of sanitary sewers. So as the city continues to work on reconstructing streets, specifically surface pavement, we of course want to be disciplined in not making those, that additional investment, without checking what's underneath the pavement. So we look at the water sewer lines, and the expectations will have roughly $750,000 of, in essence, companion-related infrastructure projects to our street projects. Other improvements at the treatment plant are rebuilding a floating digester cover, as well as a digester heat exchanger, both projects for $450,000 or $150,000. In the parking and transit fund area, no material change is in service, but there is an additional $70,000 parking utility street sweeper. Both facility fund, no major change, no material change. One of my last slides is about our proposed recycling utility fund. The recommendation is in January of 2020 to start the monthly charges. The budget identifies a $4 per month charge. In the months of April through May in 2020, both the trucks will, we will receive the trucks as well as we will begin receiving the carts, both recycling and, and recycling service pickup. May of 2020, the goal is to start up that month. One thing that is new for 2020 is our garbage and recycling processor has identified a first-time charge to process our recycling. Currently, we get a zero per ton charge. What's been identified in public works committee will be discussing this soon, is a $90 per ton charge. This is more on a per ton basis than what we're charged for disposal of our garbage. This adds up to $363,000. As I mentioned, this is a new charge. And the last is the initial lease rate of our recycling carts, roughly $31,000. Beginning in 2021, this initial lease will go up to roughly $83,000 per year for a total of 10 years lease for our carts. That really is a summary of the details associated with the 2020 budget. Again, the budget as well as the budget brief have been posted on the city's website. Hard copies are available at city hall, hard copy will be available at the public library. And again, I really want to thank all the management team and their support staff. Marty Harberson being fairly new to our staff as the director of finance. This was his first full-fledged budget. So a little bit of baptism baptism by fire for him. Carrie, Aaron's put a lot of work into this as well. As I mentioned, this is the first year the city's been able to use our accounting payroll software to generate information exported into a spreadsheet where in the past the city worked solely off of a spreadsheet and then tried to make it fit into our accounting system after it was approved. So with our new process, we're able to make one change in one fund and instantly be able to see how it ultimately floats to the top and affects our overall budget summary. So definitely in advance for our organization and will substantially improve the process in 2021. So again, I appreciate your time to see you.


Today's video is sponsored by Aura. There are at least two kinds of silence that define us. One is the eloquent silence of the world as we were given it. The silence of light and beauty. The silence that holds a promise. There is also sometimes a dark silence within us. One that results from willful blindness and deafness. We struggle against it. What will America be? How's it? How's it? Robert Adams, landscape photographer, is one of my favorite photographers. Not just in landscape, but any genre. I remember the first time that I saw one of his images. It was captivating in a way that very few first encounters with the photographer is. It was this silhouette of a lady outlined against a blank window in a nondescript house. So simple yet so evocative. I had to find out more about this photographer. I was just obsessed with him and I discovered that he was part of a group called the New Topographics who were a selection of landscape photographers in the late 50s, 60s, 70s, around that middle of the century period who were thinking about man's effect on the landscape. And the New Topographics is very interesting, but it also is one of those areas in photography where we can get a little bit academic. You know, drifting away from what really is, certainly for me, the motivating thing with photographs is how they make you feel. It's fine that they have a purpose, but surely if they don't make you feel anything then they kind of miss their purpose. So rather than dwelling upon, you know, the New Topographics and their impact upon photography and modern consciousness and all that kind of stuff, I just want to concentrate on the title of this wonderful book that I got recently called American Silence, which is cutting straight through to what I find so intriguing about Robert Adams' photography, which is this feeling of silence, the quietness about them. The fact that, yes, they do have a lot to say, but they say it so softly. I was really excited when this book arrived in the post because, first of all, it's a lovely book. I mean, it's printed beautifully. It's heavy, but it's not too heavy. It's got some wonderful photographs in here that I hadn't seen before. And as I was flicking through it, it dawned on me that this wasn't simply just a retrospective, but it is a catalogue for an exhibition. And I was, oh, this is kind of interesting. And then it dawned on me that this exhibition would be showing when I was in DC at the National Gallery of Art. I was like, oh, this is so awesome. We must go to see this immediately, if not forthwith. So that's how I came to be in DC on like the 7th of July or something like that on a Sunday afternoon and walking through this wonderful exhibition of Robert Adams' photographs. They covered his entire career, obviously with it, because it's a retrospective. They were so once again quiet. I think this is always the thing that we tend to miss when we're looking at photographs, especially on screen, is the size that the artist wants them reproduced at. There are some photographers who reproduce their images in huge scale. So they are overbearing and you're really dominant. But what I found intriguing about Robert Adams' prints were that they were modest in size, that they were not in your face, brash things, but more, almost like a set of many statements in, well, if they'd been any smaller, they would have been like a postcard size, you know. But these ones, you know, 8 by 10s, that sort of thing. And I found them all the more powerful for this modesty. As I was walking around the exhibition with a friend of mine who had gone to visit, you know, I was trying to explain to about the new topographics and all this kind of stuff and, you know, and why these photographs are actually really good. And that's always a tricky thing, isn't it? You sort of say, well, here's some photographs of what are actually fairly nondescript environments, you know, tract housing being built in, you know, in the desert and signs just, you know, randomly placed in places. There's nothing that you look at it from a technical standpoint and go, wow, that's an amazing trick they've done with the photography there or, you know, or that the scenes themselves are crazy, you know, major events much, you know, like the Pulitzer Prize gallery that I'd seen a couple of years previously in DC as well. These are just photographs that, well, they're silent. They're silent observations of a country, a time, a place, you know, a state of environment that was in flux, was changing. While this development must have been noisy that they brought all this stuff to, they are photographed then in this quietness that often they are kind of devoid of people. But man's mark is always in these images. I love that idea of just letting the landscape speak to you. Because I was in the U.S. and various boring reasons about, you know, cell phone companies and things like that, I was having to use public Wi-Fi, an awful lot when I was there, you know, just checking my emails and what I have, you know, I could see the horror that my friend was looking at me when I was happy, go lucky, you know, connecting to all these unsecured networks because identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America. Apparently it's so rife that there is a new victim every 14 seconds. I mean, think about that. It's crazy. And that is why I'm very happy to be partnered with today's sponsor Aura. Aura is identity theft protection. It's fraud monitoring. It's a VPN and password management system plus antivirus all in one easy to use app. Now you might have one or two of these tools already, but if you don't have all of them, then it's like leaving your back door open when you've triple bolted the front door. No doubt you know somebody who has had their identity stolen and have been shocked about how easily this can actually happen. Using Aura's VPN, you can make sure that all of your personal information is safe and encrypted. Protect yourself and your family from identity theft by clicking on this link on screen. And it's also in the description box below. When you click on that link, you will get a two week free trial to Aura. And then you can see for yourself just how many times in the past your information has been compromised. My favorite period of Robert Adams' photography is from the New West. These images in Colorado and in the Denver when things were being built up, all this tracked housing was rising from this, I don't want to say barren earth, but it certainly looks barren in these photographs. And they remind me somewhat of my own childhood. I think this is what photographs can do so well is that they can be gateways to a place that you enjoy that reminds you of some event in your past. And I look at these images of families starting their new lives in these places and then contrast that against those self-same places today. Because in a lot of the photographs in this period, you can see street signs.  How different does the world look now compared to those images then? And perhaps this is now the power of these photographs is that we are reminded that what actually looks like it has always been thus, this built up suburban, commercialized landscape, didn't always look like this. And I did say that we wouldn't drift into the world of the new topographics and that kind of stuff. But it's almost impossible to not feel that power, that echo of an old advert that I remember seeing that the words have stuck with me, which says strong words, softly spoken. These images of Robert Adams and everything else that was contained in this exhibition of American silence were just a joy to behold. It was wonderful to see these images in person, to feel their quiet power. And I've mentioned that a lot today because his work is beautifully quiet. Like a lot of photographers, Robert Adams has some standout images that I think even, somebody with either the most passing interest in photography could look at that and go, yeah, I think that looks nice for want of a better word. But he also falls into this category that I think a lot of, let's loosely call them arty photographers falls into, which is you show a photograph that by itself is, well, it's fairly nondescript. It's not great. And, you know, when you're talking to a friend like I was at this exhibition, it's hard to point at an image and go, dad, this is so good, because it looks like something everybody else could do. Robert Adams creates some wonderful standalone photographs. But the real power of his images comes from the body of work that he has created over his whole career. And this is why when you talk to somebody and you show them what can be a fairly nondescript photograph from something, like I was, you know, with, with my friend at the, the exhibition, trying to explain, wow, this is so cool. And your wife Robert Adams is great. If you look at that image, it's kind of like, well, it doesn't really, what is it? It's just, it's a picture of a, of a tree trunk on a beach or some random thing. And you have to think about those images in conjunction with all the other photographs that Robert Adams, William Eggleston, Stephen Shaw, all of these photographs come together as a body of work. That's what we lack so much. That's why going to exhibitions is so important to see photographs, not just printed at the size that the artist intended, but in the way that they intended to work together as a body of photographs, not just individual photographs put passively on the screen. Go and see exhibitions, go and drink in photographs, in the flesh, to see the prints, to see the almost tangible fingerprints of the photographer in that image. A photographer who I would love to go and see their work in person is Desiree Dolrin. I know that you are going to love her photographs because they are also quite quiet. Click on the video on screen right now and enjoy her sumptuous images. Thank you ever so much for watching and I will see you again soon.


Hello, hello, everyone. Yeah, just welcome you again. Like for the next session, we are having by Timothy Apnel over the automating the management of the Kubernetes apps. And I think we are running out 10 minutes late. But anyways, yeah, we had a quite interesting session on the blockchain by Prajit in the previous session. So let's get connected with automating the management of Kubernetes apps. Hello, I'm Tim Apnel, and I'm a product manager and evangelist on the Ansible team at Red Hat. I've been involved with the Ansible project since its beginning days as a contributor user Ansible consultant and now product manager. So I've been around Ansible on automation a lot and have seen it from many angles. In the past couple of years, I've been looking at how Ansible could be useful when applied to automating cloud native systems and more specifically Kubernetes. I often get puzzled looks when I suggest Ansible to automate something with the Kubernetes cluster because Ansible is not a cloud native tool that they've considered. To them Ansible is a tool for doing configuration management orchestration and DevOps on traditional IT systems like on-premise bare metal servers, network infrastructure, and maybe even public cloud services. This is a misconception though because Ansible fits naturally into a Kubernetes environment. There are many similarities to how Kubernetes and Ansible approach their individual problem domains that make a natural fit when we bring the two together. They're both highly active and highly used open source projects and have vibrant communities working to solve common problems. They make hard things easier through automation and orchestration. They also both work as desired state engines and make extensive use of YAML. As we can see in the two examples, both use similar patterns and YAML to describe the desired state of the world. On the left you have a Kubernetes config map object definition expressed in YAML that you could feed into your cluster using cube control. On the right is a single Ansible task doing the exact same thing. Their syntax is almost identical. What's different is a small but significant thing. Templating parameters like the color variable here using Ansible's built-in gingetoo templating function. Templates is not something cube control has traditionally supported, but that has begun changing recently with the customized plugin. What is the most powerful part of using Ansible is how easy it is to interact with Kubernetes, whether you are developing an operator or automating something else with your cluster. With the Ansible Cates module and other related modules that are part of the community dot Kubernetes collection, an Ansible user can manage applications on Kubernetes, on existing IT, or across both with one simple language. In the last example, we saw an Ansible task with an inline config map definition that had a parameter templatize. Ansible lets you take that one step further and maintain the entire definition as a separate gingetoo template file like in this example. In an upcoming release of the Cates module, you'll be able to do this more concisely without the lookup function by just specifying the path to the template file. Every shell command and UI interaction is an opportunity to automate. This theorem of mine is applicable to any automation of infrastructure and systems. It is not just cloud native systems though. I thought it was important to highlight this notion because seizing the opportunity to automate is an underlying theme to the uses of Ansible with Kubernetes that I will cover here. There are many benefits to automating and many tools you could use to automate Kubernetes systems. So why Ansible to automate your operations with Kubernetes? Ansible is ridiculously simple to learn. New users can learn the required structure in hours, not days or weeks. If you're already developing Ansible content, your skills are transferable and you are most of the way there to developing something for Kubernetes. The same tried and true Ansible tooling lets you automate and orchestrate your applications across both new and existing platforms, allowing teams to transition without having to learn new skills. With the case module, an Ansible user can manage applications on Kubernetes on existing IT or both with that one simple language. No programming required, faster iterations, and easier maintenance in getting things done. So for the rest of the presentation, I'm going to go a bit deeper into these primary but by no means only ways you can apply Ansible to automate your Kubernetes based systems. The first use of Ansible in automating Kubernetes environments is what we refer to as last mile automation for Kubernetes cluster setups. There's a lot more to making Kubernetes useful than just installing it and getting it to start up. There's additional setup and configuration of resources on the cluster and infrastructure off the cluster, you will still need to perform to have something useful for your specific needs.  Enterprise Kubernetes offerings like Red Hat's OpenShift platform have installer systems that help you with some of this, but they will only get you so far. All infrastructure can be hosted and replaced by a Kubernetes cluster. I alluded to this in my last slide that in setting up and managing a Kubernetes cluster, you'll need to integrate and connect with resources and infrastructure, not running in your Kubernetes cluster, and that are not cloud native. Many organizations have made significant and historical investments in traditional IT and infrastructure skills and workflows. I would wager many of you listening are in those organizations. There's a lot of potential combinations and needs to what this specifically means to you. So Ansible can be the glue for bringing the traditional off cluster and the cloud native on cluster infrastructure together. It can provide the functionality needed to coordinate and manage these hybrid deployments in as simple and effective way as possible. Another potential use of automating Kubernetes environments with Ansible is creating repeatable Kubernetes application and service deployments. This is a bit similar and somewhat overlapping with last mile automation in the first use case we just covered, but here we're focused on the applications and the services rather than on the cluster itself. So something like this look familiar. You want to deploy an application to your cluster and you are presented with a quick start guide that features a dozen or more cube control helm OC and said commands along with some instructions to make manual edits to example files. It's like the equivalent of the sys admins run book from the 1990s. Ansible can help because customers deploying cloud native applications and services will never have just one cluster. At a minimum they will have dev test and production clusters. And if the scope of their offerings are of any size or sophistication, they're likely to have multiple functional and geographically dispersed clusters across data centers and cloud providers. So defining Ansible's variables and inventory management templates and playbooks, it can be used to create repeatable and consistent Kubernetes applications and service deployments, just like traditional infrastructure. Standard procedures and settings can be shared while others can be modified according to the cluster being targeted, all from one central control plane. This can get you pretty far in a way that is simple and lightweight. If you are managing a large estate of clusters and applications, there are powerful tools emerging, you'll want to explore like red hats advanced cluster management for Kubernetes offering. Another use of Ansible to automate Kubernetes environments is the encoding of human operational knowledge in the form of operators. This is something we're going to dive a little bit deeper into than the previous uses. For those of you familiar with Ansible, it's something a bit different and worth the exploration. I also believe operators in general have a lot of great potential to help organizations do powerful and useful things with their Kubernetes clusters. So operators automate and simplify the management of complex applications on Kubernetes. This is an application-specific controller that extends the Kubernetes API to create, configure, and manage instances of complex, staple applications on behalf of a Kubernetes user. They build upon the basic Kubernetes resources and controller concepts, but include domain or application-specific knowledge to automate common tasks. To put, operators enable you to program Kubernetes with the smarts it needs to effectively manage your applications or services for you. The Operator SDK is something that was originally developed by CoreOS, championed by Red Hat, and is now an incubator project of the CNCF. So when it comes down to it, operators are just a pattern and a type of controller application running in your Kubernetes cluster that the Operator SDK helps you implement. An operator is watching for events that happen inside the cluster, and it is responding to those events. It is always looking at what has been specified as the desired state of the world through the endpoint in the Cates API, defined by a custom resource or CRD, and then makes changes to the cluster to bring it closer to what is specified. This process of making changes to aligned states is called reconciliation. As mentioned, an operator is a special type of controller that is purpose-built to deploy and automate the management of a Kubernetes application. Operators work in a relatively modern release of Kubernetes and do not require you to install some additional extensions or use a specific distribution such as OpenShift. Whatever kinds of workloads you need to deploy into Kubernetes can be automated with this operator pattern. This pattern is designed to capture that human operational knowledge that I talked about in code so that anything that an administrator or a system engineer would need to perform in order to maintain an application or service and keep it running indefinitely on a cluster is automated. The Ansible operator SDK is a collection of building blocks that make it easier to develop and manage Kubernetes apps in both a Kubernetes and Ansible native way. It is a first-class citizen of the operator SDK. It's not something that you need to add. Ansible is one of the available built-in types of operators that the operator SDK is able to generate and build. Besides Ansible, the operator SDK can also assist with developing operators using Go and Helm. Ansible-based operators, unlike Helm-based ones and just like Go-based operators, can be used to manage the complete lifecycle of container-based applications running in Kubernetes. Ansible enables full-featured operators to be developed more easily. Arguably, you are not giving up anything using Ansible, and in some respects, you gain a lot of efficiencies. With Go, you do get that fine-grained control, but there are quite a few advanced and complex concepts involved in doing so. There's also a lot of generic boilerplate functions every operator needs to implement and manage in Go that has been embedded in the Ansible operator SDK. Let's take a look at that now. Inside of the operator, we have the operator SDK binary. This is a pre-built generic operator written in Go that will run Ansible for you based on how it's configured in the watches.yaml file. That file is a mapping between a Kubernetes resource and your Ansible content. The Ansible kates module will be used to create resources in the Kubernetes cluster. As a developer creating a Kubernetes operator with Ansible, you're only responsible for providing the watches file and the Ansible content that manages your application. The operator SDK binary handles all the low-level operator functions and details for you. Using Go is a very powerful way to write Kubernetes operators, but there are quite a few advanced and complex concepts in doing so. There's very advanced and powerful caching and queue management that are built into the Go client and expertise to get proficient with it. If you don't have that type of time to build up the expertise or you don't want to take that time to work through that right now, you can leverage what comes as part of the generic operator binary in the Ansible operator SDK so you can focus on writing your reconciliation logic with Ansible. So let's take a look at what's in an Ansible-enabled operator image. In the white box is what you provide, which is pretty minimal. Watches.yaml file that we just talked about and at least one Ansible role or playbook. What's in the gray box is functionality and resources provided to you as part of using the Ansible operator SDK and its base image. It includes the operator SDK binary in addition to Ansible itself, Ansible Runner, and Python plus any dependent libraries. So remember when developing an operator using Ansible, you only need to work out and provide what is in that white box. The Ansible operator SDK tooling provides the rest. Developing your first operator with Ansible is quite straightforward using the SDK. First, you initialize the operator project with Ansible using the init sub command and a few parameters. The important part here is the plugins equals Ansible in red. Second, you develop your Ansible content to automate the lifecycle of your application or service. The SDK even gives you a means of testing your operator locally using the molecule test framework. Next, you map a Kubernetes resource in the Watches file to your Ansible content. Once you're ready, you can run the build command and the operator SDK will build a container image with everything we reviewed in the previous slide. With that, you have a container image ready to be deployed to a Kubernetes cluster or published to an image registry. We don't have time to do a demo of an operator in action here, but we can quickly walk through an example use of one. Say we've developed an operator using Ansible that will deploy and manage a scalable caching service made up of memcache router nodes, McRouter, that is managing memcache pods in a pool. The operator has the know how to set up and maintain the configuration of McRouter, more specifically the number of memcache nodes in the pool and their addresses so it can work with them. So as the pool scales down, or it needs to scale up in running your service, the operator of the operation of McRouter will be adapted accordingly, instantly and without human intervention. Remember, adjusting pool size happens with a single API call to the caching service CR. The value here is that you can manage your application lifecycle with an operator and developers and admins can easily manage one or many instances of your application stack simply by using it. Operators enable a public cloud like experience we see using services from cloud providers such as AWS or Microsoft Azure. Okay, moving on. Another use of Ansible automation is in creating continuous deployment or specifically GitOps workflows. GitOps works by using Git as a single source of truth for declarative infrastructure and applications. Often you read that immutable infrastructures and even more specifically Kubernetes cluster management are asked attributes of GitOps. I believe that this description is a bit too prescriptive and limiting. So here I treat them as suggestions and preferences, not requirements of GitOps. We'll see why in a little bit here.  When changes are made to get engineers developing software using their standard workflow and continuous integration practices as usual. When a release is ready, it is pushed to a registry continuous integration is kept separate from continuous deployment mechanisms, which is a best practice that GitOps recommends and incorporates. So to roll out the new release of changes made in the Git repo to state that the new release should be made and used in a cluster. The GitOps agent that is running on the cluster pulls in the configuration from Git. Typically, these agents are Kubernetes operators such as Flux from Weaveworks. The GitOps operator works to align the current state of the cluster with the desired state of the Git repository. Now let's look at what happens when we apply Ansible to a GitOps workflow. What we get is something that is more flexible and able to do more. Here Ansible replaces the GitOps operator that is running on a cluster and pulls in its state configuration from Git. Ansible can work with operators running on a Kubernetes cluster for a sort of push-pull sort of approach. Tower pushes the configuration to the operator via a CRD endpoint, and then the operator pulls in any container images from the registry that it needs. The GitOps operator made for a specific case application or service rather than one of all the configurations that manages the life cycle on the cluster. What is more important to note is that this also provides the flexibility to apply GitOps workflow principles to systems other than Kubernetes, such as public private cloud services and network infrastructure. You're not required to use a GitOps operator as an agent on that infrastructure. You also have the flexibility and the freedom to use the best tools for your needs and tailor your pipeline to how you want to work. A strength of Ansible is that it excels at IT automation glue. Covered here are some of the most common ways Ansible can help automate the management of Kubernetes deployments, but they're not the only way. Remember, every shell command and UI interaction is an opportunity to automate and Kubernetes is not any different. If you're interested in learning more and digging into this topic deeper, here are some starting points that I recommend. Later in October, we'll be hosting Ansible Fest, our annual community and user festival. The Ansible community will be talking about all things Ansible, including Kubernetes, GitOps and a whole lot more. This year will be virtual and is free for all who want to attend. So just go to the ansible.com slash Ansible Fest link to register to attend yourself. Thank you all for listening and I hope you found this information useful. Happy automating. Hello, everyone. So thank you. We had words. So if anyone has any questions, I am. I'm here in live now. Please put your questions in chat if you have any. I guess I stunned everyone into silence. Oh, hey, Dave Duncan. Hello. Thank you. Yeah, I'll be over over in the room. Oh wait, there we go. There we go. So all right, so first question. So Jason, yes, you can mix Nate's automation with regular stuff. I actually am doing a talk at Ansible Fest for GitOps. And in it, I actually show a mix of things happening in there. So you could do something like deploy an application into your Kubernetes cluster. And maybe that needs to use an external database.  Oh, Dave Duncan was just on RDS database as part of it or, or make a schema change to that database as part of your deployment rollout. So in that case, you're using Ansible to both work with your Kubernetes cluster and the application on there and also work with a public cloud provider system. So what Ansible can do, you can coordinate. And that includes Kubernetes that includes networking infrastructure cloud. You name it. All right. Let's see Hermann Terraform and Ansible for Kate's operators. Yes, Ansible for Kate's operators. There's not really anything for Terraform and that that would actually be a little hard because Terraform is pretty much limited to cloud provisioning only. So I'm not sure how you would really utilize Terraform in an operator. But there is, as I mentioned in my talk, a Kubernetes operator SDK. And one of the options that are built in when you downloaded and use it, and this is part of the CNCF now is an Ansible one.  You create a task or two, whatever you need to automate and set up the watch's file and you can build a container and deploy it anywhere that, you know, or any Kubernetes cluster. All right. Any other questions out there? Yes. Sorry, I'm just looking at Jason, your last comment. Yeah, that's one of the things I try to stress and I've seen this a lot in cloud is when you mentioned in your comment about a ton of commands to set up something. That's what I mean by last mile automation. And we've seen this a lot. First and foremost, an Ansible automation guy that's come to learn Kubernetes and appreciate Kubernetes. And one of the things that still kind of Well, I'll say stuns me is when I sit down to use something and I'm given like pages and pages of of cube control and OC commands and Helm commands and all commands and said commands and just to get up and running and I just look at I go why didn't they write an Ansible playbook for this. This would have made things so much easier. And that's that's something that we want to get across and that's what that theorem is that I put out there which is every shell command every UI interaction you do is an opportunity to automate. And so if you if you're seeing tons of commands to get something stood up. That's a prime candidate to automate and I would suggest looking at Ansible for that. Yeah, we're seeing it is sort of a case thing in that it's almost like I don't want to offend anyone but it's almost like the cloud native community forgot about traditional tooling. So I'm here to kind of remind people that hey, you know, there's still applicability to a lot of this stuff that's come before cloud native and that's not to take anything away from cloud native. It's just to say, you know, let's let's put the best thing out there wherever that comes from any other questions. Awesome. Thank you so much Tim. If you want to continue the conversation you can I'm going to bounce over to the room for everyone else and shell. Actually, I work with Jeff. Jeff is right now we've contracted him to do some work with the Ansible team. So I just was talking to him earlier today. So I want to move over to the other and so other rooms so you can continue. Thank you everyone. Thanks for listening.


Soldiers from Charlie Troop, 3rd Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment recently got some hands on time with their weapons. Defeating the enemy takes more than just knowing how to shoot, though, and the cavalrymen understand that many skills are needed in a firefight. So I get to learn the radio, call for fire, call them medivacs, also I get to put rounds down range. Radio telephone operators, or RTOs, provide communication support in combat, allowing units on the ground to talk to each other and with their headquarters. When you're working the radio, it's a lot of fun because you're not just playing down and looking for the enemy, you actually know everything that's going on. You know every situation where everybody's at, what you need to do, it's a lot of fun. The troop commander supervised the training and believes his soldiers got a lot out of their time in the field. It's definitely satisfying knowing that the work we're putting in is paying off and it's also just kind of a guarantee that we are doing the right things and it just sets you up with success going down range. Charlie Troop looks to continue refining those many combat skills in preparation for their future deployment. For the 4th Brigade 10th Mountain Division, I'm Sergeant Eric Provost.


hing else that's happened the last couple days to monitor public record I can update you on I think that is it I apologize that there was like a day out of date in this uh this presentation so again you know Q&A will be limited I've done my best answer questions I'm happy to take comments and answer any more questions in our court I'm just curious I mean uh for years this has been it has been in effect very close to the best and now I'm wondering what the motivation is for this open kimono well my understanding is that it was requested by the agenda for that reason this this is unconventional to be sure um but it can be done to the extent it focuses on public records this is all public this is all public so why wasn't this done earlier why wasn't this done when there were outcries and they pressed banner for this information to be made public let's ask public public sense let's take this into the court it's public but to provide transparency to the public I would summarize it like this that could have eliminated all of those problems in the past few years could have been made this could have been done well on the website I mean I don't think this really eliminates any of the problems but to the extent the board and the district are comfortable doing this and certainly this would have been a much harder thing for me to do a year ago or six months ago than it is now now that I'm essentially handling the district's representation in the Holloway case we don't have special counsel anymore I've had to become more familiar with the cases so it didn't take a lot of work for me to put this together and I'm much more comfortable sort of knowing what's public and what isn't I mean this is a tough and unusual thing to do and I guess if this would have been helpful earlier it would have been a very difficult thing for me to do earlier I appreciate it thank you I do but it would have been I think it would have eliminated many many more problems if it had made a problem earlier I'm not sure if it would have eliminated the problem it was very well done and it clarified a lot of confusion and sometimes just eliminating confusion is a good trend so could you explain if the complaint against the people with sole property is successful and they have to give the money back to the district what happens to us to the district I don't understand how they give the money back but the district can't give the land back well sir you're you're in someone uncharted territory there and I suspect that we would have different views than Mr. Halloway and his attorney for that reason okay I feel like I want to say something but I guess I'm not exactly sure what to say so first of all I want to say I discovered 1090 violations at two local agencies pretty much at the same time one was the library board that attorney Mosher was on and the other was the SLB water board I found both of them at the same time what was going on at the library was that Mike Termini who just ended his term as mayor of Capitola he was the Capitola representative on the library board and he was doing business with the library which is I guess the law section 1090 says a board cannot make a contract in which a board member has a financial interest can't make a contract at all it doesn't matter whether the board member recuses himself the board can't make the contract he walks out of the room the board still can't make the contract that's what section 1090 says and it's been the law in this state almost since statehood in one form or another the reason that I know this is because back when I was researching this before the case was ever filed I found the Attorney General has a book on conflict of interest and there's a chapter on section 1090 so if you look at the book online you find the chapter on 1090 you only have to read a couple of pages and you will find that you will realize I do not want to get close to this this is like the third rail and you get electrocuted if you use this now there's a phenomenon in local government where if you find a law violation and frankly I have found several law violations by this district when you do and you go to the attorney or you go to a board member and they say, oh our attorney says it's all good like at the library board the attorney didn't come to the meetings and you say, oh the attorney says it's all good everything's good, it's all good we're not doing anything wrong so what do you do when you face that kind of a situation where the attorney just flies out his room on the lawn and I guess what I've discovered is one thing you can do is you sue the agency when I sued the library board well I didn't even sue I didn't even sue the library board on the conflict of interest so I went to the board and within a couple of months terminated all the money back it was $30,000 and the attorney retired and the library director retired so I felt that's a job well done I brought the evidence I brought it to the board and within a couple of months the library director was gone the attorney was gone and the board member paid back $30,000 to the public I wish that this district had handled this thing the same way because at this point the district has spent $4 million defending the indefensible this is indefensible board members not supposed to be doing business with their agency and it's just flat on it and what I wish would have happened what I always thought is what if this were a school board I just have to believe that if this were a school board eventually one of the trustees said before you got to $250,000 and I think it's probably heading over that now but before you got to $250,000 to defend a board member's financial transaction some board member would speak up and say we've been entrusted with this money to educate children why are we going down this route on this I mean I think you ought to relax a little bit I don't know what exactly so I have to tell you that the main purposes of my lawsuit was to object Mark Hines I came to the board in early 2015 when there was a new board almost four years ago and I had a piece of paper that had a dozen code sections on it and every one of those code sections was a story about something Mark Hines was wrong about there were a dozen of them and I mean I gave up at a dozen they went on beyond that and it would have been a story that I could talk for five minutes about what that was all about and how he was wrong about it and that would have taken an hour but I just said this guy's made so many mistakes I was really hoping and I had to plead it with him get a second opinion because Hines was the one who caused this problem in the first place the district never should have bought my house now I talked to a great group at the time the first time I ever heard about this why would your district buy a house didn't make any sense and I asked board members and I asked staff members and I got consistent answers there were two reasons that I was told can you wrap this up quickly you know what you don't have to make any decisions and I know you're running into a closed session later I don't think there's anything you have to decide tonight I'm always available I know I'm not trying to shut you down and the fact that at this point the district is suing Hines again it's kind of like the library board situation I feel like well I've done my job here this was what it took to get that guy out of his district and Bob and I followed the whole process by which the current district council was highlighted Bob and I spoke in favor of the current district council so that was an important thing that needed to happen at this district but if I had not done this Hines would still be here he would still be here and people would still be saying oh it's all good so that was one of the things that was necessary now the other thing is there were lots of different lawsuits that I could have picked and the reason I picked this one I'm trying to get people private parties to pay back I'm not trying to hit up the agency and I'm not trying to get to spend a lot of attorney's fees and it pains me to have your attorney talking to my attorney I mean we're just chewing up attorney fees and the mediation thing so you know ex-president brought up the mediation thing a couple months ago well first of all I don't want to see Gina Nichols in mediation I don't think I can get anything out of her I mean if you've got anything to say to me to educate me about this go ahead if you want to get the mediation and grab me and try to trash talk me and tell me this case is important I'm not interested in hearing it at this point I bought a master's degree in this subject and I'm going to see it through I mean I have to see the answer in the contract void from inception you know in the oral argument in the spring Shannon Jones was the attorney for the showcase and the Justice Elia asked her directly did the board member have a financial interest in the contract and she started the answer and said hey if you're going to make an argument just say no and he's asked her again I'm amazed because I think this is the kind of thing we usually have to prove important but she admitted a lot out to the court in the deal yes she had a financial interest in the contract there's nothing else for me to prove that's why my attorney is going to go for summary judgment if you have a financial interest in the contract it's void so I guess in your way that's the answer to Mr. Mosher yeah it's void and I want that half million for this district from private parties we have a board member his partners and his clients you know and I hope there's some insurance to cover it but I don't really care I'm trying to get half million dollars for this district I understand that but I need you to to buy that equipment directly and that he would install it for free and what he paid back on his own is the right thing to do because Mr. Holloway was right technically we understood that the library director made a mistake he gave an additional $30 donation because the library he did not pay back money but the library paid him for his work it was an additional donation okay it's getting out of hand there let's stop he spoke twice no come on he spoke twice I know that but you spoke twice as long I think what's going to happen is you're going to spend a little over a year with another quarter million but I would like to answer Mosher go ahead he's gone so don't bother before I ever brought it up to the library board I called my terminating on the phone and I told him what I knew and he told me that he had talked with John Barassani the attorney a year before and that John Barassani told him at the time he was only in for $11,000 and at that time Barassani told him the worst that's going to happen you should have to pay back $11,000 that was in terminating this is what he got from the attorney so the attorney reached his duty to the board kind of like you're this attorney reached his duty to the board by not informing them hey there's a library board member doing business with the library he didn't tell them that but it was 11,000 and a year later it was 30,000 so he was doing business with the library first thank you thank you both okay next agenda item are we done? can I ask one more question who are you asking the question of of the attorney of the district attorney of Gina you probably won't be able to answer this but I know this is a question that's on a lot of great payers minds and that is how much longer is this going to go on how much more are we going to have to pay and is there any way of short cutting or reducing that do you have any answers to all those questions to the extent I can try to work on those issues it'll have to be a close session but you understand the concern I think she'd have to be F. Lee Bailey or something like that okay can we move on minutes from the board of directors meeting November 15th 2018 consent this is a consent oh it is consent so we don't have to do anything right we vote on the consent agenda we don't actually you don't actually it's just okay alright so then we're going to go to district reports right okay thank you okay administration and engineering are there any reports are there any department James your department right you have the performance status reports in front of you administration, finance, environmental operations and legal full management well I totally lost my place in my mind they'd be more happy to answer any questions so administration and engineering is there something you can answer for me I have to look and see if I highlighted no I didn't highlight anything on that because I had orange so if you want to talk about this or James no yes one quick question what? where's the question if I cannot one quick question for James you can ask James a quick question James on the inflows and outflows where water is going between systems on your report there was 129,000 by the way what are the units on that report is it gallons or is it gallons or is that 129,000 going it was sort of going to a fall tree the version being downed to a search protected so we had to supplement the system of water from the water system and then the system is also shipping most of the water to the pico all the water is that going through any other system or is that direct any other comments to James okay next item is finance put Stephanie up I've got questions on bill pay Chair Henry just because this is the first time we're going through this I just want to point out that this is all grouped under one when you say a different item that works but it's all grouped under one agenda item so for purposes of Brown Act and so on it's one item but I understand you're stepping through it part of the time it's just sort of a question okay so I think on the bill pay some of these that you probably won't answer some what's the matter okay there's a continuing litigation in the parking lot do we got a knife okay so I think this might be a question for about the Olympia Patrol service there's a bill in here for $650 is that a monthly bill is that and what exactly did they do they they lived in the past the Olympia watershed has had problems with a lot of motorcycle and vehicle trespass outside of the trail areas and it causes a lot of disruption to the environment there it's a sensitive habitat area and so they hired the land trust a number of years ago to go and patrol the area and send us a report of illegal abuses that are happening on the property and so that's what that $600 was for so do you look at that on a regular basis to see if that's money that's being spent wisely or yeah, we're always keeping track of the reports and if there's wires of fences we go out and fix the fences and they maintain if there's safety or hazard areas where a tree falls down or a tree is partially falling down and it might cause some kind of risk for users on the property if open to the public access there so we use those reports we don't have enough staff time to go out there and be monitoring on a regular basis ourselves so we have to do that it's a great cost thank you I don't mean to totally hog this item if you guys want to say something but I'm looking at some of these stream flows they really add up there's about three different bills and I realize we need to do stream flow I guess I'm always at my question is are we putting RFPs out for some of this stuff or are we just saying hey we've been conducting a stream flow and temperature monitoring program for the last four years the San Lorenzo river with regard to our surface water diversions and how they impact total flow on the San Lorenzo river and temperature on the San Lorenzo river which is a critical aspect of stream health for fish for fish health for fish success mostly salmon so I think I'm hoping that when we have these workshops that we've been talking about tonight that would be one of the key aspects that we're discussing what we've learned from that monitoring program and how that informs the next phase of what our program is moving towards is more conductive use making sure that we're enhancing stream flow and making sure fish habitat is taken care of while we sustainably manage our water supply in the groundwater areas thank you so Stephanie this LAIF local agency investment fund can you tell us about that yeah on the cash section so late is a common area that a lot of government agencies will invest their money in their pool the district used to have a lot more money sitting in late a couple years ago the Santa Cruz County fund similarly operated was generating better returns and so we started to keep more of our money with the county there's pros and cons to each outside of just the interest that it earns alone currently though LAIF has started to now outcrawl Santa Cruz County fund and so this past month in November we actually transferred $500,000 into the late fund to start to gain some of the better interest there LAIF only allows you to hold one account with them so there's no possibilities of being able to have sub accounts for different things for example we did just recently close on the $2 million probation take loan one of the lender's requirements was that the money they sent sit in its own separate fund so that money we had wired to the county and the county created a sub fund for us to be able to hold that $2 million separately as we draw down the new payments so each of them have some flexibilities but right now since there is what I do a more significant increase in the interest rates for LAIF we are going to start to migrate some of our money over there I didn't mean to hog this so does anybody else have like there's more finance in here, more bills there's environmental, there's operations and legal yes you want to say something so on the environmental report I wasn't exactly sure what the context was it looked like there was a mix in the report of potentially historical things and current things and I was a little confused so for example under climate adaptation there's an inventory of 2017 the report is providing the additional items of October 18th board's agenda so I wasn't sure if the report is talking about what you've done what's happening currently or whether it's a full historical retrospective of the two current it's mostly current it's mostly all the things that you're working on currently so with climate adaptation there's several efforts that we're working for writing a climate action plan as part of that inventory and we recently received the report from like a month ago we received the report from a verification their party verification on our inventory so that is disgusting there okay so on public outreach there's interviews Rick Rogers interviewing several times two weeks in mid October I'm trying to just make sure when I'm reading this am I reading this from the point of view of everything that's happened up to this point over some period of time or is it specifically about last month or last quarter or last week well some things are ongoing right so that one looks like something I must have missed I didn't pull it out but usually we have I have the most current efforts that are going on with regard to that we haven't done another interview with KBCZ since that one so I didn't remove it but if we were to do another one because we have a contract with them I'll put the most recent one there and who's responsible for all our Facebook and social media postings who in staff handles that we do that okay thank you any other questions oh Tony you have a question actually I have a question question and I'm sorry that I don't understand this I just want to try to understand when you were talking about those the studies the care of the fish and everything and you know I think here sounds a value we really care about the environment I just want to understand is that pay for those kind of studies is that something that all water districts do do they all I would think that would be like the responsibility of the state or something is that normal well not all water districts get water from surface water and so not all water districts have an environmental department and this water district gets about 50% of their water supply from surface water and that does have in fact on a dangerous species we are in a bio-diverse area where we have a lot of species that are impacted by human activities more so than other areas where there are less bio-diverse species does that mean that we want to ensure that we're not going to be overfusing the water and not going to be endangering them so therefore the mistake or whoever the federal government won't come after us it's okay you have to stop using that water so this is kind of a way to prevent that from happening yeah and it's been affected okay the city of Santa Cruz has been in this for 10 years to the same extent of what we're doing now what the stream of flow is on there I just want to make sure that we that rate cares that it's appropriate that we should be paying for that yeah the city of Santa Cruz does have a much more robust environmental department than we do many people on staff hydrologists and their environmental compliance department has got four people or five people their water conservation department has four or five people they have a public relations department they have they do all those things and their way they've been in this and their way they're much more customer based but they also get their water from a similar situation okay well thank you very much I appreciate it Lou you had your hand up Dr. Bruce do you see any benefit in integrating some of the things that we've learned on Monday at this symposium into the environmental thing absolutely thank you we're sort of like channel each I was waiting for the directors reports and directors communications to point out that the thing that we got to enjoy on Monday but absolutely and that's why Jen and Carly were both in attendance and there's I think a great great opportunity she was there I saw her I said hello to her miss that sorry short answer yes particularly the precipitation studies are in great interest great lady on the financial side of it we said it was $650 a month to invest it's a valuable resource I'm lost for it whoever's doing they are they have authority they'll call in help if they see no they're not in enforcement it's just a monitoring so if they see something and then let us know right Mark can you say something a few questions one's addressed to seven questions to Jen regarding before the previous general manager vacated his position and there was a discussion of a pending loan application for capital facilities and I'd like to know what the amount was and what's the status of that no that's happening so that's still the USDA loan so we still haven't that's still in the submittal phase we still haven't even gotten official word back from USDA what was the total amount estimated 8.2 it started like 6.5 8.3 so we're going to hear back from them I was on the phone with them today and they were hoping to get us answers back by 12.31 that's coming up pretty soon the second question is seems like we're entering into a regional sharing water agreement relationship conjective use essentially benefiting mostly Scott's Valley I'm hoping that the future board will be through their membership will be involved in how that sharing of water through conjective use will affect our current demand here within the Valley in terms of its rate payers and the cost the potential cost changes or cost increases that affect rates I want to keep that on our radar thank you anybody else have questions in these department status reports like operations James would love to answer questions I can't just want to fail okay so I guess we kind of skipped right to committee reports we can there haven't been very many committee meetings so just engineering and lead on so you don't have anything to say I'm not on either of those committees so no that's true you're not although you're soon going to be an engineer but I'm not psychic really I would have thought by now you wouldn't have don't know what we would have said okay alright directors reports directors communications have you got a communication Lou kind of did the preview of whatever I was going to say on Monday I was able to play a hostess to the California's fourth climate change adaptation assessment and there was a dual location presentation and UC Santa Cruz was attended by about 60 people we had a series of speakers who were presenting research and findings about the status of climate change impacts California's Central Coast and the attendees were able to hear as we pointed out studies that indicated variability in temperature variability in precipitation sea level rise impacts and its consequential impacts saltwater intrusion into aquifers and cliff erosion estuary impacts for us here it's more likely that we're going to have impacts in precipitation changes a lot more and a lot less and because of higher temperatures and higher evapotranspiration and ever increasing risk of fire so I'm sure Jen and Carly also took away from the event and are going to be integrating into the work of the environmental committee and all of our Associated Watershed Management and Planning and I've back in the day when I was on another water board and that used to be the San Marloreta base and remember people from UCSC coming out and talking about all we're going to get more rain more droughts the rain is going to be worse the droughts are going to be worse pretty scary stuff anybody else on director communications we haven't been directors too long to communicate but I think I've been talking a lot anyway Ed once paid me a dollar to be quiet for one hour so if I get too bad maybe somebody will offer to pay me oh Bill you're engineering but you didn't have a meeting we went over the basic stuff but I did got interested in asset management and computer modeling etc and that was what I was talking about I didn't really know some of the stuff that we already have but I did reach out to an expert in the field he's the guy that I used to work for and I said at the meeting Rick and some of the staff are going to go there on Wednesday and he's just going to give like an hour an hour and a half for our speech and I'm sure it should be helpful to hear from that expert on that and then possibly we can discuss that more in engineering committee meetings alright so board of directors meeting agenda items there was a list here and I would like to see Santa Margarita listed in this group because there's been all those meetings every month but I never heard anybody come back from the meeting and really say much of anything of what was going on I do know from talking to the facilitator starting in January there are going to be public meetings on Saturdays in various locations Scotts Valley San Lorenzo sorry they'll all be at the Felton community hall all of them will be the second Saturday of the month they've been scheduled and they went out this week we did do a notice there'll be other venues it will be in the paper and things like that will be coming up but we just did the social media blast this week it'll be the second Saturday of the month, January, February and March the second Saturday of the month I believe the first one is on January 12th it will be on Land, Houston Water Supply and it will be at the Felton Town Hall to get the hands at nine so even Scotts Valley is going to come over to Felton everyone should be coming to Felton we're only doing that in one place we'll get there we'll get you there the parking is so terrible and the sound is so bad from the traffic I don't know why they didn't try Zion anyway so I'd like that at least to be on the agendas so that those of us who are on that committee can come back and give a report so people know what's going on because I think that's an issue that people really don't know what's going on and so they can get a lot of wild ideas or maybe they'll get the right ideas this list is just a partial list and now that there's a chair a chair we'll sit down and start developing a schedule with these lists and get more input because there's a bunch of other things that, you know, the website there's different things that staff is ready to move ahead on but the plan is to bring the stuff in front of you I know there's a lot of these issues I was just specially concerned about right and we'll we need to update this strategic plan sooner than later because then that for a lot of us will fall in and then we'll get on a schedule and so staff can prepare the necessary app reports and so forth and get a schedule so we're not chasing up jail for us and we've got to work that for workshops workshops looking forward to does this mean we're about done here we're all done so we can go we can adjourn for closed session agenda the public comment for closed session okay, public comment I think we should we'll shut down this litigation as quickly as possible and join Mr. Holloway's suit against the other adversaries let's stop wasting our money since you're going on long enough let's go to the court and vacate that case if we can the case of not defending Terry Beer on the vlog that'd be great if we could do it we've got to hire Bruce to go suit somebody Bruce you know I could suit this district so many times and we'll suit a different district well you know every time we're back and forth there's going to be more than I'm going to tell you there was a granite violation that this district was doing that I did not want this district to have to pay to defend I sued Santa Clara County Santa Clara County they're ten times bigger than Santa Cruz County they're a thousand times bigger than this district Santa Clara County I sued them to make the same point so I didn't hurt them much but I made my point I won that case so I could have sued this district many times and the reason I picked this particular case was because this is a way to get private people to pay the district to get money into the district from outsiders that broke the law it's not where you just hit up the district you go sue the district for being a bad actor and they have to pay your attorney and they pay your attorney and all all you do is it's a sting that's a sting that's no fun so I thought this would be a little bit better some of the bad actors to pay so we got about four different cases here you got me versus showcase you got the era versus the district the era versus Heinz and district versus Heinz out of these four cases I think I got the best one because all I have to prove is financial interest in a contract and he admitted it he admitted it in board meeting he admitted it in deposition and he admitted it at trial so it's well established and he owes a financial interest so that's all I have to prove and that's easy now the era suing the district to me this is a terrible thing he's the one that everybody should be focused on he's the one trying to get money out of the district I'm trying to get money into the district and he's trying to take money out the other two suing the attorney how often does that work I mean you read the paper how often do people sue their attorneys and it actually works and I think the district has a much better case than the era because at least the district paid for the attorney that didn't represent them well but the era got free legal defense and accepted it and anyway of these four cases I think mine's the easiest to prove so I'm frustrated it takes four years to do these things or eight or whatever it's going to be okay so any other public comment on closed session I think before we close we'll take a 10 minute recess before we go into closed session a recess okay we're having a recess 10 minutes and it's not okay