[0:05] Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to make a quick announcement before we start. District 6 chairperson, Tony

[0:12] Estrimera has requested to attend today's board meeting remotely for medical reasons. In compliance

[0:18] with AB2449. During the roll call, please state for the record if any individuals over 18 years

[0:25] page or present in the room. And if so, what the individual's general relationship to you is,

[0:32] please note that in compliance with AB2449, all votes taken in today's meeting will be conducted

[0:39] by a roll call vote. As a reminder, your camera must remain on.

[0:46] Okay, Director Bounder, Director Bell, Director Eisenberg, absent, Director Shua, Vice Chair

[0:57] Santas, Director Verella, absent, Chair Estimera.

[1:03] Hi, thank you madam chair, there's no one in the room, just me.

[1:10] So at this time we're going to go into closed session, we have a number of items, so we'll

[1:15] back up on a clock. Thank you.

[1:20] Yeah, for the director Rebecca Eisenberg, directors here. Thank you.

[1:24] And Mr. Chair before we go in a close session with respect to item 2.1,

[1:28] the claims or other writings giving rise to this close session are available for inspection

[1:32] in accordance with the Brown Act. Thank you. Thank you.

[2:52] Mr. Chair, are you here also okay?

[2:57] Mr. Chair, Tony,

[3:08] are you getting in response to him? Yeah, okay.

[3:12] Yeah, Tony, it's up.

[3:14] You got it.

[3:16] Right.

[3:18] We'll call the meeting in the order, please.

[3:24] So we'll go back.

[3:25] We have the district council report on the closed session.

[3:28] Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[3:29] Carlos Loreana, District Council.

[3:31] With respect to the board met in closed session with all directors participating and with respect to item 2.1.

[3:37] Direction was given to staff.

[3:39] With respect to item 2.2 on a motion by chair.

[3:42] Mr. Maris seconded by Director Shua and a vote of 6 to 1 with Director Eisenberg voting

[3:46] no, the board at CEO Rick Calendor's request has placed Rick Calendor on paid an

[3:52] administrative leave beginning March 15th, 2025, and lasting until further notice.

[3:57] The board has further directed that CEO Calendor make himself available for interviews

[4:01] in any workplace investigations upon commencement of paid administrative leave.

[4:06] With respect to item 2.3, no reportable action was taken, with respect to item 2.4 on

[4:11] motion by Director Verella, seconded by Vice Chair Santos, and a vote of 6 to 1 with the

[4:16] Director Eisenberg voting. No, the board directed staff to file an answer in the action

[4:20] identified in the agenda disclosure for this item. Thank you. Thank you, Council.

[4:55] I will have the

[4:57] move everything forwards so we'll just go right

[5:00] Right through the, we'll just go right to the agenda and sometime during the meeting we'll take a 10 minute break, just so we can take a break in between.

[5:13] So we'll move right along to 3.3 time open, public comment on any item that under agenda.

[5:20] Now's the time for any members of the public that might want to address us on any issue that's under agenda today.

[5:27] Madam Clerk, do we have any requests?

[5:30] Thank you chair.

[5:31] We have no requests to speak at this time.

[5:33] Thank you.

[5:34] Then we'll move right along to 3.4.

[5:37] Receive the safe clean water and natural flood protection program.

[5:39] It depends on the monitoring companies and the reports of this school year.

[5:44] News.

[5:45] Good afternoon.

[5:46] Good afternoon chair.

[5:47] Mr. Mariam.

[5:48] Members of the board.

[5:48] My name is Luis Piniac.

[5:49] I serve as an assistant officer over seeing the coordination and alignment of several key programs

[5:53] to which are the Safe Clean Water and the CIP Capital Improvement Programs.

[5:58] So every year, the Independent Monitoring Committee meets to assess the previous

[6:01] years progress of our Safe Clean Water Programmer projects.

[6:04] They do this by looking back at its review of our Valley Water Safe Clean Water report.

[6:08] And in this case, they review the annual report for fiscal years 2023 to 2024.

[6:15] IMC, Chair, Jeffrey Hare is participating via Zoom today due to a scheduling conflict.

[6:19] However, here in person is one of our newest IMC members representing district

[6:23] for, which is Vice Chair Susan Landrie, who will present the IMC report today.

[6:29] And then we'll pause for questions in an item 3.5, our business planning analysis unit

[6:33] manager Jessica Collins will present value waters management response to that report.

[6:38] Thank you, it was

[6:47] good afternoon, Mr. Landrie.

[6:49] Oh, hi. So as he mentioned, I'm Susan Landrie. I think I know most of you on the board.

[6:55] I was appointed by Jim Bell and this is my first year, I'm currently the vice chair.

[7:03] You always see our letter from the independent monitoring committee so I'm just going to kind of quickly summarize.

[7:10] So as a board, we wish to state our appreciation and recognition to staff for the timely response and assistance in preparing the report.

[7:21] I am C at the first meeting in December set up subcommittees to review the safe water clean water program progress and to make this report today.

[7:34] There were six subcommittees. E-tone was around a priority area A through F plus the appendix of the financial report.

[7:42] We had General Recommendations, they were broken into three categories, A, procedural recommendations, B, program recommendations and C specific recommendations.

[7:56] Overall, the IFC members agree with the status of each item in the preport from the fiscal year 2324 Safe Clean Water Program Annual Report.

[8:07] procedural recommendations. We've had some problems getting a quorum and part of it is

[8:14] each district does not currently have two representatives. So we strongly encourage you to

[8:19] make sure that everybody has two representatives.

[8:24] Also, the public is becoming more and more

[8:28] aware of the impacts of climate change. Staff should provide more specific details on how some

[8:34] the proposed construction projects are actually beneficial in this context.

[8:40] Specifically something like Anderson Reservoir provide more information

[8:45] how effects climate change.

[8:48] The city continues to recommend staff work on improving the presentation.

[8:55] We got kind of nitpicky of colors of the bar charts and size of fonts

[9:00] and too much widespread space on the page, but overall the report was well prepared.

[9:07] Regarding program recommendations, generally the committee recommends that the annual report

[9:13] should provide greater clarity as to specific sources of funding for each different

[9:19] project and include a more detailed explanation and description of the sources of that income.

[9:25] That was program requirements, under specific recommendations, one of the things that's very

[9:31] apparent on water district projects is the jurisdictional complexities and that includes

[9:37] permitting external funding and inflammatory factors.

[9:42] The committee would request a presentation from staff about the relative overall impact of these

[9:48] jurisdictional complexities as it progresses through the next year and look at some

[9:55] innovative approaches that the committee could understand what valuable water district may be doing.

[10:00] The financial appendix was reviewed and requests that more information explaining the purpose and importance of long-term debt, repayment, timeline, debt costs and different financing options that may be available and how those support the program goals.

[10:20] So that's some re of our report.

[10:24] The one thing we do want is some tours and presentation.

[10:28] We have four listed.

[10:30] Ceratoga Creek has a TVMobile Anderson Dam

[10:34] size of the retrofit and coyote Creek flood protection.

[10:38] And the last one was a hail Creek enhancement pilot project.

[10:43] It's a geomorphological.

[10:45] We do have the channel in a constrained situation.

[10:49] it's pilot program and we thought that one would also be good to present. So at this point

[10:55] that's my presentation. If you have questions, I don't know if you're interactive to me or

[11:02] Great. Thank you, Ms. Landrieg. Well, yeah, when any board member asks you questions,

[11:08] we'll have you come up. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

[11:14] Yes, Ms. Chair, we got Dr. Shua.

[11:19] Yeah, direct to Shua.

[11:22] Good.

[11:22] Thank you, Chief.

[11:23] Is there questions for Ms. Landrie?

[11:25] It's not a question.

[11:27] Okay, sorry.

[11:28] The request for our Ms. Landrie, that I read it in your report that the report is to have a full

[11:35] IFC committee.

[11:37] And then the year that I was on the board's representative on the IMC, I heard this

[11:46] constantly that this is a working committee that everybody wrote their his or her slave

[11:53] said then actually do work, not just receiving report from our staff, so maybe you can

[12:01] stress the importance for the, well generally the I know the clerk stays on top of you know

[12:09] So I'll ask the clerk to review the membership and let direct us know if there are any vacancies

[12:21] so that they can make immediate appointments.

[12:24] Yeah, that will be great.

[12:26] I have a quick question for our clerk of the board that does the appointed IMC member needs to

[12:38] recite within a specific district in order for that? No, as much as Santa Clara County. Correct.

[12:46] Okay. Okay. Thank you. I think that's that's important that that that definitely gives

[12:51] a more room for the director to find the appropriate person to serve on the

[12:57] the committee. Yes. Thank you. Okay, loose. We have director Rebellard. Oh, sorry,

[13:05] director Bellard.

[13:08] I actually was going to say exactly what director Shua said. And so I'm just

[13:14] going to underscore what she said. And I want to say for the record that my two seats are full. And

[13:21] I just want to peer. Blash publicly shame. Whoever my fellow directors are in terms of

[13:29] not having your slots full. This is a lovely part of our democracy to have folks serving in this role,

[13:37] so I would just encourage my colleagues to get their positions full. Mr. Chair, we have a

[13:43] direct horizon group. Thank you. I just want to say I would love to build my seats,

[13:50] but unfortunately everyone I have tried to recruit has looked at what this organization has done to me

[13:57] and wants doesn't want to have anything to do with it. So I'm hoping that can resolve over the time.

[14:03] Well, you claim to have 55,000 folks in your district, so we should be able to find some of them.

[14:08] Next. They're watching. Good. Next. I had somebody else on the there. Is that what you

[14:13] Director Bell, were you on there? John? Anybody else? No. Okay. So, loose.

[14:22] Mr. Chair, there's a point.

[14:24] Some of the committees we need to look at the criteria and change some. An example like a dagger

[14:29] culture. There's been vacancies and we can't fill them, not because people don't want to.

[14:35] Some of the criteria need to be changed so it encourages more to apply. So that's something

[14:41] you probably can give direction to review some of these committees and we'll go from there. Thank you.

[14:49] Nose? Yes and just for reference we have three vacancies. One in district one in district four

[14:54] and want to restrict seven to your terms.

[14:58] So this concludes this item and we're going...

[15:00] We want to move on to the next item, where Jessica Collins, our business planning analysis unit manager, will provide a response to the IMC report.

[15:08] Thank you. Jessica, good afternoon.

[15:16] Good afternoon.

[15:18] Chair, Mr. Marra and members. The Board, I'm pleased to be here this afternoon to present the management response to the IMC's annual report and review of the FY24 safety motor annual report.

[15:30] Before diving in, I did want to take a moment to thank the IMC members.

[15:34] This is no easy task.

[15:36] It takes a lot of hard work over the last few months.

[15:40] And I'm as always very impressed and appreciative of the role that you play and how seriously

[15:47] you take that role in the amount of time and effort that you put into your jobs.

[15:52] I also wanted to take a moment to thank bellywater staff that participated in this year's review process.

[15:57] There are everyone from the Secretary Water Project team that is under my unit as well as all of the project managers that are involved in development of the report and working with the IMC.

[16:11] Let's move on to the presentation.

[16:12] I think we have PowerPoint.

[16:15] Yes.

[16:16] Thank you.

[16:21] Okay, great.

[16:22] So in today's presentation, I'm going to be reviewing the management response to the IMC report.

[16:26] And allow the Board to, or ask the Board to accept the response and provide any direction as needed.

[16:37] So first I did just want to acknowledge that in review of the FY24 in your report,

[16:42] the IMC did agree with the status of all 32 projects, and there were no project specific recommendations, as mentioned.

[16:48] There were procedural and program level recommendations and in summary, management acknowledges and agrees to address or implement all of the recommendations.

[16:57] these include taking steps to ensure that each district has two representatives,

[17:05] continuing to provide more specific details on how some of the projects are beneficial

[17:09] in addressing climate change, using more differentiated colors, lines or symbols and maps

[17:13] graphs or presentations to improve accessibility, providing additional details to better explain

[17:19] the differences between the different funding sources and including highlighting and explaining

[17:25] any change in confidence levels from previous years including information in the summary chapter explaining

[17:30] the purpose and importance of long-term debt financing and finally exploring the use of a

[17:35] site paper for annual reports. I stated earlier there were no project specific recommendations

[17:41] and that brings us to today's staff recommendations for the board which are to accept the

[17:45] management response and provide any additional direction as needed on the stand-up and for questions.

[17:52] Thank you. Thank you. Questions?

[17:57] Vice chair, any?

[17:59] No, no, no, no. Okay. Okay. Any public comments?

[18:04] Thank you, Chair. There are no requests to speak at this time.

[18:08] All right. Well, thank you very much for the presentation.

[18:11] And also, thank you very much, Mr. Landrieff, for both the service and the report.

[18:15] Certainly, do appreciate all the time and effort that you and all the members put into your work.

[18:20] Thank you.

[18:25] I would like to say that.

[18:26] Yes, thank you.

[18:30] Second.

[18:33] All right, Roko.

[18:36] Director Ballard.

[18:38] Director Bell.

[18:39] Director Eisenberg.

[18:42] Director Shewak.

[18:43] Yes.

[18:44] Vice chair centers.

[18:44] Yes.

[18:45] Director Verella.

[18:47] Chair Estomer.

[18:48] Aye.

[18:49] Motion carries.

[18:50] Thank you Madam Chair.

[18:51] We move right along to 3.6, except the 2024 board advisory, I would close to the water advisory committee, environmental water resources committee.

[19:00] And the commissioners of accomplishments reports.

[19:07] We have Mr. Chair, Mr. Peter Vendite.

[19:12] Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Vendite.

[19:13] Good afternoon, all members of the board and you two, Chair.

[19:19] How are you today?

[19:20] Good.

[19:20] Thank you.

[19:21] My honor.

[19:22] So things must be good for you.

[19:23] Thank you.

[19:25] Yeah.

[19:26] We've made some accomplishments.

[19:28] Although we have to keep in mind that everything's in progress still because basically,

[19:33] a lot of the things that we've dealt with our informational.

[19:38] There has not been a lot of motions on certain items.

[19:43] You know, we elected the chair in 2024, which is myself and vice chair.

[19:46] And we were reelected again in January by the committee.

[19:50] And we are, we kind of approve the accomplishment report, even though there's not much to it.

[19:58] One of the accomplishments was that we,

[20:00] We moved and voted to hopefully keep aggregates down, because that's the biggest impact on agriculture

[20:10] would be taxes and the utilities that it takes to get that water on the ground, keeping in

[20:16] mind at the majority of agriculture in South County now and we are totally dependent on groundwater.

[20:21] So for us, that's one of the biggest issues that we want to make sure that this board

[20:27] and the water district itself maintains those groundwater supplies the quality and the levels as best

[20:35] if they can. We are totally dependent on groundwater.

[20:42] So one of the emotions that we voted on was to keep

[20:44] the rates frozen. If that's possible, it's just a recommendation. The board does what it wants to do.

[20:49] So that's, you know, this is long as we can keep it down for agriculture so that we can survive.

[20:53] we are the low-run of the economic ladder in this valley now, where we used to be the top-run

[20:59] when this board was formed in one of those at the 30s, I believe. So we've received a lot of

[21:07] information and reports on the master plan, the value waters, master plan. We've made comments on

[21:13] that but we have not voted on any of the recommendations. It's still informational and that's still

[21:19] progress, the one water, upper-power, water shed plan, that's all these issues are in progress,

[21:28] even though we've accomplished commenting on them and making recommendations.

[21:34] We've also discussed

[21:35] the benefits that agriculture has when it comes to mitigating climate change and carbon sequestration,

[21:44] where they only industry in the valley that has the capacity and the capability to sequester

[21:49] carbon. I don't think there's any other industry in the value. There's organizations that can help

[21:55] and there's, of course, the open space trust that help, but agriculture is going to be the key

[22:00] to sequestering carbon, because that seems to be the big issue at all the meetings I go to

[22:05] is climate change in carbon. So we've got to keep that in mind going forward when it comes

[22:14] to

[22:25] that we've discussed most of the work we've done has been taking in information and trying to form policy recommendations to the board.

[22:36] We've worked on the work plan and I'm working very closely as the chair with Darren and Vince.

[22:44] We are trying to come up with the, first of all, we're trying to figure out how to maintain

[22:51] a form of this board since there aren't many farmers left in the county and most of them

[22:57] that are left are Asian and Hispanic.

[23:00] So there's language barriers and a lot of those folks don't want to get involved in the committee

[23:05] because they don't, they fear government.

[23:09] Let me just put it that way, you know, so they don't get involved.

[23:12] So we're Darren and Vincent I've been talking about maintaining sort of an abridged committee if that's possible if that's allowed in the charter. That's one of the plans we're discussing.

[23:25] Because I think it's very important that we have an ag water advisory committee.

[23:33] And even if it's a small one, it's very important.

[23:38] So, that's pretty much it for accomplishments other than, you know, the climate goal.

[23:45] That seems to be the big issue and Ag is going to play a very big role in that, because

[23:52] all the agencies that I deal with and all the committees and boards that I send on, the

[23:56] big pushes for climate mitigation.

[23:59] So, thank you very much for your time and I hope that helps.

[24:03] Thank you Mr. Van Dyke for your work and your report and also your service.

[24:09] Any questions for the board? Mr. Vetscher?

[24:12] Yeah, Mr. Chair, we have Director Verella.

[24:14] Yes. Director Verella?

[24:20] Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Van Dyke for coming up and giving this to you.

[24:23] Yeah, John.

[24:24] So I think as a member of the committee,

[24:27] I know, along with my colleagues, we're very committed to agriculture.

[24:33] agriculture is what this valley represents and has represented for many, many years.

[24:40] Way before we, we more from Valley of Hearts Delight to Silicon Valley and a very, very

[24:47] short period of time.

[24:50] What I see happening, what we see happening in the South County where mostly of the agriculture

[24:53] is happening, it still exists, is the two largest cities in that area both Morgan Hill.

[25:00] And the city of Gilroy are annexing property and building homes and building more residential communities.

[25:06] And that's taking away infrastructure and taking away, not infrastructure, but taking away life that are agriculture.

[25:17] So I don't think I can stop that, it's growth, it's continuing to grow.

[25:22] But we've seen exponential, I've lived in Morgan Hill 48 years. And when I moved there, there was less than 20,000 people were,

[25:29] over 150,000 people now. And Gilroy is no different. So there is an encroachment of land going towards

[25:36] development that's taken away agriculture in our communities. So, and much of this can be stopped,

[25:41] and can be avoided by attending left-go and leading left-go meetings are represented in Mr. Bell.

[25:47] It can be a spokesperson on that issue. With the ad folks, if that's something that you think is necessary

[25:54] to do, to stop this growth pattern that's happening. Other than that, it's going to continue,

[26:00] unless we can find ways for it now to continue. But from the perspective that

[26:04] aggregates, I know that we will continue, in my opinion, to support agriculture and maintain

[26:10] those rates, as long as agriculture is continuing in this region, to support your businesses as they

[26:17] are existing today. So that's a commitment from this Board of Directors.

[26:22] Thank you, John.

[26:24] I attend quite a bit of, I attend the Lafcom meetings too, and I think that what we need

[26:31] is an advocate, and I think your organization has a lot of power.

[26:35] You can advocate for us on the local level with the supervisors, the planning department and

[26:43] Lafcom.

[26:44] Has your supervisor been there for you, has that individual been there?

[26:47] not since the person attend any of your meetings?

[26:52] No. No, she doesn't. And she hasn't had staff. I've reached out to her as my position on the

[26:58] Land Trust Anna and at Loma Create a Resource Conservation District. And I have gotten no response

[27:04] with several times. So I don't think she's really interested in that. Her push is more towards

[27:10] housing and social justice type issues. No, I don't know if she realizes how important

[27:16] agriculture is especially for the what I consider the underserved communities, because they rely on

[27:22] act for jobs and at a lot of times housing. And that continues all the way into the Pahoto Valley

[27:29] the region as well with the farmers in that particular area. Mostly Latinos in that particular area have

[27:34] language barrier issues and being able to communicate their responses to that part of the region in that

[27:40] county of Monterey County area as well and Santa Cruz County. So it's a problem that we all need to be

[27:46] something he wants to say on this issue. Yeah, well, I, I, I, I attended the

[27:50] Barrow Resilience meeting yesterday, which involved Sanctuary's

[27:55] Monterey Sanctuary, Sanctuary, and, and, and we said on that, that

[27:59] she's doing, and Zoe, Dingerie was there. She, and she always attends those

[28:04] meetings. So we, we have a good relationship, but there's, there's a lot of

[28:06] issues facing the Barrow River watershed. Well, most of them, like you said,

[28:11] have to do with development. Yes. And with that development comes non-point

[28:14] source pollution and that's becoming a worse and worse and problem and also there's the issue of

[28:21] the wildlife corridors and the and the of course the encroachment and development on the

[28:26] Class A soils. Fortunately at this point, east of Giroi still has a 48-year minimum zoning that

[28:32] that could change with the leadership in the county and of course there is there is a agricultural

[28:38] farm plan that the planning department put together through Michael Mehan

[28:43] where they help with marketing and issues that involve farmers.

[28:50] The biggest problem is that there's a lot of small farmers and they're from what I consider underserved classes.

[28:59] And they're the ones that are not being represented.

[29:01] I agree.

[29:02] One of the things if I might, through the chair, you're a well aware of Sergeant Ranch in that region.

[29:08] You know that property is for sale.

[29:10] I know that properties for sale. Again, we are land trust has jurisdiction over property on the east side of that property.

[29:18] On the east side, we have land on the east side that we have easement on 388 years or so.

[29:25] And you have a piece of property on the district has a piece of the acre parcel or so that we're trying to get somebody to farm.

[29:32] Well, if there's a way that their land trust can acquire that entire property that would be under your control for future otherwise it could be a target for development.

[29:39] I don't think that will be because it's in the flood plain and I don't I don't think the county's gonna

[29:44] allow that to happen down in that area, but I don't know I don't think the land trust can

[29:51] afford to buy the easement off that property if you you know you might want to call

[29:55] Talk to our office, our executive director,

[29:58] Tena Heizner, and...

[30:00] If you want to donate any easement, we want to do a range of meetings we can talk about. I can do that. Let's do it. Okay. Any other questions? Any other questions, Mr. Vice Chair?

[30:12] Well, Tony, I might have accidentally cut somebody else someone to go to director Eisenberg.

[30:16] Director Eisenberg.

[30:19] Thank you. Mr. Van Dyke, thank you for your volunteer work.

[30:26] I have attended, as you may have noticed, I have attended every single agricultural committee meeting,

[30:33] even though I am not allowed to directly serve on it.

[30:39] As you know, I am from an agricultural state of Wisconsin and the agricultural, the farming community,

[30:48] was deeply influential on my family, my values and the culture with which in which I grew up.

[30:54] And so I also have gratitude to you for your work as a farmer, as an organic farmer, as a, you know, in a community of farmers who have been supporting each other and helping each other as farmers do, you know, through tough times and I admire your work and I'm truly grateful for us as they often say we don't need computers or cars, but we do need food. Thank you. So you sustain us.

[31:24] I also, you know, and with that said, I hear your need for an advocate and I fully agree with that.

[31:34] I wish I could be your advocate on a formal basis, you know, again, given my values enough bringing,

[31:40] but perhaps I can, but as you know, I can't because of the decisions made by my colleagues, but in the

[31:52] use these words to encourage my colleagues who have the opportunity to serve more directly

[31:58] to explore measures that you brought up regarding regenerative farming. It is a very

[32:05] big exciting field of regenerative farming practices. There are some agricultural efforts,

[32:14] communities, organizations that are starting to leverage the trillion dollars lying around in

[32:20] carbon credits, and I do think that value water can have a role in helping open up this

[32:28] flow of funds. I also hope that I can do a better job of convincing my colleagues to let

[32:36] go of some of the most financially and environmentally damaging proposed projects like the Delta

[32:44] tunnel, and like the Pacheco Dam. So that you can have lower water rates and less pollution,

[32:54] which not only would be helpful to you, but would be helpful to everyone. So again, thank you

[32:59] for your work. I deeply appreciate it. I appreciate it. Mr. Chair, let me see, is anyone else

[33:03] Jim, anybody? Well, this is real quick when I go culture chair, Van Dyke, director of a

[33:10] There's numerous times I've asked and requested and I hope you guys will hook up with the Delta

[33:15] Mandoda group. I think I'll give you more leverage. This way you can work with our government

[33:19] relations and see if we can get some bills or some support and other areas and make water

[33:24] conservation continually, which you guys do a great job. Yeah. I wish to share it back to you.

[33:30] I'm kind of motion to accept the report.

[33:34] So, there's the motion by Santos, the second by Eisenberg, director Eisenberg.

[33:38] Excuse me, Mr. Chair.

[33:40] Sorry, I have another speaker.

[33:41] Oh, I'm sorry.

[33:42] Oh, Charles, Ice from the EWRC.

[33:47] Oh, okay, sorry.

[33:49] Oh, nope.

[33:50] I'm sorry.

[33:51] Good afternoon, Chair.

[33:53] Sorry about that.

[33:54] Sorry, it's a combined agenda item.

[33:56] I know there's a lot of questions.

[33:57] Yes, I'm sorry.

[33:58] It's a very welcome.

[33:58] Thank you.

[34:00] So thank you.

[34:01] I'm going to be quick for the sake of time.

[34:02] I understand you got a lot on your agenda.

[34:04] So again, Charles, Ice, I'm the current chair,

[34:06] as well as past year's chair for the environment

[34:08] and water resources committee.

[34:09] here to present the accomplishments report, which is included in your board packets, so I'm not going to go through it again.

[34:16] I'm here to answer any questions, and I was going to ask which had already been stated by several of you already to

[34:23] please continue to appoint all your a lot, a lot of appointments that you can not only this committee, but all the committees.

[34:29] The more voices her, the better representation of better product.

[34:32] So with that, I will conclude. Thank you.

[34:34] Thank you sir. Questions? I missed the vice chair.

[34:42] Questions of comments?

[34:43] No, okay. Don't. Okay. All right. Then I'll let it take that motion.

[34:50] I'm sorry. Who was the motion?

[34:54] The second.

[34:56] It was Dr. Shua and Vice Chief.

[35:05] Okay, I believe it was Director Santas and Director Eisenberg. Yes. Motion and second. Okay, roll call.

[35:11] Okay, roll call. Director, oh, Director Baller, Director Bell, Director Eisenberg, Director Shua, yes. Vice Chair Santas? Yes. Director Verella, chair, chair.

[35:24] Hi. Motion carries. Thank you. The eyes have it will move right along to 3.7, which is to consider those committees.

[35:31] work plans and your work plans. If there are no questions, comments, I'll in the

[35:37] table of motion. So move, Santos. Yes, Director.

[35:45] Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Quick

[35:49] question on the work plan for the water commission. I just really hope that

[35:55] they'll spend the time to do some in-depth understanding of the

[36:02] water utility infrastructure, repair, and

[36:06] rebuild and how is that being a significant part of the

[36:12] water rate. So that we don't repeat the same

[36:15] cycle. Thanks, yeah. Thank you.

[36:19] Yeah, Mr. Chair, did you want to speak on this?

[36:24] Okay, thank you. Go ahead, Chair, back to you.

[36:26] Thank you. All right, I want to take the motion to accept those plans.

[36:32] So move.

[36:34] Okay, motion the second roll call, please.

[36:38] Director Baller. Director Bell. Director Eisenberg.

[36:45] 3.7.

[36:51] Director Shua. Yes. Vice Chair Santos. Yes.

[36:54] Director Verella. Chair Estimera. Hi. Motion carries.

[36:58] All right, the eyes have a 3.8, Dr. Resolution Certifying the final EIR,

[37:07] for the coyote quick selection project and approve the project.

[37:18] What was that?

[37:20] What was that?

[37:20] You had a motion by the record for Rela, second by myself, and director Eisenberg wants a presentation.

[37:26] You recall Mr. Chair?

[37:28] Let's have a short presentation.

[37:30] Okay.

[37:32] Hi.

[37:33] All right.

[37:33] Good afternoon, Chair.

[37:34] As you may remember, so the Board, Vavani, you're put through Deputy Operating Officer

[37:37] Board of Shared Design Construction.

[37:39] I'm going to turn it over to Madhu Tubalu, who is the Engineering Unit Manager, and

[37:42] Andrew Martin, the Environmental Planer for the Project.

[37:45] There will run through slides.

[37:47] We have a very short presentation that we'll watch the project description.

[37:50] Thank you, Vavani.

[37:51] Thank you.

[37:56] All right.

[37:56] Good afternoon, Chair.

[37:57] As you may remember, so the Board.

[37:58] Good afternoon.

[37:59] capital engineering manager in the water shed design and construction division.

[38:06] We go over your previous presentation.

[38:08] We'll briefly talk about the project objectives, project area, overall schedule,

[38:14] then the AR process and the proposed board actions we're hoping to take today.

[38:20] The primary objective of this category,

[38:22] flat production project is to particularly the homes, schools, businesses, and transportation infrastructure

[38:28] from a flat event equivalent to the February 27th event.

[38:31] it is also referred to as a 20 year written period event.

[38:38] And here is a quick overview of the project area.

[38:40] The project is approximately 9 miles long from along the PITICREE and Tali Road being the southern limit of the project and the Montjeque Expressway.

[38:52] Up North is the northern limit of the project.

[38:55] The project was divided into two projects in response to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

[39:02] also refer to as a fork 2020 order to express the construction of the tunnel at Anderson Dam.

[39:09] The initial project that is tied to the forecorder is referred to as a high degree flood management

[39:14] measures project and included construction of like 8500 like linear feet of flood walls between

[39:21] old Auckland road and interstate 280. A hydraulic pressing system like referred to as a geek and

[39:28] and Piler was used for installation of these flood walls to reduce the noise and vibration when we are doing the work next to the residences.

[39:37] And the CITICAL FIT Protection Project, the construction is almost complete, and the staff will be coming back to the board in May for acceptance of the civil work.

[39:47] And the second phase of the project retained its original name CITICAL FIT Protection Project, and it covers approximately 60% of the original nine mile project.

[39:56] This project is currently in design phase, staff prepared and

[40:00] Environmental impact report for this project and is in front of the board for final certification.

[40:07] And the criteria for that protection project consists of like four types of flat protection elements.

[40:12] One is the flat walls. Two types of flat walls. One is a concrete flat wall. And then the other one is a sheep pile flat wall.

[40:18] And then the second type is the passive barriers, which lay at the ground surface. And then they'll get deployed whenever there is a flood event that triggers them.

[40:26] the third one being that emperors are embankments and the final one being the flat gates which are

[40:32] installed in the storm drain network system and so that way they can prevent the back flow

[40:38] when there is a high flow in the creek and here is a quick overview of the project schedule.

[40:45] So as I mentioned earlier, Ketic Creek flood management measures project that is up on the top

[40:51] that's almost the construction is almost complete and it is the project area is ready to handle

[40:56] any flows that are coming out of the new tunnel at the end of the end of the end of the end.

[41:00] And the CITCRIC fluid protection project, the 90% design is complete. And the construction

[41:07] is scheduled to start early to mid next year and will be completed in the before the winter of like

[41:13] 2828. And this construction is also tied to the bigger end of the end of the end of the project.

[41:20] And the project needs to be complete before the stage to the different end of the end of the

[41:26] And let's take acquisitions and the permit regulatory permits coordination is ongoing and we'll be complete by end of this year.

[41:36] Now I'll hand door to Andrew Martin in environmental planner for the year process.

[41:41] Thank you.

[41:45] Afternoon, Characters and board members, some more.

[41:50] Yeah, I'm just going to give you a little rundown of the IR process for this project in November 22,

[41:57] On November 22, 2023, we circulated the notice and preparation for the draft of the IR,

[42:02] notifying the public that we were preparing in the IR. In December 6, 2023, we held a

[42:08] scope meeting to present the project, identify key and environmental issues to be evaluated in the

[42:14] IR and to solicit comments from the public. At that same time, we also notified the local tribes

[42:22] of the opportunity to consult during the IR process, and then in July of 2024, we circulated

[42:30] the draft EIR for a period of 45 days, which closed on August 26, 2024. We held a public meeting

[42:37] on July 25, 2024 to indicate to people how they could comment on the EIR. And then the final EIR

[42:47] was released late last month, we received comments from three agencies and three individuals in the, in the, in the, in the final we are, we responded to all of the comments and also included revisions to the IR and the project description.

[43:07] So, for most, what the, yeah, are concluded is that for most of the resource areas impacts for either less than significant, or there was no impact, however, for some of the impacts.

[43:19] Some of the resource areas impacts needed to be mitigated to less than significant, that included biological resources, cultural resources and tribal cultural resources,

[43:30] geology, soils, and seismicity, hazardous and hazardous materials, vibration and noise and vibration,

[43:38] most of the impact related to noise and vibration and transportation and traffic.

[43:45] Daytime construction activities, including power driving and other noise generating equipment,

[43:51] would have a temporary impact on people and the project vicinity, creating excessive noise levels,

[43:59] Even after all of the feasible mitigation measures are implemented to reduce that impact,

[44:05] the impact would still be significant and therefore is significant and unavoidable.

[44:12] The project team considered a variety of alternatives to proposed project.

[44:18] Most of those were considered and dismissed either because they didn't meet the project objectives.

[44:24] They would not adequately reduce the significant impacts of the project,

[44:28] or they were not technically invisible.

[44:33] It moved forward with two alternatives,

[44:36] the no project alternative,

[44:38] in which none of the project objectives would be met

[44:42] that the project would not be constructed

[44:44] and there would continue to be a flood risk

[44:47] to the community in the future.

[44:49] A second alternative that was evaluated

[44:52] involved acquiring and making enhancements

[44:55] several properties on the east side of Cairdy Creek instead of building.

[45:00] In a football, however, that alternative would not meet all of the project objectives, and therefore was not the environmentally superior alternative.

[45:12] So today, you're being asked to consider the benefits, costs and the benefits of the project, the project would benefit the community by reducing flooding to homes, businesses, transportation infrastructure.

[45:28] It would also ensure that if it was completed by or to construction, prior to operation of the phase 2 diversion system for the Anderson dam, the seismic retrofit project that people would be protected from elevated flows released from the stage 2 diversion system.

[45:48] So today, you're being asked to adopt the resolution,

[45:57] certifying the IR, adopting findings of fact,

[46:01] for all the significant effects of the project,

[46:04] adopting a statement of a variety of considerations,

[46:07] finding that the benefits of the project

[46:12] outweigh the significant unavoidable noise impacts,

[46:15] And finally, adoption and mitigation monitoring reporting program that tracks all of the mitigation measures that would be implemented during project implementation and approve the project.

[46:30] I think that's about it.

[46:32] I guess there's one other thing.

[46:34] Staff anticipates requesting boards adoption of the final plans and specifications and authorization for obtaining construction beds at the beginning of 2026.

[46:43] and starting construction in summer of 2026. That's it. Mr. Chair, we have director Eisenberg.

[46:53] Just a couple brief questions. First, thank you for your hard work and I can know how long this has been going on.

[47:02] And that I think that many people are happy that it has received some additional progress.

[47:10] So my question really is, is that we're supposed to consider the environmental effects of this project and I saw that 120 page documents, you know, which I appreciate, you know, in our attached to this agenda.

[47:26] I'm wondering if you, well, first of all, I want to make sure that the public has an opportunity to speak. I don't know if that has happened on the other agenda item.

[47:32] And so first just putting that out there.

[47:34] Second, I'm wondering if you could summarize

[47:38] for the public and for the board,

[47:40] what the primary objections other than sound were,

[47:44] and how those were resolved.

[47:47] And I guess in particular,

[47:48] I want to understand whether there are any groups

[47:51] that are still unhappy with it,

[47:54] just to assess our risk of litigation.

[47:57] Since there's a lot of litigation against us.

[48:01] I'm going to turn it over to John and his team to respond to those individual comments or anything.

[48:07] As far as I'm aware, we do not have any outstanding comments that have not been answered or any that we have received since posting of this agenda,

[48:15] but I like John.

[48:16] I appreciate it.

[48:18] Thank you.

[48:19] I specifically need to answer to their satisfaction.

[48:21] I'll then, you know.

[48:23] Thank you.

[48:25] Good afternoon, John.

[48:26] Boosh, Rod, Deputy Officer, Watershed, stewardship and planning.

[48:28] Yes.

[48:29] You know, it's a long linear project.

[48:31] So there are impacts that are unavoidable.

[48:35] There were some tree impacts that had to be.

[48:37] We tried to very hard to stay out of the recurring

[48:40] corridor.

[48:41] There were some impacts to believe of that colony

[48:44] that were Jason, and that was the main,

[48:46] the primary biological resource that was at risk,

[48:49] and that had to be mitigated for.

[48:52] How do you tell

[48:55] me?

[48:56] You might need to help me with the details on that.

[49:00] Actually, it was more than one type of bat.

[49:03] It was pallid-bat, Townsend's Bigger Adbat, and Western Redbat.

[49:10] And those two-first species pallid and Bigger Townsend's

[49:15] are have a really low probability of occurrence.

[49:17] The Western Redbat has a moderate probability.

[49:20] Therefore, the mitigation for the species was to do surveys,

[49:25] habitat assessment ahead of time.

[49:28] And if necessary, do habitat modification to discourage

[49:32] roasting by bats in the project vicinity. This wouldn't occur during times when there's

[49:40] during maternity times when the bats are producing offspring or during hibernation times,

[49:48] but this will all be done under the guidance of a qualified biologist and it would all depend on

[49:53] surveys and whether or not the species were present in the project area. And the trees because of course

[49:59] We know each.

[50:00] Given a million baby trees won't replace a mature trees?

[50:04] Well, there were, fortunately, I think, 69 trees totaled it would be impacted by this project

[50:12] and right-parent area. Roughly 47, native and 22, non-native.

[50:20] And, you know, typically

[50:21] for impacts to right-parent habitat, there would have to be some mitigation.

[50:27] that mitigation includes payment into an in-loop fee program and the Valley Habitat Plan

[50:34] as well as paying tree permit fees for tree removal permit fees to the city of San Jose

[50:41] within the city of San Jose jurisdiction. And so those are some of the main ways that we're dealing

[50:47] with loss. So basically paying money in order to destroy mature trees.

[50:56] Yeah, those fees go toward other habitat enhancements elsewhere.

[51:02] Right.

[51:03] Thank you.

[51:06] Just to share that, we get John who's all the way from New Orleans.

[51:13] Anything else, Vice Chair?

[51:16] Yes, we have Director Bell.

[51:18] Director Ballard?

[51:21] I also wanted to make sure we...

[51:24] Thank you so much for the opportunity for the public to comment if there are comments.

[51:28] Typically, I'll wait until after we hear from the public to ask questions.

[51:32] Since we started the question asking process, I'll just file on.

[51:36] We do have one.

[51:37] Okay, great.

[51:39] Well, then I'd love to hear that first before I comment.

[51:41] Thank you.

[51:42] Well, after you did, Clark, it looks like we have caught you.

[51:46] Yes, we have caught you, Irvin, online to speak.

[51:50] Good afternoon, Mr. Irvin.

[51:51] Good afternoon, Chair Estomerra and members of the Board. Can you hear me?

[51:57] Yes.

[51:57] I wanted to just say that I'm really pleased that the in-create crossing will no longer occur.

[52:05] Because that will decrease the impacts a lot.

[52:09] So I'm very happy that I found the alternative solution to use the property that is on your consent calendar for purchase.

[52:18] But I'm also hoping that staff can describe how all the changes since the draft EIR has changed

[52:28] the impacts and mitigations because there have been a lot of changes since the draft EIR.

[52:36] In particular, I'm somewhat concerned about water quality and other impacts due to the

[52:48] created new creek outfalls that will be implemented with the new

[52:57] berms and I don't know if there's going to be any additional maintenance

[53:03] roads or staging areas that it kind of look like that would increase and

[53:09] there might be impacts on grading or runoff and then I'm not sure if that

[53:16] that the acquired property on Brookwood is going to be demolished, what are the impacts of that.

[53:25] The EIR, there's no changes in the EIR and the amount of excavated material,

[53:33] which seems like I have a hard time believing that.

[53:38] Just given all these changes so maybe staff could explain a little bit about the changes

[53:45] since the draft EIR and how that impacts the mitigations and impacts of the project.

[53:56] Thank you.

[54:03] Thank you for your question.

[54:05] There were some changes to the EIR or to the project description as you noted.

[54:11] Removing of the creek crossing was a significant change.

[54:14] It resulted in fewer impacts to right-parent habitat and there were no impacts to in water habitat, which was a big benefit.

[54:25] For the other changes to the project, there were changes to the configuration of flood risk reduction components.

[54:33] as you noted more firms, then had been previously planned,

[54:39] extension of a flood wall in one particular case.

[54:46] And, you know, the impacts were consistent with what was evaluated in the EIR previously.

[54:53] So there was not a significant change that required

[54:59] Good.

[55:00] Additional mitigation, or that would worsen impacts the IR. So that's the long and short of it that, you know, in consideration of the additional changes to the project description in between the draft and finally IR, there were no significant new or worsened impacts because of those changes.

[55:27] And I think Medio, our engineer is going to talk to the book.

[55:32] See to the book on property question.

[55:35] Thank you.

[55:36] Regarding the Brooklyn property that's on the board agenda that's coming up next.

[55:40] So initially that area, we are building like a flood wall that's like approximately 15 feet high.

[55:47] One of the issues is like that area the houses are really close by and there is no easy construction access to get to the back of these properties.

[55:54] So, this property was identified as one of the potential candidates and full acquisition was offered to the property owner and he agreed with it.

[56:04] So, we are going to recommend into the board for full acquisition of this one property that's coming up next in the board agenda.

[56:12] So, and as for as like once the construction is complete, I think our real estate unit will take over and then come a bit to determine like what to do with that property.

[56:27] Thank you for the questions.

[56:36] Thank you for your questions and throughout the battle.

[56:41] Yeah, thank you.

[56:44] So I went to a few of the community meetings because part of this is in my district and that was great to see this progress.

[56:51] And then prior to this agenda, I had to reach out to several folks who live in the area that I met over the course of those community meetings just say,

[56:59] Hey, it's coming, you know, anything else you've, have you been following anything you want to say or communicate? And so I just wanted to relay and give you all a chance to comment on some of the things that you've heard from the community and incorporated and address.

[57:14] And so one of them is, one of the meetings you all, and this is my understanding of the story is, you know, around one of the parks, big park in Nagli Park, you know, it's not particularly attractive to just put a big wall up around the park, and of course the community said we don't want firms, we don't want walls, come up with something better.

[57:38] And you went to the drawing board, and you did.

[57:41] You came up with this disappearing magical wall thing.

[57:44] And I was at the community meeting where you all introduced this concept,

[57:48] and people were like, what is this?

[57:50] And there was this mixture of like,

[57:56] bafflement of skepticism.

[57:59] So I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the wall,

[58:01] since it's new, this wall that's in the ground,

[58:04] when the water seeps in, it's going to pop up.

[58:06] And ways to address some of the skepticism that the community, you know, just because it's a new concept, or a new thing to the community and how we maintain it, how we make sure it's going to work when we need it.

[58:19] So that's one thing that I wanted you to just talk about because it's kind of cool.

[58:24] And then another thing is just, you all know those and it's in the documents, but you noted that there's a lot of sound and construction impacts.

[58:34] and so having that point of contact with the district or that system for when when things aren't

[58:40] going particularly well, the community has someone to be working through, and so that's great.

[58:48] It's there. And so I wanted to highlight that. And then the last thing I wanted to mention for all my

[58:55] my folks in the bike community is, and I did a search in the EIR for the word trail, and it comes

[59:02] up 147 times. Clearly all have been talking with the city of Tenoise and exploring the opportunities

[59:10] to make sure that that whole trail system gets built out and we're coordinating. So I wanted to just

[59:18] give you an opportunity to comment on those conversations as well. And that's it.

[59:22] Yep. Thank you. I think regarding the Asubarir, so there are proposed mainly around the William Street

[59:28] part and the Salmawal Inter part. So these are definitely like a new technology. It's we did use it on other

[59:35] one more value water project and they have been used quite extensively and other parts of the USA. So

[59:43] none of the, they were tested like multiple times during floods and it never failed basically. It

[59:50] worked as it was intended to. So the way it works is like basically these are all you made out of

[59:58] gets under these.

[1:00:00] So, the water pressure kind of pushes the systems off. As the water level rises, this passive

[1:00:05] virus will also rise, but the beauty of it is like because they stay at the ground surface like

[1:00:10] for the rest of the year, when there is no flood, people can walk over it, drive over it, and their day to day access to the

[1:00:17] park will not be impacted. So, that's about the passive barriers and in case for any reason, if

[1:00:25] don't deploy as intended. They do have a backup system which is called like hydraulic

[1:00:30] system. All our maintenance has to do is like go there. Kind of there is a button to press it

[1:00:36] and you'll manually like lifting them up like that and they'll act like a flood wall. So I think we

[1:00:42] have like a backup system in case yeah if it doesn't work as intended and that I directly system

[1:00:47] also helps in terms of maintenance when our maintenance crews need to maintain it before the

[1:00:52] and starts, they can push this button and it lets us up and clean whatever they need to do in there.

[1:01:02] And coming to your second comment regarding the point of contact during the construction for compliance and all that,

[1:01:08] we will have a point of contact for all value order projects.

[1:01:12] When the construction is going on, right before the construction start, there will be a pre-concession meeting,

[1:01:17] and that's where we'll probably like kind of give out the number for number email address in the

[1:01:23] name of the point of contact. So yeah, that does work and it will be on the value water project

[1:01:28] webpage also.

[1:01:32] Oh, sorry. Yeah, and the last one like regarding the city of San Jose trials.

[1:01:36] Yeah, there are a few locations where we do have to close the existing trial,

[1:01:41] like especially near that somehow we'll interpar during the construction just for public safety.

[1:01:45] So we are closely coordinating with the city of San Jose, PR&S like Parks and Recreational Neighborhood Services Department about these part closures.

[1:01:56] They are aware of it and we are already working with them like how soon we need to put out the public notices like in order to inform the public.

[1:02:04] And while construction is going on there will be details for the public to let them know that this AI is closed and this is how they can go around that work.

[1:02:19] Okay.

[1:02:20] Thank you, Director Ballad. If I can add one more thing, we just finished the other part of this project, the first part of it.

[1:02:26] We did have that pretty extensive outreach through the neighbourhood through next door post and regular connection with the neighbourhood.

[1:02:33] Thanks to our communications team, that's done.

[1:02:36] Fabulous job connecting with them. We've had one complaint so far in the two plus years of construction on that.

[1:02:42] Well, we're fairly confident that we've made this down on how to execute a project like this.

[1:02:47] So close to the neighbors.

[1:02:48] So we hope to continue with that.

[1:02:50] Thank you.

[1:02:52] Thank you.

[1:02:54] Thank you.

[1:02:54] For the questions.

[1:02:58] It's about share.

[1:02:59] No, I'm seeing like it's okay.

[1:03:01] Comment.

[1:03:01] I like to make as that.

[1:03:02] I used to work there that far.

[1:03:03] Awesome.

[1:03:04] Seventeen Street for years.

[1:03:06] And to go back and see all the improvements.

[1:03:08] What our staff has done.

[1:03:09] Talking to the neighbors.

[1:03:10] Meet with Jeffrey here and part of the environmental committee

[1:03:14] Guys doing of course we have the media day a lot of good comments and the media coverage. Thank you all back to you, Chair

[1:03:25] Go ahead Mr.

[1:03:32] Chair. Tony are you there

[1:03:39] are you in mute on?

[1:03:42] Through the chair hitting it froze for him

[1:03:46] One second. It sounds like our wages in frozen

[1:03:57] You okay, Tom? Yes, all right. Yeah, I throw those friends from all over

[1:04:02] that's right back to you. All right well yeah just my comments are of course certainly appreciate

[1:04:10] all the staffstone on this project you know I share I share the district the this community

[1:04:18] would direct the ballard and also with the vice chair all three of us and this has been a

[1:04:25] great project is moving fast the community is very happy with it so at this point I'll entertain

[1:04:31] the motion for adopting the EIR and also approving the Cognitive Crete flood protection project.

[1:04:44] Yeah, we got a motion, Tom. So roll call, please. Is there a second? Yes. Okay.

[1:04:51] Roll call. Director Baller. Director Bell. Director Bell. Director Eisenberg. I don't feel comfortable yet. I don't like

[1:05:00] Distraction of trees. All right, just vote. This is a roll call.

[1:05:03] I'm okay. No. Director Shua? Yes. Vice Chair Santa? Yes. Director Varella. Chair Estimera. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you.

[1:05:18] We'll move right along to 3.9. What's the right distribution of the district CIP also loose?

[1:05:35] Good afternoon, Chair.

[1:05:44] We have prepared a presentation that Jessica Collins can present, our business planning and analysis unit manager.

[1:05:52] If the board pleases, or we can go ahead and approve the CIP draft.

[1:05:59] take questions and approve the CIP draft this clear 26th of 30. What we've prepared though

[1:06:05] are the changes between the preliminary which you saw in January to today. Current changes.

[1:06:18] All right, any requests?

[1:06:21] We've had a number of presentations.

[1:06:24] Yeah, yes, I'd like to see the presentation that this staff member. All right, let's just have the update.

[1:06:33] Thank you, Luz. Good afternoon again, Chair of Stramarine, members of the Board and please

[1:06:39] to be here to present the CIP draft FY206 to 35 year plan. If you haven't already received

[1:06:45] your copy, you should have one waiting for you with the clerk at the board. Before diving in,

[1:06:49] I just want to take a quick moment to thank the CIP team who works very hard every year to produce

[1:06:54] this document along with all of the capital managers who we work with very closely through the

[1:06:59] AP Development and Delivery Process.

[1:07:03] Today's board's act, board actions are to review the CAP draft five-year plan and authorize

[1:07:07] the release of the plans to all of the cities in Santa Clara County in the land use of

[1:07:11] authority, along with the county itself, for them to review and confirm with consistency

[1:07:16] with their general plans.

[1:07:19] In today's presentation, we will cover the annual CAP plan development, including a project

[1:07:23] plan update summary and overview by type of improvements, a review of how we leverage external

[1:07:29] funding and projects that are planned for closure, and then we'll be discussing next steps.

[1:07:34] This slide serves as a reminder of where we're at in our annual process and how the CIP by

[1:07:39] annual budget and water charges are all developed together in parallel. And here we're focusing

[1:07:44] in on the CIP development process. The board reviewed the CIP preliminary five year plan in January

[1:07:51] and at that meeting the board provided direction regarding key capital investments under the

[1:07:59] and provided feedback regarding the watershed stream stewardship fund, fund 12, and the

[1:08:03] safety and water program fund, fund 26. In response to the recommendations presented,

[1:08:08] for funds 12 and 26, the board directed staff to hold a public hearing to consider

[1:08:12] modifications to the safety and water program, fund 27. The public hearing was held on February

[1:08:18] 11, 2025, and continued February 25th. And on February 25th, rather than provide direction

[1:08:25] on the post modification during this year's CIP development cycle, the board directed

[1:08:29] step to hold a public hearing during next year's CIP Annual Development

[1:08:32] Cycle to align with the development of the CIP FY27 to 31-5-year plan.

[1:08:38] Based on board's direction, the San Francisco Bay Shoreline Project EA11, Project E7

[1:08:42] under the Safety and Water Program, Project Cost increase approximately 87 million

[1:08:47] will results in a funding shortfall in fun 12 for fiscal years 28 through 32, and that

[1:08:53] will be addressed during next year's CIP Annual Development Cycle.

[1:08:57] In response to the Board's direction for all funds,

[1:08:59] staff is prepared to see IP draft five year plan for fiscal year 26 to 30.

[1:09:03] After the draft five year plan is authorized for release,

[1:09:07] we will begin our 60 day public review process,

[1:09:10] which includes a public hearing and outreach to the cities and counties and land use authorities.

[1:09:14] Following this public review process,

[1:09:16] the final five year plan will be presented to the board for approval via a resolution on May 27.

[1:09:21] But the final document being prepared no later than June 30.

[1:09:25] We'll now dive into our project plan updates from the board adopted, FY 2025 to 295-year plan.

[1:09:33] As part of this year's annual process, there have been 54 project plan updates.

[1:09:37] 28 will change the schedule and cost.

[1:09:40] 12 will change the scope schedule and cost.

[1:09:42] 3 projects had changes to schedule only.

[1:09:44] 9 projects had changes to cost only and 2 projects changes to scope and cost.

[1:09:49] And then our small capital project updates were produced for seven of our small

[1:09:55] cap projects.

[1:09:56] I did want to note that all of these changes are reflected in deep.

[1:10:01] In

[1:10:04] addition to those project plan updates, we have identified additional updates that have been implemented since January 14th, which is when we were last before the board.

[1:10:17] This list here is also included in the attachment to and is reflected and is reflected in the draft five year plan.

[1:10:25] Most notable of the changes are the Anderson Dam Tunnel Project. There was a total project cost increase of approximately 42 million due to the modification and project scope and you will be receiving a full presentation on that later in today's agenda.

[1:10:40] And then for the Anderson dams seismic bridge of fit,

[1:10:44] there was a project scheduled delay by one year

[1:10:47] due to the FERC issued scheduled update,

[1:10:49] which did result in a total project cost increase

[1:10:52] of approximately 69 million due to inflation only.

[1:10:56] And that was presented to the board earlier in the year.

[1:11:01] In addition, we've identified the following projects

[1:11:03] that have potential project plan updates.

[1:11:05] Please note these are pending changes and not yet finalized

[1:11:08] and therefore they are not incorporated into the draft five year plan.

[1:11:11] Once they are finalized, we will be updating the document and this information will be included

[1:11:18] and incorporated for the May 27th Board meeting.

[1:11:23] Finally, following the board's direction of feedback provided on January 14th,

[1:11:27] include the three new projects into the draft five year plan, and those are the enterprise resource

[1:11:31] planning system replacement project, the CAUTI danceized mixed stability project,

[1:11:35] and the pipeline maintenance program.

[1:11:37] I will now provide an overview by type of improvement.

[1:11:42] The CEPFY-2630 draft five-year planning includes 76 funded projects distributed among the following categories.

[1:11:48] There are 43 water supply projects, totaling approximately 7.9 billion, 12 water resources stewardship projects, totaling approximately 140 million, 14 flat protection projects, totaling approximately 2.1 billion, 3 buildings and grounds projects, totaling approximately 96 million and 4 information technology projects.

[1:12:07] totaling approximately 70 million. Key capital investments under water supply

[1:12:12] including the Anderson dams that make budget for it project and particular reservoir

[1:12:15] expansion project along with a ranking out of water treatment plant reliability

[1:12:18] improvement project. For water resources stewardship we would like to highlight the

[1:12:24] Ojo Ponds Creek Lake separation project and under flood protection we have the

[1:12:28] Abriagus Creek flood protection project which is under construction and nearing its final

[1:12:34] phase and the Kaori Creek flood protection project for which you just adopted the EIR

[1:12:39] proceeding this item.

[1:12:43] And here you can see the valley waters prior your actuals and future year plan expenditures

[1:12:47] and funding are broken down by type of improvement.

[1:12:51] With the nearly 10.3 billion included, it does account for both received and planned

[1:12:57] outside funding of approximately 1.3 billion.

[1:13:00] includes grants from nonprofits, local public agencies, special district, state and federal

[1:13:05] brand agencies, states, states, and venture reimbursements and cost share partnerships, and that

[1:13:10] brings us to our slides on leveraging external funding. Between fiscal years 26 and 30,

[1:13:16] we are anticipating to receive nearly $273 million, this includes $197 million in grants and agreements,

[1:13:23] and $76 million in unsecured funding. This does not include the pending grant applications

[1:13:28] totaling approximately 100 million. Here you can see the breakdown by agency of the

[1:13:33] secured grants and agreements with the projects that have secured the funding. And I

[1:13:37] didn't want to note that appendix A of the CIP draft plan does include a complete list of

[1:13:42] planned capital reimbursements.

[1:13:47] The two sources of funding that are planned and forecasted

[1:13:49] but considered unsecured are the S of CJPA partnership's and grants funding, along with the S of

[1:13:54] I.A.A.A. 11 states of Ventionary Embrcments.

[1:13:59] And as referenced earlier, there are several pending grant applications totaling approximately

[1:14:03] 100 million, securing these grants is not currently forecasted, but will help with the

[1:14:08] health of each respective fund.

[1:14:11] Moving on, we have projects planned for closure and these projects listed here will remain in

[1:14:18] the CIP fifth school year 26 to 35 year plan to allow for closed out reporting on fiscal year

[1:14:23] 25 Actuals. The projects will then be removed from the CIP at boy 27 to 31 five year plan,

[1:14:29] unless a project plan update occurs, uh, necessitating an extension of the schedule.

[1:14:34] And that brings us to today's board actions. And next steps, we are asking that the board

[1:14:38] authorized the release of the document to all cities in Santa Clara County and the County of

[1:14:43] Santa Clara for a review as to consistency with their general plans. And following this, we will begin

[1:14:48] the 60 day public review period, which includes a public hearing before returning to the board in May

[1:14:52] with a resolution for approving the CIP final FY26 to 35-year plan.

[1:15:02] Thank you, Jessica. Questions? Yes, Mr. Chair. We have to direct a relevant, followed by Director Eisenberg.

[1:15:09] Director Verella. Thank you, Chair. So on the grants for the 273, 73 million outside grants.

[1:15:18] Are there any federal dollars involved in that in due to the effects of the in jeopardy and nothing received?

[1:15:25] Yes, we do have grants that are federal and here is the slide and during the January 14th meeting we did have an attachment that outlined the projects that have secured funding that has not yet been received and any unssecured federal funding as well.

[1:15:47] that attachment is something that we can bring back if you're interested for the final

[1:15:52] May item as well, but at this point we have not received to my understanding

[1:16:00] indication that we are specifically not receiving any of these funds and so we're proceeding

[1:16:06] as planned at present. Okay, so I'm understanding we have not received those dollars. They're pending.

[1:16:12] There are projects with secured funds that have not yet been received.

[1:16:17] Okay, so that's what I'm concerned. Yes, and those funds understand it. Do we have a dollar amount on that?

[1:16:24] I can

[1:16:25] See if we can get that. I think we have access to that from a prior attachment.

[1:16:31] Secondary, the other question is how if we do not receive those. How would that impact these overall projects?

[1:16:37] I think timelines that we're looking at.

[1:16:39] Good afternoon, Darren Taylor, Chief Financial Officer. The largest federal grant that we have is the $80 million

[1:16:45] from the MSCS for Upper Yagus Phase 2B.

[1:16:48] And we are just about ready to submit our first claim

[1:16:52] for reimbursement and what we've heard from NRCS

[1:16:56] is that it could take a little while to process our request.

[1:17:02] We have not heard that receiving those reimbursements

[1:17:07] would be in jeopardy.

[1:17:08] What we've heard is that due to staffing cutbacks

[1:17:11] at the federal level, that it would take a little more time

[1:17:14] process those requests. So that's kind of where we're at with that. But the $80 million is the

[1:17:18] biggest piece and obviously that would, you know, that is critical to getting that project done.

[1:17:25] Okay, thank you for those answers to those questions. Those are my questions. Thank you.

[1:17:29] Thank you. Thank you. The right size number.

[1:17:31] Great questions. My first, I have three quick questions. First is to clarify. We're only

[1:17:38] approving it to be released to the public. We're not approving it. Okay, good.

[1:17:43] And second question is the reference to the San Frisquito Creek. Since since we

[1:17:49] did agree that we would discuss this later, right, the movement of funds, what specifically then

[1:17:56] is the change? Oh, you referring to the pending project plan updates. Yeah. So the or the

[1:18:06] project plan updates, I think, process between now and January 14th.

[1:18:11] For some of the Skido Creek, there was a scheduled change.

[1:18:13] It did result in an increase to the total project cost.

[1:18:17] But it was due to inflation only.

[1:18:19] I think only roughly around.

[1:18:22] It was 7 million.

[1:18:24] I think 7 million for the whole project.

[1:18:27] I think.

[1:18:28] That's correct.

[1:18:29] 7.74 million.

[1:18:30] And there's five participants.

[1:18:31] So for us, it's 1 million something.

[1:18:34] So, okay, great. Just want to understand. And then third is, you had a slide that talked about, I think, the four or six different buckets, do you mind pulling it back up? I just want to understand what those different categories were, yeah, right before that one though.

[1:18:52] Okay, five different, five different buckets. So, which category is dedicated to

[1:19:02] ecosystem, conservation and rehabilitation specifically? Well, specifically what a resources

[1:19:09] stewardship however many of our projects are multi-benefit projects. And so they do include

[1:19:14] those components. Do they usually include them as mitigations or do they include them as standalone?

[1:19:22] I believe it can be oftentimes resulting from mitigation, but sometimes they handle them.

[1:19:30] So I just want to point out what a small percentage of this money is going towards ecosystem, conservation, and regeneration.

[1:19:43] And just my little plug for climate action, we are in a crisis right now, so I would always encourage more money spent on that.

[1:19:52] I mean, of course, the substance debate will happen later and you'll hear a lot about that from, you know, my, my friends.

[1:20:00] In the environmental communities, but okay, thank you for answering those questions. I appreciate it.

[1:20:05] Mr. Chair, we have Director Bill.

[1:20:07] That would be well.

[1:20:09] Yeah, thank you.

[1:20:11] I wanted to find out of the projects either. Can you give me specifics about any projects for the Guadalupe River?

[1:20:25] The Guadalupe River Floor Protection Project is a current commitment under the Safe Clean Water and Natural Floor Protection Program.

[1:20:33] That project is proceeding.

[1:20:36] I believe with the US Army Corps of Engineers at this time, and we are waiting on our general reinvestigation that he results.

[1:20:44] So they're, well, well, yeah, but okay, so there's, so you're depending on Trump to get the money to us, but how, how, how, how much money is in this plan for the well of you river, that's the question I have.

[1:21:01] How much money for this in this plan?

[1:21:04] We're looking out now here today.

[1:21:06] Certainly, I can absolutely.

[1:21:09] I'd like to provide you with that information.

[1:21:11] That's a specific project.

[1:21:15] It's a, sorry, the, well, bear with me one moment for the Guadalupe River Flood Protection Project

[1:21:27] Interstate 280 the Blossom Hell Road that's considered Project E8 under the Safety and Water

[1:21:32] and Natural Flood Protection Program. The amount of funding or reaches 7 through 12,

[1:21:40] The revised total project cost is 85.6 million inflated of that.

[1:21:50] 69.4 million roughly was expanded in prior fiscal years.

[1:21:57] Part of that was the acquisition of real estate needed for the project,

[1:22:02] which is considered part of our local share moving forward,

[1:22:04] which was what allowed us to move forward

[1:22:07] with that funding allocation reduction

[1:22:10] while still maintaining our commitment under the program.

[1:22:14] So how much money is in this plan?

[1:22:18] Five-year plan for the Guilupier River.

[1:22:23] So moving forward.

[1:22:24] A particular plan.

[1:22:25] I am looking at.

[1:22:26] I'm talking about what's been spent in the past.

[1:22:29] I'm approximately 17 million.

[1:22:32] So, I have all the project $17 million to, well, what is that?

[1:22:40] 17 million in future years, yes. Yeah, what's that specifically for?

[1:22:45] And I can call on our deputy officer, Bavanna Yerapotu to speak to that.

[1:22:56] Thank you, Jessica. Through the sheriff, I may.

[1:22:59] The 17 million plus that Jessica mentioned, director Bell, is going to be for our local

[1:23:07] share, going forward staff costs as well for the Army Corps project that they're still

[1:23:13] developing their design and revised cost estimates for.

[1:23:17] Okay, what's the time of the Corps of Engineers?

[1:23:24] So, we...

[1:23:26] Engineering on that.

[1:23:29] Right now, they are asking us for a workshop to go through their revised estimates and we are hoping to have that workshop scheduled before the end of this month.

[1:23:40] And sometime this summer, we're hoping to get a revised benefit cost ratio as well as the updated costs for the overall project after which they'd have to go through their process to get approval for moving the project forward for.

[1:23:56] approval through headquarters and then move it into a design.

[1:24:00] Do we have a priority list that we have established for the Army Coral and Ninja's funded project?

[1:24:15] I mean, all of our projects in the CIP are assumed to be funded to whatever level that we have funded in there.

[1:24:25] So I would say the shorter project is an active project and then the Guadalupe there are only two projects that are really active Army Corps of Engineers projects in the city.

[1:24:38] How much is in the budget for the shoreline project?

[1:24:43] So as referenced earlier, shoreline EA 11 does have a approximately $87 million funding shortfall as a result of not moving forward with the recommended modification.

[1:24:55] that will be addressed in next year's CIT planning cycle.

[1:25:00] At present, that project does remain under fund 12. Going back to the question on prioritization, we do have both our funding filters for prioritization that are then combined with business risk exposure scores for existing infrastructure to place all of our capital projects into one of three funding categories with category one being the highest risk category two being middle risk and category three being lower risk. Again, that attachment was provided.

[1:25:25] based on last year's adopted CIP at the January meeting,

[1:25:29] we can include that attachment again

[1:25:30] for the upcoming final board meeting in May.

[1:25:33] So, yeah, I didn't do very much about that.

[1:25:37] That's interesting question, but in terms of the core of engineers,

[1:25:44] criteria, which they now have changed.

[1:25:48] But the core engineers looks at the valuation in a less way for determining criteria for the projects and that correct valuation of potential lost flow control.

[1:26:09] Is that true?

[1:26:13] I'm not sure I understand the complete question.

[1:26:15] They do have their criteria for how they evaluate the economics.

[1:26:19] That's one interesting question.

[1:26:21] I want the board to know about that.

[1:26:24] I see, we did provide an updated right and I think there was a response in last

[1:26:32] votes memo that we included as a CEO bulletin item director, Bell, that we can refresh.

[1:26:38] So they do have the criteria by which they go and evaluate the economic benefits to regional

[1:26:46] or what they consider national economic benefits and that they had new principles and

[1:26:51] guidelines that they have developed but the actual implementation of that is still pending

[1:26:56] on how they quantify non-economic benefits in other words the environmental social benefits

[1:27:02] that they would put a dollar number to.

[1:27:07] At the Capital Improvement Program Committee,

[1:27:10] I asked that the staff looked at smaller scale,

[1:27:18] flood control, critical flood control projects

[1:27:23] on the Guadeloupe River.

[1:27:25] Are there any projects in this five-year plan

[1:27:29] for those sorts of projects, smaller scale projects

[1:27:35] that would not complete the full plug control that

[1:27:45] provides some flood control, but not the entire amount.

[1:27:50] Are those projects in the five-year plan here?

[1:27:54] I'm going to look to Chief Hakes to respond to that next

[1:27:59] Thank you.

[1:28:00] Who are you looking to?

[1:28:01] It takes Chief of Writing Officer for one of those projects in there.

[1:28:05] So currently.

[1:28:05] It's kind of buoyant.

[1:28:06] He was right on here.

[1:28:08] Currently we do not have any subsets of the Guadalupe Project Incorporated in the CIP committee.

[1:28:13] Excuse me.

[1:28:13] CIP plan.

[1:28:14] Although we are coming back to the CIP committee with an update in the July or August timeframe

[1:28:18] in order to discuss whether a smaller, more focused project would be something that

[1:28:24] the value water would be pursuing.

[1:28:31] Okay,

[1:28:33] what I get out of this is that there's no projects in the Guadalupe River.

[1:28:37] Okay, and I'm not happy about that.

[1:28:39] I think that was not what was told to us last year and I find that unacceptable.

[1:28:51] I think people ought to be really straight about what is going on with the Guadalupe River.

[1:28:55] not getting the answers. It's not fair to me as the representative of that area. It's not

[1:29:03] fair to the city government, which is trying to get answers on this. It's not fair to

[1:29:08] constituents that are trying to get answers to this.

[1:29:13] People would like to know, does the water

[1:29:17] district have any plans and is there any vote of getting flood control projects that would protect

[1:29:25] all these people that are paying higher insurance, they're in danger of floods,

[1:29:31] along thousands of homes along the Kuala P River and the Chibitory rivers of the Kuala P River.

[1:29:40] And we would like to know the answer to that in the future hearings on the five-year budget

[1:29:45] Mr. Chairman and those are my comments. Thank you. Mr. Chair, we have Director Bellard.

[1:29:51] before we do that direct the bell, we can at the end of the one we usually talk about our schedule.

[1:30:00] We can, could you please raise that so we can include it for a, uh, uh, worst question on that.

[1:30:09] When we get to the schedule, the schedule in portion at the end.

[1:30:14] Oh, and to I hear the answer, basically, thank you.

[1:30:19] Okay, I'll start with the ballot.

[1:30:23] Yeah,

[1:30:28] I was based on Director Bell's comments I was going to ask she takes to mention that at an upcoming CIP meeting, there will be more in depth discussion on this and so you did that, thank you.

[1:30:48] But yeah, that's it. Go ahead, Mr. Chair, any members of the public?

[1:30:52] Yeah, nice you, director.

[1:30:54] Oh, director, sure. Thank you, Chair.

[1:30:58] This my comment is about San Francisco Creek.

[1:31:04] And I think it's important to clarify for everyone that's a whole listening

[1:31:09] that Mr. Miss Collins earlier mentioned that the seven million dollars

[1:31:15] increase to service the Skido Creek. That's based on the existing project and then the

[1:31:22] inflation cost increase is the $7 million. However, that existing project does not meet

[1:31:33] the safely water KPI to provide 70-year flow protection and service the Skido Creek JPA has reaffirm

[1:31:43] that is still, it's go to implement that project that's providing 70 years for protection,

[1:31:55] was invested in CEDO Creek. So JPA is restarting what's if a project should be. And this project

[1:32:05] likely will be different from the project that's existing and then what's in our CEPIC.

[1:32:12] So we don't know what this new project is going to be yet.

[1:32:15] So I just want to clarify that within a short near future,

[1:32:22] likely there'll be a new custom cost estimate

[1:32:26] for San Francisco Creek based on this new project

[1:32:29] that's providing 70 year for protection.

[1:32:33] So this is $7 million increase is based on existing project,

[1:32:38] which likely will not be the project for San Francisco Creek.

[1:32:42] Thank you. Thank you. Anything further, vice chair? No, it looks okay. Any public comments?

[1:32:52] Thank you chair. We have no requests to speak. Okay. So, uh, um, anything

[1:32:57] emotional to authorize release of this document? I'll make a motion to, um,

[1:33:04] for to authorize release of the document to all cities, uh, and then use agencies instead of

[1:33:09] county to receive feedback.

[1:33:12] Click on the motion.

[1:33:14] All right.

[1:33:15] Roll call.

[1:33:19] Director Ballard.

[1:33:21] Director Bell.

[1:33:23] Director Eisenberg.

[1:33:26] Director Shua.

[1:33:28] Vice Chair Santas.

[1:33:29] Yes.

[1:33:29] Director Verella.

[1:33:31] Chair Estimera.

[1:33:33] Motion passes.

[1:33:35] Yes.

[1:33:35] I have it.

[1:33:36] 3.10.

[1:33:38] Receive the fiscal year.

[1:33:39] 0.25, 26 second pass by annual budget overview.

[1:33:54] Mr. Chair, this is information only. Yes,

[1:33:58] Baron O'Reake was.

[1:34:04] Good afternoon, Chair. Mr. Minata. Yes, and Reake. Good afternoon.

[1:34:08] Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon to the board members. I'm in again, the budget manager and here with me,

[1:34:14] a team member of mine, Chris to reason this is a senior analyst in budget office. No, so see a full tailor.

[1:34:20] So this evening, this afternoon, I'll be walking you through the second pass by annual budget update presentation as a reminder.

[1:34:26] This is the second presentation of three budget presentations that will take place throughout the budget process before the formal adoption of the budget in the month of May.

[1:34:35] The first pass presentation, which took place on January 25th was a high level budget summary consistent with the information provided to the board during the work study sessions on the CIT and the groundwater production charges on January 9.

[1:34:47] The second pass presentation brings forth updated budget assumptions along with an attachment

[1:34:52] that includes all budget retail pages for operations and the projects.

[1:34:58] Any direction they provide today?

[1:35:00] We'll be including the third pass of our budget and share with the budget on the board during the worst

[1:35:04] stations in late April. With that in mind, these are the topics that we'll cover during today's

[1:35:09] presentation.

[1:35:14] I'd like to refer you to the top portion of the slide. These are the dates for the

[1:35:18] fiscal year 26 final budget updates that we have, or we'll be presenting to the board. The proposed

[1:35:23] budget will be complemented by the boardwork, study sessions towards the end of April, which will

[1:35:29] very thorough. We can see that we're on track to adopt the budget at the end of May.

[1:35:37] So we'll start off with the revenue assumptions. We have a total of water charge revenue of $423.3 million

[1:35:42] in fiscal year 26 and $477.000 in fiscal year 27. The revenue assumptions include the water rate,

[1:35:50] the water rates here and the usage highlight on the slide, which aligns with the information provided

[1:35:54] to the board during the first pass. As mentioned in the first pass presentation,

[1:35:58] the one percent that below in property tax receipts assumption is based on the growth rate

[1:36:04] growth rates forecast in the most recent SoneClarer County assessors report. The state clean

[1:36:09] water special parcel tax assumptions currently assume a 2% increase but maybe adjusted based on the

[1:36:14] Bay Area CPI index. In total we are budgeting 744 million dollars in fiscal year 26 and 766.2 million

[1:36:22] dollars in fiscal year 27. The 48.8 million dollar increase in fiscal year 26 versus fiscal

[1:36:28] you're 25, primarily driven by three things.

[1:36:31] The water charges capital reimbursement assumptions

[1:36:34] and also the property tax receipt of assumptions.

[1:36:39] In terms of district-wide highways,

[1:36:41] we include the operating costs, the debt service,

[1:36:44] and the capital projects, operating projects,

[1:36:47] funding is up $23.5 million in fiscal year $26

[1:36:50] over the prior year, and capital projects,

[1:36:52] funding is up $46.9 million, that's

[1:36:55] good for the prior year.

[1:36:57] Project costs, you talk pages, as I mentioned,

[1:36:59] are aligned with the operating

[1:37:00] and that service outweighs on this slide and they're quite as as attachment to this board

[1:37:05] agenda item for your reference. Additionally, the capital outweighs funding align with the

[1:37:10] cap one from a program that was presented to a board on February 25th.

[1:37:16] The slide six shows these

[1:37:17] salaries and benefits in a tabular format with total salaries, relatively flat in fiscal year 26

[1:37:22] that's compared to fiscal year 25, which assumes a decrease of regular positions from 921 positions

[1:37:28] to 876 positions. As compared to the first pass, these costs now include five release frozen

[1:37:34] positions in fiscal year 26, which have been proposed by senior management to address various

[1:37:39] workload priorities and help with achieve outcomes and projects. In summary, total salaries

[1:37:46] expense remain relatively flat in fiscal year 26, primarily due to the hiring freeze,

[1:37:51] only increasing by 0.4 million dollars, and total benefits cost is up by 3.9 million dollars

[1:37:57] and fiscal year 26 did to the various benefits that are listed here on the slide.

[1:38:02] In summary, the total salaries and benefits cost increased by $4.3 million in fiscal year

[1:38:07] 26, assuming a decrease of 45 frozen positions.

[1:38:14] Understable, the slide shows the total position increase from the first pass to the second

[1:38:19] pass on the right hand side.

[1:38:21] It illustrates the five release frozen positions, which increases a budget head count from

[1:38:25] 871 to 876 positions in fiscal year 26, the release positions will benefit the administrative

[1:38:32] services, water utility and the watershed divisions.

[1:38:39] Slide 8 shows a breakdown of the operating expenditures by fund, along with the variances,

[1:38:43] in total $531.8 million in fiscal year 26, it's an increase of $7.6 million versus fiscal

[1:38:49] year 25, or 1.4%.

[1:38:53] The fiscal year 26 operating expenses increase was minimized by the impact of the frozen

[1:38:57] positions as compared to fiscal year 25. As indicated on the slide, the general fund now includes

[1:39:03] the funding for the water rate assistance program to the tune of $1.3 million per year for

[1:39:08] both fiscal year 26 and fiscal year 27.

[1:39:16] This slide shows the capital expenditures by fund in fiscal

[1:39:18] year 26 at least, or $1.11.7 million for capital projects that are aligned with the CIP presentation

[1:39:24] provided to the board on the very 25th. As we know, capital expenditures vary,

[1:39:29] noticeably year or year due to construction schedules of such projects.

[1:39:34] Not also both on the balances for the capital projects are noted on the slide and have been

[1:39:38] previously discussed as part of the various draft safety presentations.

[1:39:42] Major capital provisions are detailed on slide 20 in the appendix for your reference.

[1:39:49] In terms of estimated fiscal year 26 reserve balances recurrently estimating to end the fiscal year 26

[1:39:54] at $550.9 million or $52.7 million lower than the fiscal year.

[1:40:00] 225 projected estimate. As you are aware, fiscal year 26 estimates are based on projections for revenue,

[1:40:06] our various financing assumptions and operating account books, benatures that have been discussed with the board during today's meeting.

[1:40:14] Objectives for our financial planning are to ensure that we have sufficient resources for our current services and obligations and to prepare for future anticipated funding requirements,

[1:40:22] and any unforeseen events.

[1:40:24] To meet these objectives,

[1:40:26] Valley Water will strive to have sufficient

[1:40:27] funding available to meet its current

[1:40:29] and future operating capital obligations

[1:40:32] along with the debt service cost obligations.

[1:40:37] To conclude, the next steps will be

[1:40:40] an April 23rd for the budget work study session

[1:40:43] and where each division will provide a very detailed overview

[1:40:46] of their fiscal year 26 budget and their outlook.

[1:40:49] In the appendix, you may find a detailed historical budget

[1:40:52] information to provide you with the additional context for the fiscal year 26 proposed budget.

[1:40:57] This is the end of the second post presentation and we're ready for any questions.

[1:41:02] Questions?

[1:41:05] What's the advice here?

[1:41:06] Mr. Chair, we have Director of Reload.

[1:41:09] Director of Reload.

[1:41:11] Thank you, Chair. Yes, I'm going to ask you the same question.

[1:41:14] I ask previously on a presentation on the current cutbacks that are coming through the federal government

[1:41:20] that are affecting many public agencies on your forecasts here, are you looking at potentially

[1:41:27] having an impact on our estimated revenue streams due to the cutback to the coming potentially

[1:41:33] coming to us? Are you looking at that? And if so, how are you looking at that?

[1:41:39] Thank you, Director. Vrala, to answer your question, we're not assuming that there's going to be any

[1:41:44] reduction to revenue streams. I think we talked about the $80 million grant for from NRCS for the

[1:41:51] for your office phase 2B project.

[1:41:53] We're not anticipating that that grant would be eliminated.

[1:41:57] So we're proceeding forward with assuming

[1:41:59] that that grant is going to happen.

[1:42:02] Other impacts that are out there.

[1:42:04] We've obviously got federal loans.

[1:42:07] We've got with field loans for Anderson Dam,

[1:42:09] seismic retrofit, the Pacheco Reservoir expansion

[1:42:12] project, as well as a couple of flood protection

[1:42:16] projects under the Safe Clean Water Program.

[1:42:18] We were successful in getting our first drawdowns on the Anderson loan and on the safe clean water loan in February, so just a couple of weeks ago.

[1:42:29] And so we believe that those loans are solid.

[1:42:33] We have not heard anything with regard to, you know, a change as it relates to existing inhand loans.

[1:42:41] We are still working on a couple of loans, federal loans,

[1:42:47] a dam safety program loan on the core with the program.

[1:42:50] We have not heard that there's anything changing with regard to that.

[1:42:54] We're moving forward with submitting the application.

[1:42:57] We are likely going to submit that application for that loan in late March or early April.

[1:43:02] And we are working on our second LOI.

[1:43:05] We are working on the application for the second loan as it relates to Anderson.

[1:43:10] And, and so again, we're looking at submitting that application in late March or early April, again, we haven't heard anything that things have been derailed as far as moving forward on on on those two loans.

[1:43:25] So so with that, I would say that in general, we're moving forward. We're not anticipating any

[1:43:32] You know, negative consequences from what's going on at the federal level with our budget as it stands today.

[1:43:38] So when you say we haven't heard, who would you be hearing that from?

[1:43:43] What federal agency would you be hearing that from?

[1:43:46] Sure, sure.

[1:43:47] So with regard to WIFI alone to be the EPA, with regard to the 80 million dollar loan.

[1:43:56] for the opportunity to be at the NRCS.

[1:43:59] Okay, thank you for that, appreciate it.

[1:44:01] Chair, we have Director Bill,

[1:44:02] followed by Director Eisenhower.

[1:44:04] Director Bill?

[1:44:07] Okay, okay,

[1:44:13] North County zone two water charge

[1:44:18] increase of 9.9.

[1:44:23] What kind of assumptions are made regarding that, regarding holding the line on the cost of the scope of our projects?

[1:44:35] Are we assuming an inflation for the projects?

[1:44:41] Is that 9.9 continued in the future years?

[1:44:48] What kind of inflation and project scope controls are we imposing to make sure that doesn't go higher than that?

[1:45:00] Yes, you're correct. With regard to the W2, the water rate projection is 9.9% for FY26, and that 9.9% increase continues for the next eight or nine years after that to pay for the CIP, the Water Utility CIP, which is consistent with what the board just saw from the last presentation, the draft CIP there.

[1:45:25] And there are inflations, assumptions included in that and that's baked into the water rate model.

[1:45:32] The inflationary assumptions range from 5% to 7% per year, as we look forward.

[1:45:37] So that's what these assumptions we have in there. 5% to 7% per year.

[1:45:40] getting a copy of what the inflation by the year you're projecting is so we can see how that applies to these projects.

[1:45:54] I would like to know also if in designing the projects are there scope changes or they identified in terms of increasing the cost of projects.

[1:46:07] The design changes could be the cost of land improvement, engineering goes up, project delays, those kinds of things cause a project cost to go up.

[1:46:24] And I like to know what assumptions are made regarding those issues when you estimate the 9.9.

[1:46:32] I don't like to tell people what you're rating Chris going to be 9.9.

[1:46:35] Then we say, well, never mind.

[1:46:37] It went up and we have all these other reasons why it's going up because of the project foster going.

[1:46:44] So I would like to know.

[1:46:45] I mean, I think it's fair to ask,

[1:46:49] because frankly, crossing crease is one of the big problems

[1:46:54] of this agency.

[1:46:57] We haven't been able to have a consistent,

[1:47:01] crossed level.

[1:47:04] I would like to just make my statement please.

[1:47:08] I would like to know, get that information to me.

[1:47:12] So I would have that.

[1:47:13] So I can tell my constituents what assumptions are in this budget

[1:47:19] Yeah, thank you. And if I could just kind of respond to the first part the inflation assumptions

[1:47:24] That's going to be that is in the five-year plan and we can also bring that back

[1:47:29] One of the things that I'd like to do is capture questions and bring it back to the budget

[1:47:32] What's that session and April?

[1:47:34] Yep, come later. I'll be I'm not going anymore. Okay. Got you on that and then with regard to your second question on I'm gonna ask

[1:47:43] Jessica Collins to kind of help answer that question that the second part of your question.

[1:47:48] Thank you, Darren. Can you guys, can you hear me? Okay. Okay. All right. So,

[1:47:53] changes to scope schedule and cost are reviewed every single year with all capital

[1:47:57] project managers, our team meets with them. Any updates to scope schedule or cost are

[1:48:02] tracked and documented via change management memos. And then that information is provided to

[1:48:07] both the CIP committee and the board. It was included in our last board item as attachment to

[1:48:12] It's a summary of all changes, so that's something that we share in a very transparent way with the board in the public and all of those changes are what feed into the water charge of water resetting process every year.

[1:48:27] Yeah, so what is the way you go about.

[1:48:32] When we have like a budget and then we say it's going to be 9.9.

[1:48:38] And then there's crossing breeze, you might give us a list but then how does that translate to higher rates?

[1:48:48] How do we know we don't see that?

[1:48:52] So I think not the time to ask that question.

[1:48:56] It's not during the couple of budget times during the budget time in my opinion.

[1:49:00] So I can look at how you view these things in terms of performance

[1:49:07] in terms of the budget. So I would like some answers on that if you could give me back to the answers.

[1:49:12] I appreciate it. Thank you.

[1:49:18] Okay. Have a nice number.

[1:49:22] Thank you so much. So I incorporate my reference.

[1:49:26] By reference my request that we spend more money on ecosystem protection and rehabilitation.

[1:49:34] With a notation also that when you spend money in ecosystem protection and rehabilitation,

[1:49:40] you also mitigate flood risk, fire risk, and you help farmers, as along with many other positive benefits.

[1:49:51] So that is pretty much the biggest bang for the block is ecosystem, conservation, and rehabilitation.

[1:50:00] I also would like to see in the next version, and we've discussed this before and direct about kind of hit on some of this too, is it, you know, it's kind of funny that you mentioned we hear from the EPA, while our president and his buddy Elon Musk have been planning on destroying the EPA.

[1:50:21] So, now, when it comes to these withy-alones, I could see how maybe they would hold onto them because if the borrower ultimately can pay, and that's a big if they are extremely profitable to the federal government and extremely expensive to the borrower.

[1:50:42] And, you know, that's because, as you know, a 5% interest rate with a whiffy alone due to the 30 year, you know, beginning of the repayment schedule results in and the interest compounding on every single year that goes by by the time you start paying the stuff back, you've compounded 30 years of interest.

[1:51:07] So you're paying back in our case more than three times the amount that you've borrowed so these aren't really ideal for anyone in my opinion.

[1:51:18] So what I keep asking and I'd love to repeat is can we please look for alternative funding methods, then these with your loans and if we can't find any other alternative funding methods, maybe those projects do not belong in the budget.

[1:51:35] because we need to be serious about our projects and if you look at the termination rights

[1:51:44] of the federal government in those wifia loans, if we default meaning even delaying the project,

[1:51:52] they can actually accelerate meaning calling and full, not just the loan for that project,

[1:51:59] but for every project. That's actually in the loan agreement.

[1:52:02] So anyway, the bomb line is, I really think we need to prioritize projects that are more financially sustainable.

[1:52:10] And then finally, I'm still kind of hung up on that number of independent contractors in the hiring freeze.

[1:52:17] I just can't get past that.

[1:52:20] You know, at an earlier meeting, when I did ask for, and I know Director Bell has asked for a lot of this too, you know, for actual financial cost of hiring,

[1:52:29] the independent contractors, it didn't, I wasn't convinced that there's any cost savings

[1:52:38] to hiring independent contractors. So here we are in what is considered by many to be among

[1:52:44] the worst job markets in recent history for job seekers.

[1:52:53] There are a lot of really qualified people

[1:52:55] looking for jobs, additionally with the federal layoffs, there are even more qualified people looking

[1:53:03] for jobs. I fundamentally believe it's our legal obligation as well as our ethical obligation

[1:53:10] to hire full-time employees. Absolutely, it's not possible. And I when our ethical obligations

[1:53:19] of lines with what's in the best interest of the district as would happen in this case.

[1:53:26] I continue to push for a budget that has more permanent employees and fewer independent contractors.

[1:53:35] Thank you for considering.

[1:53:38] So, my share next. Well, Mr. Chair, I would imagine our staff will give

[1:53:43] or Bell, a bit of explanation that I just got to receive from Blue Shield and PG&E on their

[1:53:49] increase.

[1:53:51] So, nobody else go ahead, Mr. Chair.

[1:53:55] All right.

[1:53:55] That was the information item.

[1:53:58] So, let's go to our consent calendar next four, item four, and then after that, we will take

[1:54:06] ten minutes recess. So I'll entertain the motion to approve the consent calendar.

[1:54:14] Second. Second. Second. Okay. Motion is second. We have a roll call, please.

[1:54:20] Director Baller. Director Bell. Director Eisenberg. Director Sheila. Yes. Vice chair

[1:54:28] Yes. Director of Aurella, Chair and Srimara.

[1:54:32] I motion passes. Okay, the ice have it. So, let's take a 10 minute recess. Let's see. We'll come back at the five, come back at the three minutes after three,

[1:54:50] slightly 10 minutes.

[1:56:30] Mr. Chair, is prior to going on. There's a Deborah Goldine wants to speak on 5.2 because she has to leave with your permission. Can we get her to say a few words before she has to leave?

[1:56:45] Well, let me public comment.

[1:56:51] Let me just give you a head of time.

[1:56:55] All right. The director's all back?

[1:57:01] Everybody's here Mr. Chair.

[1:57:03] All right.

[1:57:03] Good. Thanks.

[1:57:05] All right. We'll have Miss Messing address us.

[1:57:09] This is Deborah Golden here.

[1:57:11] Miss Golden.

[1:57:12] Go ahead Tony.

[1:57:16] Yes, Miss Golden.

[1:57:19] Thank you for hearing me.

[1:57:20] I have to be in back in Palo Alto at four.

[1:57:24] Yeah.

[1:57:25] So it was came as news to me that you could actually have a complaint against a board member.

[1:57:31] bought and put on a agenda, and if I had known that, I would have done that years ago.

[1:57:39] I have some very serious concerns with some of the ethical behavior, and I've been

[1:57:44] watching this board closely for about four years because of that.

[1:57:50] So I just want to say that I hope when I bring my complaint against a particular board member,

[1:57:57] who will not be Rebecca Eisenberg to this board that it also gets put on the agenda and

[1:58:03] considered with the same gravity that Peter sends complaint has been considered.

[1:58:13] And before you consider Mr. Peterson's complaint, I would like the board to investigate.

[1:58:19] I mean, before you act on it, I would like to know what Mr. Peter sends connections to

[1:58:26] Jacob Dam Projector, I suspect he has a vested interest in that project, because at the end of his

[1:58:33] letter, he puts in, he says that the particular, stop, put Jacob Dam is a well-funded organization.

[1:58:41] I mean, I almost spit out my coffee when I heard that because it's like,

[1:58:45] I'm, no, it's not. So, you know, he is excoreating Ms. and his letter, Ms. Eisenberg,

[1:58:51] for being dishonest and he lists a number of, he has a long list of allegations, and he's

[1:58:59] being dishonest dishonest in a way that's provable. Here, so before you take his allegations

[1:59:05] seriously, I think it requires some due diligence to, for him to provide evidence support,

[1:59:11] his allegations.

[1:59:14] And yeah, I'm also concerned that this was put on the agenda as a sort

[1:59:25] of a payback and I don't know. It was put on as a personal, there was a personal motive in

[1:59:33] putting this on the agenda. So when I come with my complaint forward, if it is accepted or rejected,

[1:59:40] I guess I will have confirmation of that suspicion. Thank you for your time.

[1:59:46] Thank you. All right, with respect to respect to 5.2, this is the process

[1:59:55] that we have. When there's a complaint, I guess the board member, it doesn't matter who it is or what it

[2:00:00] It is and whatever the story is, whatever that complaint is, this is what the policy is.

[2:00:06] So just following the policy, which is to have the board have the chair deal with the complaint.

[2:00:14] I don't have not gone any way other than to receive the complaint and not going to do anything

[2:00:19] until the board assigns me to handle the complaint. That's the way the policy works.

[2:00:23] with every complaint against a board member from a member of the public.

[2:00:28] That's what our policy says and that's all following today.

[2:00:31] That's why it's here.

[2:00:33] So I'd entertain a motion to that effect.

[2:00:38] So move.

[2:00:40] There's second.

[2:00:41] Can you clarify?

[2:00:43] I already clarified it.

[2:00:46] That's what the policy says.

[2:00:50] Mr. Chair.

[2:00:55] We're not on five two. Tony is just responding to the complaint by the complaint of the last person. That's all.

[2:01:03] We'll come back to that. Go ahead, Tony.

[2:01:05] Yeah. Okay. So back to five point one.

[2:01:08] On five point one.

[2:01:10] This one was a request that was made by Director Eisenberg who raised this issue.

[2:01:17] I responded to it along with that.

[2:01:19] the Shua. And we said that these policies from the committee would to have come to the board,

[2:01:31] but we realized that it already came to the board. And so I put this on so that we asked the board

[2:01:39] to refer this issue to the committee, and then of course the committee would deal with whether

[2:01:44] There should be a policy or not, or what it is, and make a recommendation to the board

[2:01:48] to that effect.

[2:01:50] Also, direct the battle to also inquire regarding this.

[2:01:56] Mr. Chair, we have director Eisenberg, would you like to speak?

[2:01:59] Yes, sir.

[2:02:00] Eisenberg?

[2:02:01] I need to be very clear that I never advocated for any old complaint, especially an ad hominom complaint,

[2:02:10] which, as you know, is a Latin term for personal attacks,

[2:02:17] I'd never would have or did advocate

[2:02:20] for every complaint made by any individual

[2:02:24] to be put on the agenda

[2:02:26] because we would be having a lot of agenda items

[2:02:29] about every single one of these board members

[2:02:32] and not just me. This is an unprecedented agreement.

[2:02:35] That's what the policy says.

[2:02:37] Okay, that is what the newly changed policy you just created in the board policy and

[2:02:46] clinic commission. So we need to be committee. So we need to be very clear. This policy did

[2:02:52] not exist until you recently made it in a committee that you took me off of that and replaced

[2:03:02] me. And this was what you decided should be the brand

[2:03:08] in policy. Well, you say you, when you say you, if you talk about the

[2:03:12] creator, I, I, I, I, I, I was a reading that I was in Europe

[2:03:17] visiting my sister, where you discussed defunding my

[2:03:22] creed authority project. You, I have attended every single one of

[2:03:27] these for planning and whatever you call policy and whatever

[2:03:31] you call it now, committee, the committee IE was on. So just what is done by the committee?

[2:03:38] So I say that because I object for the record that this was anything I asked for. This

[2:03:46] is not something I asked for. It makes zero common sense. It's also anti-democratic. The way to

[2:03:54] deal with an elected representative if you don't like them is you have many means. One is to

[2:04:01] organize a real talk. I agree with you, but you're discussing 5.2. We are now in 5.1.

[2:04:09] 5.1, I'm looking at it. It's a policy that you claim I had something to do with.

[2:04:16] Board appointed officers.

[2:04:21] Oh, yes, I opposed that, too. Because, yes, thank you. This was also a

[2:04:26] There was no policy, you requested at the last meeting.

[2:04:29] Actually, there was a policy.

[2:04:32] The policy was that board appointed officers were excluded from the right to file complaints against board directors.

[2:04:45] But they were specifically not listed.

[2:04:49] And what I said regarding that is the entire $600,000 investigation that was done against me as well as the $2 million dollar.

[2:05:00] The dollar lawsuits that have followed against me were never authorized by the codes. That is my legal opinion

[2:05:07] as well as that of my attorneys, which unfortunately I was forced to higher without my condemnification

[2:05:14] clause that you agreed with, to give. This has been my legal opinion and my personal opinion that these

[2:05:23] investigations are unauthorized. That is completely apart from the fact that there was no authorized

[2:05:29] ethics committee at the time to actually make this recommendation. So there are numerous

[2:05:36] problems with the way this problematic investigation against me was launched. In addition

[2:05:43] to the fact that the investigations didn't even stay to claim. So all that is being handled

[2:05:48] unfortunately in the courts because because of these investigations, what value water then does

[2:05:54] is spent millions of dollars on deepest litigation

[2:05:57] that only makes things worse.

[2:06:00] What Valley Water needs to do is learn to grow up

[2:06:03] and learn to treat other people

[2:06:06] with professional respect, including the issue of safety.

[2:06:09] Yes, that goes for all of us.

[2:06:12] It's wrapped others, land utility to be okay

[2:06:16] with disagreements.

[2:06:17] We're done.

[2:06:18] It's part of my ethnicity and part of my religion.

[2:06:22] We are done.

[2:06:24] We're not done. We are done.

[2:06:28] You are done. You are done. You are done. You are done.

[2:06:30] You cut me off. Not in issue that we are not at this issue.

[2:06:37] So, you are done.

[2:06:39] Mr. Vice Chair, what else is there?

[2:06:42] Okay, we have Director Valor then we have Director Bill.

[2:06:45] Director Valor.

[2:06:50] Great.

[2:06:50] So, I wanted to just bring the conversation back and make sure we're all on the same agenda item.

[2:06:57] Yeah, I just want to make sure everybody understands that because we started with someone commenting on 5.2.

[2:07:05] So I think it makes people up. So we are now.

[2:07:09] I want to just say that part of the context here is the all remember on December 10th, we the board adopted the policy that now is being

[2:07:26] discussed in 5.2. That is the process that is triggered when a complaint is filed against a board member by a member of the public or by an employee.

[2:07:40] As we the board have been going about what we do, some of us noticed that, hey, we have a process for when someone files a complaint against a board member.

[2:07:53] that's the one we adopted on December 10th. We have a process for when someone files a complaint

[2:08:00] against an employee should we have a process for BALs given that the board fires and fires those

[2:08:08] folks and so that that is what this agenda item is. It is asking the board policy and monitoring committee

[2:08:15] I think I'm getting the name right to have a conversation about whether we should and if so

[2:08:24] let's let's figure out what that process would look like. So I support that. I would go ahead

[2:08:28] and make a motion to have that referral move forward and that's all. Thank you. Is there a second?

[2:08:36] Yes. By night, I got a director's shoe and there's a second. Go ahead, don't. Okay, I'll direct the bell.

[2:08:42] What's a motion?

[2:08:45] I heard the motion to be a that proved the referral. Is that correct? So we'll be discussed.

[2:08:52] I support this. I thought, okay, this is good. I mean, we'll go ahead and do this. I want to I want to recognize some special things that think about in that committee. Okay.

[2:09:03] One of them is sort of the power, power relationship issue and making sure that people feel comfortable

[2:09:16] in a way of applying their rights to have a complaint against somebody that has power.

[2:09:25] I think that's important.

[2:09:27] You know, to look at that in a fair way, I mean, I think there's been a lot of talk about that in the country that people, it's hard to complain against somebody that has power over you in some way in terms of your employment or in terms of other things, you know, political things, other things.

[2:09:57] So um

[2:10:00] That's important. If we do the referral, I think those kinds of issues should be talked about. I think the way you get around that is sort of having some kind of neutral, you can talk to professionals about this, but neutral sort of evaluator, arbitrator kind of person to weigh in judge that case.

[2:10:27] So if you want to say it that way, to make it fair decision on the issue, okay?

[2:10:33] So I make any comments in a way where it doesn't have the appearance of political,

[2:10:42] it is more fair

[2:10:43] and it's neutral, have a neutral evaluator.

[2:10:47] So I'm just, you know, off of when that comes back from the committee, some of these things are considered.

[2:10:52] And I appreciate the referral.

[2:10:54] Thank you very much.

[2:10:55] I support it.

[2:10:58] I think further, Vice Chair.

[2:11:01] No, I'm going to have chair.

[2:11:03] All right, roll call please.

[2:11:05] Director Ballard.

[2:11:06] Director Ball.

[2:11:08] Director Eisenberg.

[2:11:12] To this existing committee.

[2:11:15] The committee as it exists now.

[2:11:16] Then the answer is no.

[2:11:19] Director Shua.

[2:11:20] Yes.

[2:11:21] Vice Chair Santos.

[2:11:22] Yes.

[2:11:22] Director Varella.

[2:11:24] Chair Estramara.

[2:11:25] Aye.

[2:11:26] Motion passes.

[2:11:28] Right. Five point two.

[2:11:32] I'll undertake motion since we've, I think, discussed.

[2:11:34] Oh, Mr. Chair, we have a couple of speakers on five, too.

[2:11:37] Okay.

[2:11:38] Additionally, I've never been informed of any charges against me.

[2:11:45] Good word, Ed. Chair, do you want me to go ahead and.

[2:11:47] Yes.

[2:11:48] Okay. The first speaker we have is a Doug Peterson.

[2:11:52] Five point. Please. Please come in.

[2:11:55] Followed by Peter Van Dyke.

[2:11:59] This is Peter,

[2:12:09] sir.

[2:12:09] Hello again, my name is Doug Peterson, and I value my constitutional right to speak about agenda item 5.2 which focuses on two formal complaints that I filed against director Rebecca Eisenberg.

[2:12:23] I did not intend to speak here today, but her defamatory online references to me posted last night have left me no choice but to appear before you again and defend my good name.

[2:12:35] My first complaint was signed and filed in person on February 13th in accordance with the

[2:12:43] government, the board's governance procedures.

[2:12:46] Recent events led me to file a second complaint on March 4.

[2:12:52] Last night, two online narratives posted by director Eisenberg, alleged that my grievances

[2:12:59] are part of a coordinated effort led by chairperson Esfremara and are somehow connected to a matter

[2:13:07] concerning the CEO. I categorically deny director Eisenberg's false characterization of my

[2:13:18] actions and motives. I composed my formal complaints on my home desktop computer using my own

[2:13:25] intellect and resources, believing that director Eisenberg's dishonest and defamatory online

[2:13:33] statements violate the board's code of ethics and conduct. I have never spoke to the chair

[2:13:39] or any other district official about my complaints prior to filing them. After I filed my

[2:13:48] This complaint, Chair Estimera contacted me to provide a basic understanding of the process

[2:13:55] that would likely be followed and our conversation was brief.

[2:14:01] When he contacted me about the second, I expressed my desire to have the closely related

[2:14:07] complaints adjudicated concurrently, and it is my understanding that this is how the board

[2:14:12] will proceed if it agrees to process my grievances.

[2:14:15] If necessary, my personal handwritten notes and my computer's search history could verify that I

[2:14:23] compose both complaints independently.

[2:14:27] I was not encouraged, directed, or aided by any official from Valley Water.

[2:14:34] I will conclude by saying that the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution was not put

[2:14:39] place to protect the rights of government officials to defame and humiliate folks like me.

[2:14:47] It was enacted so that ordinary citizens could openly express their thoughts about their

[2:14:52] government and seek redress for their grievances free from fear of retaliation or intimidation.

[2:15:00] Director Eisenberg is obligated by her privileged position to speak in a way that honors the thoughtful

[2:15:07] stretchers outlined in the board's code of ethics and conduct, and I am well within my rights

[2:15:13] to seek redress for blatant conduct violations that cause significant harm to me and others.

[2:15:21] I am fully confident that this board will treat them at her fairly, and I will be at peace with

[2:15:27] any outcome of your deliberations.

[2:15:30] Thank you again for all that you do.

[2:15:33] Mayor's fine to that.

[2:15:34] I think there's no, you may not respond.

[2:15:36] Well, you're not going to miss the Peterson.

[2:15:37] This is, this is public comment.

[2:15:38] There is no reference like that.

[2:15:40] Mr. Van Dyke, I do not mention it by name on a website.

[2:15:43] Out of order, or usual.

[2:15:46] OK, I'm after that.

[2:15:48] But the way you treat me right now is completely out of line.

[2:15:52] So, I thought that the ad committee for several years,

[2:15:56] And I've been attending a lot of the board meetings

[2:16:00] because I need to learn about the district

[2:16:02] and what goes on even though I was on the resource

[2:16:05] conservation board of directors back in the 90s

[2:16:07] as a young man.

[2:16:11] And the only way the boards can function properly

[2:16:16] is to have continuity.

[2:16:19] And Mr. Peterson mentioned the first amendment.

[2:16:21] I don't think he fully understands it.

[2:16:24] Because I believe that her first amendment rights might be violated in this case.

[2:16:31] You know, when I first, she first came to one of our committee meetings, I was really put off by her because of her personality, her brashness.

[2:16:40] I'm just being honest.

[2:16:43] You know, but because I believe in freedom and freedom of speech, I said okay, let her say what she needs to say at this meeting.

[2:16:55] And I just don't, I don't agree with putting people down, censoring people, I mean, even

[2:17:02] Al Green in the Congress the other day, I thought that they should just let him speak.

[2:17:07] He had something to say, so he interrupted his speech.

[2:17:11] I think he had a right to speak to say what he needed to say.

[2:17:16] And I've looked at the investigations, I've looked at it all, and I just, I just, your board's

[2:17:22] a function better if you can communicate these things out. And just accept her for who she is,

[2:17:29] which you know, she still kind of puts me off in a lot of ways, you know, but it has just

[2:17:34] her personality. We got to accept people for who they are and we got to move on and get beyond

[2:17:40] these petty little differences that everybody seems to focus on and focus on the job that we have to

[2:17:48] to you, all of us. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Van Dyck.

[2:17:55] Mr. Chair, we have a very

[2:17:56] great director.

[2:17:59] So first of all, I want to thank both of the speakers. I recognize that what you said

[2:18:04] to me was pretty hurt my feelings a lot both of you, but I'm not going to fail a complaint

[2:18:11] about you because you have the right to speak. And the way I was taught growing up where I

[2:18:18] And by religion and my ethnicity, is that the response to speech is more speech, the response to speech is more speech.

[2:18:27] First of all, I want to say that anyone could look at my blog at our L.E.

[2:18:33] My initials Rebecca Lynn Eisenberg at me dot medium dot com and you will see for yourself, I never once come close to mentioning Doug Peterson.

[2:18:47] In any way whatsoever, at the last meeting, Mr. Peterson alleged that when I referred to Mr. Burns, I was referring to Mr. Peterson.

[2:18:57] No. Mr. Peterson is not Mr. Burns. Mr. Burns is the mean boss on the Simpsons.

[2:19:05] And all I had was a cartoon from the Simpsons because I love Lisa Simpson and I stand by that. And you're welcome not to us, Lisa Simpson.

[2:19:13] It's okay. I love her. First of all, I want to say that the fact that this has been escalated to this level.

[2:19:21] It's embarrassing for all of us. I get that the point of this is again to publicly humiliate me.

[2:19:27] But I can stand this. I have you all have taught me so well how to keep my chin high when people say things to me that hurt my feelings. You have helped me gain the strength to know that self-esteem comes from within.

[2:19:42] And as long as I know that I'm always behaving in a high integrity manner, I can look myself in the mirror, I feel good, and that is the case.

[2:19:53] I never would have mentioned Doug Peterson in my post, I did not mention Doug Peterson in my post, and I don't know where, what if he's...

[2:20:00] Looking at the right place. Maybe he's looking somewhere else, but that was incorrect. And so I agree with the earlier

[2:20:06] speaker, Ms. Goldeen, that this board should actually take a look at this complaint before

[2:20:11] deciding to elevate it because that is just a provably false accusation. And again, I encourage

[2:20:17] you all to read it. Second, I think the fact that this has been escalated possibly might be retaliation

[2:20:23] against me because I put a reason to believe that some of you may have found out about

[2:20:28] the six hours I spent being interviewed by the FBI.

[2:20:34] Yes, I was interviewed by the FBI and I believe that some of you learned that even though

[2:20:40] I have been keeping that confidential and so these statements that Mr. Peterson is so

[2:20:47] certain of calling, defamatory, and untrue,

[2:20:50] are not being considered so by the federal authorities.

[2:20:55] So I think that there are genuine disputes over fact.

[2:21:01] There are genuine disputes over law.

[2:21:04] And when there are genuine disputes over facts

[2:21:06] or law, our democracy with our three branches of government

[2:21:10] has means of handling this.

[2:21:13] If Mr. I only got 55% of the vote,

[2:21:16] which is pretty good against a two-term incumbent.

[2:21:19] That means at 45% of the people voted for the other guy.

[2:21:24] I've actually, if anything on my blog,

[2:21:25] I've tried to extend an olive branch to Mr. Peterson

[2:21:28] because his words express a lot of environmentalism.

[2:21:31] And I think we could actually work together really well.

[2:21:34] I'm a lawyer.

[2:21:35] I work together with people of all personalities.

[2:21:39] It's what I do.

[2:21:41] I mean, I worked for Peter Teele.

[2:21:43] I worked with Elon Musk.

[2:21:44] I can work with people and be amicable.

[2:21:47] Could you please wrap up?

[2:21:48] So, I don't think I need to.

[2:21:51] So, this is a very big thing

[2:21:53] you're asking my colleagues to vote on.

[2:21:56] And I deserve the chance to address it.

[2:21:59] The way that, especially because I didn't

[2:22:00] heard about this today, no one bothered

[2:22:03] to tell me that actual complaint.

[2:22:05] So, they're under a democracy.

[2:22:08] There are means of taking action when you hate

[2:22:11] your elected representative.

[2:22:13] One of them is to get together with other people who hate your elected representative, and try to file for a, some giving the word, you know, forced impeachment.

[2:22:26] So he could, he is, he is free. Anyone is free to try to get me and peach. That is part of our democracy.

[2:22:33] Another option open to him is to write as many letters to the press and speak as much as he wants in these meetings.

[2:22:38] And I welcome these thoughts because please wrap up, so yes, I am. I welcome these. Yes, will you please not interrupt. I am.

[2:22:48] You've been on this for 15 minutes.

[2:22:53] So I hope that when the public watches these.

[2:22:57] They will see who actually is being rude and who is being polite because I want to say to Mr. Peterson, I don't have anything against you.

[2:23:05] I have been you, I have been really frustrated with my elected official.

[2:23:10] I understand how much, how much that sucks.

[2:23:13] I get the feeling of feeling like your elected official is really, really like you said.

[2:23:19] I want to say, I can't.

[2:23:22] I can't.

[2:23:23] Last time.

[2:23:24] What I am trying to...

[2:23:25] You're out of order.

[2:23:25] This is not even the agenda.

[2:23:27] I'm trying to do this here.

[2:23:28] You are out of order.

[2:23:30] We're done.

[2:23:31] I am reaching an amulet right here.

[2:23:33] I'm proposing an...

[2:23:34] Vice chair is there any is there any of the motion is that it I just want to make peace with Mr.

[2:23:43] Peters and his all and then go talk to him. I would I think we can vote this

[2:23:48] without another $600,000 being spent on an investigation and another to the vice chair I'm in

[2:24:03] Walker, Mr. Walker, Mr. Chair, I know.

[2:24:08] Hi, everyone, I'm Luke Walker.

[2:24:10] I'm Mr. Walker.

[2:24:10] Yes, Mr. Walker.

[2:24:11] Mr.

[2:24:15] Walker, just from me observing today, I definitely am one of many,

[2:24:21] a growing meaning that are standing behind her on how she is clearly targeted,

[2:24:29] Clearly met with bias and I can't hear you and can she start over we couldn't hear you

[2:24:38] No, we couldn't their my colleagues have said they can your your at home. So you maybe have a different system

[2:24:44] Yes, I just want to say I am one of many many many many many behind Miss Eisenberg and I do hope that in the future this board does

[2:24:56] as able to contact.

[2:25:00] Business with dignity and class and respect. That's what I'm going to add today, but I'm definitely looking into.

[2:25:10] I'll be looking at your past board meetings as well and presenting potentially in the future additional information, but we are 100% behind Miss Eisenberg, and I do hope you guys can conduct business with a little bit more dignity.

[2:25:29] at this point. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Anybody else?

[2:25:35] So I share. Okay. This is point. I want to ask the general council to please explain to us

[2:25:45] what this personal policy is with respect to the point.

[2:25:50] I don't know because there is actually a dispute going on between

[2:25:56] myself and the discount he's going to I want him to recite the

[2:26:00] what the I want him to recite you have not been he is not nice do not

[2:26:07] have been recognized but he is incapable of of answering this without being

[2:26:11] inflicted and if the general of the accused himself from this then there will be no

[2:26:16] the representative general council read the policy not out of order this

[2:26:22] policy that we're talking about. Mr. Chair, this is kind of

[2:26:26] so the answer to your counsel. So the policy is stated in the

[2:26:29] Board of Gender Memo, which was approved by the Board as a whole on

[2:26:32] December 10th of last year. So the policy provides that anyone

[2:26:36] quote, anyone may bring a formal complaint against the Board member

[2:26:39] from this conduct and importance with this section. The chair shall remove

[2:26:44] complaints to determine if you've complaints to determine that they

[2:26:47] articulate sufficient basis for further consideration. The chair may

[2:26:51] is not required to attempt informal resolution of a complaint with the complainant and the accused

[2:26:56] board number.

[2:26:58] The thing goes on to provide, if informal resolution is unsuccessful or is not attempted,

[2:27:02] the chair shall make a timely request to the board to form an ethics and conduct ad hoc

[2:27:07] committee to address the complaint. As part of this request, the chair shall nominate an additional

[2:27:12] member for the committee, which shall consist of the chair and one other. The chair's request

[2:27:16] shall be agendized for a public meeting of the board of directors. That's where we are.

[2:27:20] So, it's up to the board to determine whether they're doing a border, was there first a requirement that in former resolution be attempted, because there has been no informal resolution. That's actually what I was arguing for.

[2:27:34] There's no requirement.

[2:27:37] I proposed that.

[2:27:39] Yes, we did again.

[2:27:41] Yeah, attempted.

[2:27:42] I mean, this is something that two runners can work out.

[2:27:46] Mr. Chair, she's on a border.

[2:27:51] It's real simple to resolve this thing, it's to go through the process. I have not even, I have not just set down $1,000 bestigation simple.

[2:28:06] There is kind of hiring freeze. You are assuming you are, you know, you want to talk about fairness, you are assuming stuff that absolutely hasn't happened.

[2:28:15] You're just assuming the investigation against me because 600,000 and the litigation

[2:28:21] are assuming that's been 2 million. Yeah, no that is not assuming that is fact and you admitted that the district admitted that so that is

[2:28:30] There's no assumption it's not necessary to share we have to write we're on a hiring freeze and you

[2:28:35] you are out of order again and again and again and again and again we're going to get to a point

[2:28:42] We have to ask you to leave

[2:28:44] I we have to conduct this meeting according to the rules now you are out of order ten times now. Okay, I'll tie the yonning

[2:28:54] To the chair of the security rocket if we have to record your bellard. I'll write your ballard

[2:29:01] two things I wanted to say

[2:29:03] One, I wanted to go ahead and make a motion that we direct the chair to pursue some sort of resolution that falls in the category of an informal process first and foremost.

[2:29:17] I do agree that we should have adults sit down and figure things out.

[2:29:23] So that would be a motion that I make, it's within the, I think it falls within what is outlined in the memo here and the recommendation.

[2:29:34] But I would like for it to be some sort of like, let's try to sit down and work this out in a informal way.

[2:29:41] And then, and then I wanted to also ask for some clarification.

[2:29:47] Director Eisenberg mentioned that she was not notified,

[2:29:51] or was not aware that there was a complaint.

[2:29:54] I know that I received, given the complaint.

[2:29:58] I know.

[2:30:02] Can I respond, let me respond, let me respond. First of all, I personally did notify her by email. Second, no, not notice of the complaint. Not with the complaint. Notice of the complaint. Again, that's the policy. It says notice of the complaint doesn't say,

[2:30:29] in any case. Let me respond.

[2:30:34] Let me respond again.

[2:30:37] Let me respond to that. Let

[2:30:42] me respond

[2:30:43] to direct the ballard. Direct the ballard. I have seen this as I can't sit down and deal

[2:30:51] with this unless I first have an intake and speak with the complainant. Then figure out

[2:30:59] to do. I was the person on the committee that suggested informal complaints, first of all,

[2:31:07] an informal complaint process because of this, and secondly, that there always be an attempt

[2:31:14] that mediation. So, not everything ends up at investigation, especially if there's no question

[2:31:22] fact. But I don't see myself with being able to talk to a complainant without going to the process.

[2:31:31] So this is what the process is. I have not discussed this with with the complainant

[2:31:37] because this is what the process is. The only thing I discussed with the complainant was

[2:31:43] to let them know that this is the process to one that we're following now.

[2:31:47] And, secondly, I only discussed with him that he had a second complaint. We put both complaints together.

[2:31:54] That's it. I didn't feel that I was able, as a person who's got to deal with the complaint,

[2:32:03] that I was able to go talk to him and talk to everybody and conduct a meeting without going through this process.

[2:32:10] That's what the process requires. That's why I had the council reading.

[2:32:13] So, that's all I'm doing is following the process, I imagine after I do an intake that I might even consider that there is no no no basis for the complaint.

[2:32:23] But that's what that's what this sets, this is a formal complaint.

[2:32:28] We have a process for informal complaints.

[2:32:31] Once the complaint is said, this is a formal complaint, it's a formal complaint.

[2:32:34] So I'm following that process.

[2:32:37] It's a cumbersome process, but I can't say if I'm not, if I'm a disinterested person,

[2:32:43] then go talk to the complainant because then of course, the response is going to be

[2:32:48] that the complainee, I've been talking to the complainant.

[2:32:53] So that's what I'm trying to avoid by going strictly to the process.

[2:32:58] So once I go to the process, you assign as a board to me to go talk to people that I

[2:33:03] do that.

[2:33:05] Okay, can I?

[2:33:07] So two things, one, thank you for clarifying.

[2:33:12] I think all of us want to get beyond this

[2:33:15] and just get to, I think someone was saying earlier about doing the good work of

[2:33:20] this organization.

[2:33:22] So, there's a lot between an informal complaint

[2:33:27] and an investigation, and I think we're not, we're not authorizing

[2:33:32] and investigation. No. So I just want to make that clear because it seems like some people are feeling like we're

[2:33:38] you know director Eisenberg said spending $600,000 for an investigation. Or not, that's not at all what

[2:33:44] were, that's not the ways that we're at at this point. And then the other thing I just wanted to clarify was

[2:33:50] I distinctly remember getting two different communications from Doug Peterson outlining grievances.

[2:33:56] they were a part of our board packet, they were, they were there, so I'm wondering if, you know,

[2:34:06] drug drives number, you mentioned that you weren't alerted, you didn't know what the complaint was, but they were in our board packet.

[2:34:11] I mean, I recognize Dr. Ballad that you're the newest member of this board and I welcome you.

[2:34:16] Well, heartedly, and I appreciate what you said earlier, but this is really unprecedented.

[2:34:21] people write all sorts of negative things about all sorts of different board members, including the chair.

[2:34:28] There have been all sorts of mean nasty personal tax given to every single one of us.

[2:34:32] And that's what happens when you're elected official. This is the first time.

[2:34:36] This is the first time. This is the first time and it that and that this has ever been put on the agenda.

[2:34:41] I mean, this is a really expensive meeting we're having and this isn't a really expensive amount of time.

[2:34:46] This is not cost free to the public that this has been made on the agenda, especially because we're operating within the context of our CEO, having multiple complaints about him for sexual harassment and potential assault.

[2:34:58] What's it? What's it?

[2:35:00] And once again, once again, once again, once again, once again, once again, once again, once again, once again, once again, once again, once again.

[2:35:12] So that is, this is worth saying. What I think also what needs to be clarified is that direct that chair, as to Mara's words in that email.

[2:35:23] different entirely from what he just said. I have determined that the complaints and its

[2:35:30] supplement are to articulate a sufficient basis for further consideration. Now, he has

[2:35:36] not considered any other of the critical emails that have arrived at any other board director

[2:35:42] to warrant board consideration. And that within the context of the FBI looking into him,

[2:35:49] This was a formal complaint.

[2:35:53] It was filed as a formal complaint.

[2:35:57] It's not a letter or an email.

[2:35:59] Now, in response to it, I have made many.

[2:36:01] Once again, none of them have been because I've

[2:36:04] complained about, yeah, I have complained about sex discrimination.

[2:36:08] Because I've complained about it.

[2:36:11] In response to direct the ballot, direct the ballot,

[2:36:15] the different letters that we received,

[2:36:19] It are not the complaint the complaint is I don't know almost 30 pages long

[2:36:24] so

[2:36:25] You know

[2:36:27] Those are different letters like any other letters that we'll be seeing so is it?

[2:36:31] I didn't so complain from why did to the victim to the accused no, there's nothing that says that and when we get to that

[2:36:40] We've gone through this because what he said out there was provably on true his name is never mentioned in my God

[2:36:46] I do not wish we've gone way beyond way beyond way beyond this this is a very simple request.

[2:37:00] The board can obviously vote no and then you know we'll have we'll have Mr. Peterson do something else.

[2:37:09] So, is there a motion or either way?

[2:37:13] Let's move on.

[2:37:15] We've done with this.

[2:37:17] Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[2:37:18] I make a, I support that request and a motion.

[2:37:21] Is there a second?

[2:37:24] Ms. Ballard, Dr. Ballard, have you?

[2:37:26] Sure will.

[2:37:26] Is there a second?

[2:37:27] The second please.

[2:37:33] Have the clerk read the motion back.

[2:37:38] The motion is to consider the request of chair,

[2:37:40] Mr. Mayor, pursuant to GP6.5.7 to form in ethics and conduct ad hoc committee, consisting of chair,

[2:37:48] Mr. Mayor and vice chair centers to address a complaint from a member of the public, against a board member.

[2:37:55] And

[2:37:58] there is a motion by director Bale, to handle this.

[2:38:08] Excuse me, you had a border.

[2:38:11] Hi, sir.

[2:38:12] Yes, go ahead, Tony.

[2:38:14] Do we have a motion?

[2:38:15] What's going on?

[2:38:16] We have a motion for 5.2.

[2:38:19] Is there a second?

[2:38:20] We had a second by nice human.

[2:38:22] All right, then roll call.

[2:38:26] So the most, the substitution emotion is withdrawn.

[2:38:31] Yeah.

[2:38:31] One point two is what it says here.

[2:38:33] What it says we're voting on.

[2:38:34] Okay. And just to be clear, because I thought I had an original motion from director

[2:38:38] Ballard and a second.

[2:38:39] It's the suggestions.

[2:38:41] Okay.

[2:38:43] The answer is my motion.

[2:38:44] I believe this happens.

[2:38:46] Okay.

[2:38:46] So I'm sorry. Could you repeat?

[2:38:47] Who made the, the next one?

[2:38:51] The motion and then the second.

[2:38:53] Thank you.

[2:38:56] Okay.

[2:38:57] roll call director Ballard director Bell director Eisenberg. I oppose the creation of a new ethics.

[2:39:05] Just say no. This is a roll call.

[2:39:09] Director Shua. Yes.

[2:39:12] Is chair Santas? Yes.

[2:39:14] Director Varella chair and Stramara. Hi. Motion passes. Thank you.

[2:39:23] Board committee reports.

[2:39:28] Any questions?

[2:39:30] Nothing, Mr. Chair, go ahead.

[2:39:32] And his question, okay, we'll move right along then two, five, eight point one.

[2:39:38] We do have a couple of speakers, Mr. Chair, how you want to handle it.

[2:39:43] Right ahead.

[2:39:43] Well, let's start our presentation then we'll then we'll do this speaker's.

[2:39:46] Thank you.

[2:39:47] We'll take public comment after that.

[2:39:49] Yeah, we have two speakers. Don't just let me make sure you have.

[2:39:52] We have a David Kennedy in the Peter Van Dyke.

[2:39:55] Okay.

[2:39:56] Just line up, please later, go ahead, Mr. Chair.

[2:40:01] All right. Good afternoon, Chairs from Aera and Board of Directors, Submarine McCartor, Deputy Operating Officer at the Dam Safety and Capital of Delivery Division.

[2:40:09] Today, we have an item 8.1. It's the informational update on the Pacheco Reservoir Expansion Project, so we have a presentation today that was given at our January 27th water supply and demand management committee meeting.

[2:40:20] And it's also accompanied by an FAQ sheet.

[2:40:23] We have some questions that have come in over the past couple of years

[2:40:26] that we wanted to kind of memorialize in that answer there.

[2:40:30] So, that further ado, if you'd like to have the presentation,

[2:40:32] I'll pass it over to Julianne O'Brien.

[2:40:39] Good afternoon, Julianne.

[2:40:41] Good afternoon, Julianne O'Brien, engineering unit manager

[2:40:44] overseeing the potato project.

[2:40:47] OK, so we've been giving quarterly updates on the project for some time.

[2:40:52] And in October, we went to the then Water Supply, I don't remember a committee, and presented a list of future topics for to kind of guide these updates moving forward, and then that went to the full board in November of 2023.

[2:41:09] the next topic that we talked about was then description of project operations and benefits that was

[2:41:17] later that same year December to committee and then full board in January.

[2:41:23] And then in 2024 we had a discussion and review of project costs to the wisdom committee

[2:41:30] they water supply demand management committee in May of 2024 and then the full board in June

[2:41:37] that year. And then the most recent one was the discussion and review of requirements unique

[2:41:43] to the project which went to committee in August and the full board in October. And then

[2:41:48] as Ryan mentioned earlier this presentation has already gone to the committee and that was

[2:41:53] in January of this year. And then additionally we have that list of questions and responses from previous

[2:42:00] presentations that's part of the attachment. And that will continue to be updated periodically

[2:42:07] as needed. Okay, so moving forward, some of the other future topics still on that

[2:42:14] ruthless from 2023 are a discussion review of current partnership approach in the board,

[2:42:20] directed partnership percentages, and a discussion in the connection between the project and

[2:42:25] the 2025 water supply master plans portfolio recommendation, as well as the review of the

[2:42:33] in environmental impacts and mitigation measures, and then any additional topics that are

[2:42:39] end up being requested by the Board or the committee. And as of right now, we are planning

[2:42:44] that our next topic is actually going to be a combination of bullet points, uh, the first two bullet points.

[2:42:53] So what is your problem?

[2:42:56] Okay. So, um, what is to provide some project updates, um, from the geotet,

[2:43:02] on the geotet technical investigation side? So originally we were pursuing a geotet

[2:43:08] of a work under a categorical assumption to seek out which is kind of standard procedure.

[2:43:13] In May of 2023, that those design-level geotechnical investigations were stopped by court order.

[2:43:20] In spring and response to that court order, staff prepared a draft initial study, mitigated nec-negative declaration.

[2:43:28] In June, that was released for public review.

[2:43:31] And then in August of 2024, we transitioned to preparing a design-level geotechnical investigation

[2:43:37] environmental impact report in consideration of public and agency comments. And that environmental

[2:43:44] impact report actually was released for public review today. So that is now out for public review

[2:43:48] and that comment period is slated to close April 25th. And then on the environmental side

[2:44:00] what on my notes got out of order.

[2:44:07] Okay, so in July of 2021, PG&E let us know that we would need to

[2:44:14] provides an additional transmission line which has now been determined to be approximately two

[2:44:19] additional miles. In September of 2023, the Army Corps was identified as the Federal National

[2:44:26] Environmental Protection Act Lead Agency and they also requested that we separate our environmental

[2:44:34] impact statement and our particularly attractive IR up to that point we had been planning on having

[2:44:40] that be a joint document.

[2:44:43] After some internal review and discussions,

[2:44:46] we made the decision to formally

[2:44:48] separate those documents in September of 2024.

[2:44:52] And then also in September of 2024,

[2:44:57] became parent that we needed to do some

[2:45:00] Additional modeling, due to state model, statewide model updates by the Department of Water Resources, and to include state and federal biological impacts of the Delta, moving from the Kelsen to the House of Three.

[2:45:15] And this modeling updates are going to be required for the EIR. The resturculated draft EIR, as well as permitting down the road to make sure we meet the regulatory requirements.

[2:45:30] Okay, so this resulted these two phase impacts resulted in an approximate 18 month schedule of vision.

[2:45:41] The categories here are the phases. So, for example, for construction, the new start date of one January 1, 2021,

[2:45:51] is not necessarily shovels in the ground. That's just the start of the construction phase.

[2:45:55] that was something that wasn't clear earlier.

[2:45:57] So these are the new projected start

[2:46:01] and my dates of those phases.

[2:46:06] We also updated the environmental design milestone timeline

[2:46:10] that we had to chair previously.

[2:46:11] I'm not going to go through all the updates.

[2:46:14] There's a lot that the, and based on the 18 month delay

[2:46:18] was the key takeaway here.

[2:46:22] This is the one that kind of shows where we are

[2:46:25] As I mentioned earlier, the draft EIR for the design level due to animal investigations was released today, and so that kind of lines up with where we are.

[2:46:35] And then the.

[2:46:37] We circulated draft EIR development for the larger project is kind of re initiated as well.

[2:46:53] Okay, current project efforts.

[2:46:54] So, we are continuing to progress the design towards 60% design, a few elements that are not dependent on the results of the design level geotechnical investigations have already reached that 60% design, and again, we talked about the draft EIR for the geotech, which was really today.

[2:47:17] We are having ongoing coordination with PG&E on the new transmission line, and to that end, the facility study report has been completed with PG&E, and we are currently coordinating with PG&E on the interconnection agreement, which is the next step.

[2:47:32] We're continuing to move forward with the her circulated draft EIR for the larger project, and then, as mentioned earlier, we have separated the environmental impact statement from the her circulated draft EIR.

[2:47:47] upcoming milestones.

[2:47:51] The draft EIR was completed and is released for public review. We are

[2:47:58] depending on the comments received and how intensive those are. We are anticipating

[2:48:05] certifying the final geotech EIR and getting the necessary permits in August. And then with

[2:48:12] resume that work in September of this year. We will then complete that work in June at

[2:48:20] 2026. Some of that will, again, be dependent on weather and when we actually certify and

[2:48:27] resume that work. And then with the goal of completing the 60% design next September.

[2:48:36] Any questions?

[2:48:40] Mr. Chair, since the information we do have a person online and there's

[2:48:45] speakers here, whatever you want to do.

[2:48:52] Okay, he's telling you, you know, let's say questions

[2:48:54] and only questions and then we'll have public comment and then we can have board discussion.

[2:49:01] Although this is an information only item. So let's treat it as such.

[2:49:06] Well, we have Mr. Chair, we have Director Bell. Yes, Director Bell.

[2:49:11] Because it's such a large project and an independent evaluation be done on the project

[2:49:18] in terms of its cost, timeline, and scope.

[2:49:28] Yeah, we can certainly consider that.

[2:49:32] Independent.

[2:49:33] I mean, somebody can outside evaluate it as a social large project, I think we need to

[2:49:40] look at the reality here.

[2:49:45] Well, don't we have regulators looking at it and now the board did the water board?

[2:49:50] Yeah, I'm just asking for this.

[2:49:55] Most people don't agree with that.

[2:49:56] That's fine.

[2:49:57] So that's what I'm asking for.

[2:50:00] I didn't say I disagreed. I was asking whether we, that's what I want. That I thought we had the the water board looked at it and a number of regulators have looked at it.

[2:50:11] members keep changing and we need to have an end of evaluation. Thank you.

[2:50:16] Mr. Chu, have to record.

[2:50:18] Yes, I have to record.

[2:50:20] I second, third class made by Dr. Bell, and I expect it will be attended to because he made it.

[2:50:29] I also want to refer to the lengthy document that I submitted about probably a little more than a year ago.

[2:50:39] before I was taken off the committee, it was the water storage committee. I can find it for you,

[2:50:50] or I'm sure that the clerk would be able to locate it or I can, you know, for you, where I

[2:50:58] asked a large number of questions, you know, about 14 months ago, and none of them have yet been answered.

[2:51:04] And I don't want to waste time, so I'd want to refer to that. And if you don't have the

[2:51:08] document, I'll make sure you have it. I do and actually a lot of that information was incorporated

[2:51:13] in that case. It wasn't a word for word, but we tried to consolidate a lot of the questions

[2:51:20] and information that had been requested over the last 18 months into a new document. Okay, well,

[2:51:28] maybe I could be, some of that could be walked through, tried with me. I would really appreciate

[2:51:34] it, so I can better understand the changes that have been made, you know, as this is an extremely

[2:51:41] expensive project that is going to be funded with extremely in my opinion risky loans and

[2:51:49] expensive loans. So I appreciate your attention to that. I look forward to hearing more. Thank you.

[2:51:58] Mr. Vice Chair, next. Yes, Mr. Chair, if you would mind with your permission, take the two people

[2:52:03] in-house so they could be the traffic. Sure. Sure. A lot of line. So that was Kennedy and

[2:52:08] have a Kennedy. Okay. Thank you.

[2:52:17] Good afternoon, Miss Kennedy.

[2:52:24] Okay. Well, thank you very much.

[2:52:26] What a enlightening meeting this has been. I obviously against the Pajaco dam. I don't

[2:52:36] believe we need that. I believe we can use our resources in a different way in a more efficient way.

[2:52:43] The presentation. This is my second board meeting. So this is only really the second time that I've seen this, but I think whatever every presentation that you present this project to the to the public, you should have the total cost of this this project presented real plain and simple what's the total cost and also what is the impact of ratepayers.

[2:53:02] So at every meeting, you should say, this is the total cost of this point, this is the impact to the rate players at this point.

[2:53:08] You should also have, which was suggested, the independent investigators look into it,

[2:53:15] you should also have their opinion of the project listed so that we know what all these other agencies are saying.

[2:53:24] And I believe from my previous encounters that a lot of the agencies outside say that this is not a project we should be doing.

[2:53:33] There's too much money. I'm a proud member of District 6.

[2:53:38] As to Mara, I am totally unhappy with the way that you are performing here today.

[2:53:44] Very unprofessional. I don't know what you have against District 7, in the size of Merck,

[2:53:51] but it's obvious. I've only been here twice. The first time I was like,

[2:53:56] wow, what are you and the vice chair having answered? We are in the second day. I see it again.

[2:54:01] So I would like to say that when it comes to this, I will be talking to my neighbors, I will be going on instant the media to let them know what I've seen here today.

[2:54:19] I would expect a more professional.

[2:54:22] You're running through things really fast in a way that is disrespectful to your fellow colleagues.

[2:54:30] There are clear questions that you are not answering.

[2:54:34] There are clear procedures that you are not following.

[2:54:37] You are picking and choosing your procedures that you follow.

[2:54:41] For this point of order of Mr. Chairman.

[2:54:44] For this procedure here, I do not agree.

[2:54:48] Mr. Chairman.

[2:54:50] Public comment, go run ahead, please.

[2:54:53] Go ahead, Mr. Kennedy.

[2:54:54] Yeah, let me speak, Jim.

[2:54:55] All right, all right.

[2:54:57] Just let me speak.

[2:54:58] you have your time.

[2:54:59] Awesome.

[2:55:00] So, which is what happens often. You all get to speak after me. And after I spoke last time in front of this committee,

[2:55:07] Santos said, well, because there are so many people again, just want to hear what everybody says, I want to hear what all my 2 million people have to say, but yet you don't put any vehicle out there to get their opinion.

[2:55:18] I did, if you put that out there, and you get the opinion of all the people in this county, and whether we need that damn, you will get a clear and resounding no.

[2:55:28] Thank you.

[2:55:28] Thank you, Mr. Kennedy.

[2:55:30] Mr. Van Dyne.

[2:55:31] Thank you.

[2:55:35] Thank you, Mr. Chair and Board.

[2:55:39] My family had five generations of farming in this valley.

[2:55:44] And we're intertwined with the land, the ecology, and the people.

[2:55:49] Everything from the Hispanics that have been here for generations to the native peoples that have

[2:55:55] been here for generations, I've had interactions with all of them.

[2:55:59] a lot of them have worked on our farms.

[2:56:03] And I just want to make some comments

[2:56:05] that we could be considered when you think about going forward

[2:56:09] with this project.

[2:56:11] I think Mr. Kennedy covered my analysis.

[2:56:14] So I don't have to go ahead.

[2:56:15] But the one thing I wanted to point out is that the Jacob pass

[2:56:19] for probably 12,000 years in more has been a corridor

[2:56:23] for trade for the native people.

[2:56:25] So it's like has a significant cultural impact there.

[2:56:31] And you know, maybe we don't feel anything about it,

[2:56:33] but it's deeply ingrained in their culture and their being

[2:56:38] and their emotion.

[2:56:39] I've talked a lot about this.

[2:56:41] And in that corridor for trade, regional trade,

[2:56:47] that particular North Fork area was pretty much a center point.

[2:56:51] So that's something that needs to be considered when this is going through

[2:56:54] and you need to really talk to the tribes about this, too.

[2:56:57] And you gotta get them involved.

[2:57:00] The other issue is that we're gonna be in a dating

[2:57:03] because on the conservation district board of directors,

[2:57:07] we're gonna in a date, Sikmoor Habitat,

[2:57:10] which there is far less than 40% of that left in California.

[2:57:15] And the Sikmoor has an incredible symbiotic relationship

[2:57:18] with riparian corridors in how it provides shade

[2:57:22] and also sunlight, the bark is evolved to reflect sunlight into the waters and yet keep them cool.

[2:57:28] And that's very important. We're going to be losing that habitat, so that's a pretty big

[2:57:32] ecological impact there because there's not much sick and more habitat left, especially the old

[2:57:38] heirloom western sick and more.

[2:57:42] So Mr. Peterson covered the cost.

[2:57:46] And I know that that's that you're going to build this reservoir. It's proposed to build built

[2:57:51] and an alluvial plane.

[2:57:53] So I'm wondering how much the cost of just getting down

[2:57:55] to a foundational rock, there's going to be,

[2:57:59] and what that expense is, and if the district has researched

[2:58:02] that, to see if perhaps a site upstream might be better

[2:58:06] that wouldn't have that big impact

[2:58:09] on the ecology of the right-parent corridor.

[2:58:13] So I'm not sure if that's an issue,

[2:58:16] but I know that area well,

[2:58:17] because my family's been around here for so long,

[2:58:19] It's a lot of gravel and sand and loose rock and it's not good for a foundation.

[2:58:25] You're going to have to go quite a way to get the bedrock guarantee that I noticed from working with weld drillers in the area.

[2:58:32] The other thing is that there was a reservoir post there.

[2:58:41] Just kind of finish your quick as my last point.

[2:58:43] Good, wrap it up.

[2:58:44] In 1973, there was a reservoir of proposed,

[2:58:47] and there were three partners in that,

[2:58:48] moment-samped needle county,

[2:58:49] moment-south county, water conservation district,

[2:58:53] and valley water.

[2:58:54] That proposal, and you can look it up.

[2:58:57] I found this online, was rejected by the Department

[2:59:00] of the State Resources California State Resources

[2:59:02] Control Board based on the Department of Fish and Wildlife

[2:59:06] and Fish and Game saying that that Creek is a steelhead

[2:59:12] and Sam and Habitat Creek.

[2:59:15] So that's another thing that we need to consider

[2:59:17] forward going forward in this work.

[2:59:21] And I'm just wondering if it would be better

[2:59:23] to invest as money perhaps in the semi-tropic

[2:59:27] and some other groundwater storage somewhere else

[2:59:29] in the state and use that for horse trading.

[2:59:32] And save the rate payers a lot of money in the long run.

[2:59:36] There's a lot of options here.

[2:59:38] And I think the board needs to consider

[2:59:39] instead of being narrowly focused on one thing. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rendak.

[2:59:47] Right, Chair. I think you said there was somebody online.

[2:59:49] Actually, Chair, right before the two online people, we had Director Bell.

[2:59:54] Yes, Director Bell. John Dorello.

[2:59:56] I have spoken. I don't know. Director Dorello?

[3:00:00] In this matter,

[3:00:05] thank you, Chair. So I recently had the opportunity to visit with the San Benito Water District and the Particle Advocates in that particular region, two, three weeks ago. And we did a tour of the dams and reservoirs in that particular region. And they are a partner with us on this project, as you are all aware.

[3:00:32] Additionally, I have met with the Native American tribe, legal tribes, chiefs, on the Amumatsin

[3:00:42] with Velopens, chief Velopens, and the Castanoan chief Ann Marie Sears, and although they

[3:00:49] have their concerns as to the particular involvement of their history, Mr. Lopez has agreed

[3:00:58] in principle, to work with Valleywater on the study of this particular project.

[3:01:05] So we're not ignoring any of these, any of the history in this particular region.

[3:01:12] Emery Sayers, a tribal chief of the Castanoan, her land constitutes the area that we spoke

[3:01:19] about earlier about the Sergeant Ranch, and she's in that particular region in the southern

[3:01:23] and hills of Hollister, beautiful, beautiful property,

[3:01:27] and I've been with her and I visited her property many, many times.

[3:01:31] So again, I suggest you that,

[3:01:34] although they have concerns about the environmental issues

[3:01:37] that could happen from, they're not opposed to,

[3:01:40] they're working with us, they're speaking with us.

[3:01:43] And we've also met with the,

[3:01:45] and I'm on the board of the Pavel River

[3:01:47] flood protection authority,

[3:01:49] along with Richard Santos, and they too,

[3:01:53] favor this project, because it will provide flood protection for a region that floods historically

[3:02:01] in agricultural area of that particular area, monitoring county, Santa Cruz, County, etc.

[3:02:07] So although there are people that are standing up and saying this is not what we want,

[3:02:11] there are also those that are saying we need this and we need to continue with this.

[3:02:14] So I just wanted to go on the record to share that information that has been shared with me.

[3:02:27] Can we finish the public comment first, and then I'd love to have a chat?

[3:02:32] Did we finish the public comments?

[3:02:35] We can two people we have.

[3:02:37] Let me find out who keeps on interrupting me.

[3:02:40] There's something you need.

[3:02:42] Okay.

[3:02:42] So what we got is Micah Vina.

[3:02:44] We have Katja Irvin.

[3:02:46] Yes.

[3:02:52] Yeah.

[3:02:52] Micah was there.

[3:02:54] You know, yeah, thank you.

[3:02:56] Mike, if you're here with Solary Miserable,

[3:02:59] we represent the Stop the Chaker Dam Coalition,

[3:03:02] I just have a few brief comments

[3:03:03] that I'd like to respectfully provide for your consideration.

[3:03:07] Yes, first, we just want to reiterate

[3:03:09] that the public benefits of this project

[3:03:12] are speculative and the cost is too high.

[3:03:15] We maintain that the dam would flood

[3:03:17] rare wildlife habitat in the Diablo range

[3:03:19] that is not warranted relative to the benefits.

[3:03:22] We also just want to flag the issue that the dam would require an amendment to the Henry

[3:03:27] Coast State Park General Plan.

[3:03:30] In addition, the facility may be contrary to the public resources, code requirement,

[3:03:34] section 5,000 and 1.9B.

[3:03:38] And I quote, no new facility may be developed in any unit of the state park system unless

[3:03:44] it is compatible with the population of the unit.

[3:03:47] And then finally, I just want to flag the issue that the recent approval to raise San Luis

[3:03:54] Reservoir by 10 feet will add 130,000 acre feet of water capacity per year.

[3:04:01] So there is less urgency for the Pacheco Dam Reservoir Expansion Project.

[3:04:06] The additional volume in San Luis would be enough to serve approximately 650,000 people annually

[3:04:13] and support the functions of Valley Water.

[3:04:18] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sabina. Mr. Irvin?

[3:04:33] Let's cut you on.

[3:04:34] Okay, good afternoon.

[3:04:36] Thank you.

[3:04:37] Alley waterboard and staff.

[3:04:39] Cut here Irvin with the CRCled Luma Predator Chapter.

[3:04:44] I hope you had time to read the comments I submitted.

[3:04:47] Encouraging you to ask questions about the cost and viability of the Particle Reservoir project.

[3:04:54] And also in my comments, I want to emphasize that this project will.

[3:05:00] We have significant impacts on tribal cultural resources, which should be documented in these staff reports.

[3:05:09] I also want to thank staff for updating the milestone timeline, and for providing attachment to the Partica Reservoir FAQ.

[3:05:20] At the January Waters Plan Demand Management Committee, I suggested that this FAQ should be available from the project page on the website.

[3:05:31] There's an old FAQ there from February 2021, so it seems appropriate to post this one as well, and I think it would be very informative for the public.

[3:05:45] Also, at the WSDM committee, I asked about what it says there's permits that still need to be acquired for the Geotechnical Investigation, and that was answered verbally by staff at that meeting, but that might be something I think hopefully staff can, again, let you all know what the permits are, so you know what's happening there with the Geotechnical Investigation.

[3:06:14] And then lastly, it would also be useful to know the status of consultant contracts for the investigations.

[3:06:23] Do any new contracts need to be executed or do existing contracts need to be updated before the investigations can recommence?

[3:06:37] So those are my comments.

[3:06:40] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could staff tell us anything about the both of those, the consultant contractors or the permits?

[3:06:51] Yeah, so the permits, we did have permits for the technical investigations back in 2023 before they stopped. A few of those need to be updated and we'll are in the process of being updated another the EIR is out there.

[3:07:07] and so some of those permits include the Lake and Stream, Stream Medalturation Agreement,

[3:07:13] the 401, 401, 401, and 1602 certifications, and then the geotechnical investigations will also

[3:07:20] be covered under the Valley Habitat permit. And then as far as the consultant agreements I believe

[3:07:28] we will need to get some potentially modify a task order for the drillers that I could get back

[3:07:37] to you on that. Okay, and maybe we could include that, some of that information in the next update.

[3:07:46] Yes. No, that'll keep us up. Okay. Any other speakers? Yes, we have Director Ballard,

[3:07:53] and then we have Director Shoewa, and we have Director Eisenberg. Okay, Director Ballard. Thank you.

[3:07:59] And Jim Bell. So we got this update in the wisdom committee. That was great. And I had questions then

[3:08:05] And then I reread things, and I had all sorts of new questions.

[3:08:09] Good news is a lot of my questions pertain to the briefings that you already have scheduled for us.

[3:08:17] So as I'm reading, I have questions about, oh, the partnership aspect of this.

[3:08:22] What is that looking like?

[3:08:23] What are our milestones there, and it sounds like we're going to get a briefing.

[3:08:26] So that's great.

[3:08:27] Same with how this fits into the water supply master plan.

[3:08:31] Sounds like we're going to get a special briefing on that as well.

[3:08:35] But given that we have a couple letters from folks

[3:08:39] within environmental leaning that had some of some similar questions,

[3:08:44] I was wondering if you could just maybe comment

[3:08:46] and give us a little bit of a preview.

[3:08:50] And we heard this from one of the speakers online,

[3:08:52] but also read a Norton's letter.

[3:08:54] She mentions here, just with the standless dam.

[3:09:01] How does that impact?

[3:09:02] how do you now view this project? How do we view this project given that that's looking good

[3:09:09] moving forward? So that's one of the things that I was wondering if you could this briefly respond to.

[3:09:13] And then the other is kind of the cost pieces that Hacha raised around probably updating those.

[3:09:23] And then one other question I had for you, sorry.

[3:09:27] Was the FAQ which is really fantastic and great?

[3:09:30] Is it a living document? Are you adding to it as we go? Yes, so I'll start with that one. Yes, it the intent is it will be a living document in this additional questions come up. We we may not attach it to every update.

[3:09:44] We may just wait until there's some substantial updates to that, but the intent is it will be a living document moving forward.

[3:09:52] as to how this project fits in with the others.

[3:09:58] It's not necessarily...

[3:10:00] One or the other, part of that's going to be up to kind of water supply master plan, but some of these projects are actually going to work well together.

[3:10:10] Delta conveyance, if it's there, and Pichaco's there, great, that's a good way to get the water from the Delta to Bichaco.

[3:10:17] If Delta conveyance does not happen, then Pichaco is even more important as an emergency supply in case there is a Delta outage.

[3:10:27] with the San Luis Damiries, while that would allow for more storage in San Luis, it still doesn't address the low point issue that Valley Water has in Pacheco would allow us to move our water out of San Luis earlier in the year to Pacheco to help with help mitigate the low point issue with where our intake valves are in San Luis.

[3:10:50] So they could work nicely together.

[3:10:54] And then, sorry, there was, you had a third question.

[3:10:58] Cut to the question.

[3:10:59] Cut to the section in her letter on costs.

[3:11:01] And we were kind of updating the loop.

[3:11:03] So we have not had a updated cost estimate.

[3:11:07] And we don't anticipate it having a new cost estimate until the 60% design is complete.

[3:11:12] There's just a lot of moving pieces still.

[3:11:15] that being said, the latest CIP number did show a decrease in the cost because of it in the total

[3:11:22] project cost due to a decrease inflation now that the project is being stretched out a couple

[3:11:28] years further.

[3:11:33] Okay, anything further? Director? Yeah, Director Shoo. Yeah, no, I was wondering

[3:11:39] to direct the balance then.

[3:11:42] Okay.

[3:11:43] I'm going to start to show.

[3:11:45] Thank you, Chair.

[3:11:48] I have a couple of comments for staff to consider for suggestions.

[3:11:55] That first of all, this is the frequent frequently asked questions.

[3:12:01] I think it's really good.

[3:12:03] And then we continue maintaining it.

[3:12:05] at last, at the last, the manager committee meeting, we got some positive feedback from the community

[3:12:13] on that. So I thought, yeah, thank you for that work. I do have two suggestions. One of the

[3:12:21] question in there is how is the water supply master plan developed and then, but the critical

[3:12:30] which critical July year, multi-ajoyer, that kind of thing.

[3:12:33] I think it's important to point out under that question

[3:12:39] that it's all go to meet the board policy level of service

[3:12:48] to provide at least 80% of the demand

[3:12:52] doing a critical July year or a multi-ajoyer.

[3:12:55] because if we can, if everybody can live with a lower level of service to 60%, we definitely

[3:13:03] can do less less than it. But then I don't think that's the, that's, yeah. So it's, it's

[3:13:10] it's important for people who read us to understand that under these extreme weather conditions,

[3:13:19] our goal of providing the level of service and that those two things come together. That's

[3:13:24] of a supply and mass supply is developed.

[3:13:27] I think that's an important concept.

[3:13:30] So we seldom talk about that.

[3:13:34] The other question under the question list

[3:13:38] is there's something about process

[3:13:41] for a land acquisition process.

[3:13:44] I think one important thing is that

[3:13:49] we need to have approved ERR before we can purchase any property.

[3:13:54] I think that's an important component in that in your current explanation.

[3:14:03] And then I have some thoughts related to Sarah Klopp, Ms. Kacha Irvin's common matter.

[3:14:12] The first one is that she suggested that the environmental justification and equity section of our agenda memorandum

[3:14:25] be from the point out that including tribal and cultural impact.

[3:14:32] I think that's a good idea.

[3:14:33] Yeah, you said something in there already, but just be more specific,

[3:14:38] that there is a tribal and cultural impact.

[3:14:41] Even though we don't know how we're going to do it or mitigate it,

[3:14:46] but then we know there's things in the impacts.

[3:14:48] The other two things that in her leather, it's about cost.

[3:14:57] One is the...

[3:15:00] She asked for a cost benefit analysis, a discussion of all the project that I think that our currently looking at, I think that this is, to me, I think this is a pretty challenging, challenging topic, particularly for how do we quantify benefits for certain things.

[3:15:24] I mean, there's easy quantification for any things that we can assign a dollar amount to

[3:15:31] it to the CEC, but there are many, many advantages, it's hard to assign a dollar amount.

[3:15:38] And also that all these opportunities we're looking at really is number one is to meet

[3:15:48] of the water demand in the future condition.

[3:15:52] So in a ways that every project should have that benefit.

[3:15:59] So I said, I think it's a topic that's probably worse

[3:16:05] our effort to have a more complete and comprehensive analysis.

[3:16:15] because I think it's going to be something that it's an easy question that as we move forward

[3:16:23] the people who are interested in this project.

[3:16:26] That's an obvious question that many people will ask.

[3:16:30] I think we should look into exactly when we answer this question.

[3:16:35] What's the methodology that we're going to use?

[3:16:40] And my suggestion is that maybe this is the topic that we can add to the list.

[3:16:49] That's the board approved for the specific area updates.

[3:16:59] Well, since the audio list was approved by the board, so if we're adding something to that list,

[3:17:04] I think it's going to require the board's action to that.

[3:17:09] So that's the first, her first question related to the cause.

[3:17:14] The second, there's a, she mentioned something about the Pacheco project cause is low,

[3:17:22] and then the rationale being that in comparison to Anderson-Dem project, Anderson-Dem was kind of a

[3:17:32] as smaller compared to a projectile.

[3:17:42] So the conclusion is the cost estimate of the projectile

[3:17:47] down is too low.

[3:17:51] So I think that's another topic that staff

[3:17:56] can spend some time because I could be wrong.

[3:18:00] with the mind, I looked at a Jacob and Anderson.

[3:18:04] They're both challenging an expensive object,

[3:18:09] but to me, they're a two different project.

[3:18:12] One more Anderson, number one thing is Anderson is currently

[3:18:17] the center of operation of all entire

[3:18:20] one of your two of these systems.

[3:18:22] So doing the construction, we're still

[3:18:24] need to make our system work.

[3:18:26] It cannot be that system just stops because Anderson

[3:18:29] is all of a commission.

[3:18:33] So we have to do other things.

[3:18:36] And the pipeline, the cross-value pipeline,

[3:18:41] extension, the coyotey pergulation,

[3:18:43] dam replacement, the actual angle of handset

[3:18:49] that has something to do with that after the 2017 flooding.

[3:18:56] And several other other projects.

[3:18:58] And I'm not talking about the mitigation project,

[3:19:02] just the project that's required in order

[3:19:04] to make the system to perform its function

[3:19:09] when Anderson is out of the mission.

[3:19:12] And all those costs are adding to the Anderson Dam project.

[3:19:16] So Anderson Dam project is really the cost of this whole,

[3:19:21] I don't know how to describe it,

[3:19:22] I can't go over it, it's not just Anderson Dam.

[3:19:25] So to me that they're different. So using the cause of Anderson to reflect that political cause as

[3:19:37] Glance is not accurate. I don't think it's an accurate comparison. And of course I don't

[3:19:47] be wrong, but it's definitely a topic. I think it's worth some effort that we have a story together

[3:19:53] and then we can explain to people, yeah. So that's my, that's my comment.

[3:20:02] I do ask my colleagues approval to add this cost benefit analysis of all this different project to the list of things, because

[3:20:15] it's not something that can just come back, we need to, we need to figure it out and then the methodology, but why is this on the list?

[3:20:22] then it's a it will get it will get for that. So it's a okay that make that motion now.

[3:20:35] Chair is that okay that I make that only now.

[3:20:39] You mean how do you mean you're muted Tony Tony you're muted.

[3:21:04] Okay. Sorry.

[3:21:06] yes. Oh, I was going to save. This is off information only, but we could do it

[3:21:11] directive though. Good. Good. Do a board directive.

[3:21:17] The board. Because if they originally know this was approved by the

[3:21:22] whole board. So I don't know what I don't know. I don't know what's the right thing

[3:21:26] but I think to do. Mr. Cherokee, we just asked for a castle for

[3:21:36] Thank you.

[3:21:37] Through the chair, Carol Solana, District Council.

[3:21:38] This item is a gender solely to receive an informational update.

[3:21:43] However, I think that has captured your feedback and can bring an item back at a future date.

[3:22:01] On the future, on the future,

[3:22:01] reports as we will with the consultants contracts and the permits.

[3:22:05] That right. Yeah, my, my request is very simple, just add that topic to it. Yeah.

[3:22:12] Yeah, I think that works along with we more mentioned the consultant contracts and the permits for the next update.

[3:22:21] Yes. Anybody else, right, sir.

[3:22:25] Yes, you have director Eisenberg. We have. We have Mr. Rowell.

[3:22:30] Thank

[3:22:33] you and I request that you not interrupt me like the same respect you gave to my colleague.

[3:22:40] Now, I first want to just point out how inflation works and I don't mean to condescend.

[3:22:46] But when the inflation rate goes down, prices still go up.

[3:22:51] It's just that prices go up at a slower rate, but they're still going up.

[3:22:57] there is, as long as there is inflation, prices are rising. So, that is just the case.

[3:23:04] There is no reduction in inflation, that leads to reduction in price. As long as there's inflation,

[3:23:11] prices are going up. And you can fact check that and everything later on. But I hope you will

[3:23:16] understand that this is such an important concept. Now, I looked at some of the

[3:23:21] of other projects and how they increased over the years. And so when I ran for this office,

[3:23:28] the cost of Anderson Dam, which is at least the second most expensive project that this

[3:23:34] Board has taken on. It's a completely different project. I utterly agree with the reason stated by

[3:23:40] my colleague that, for example, Anderson Dam is arguably far more important.

[3:23:45] And, while this one doesn't have the same value, so, but nonetheless Anderson Dam was 648 million

[3:23:58] when I ran for office, it then doubled in price to approximately 1.3,

[3:24:11] and then as of

[3:24:16] The cost of Anderson Dam has more or less doubled and doubled again, for almost quadruple.

[3:24:23] Additionally, when I was running for the office, the state of cost of Cacheco was $750 million.

[3:24:30] By the time I was elected, I'm more than a billion.

[3:24:35] Now it is, if you include the 35% that I believe we should not be deducting for financial

[3:24:45] partners because they don't exist, under staff's own analysis, we're talking more than

[3:24:53] billion dollars. $750,000,000. The five billion, which includes the controversy of

[3:25:00] So 35% of whether or not they exist partners, but they don't exist. So that is more than doubling and then doubling again.

[3:25:11] But the actual cost of the Chaco have not, we have not been given updated costs in approximately two years.

[3:25:19] And that during that time, it is expected that the cost at least double, at least double because that is what happens to these costs.

[3:25:32] More and even more so, Pacheco, Dam, and Reservoir is a project that is more complicated,

[3:25:41] more expensive, and more regulatory, you know, heavy than any project this agency has ever taken on.

[3:25:50] We have to use, you know, we have to do takings on people who don't want to give up their land.

[3:25:58] We have to somehow convince the state parks system to give up a genuine piece of the state park.

[3:26:08] At a time when our president is actively eliminating federal parks, I do not think that state will or should give up even a square foot of state park.

[3:26:24] There is such a thing as environmental justice.

[3:26:27] These state parks are absolutely 100% necessary.

[3:26:32] And all the approvals of the various very important

[3:26:36] interest groups and regulators don't

[3:26:40] seem anywhere close to reality as others have brought out.

[3:26:45] Fish and wildlife, no, there really

[3:26:48] is not any of these regulators who are the least fit, least fit, you know, sure or positive about

[3:26:59] the ultimate impact. You know, I think done a lot of processing on this. I really have to wonder,

[3:27:07] you know, whether some people know that this jam in Reservoir isn't going to happen. If maybe this

[3:27:14] about spending the money every year and whatever value water is doing with the money it's spending

[3:27:20] because our chair has managed to delay the audit of those finances, not for three years,

[3:27:29] so we don't really know how this money is being spent and what money is spent,

[3:27:34] well we have received answers anywhere between 30 million and a hundred million dollars being spent

[3:27:38] year. And we don't know how much money is being spent each year on this project that is unlikely

[3:27:44] to occur. Couple other quick things we actually do absolutely know where the Indigenous tribes

[3:27:51] stand. They are an explicit member of the Stop Pacheco Dam coalition. These are the local ones.

[3:28:00] They were part of the lawsuit against us, where they won and we lost and we lost so badly.

[3:28:07] We had to pay their attorney's fees,

[3:28:14] we know they oppose it.

[3:28:15] We know that the environmental community opposes this because again, they are part of the

[3:28:20] stock at Shaco Dam coalition.

[3:28:24] And there is just simply no question about that.

[3:28:28] We also know that the private homeowners are not keen to give up their land nor should

[3:28:34] they be forced to.

[3:28:35] There are so many problems with this project that, again, I believe this board needs to put a pin in it and just take it off the CIP because while we continue to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on public money on looking into this, we are not doing things that are absolutely essential if we want to continue to have people living in California.

[3:29:04] One of those things is non-potable water recycling, we're not doing that we claim we can't.

[3:29:13] I don't believe that we can't. If we can do potable water recycling we sure can do non-potable.

[3:29:20] It's easier. We are still using drinking water to water outside spaces.

[3:29:27] We are using drinking water in our toilets. We have made no efforts to move towards systems of conservation

[3:29:35] and responsible reuse of water.

[3:29:40] And these, we still have no system in place on a systemic basis.

[3:29:47] Other than tiny water barrels and trust me, I still don't know how to set that thing up.

[3:29:51] And it costs a lot of money.

[3:29:53] But anyway, other than these individual water barrels,

[3:29:56] we have no system of storm water capture.

[3:29:59] which is

[3:30:00] Basically, free water. And all this matters because we have already heard that there is a large and growing

[3:30:08] percentage of people in our county who are spending far more than 10 percent. I'm sorry, did I miss something?

[3:30:18] What I think it might be important for you to consider that in your districts, both of your districts,

[3:30:23] You have constituents and voters who currently right now spend more than 10% of their income on water.

[3:30:33] And we need to keep these folks in mind.

[3:30:40] We make our decisions.

[3:30:42] We need to think about the people we impact.

[3:30:46] The fact that since I was elected to this board, I have not once been able to vote in any manner whatsoever about this

[3:30:57] Pateco Dam in Reservoir, there is something wrong with that situation.

[3:31:05] I was elected on a platform where I stayed in my opposition to it.

[3:31:12] My my the constituents oppose this and I think Mr. Kennedy for his words which which speak for my

[3:31:21] Those words speak to my

[3:31:24] constituents in power in power

[3:31:29] Yes, I think it's time plenty of time director. I think there are other people that need to speak

[3:31:38] our

[3:31:40] losses

[3:31:42] We need to stop sinking money into this money pit because there are people that depend on us and we report to them.

[3:31:51] Thank you.

[3:31:54] Who's next?

[3:31:54] Vice Chair.

[3:31:55] We have Director Bell and then we have Director Grille.

[3:31:58] Director Bell?

[3:32:01] Yeah.

[3:32:02] Thanks.

[3:32:03] This is going to make it clear a couple of things.

[3:32:08] There is going to be some kind of proposal coming back to us because we can act on anything right now.

[3:32:13] So, this is an item, the attorney just told us it's an item, a view, it's not an item of

[3:32:19] action on the agenda, so we can't direct anything, but we can have stuff, we can act in.

[3:32:27] They have stuff come back to us and my, my request again would be to have an independent

[3:32:36] it costs for you by independent cost and scope review of this project done at this time due to

[3:32:46] the fact that we have so many changes in our budget and turmoil in our funding sources.

[3:32:56] I would like to see that done and I would like to see that agenda is input on the agenda

[3:33:02] and discuss so that we can decide if we want to have an independent

[3:33:07] review of the cost of this project and, you know, it kind of determines to me because I see the numbers on all the other projects change so much, and the shifting of money and costs, I just want to see that.

[3:33:23] done for this project, this way beyond the cost of any other project that we are going to have.

[3:33:31] So I really believe that would be necessary. And I think if we do approve the project,

[3:33:39] such an activity would result in a carefully planned, a better carefully planned

[3:33:45] and cost it out project that wouldn't take away money down the road from other projects

[3:33:53] that we need to do in our five-year cap on prudent budget.

[3:33:59] I don't want this to be the project that drains the resources of the agency from other

[3:34:04] projects.

[3:34:05] And that's the concern I have given our trends.

[3:34:08] I also think that another question, Ligley.

[3:34:11] And one time I asked, there was a, who is asked the question when I first got on the board.

[3:34:18] I think it was in about a year ago, a year and a half ago, I said, well, who is this partner

[3:34:28] that we're talking about? And I kind of was told to shut up, you know, you can't talk about that.

[3:34:33] It's not, you know, I got criticized for it, you know, right here at the meeting told you,

[3:34:39] I was private, you can't really bring that up and I wanted to know who was and they said we don't know.

[3:34:49] So I got a concern about that.

[3:34:53] My concern is if somebody is negotiating with partners.

[3:35:00] I want to know who it is, and I want to know who it is, and I want to know who it is, private, and I want to know if we

[3:35:05] how, what is the relationship between the board and that negotiation should the board members be involved in that? No, probably.

[3:35:14] But I think it's not really clear given the fact that people are coming to board members, obviously we heard today

[3:35:22] and suggesting that they be partners with us. So if that's not clear, I think there's some problems

[3:35:31] I think there's some problems and I think that has to be very clear how that's done in the process for that.

[3:35:44] So that we are conducting ourselves with integrity and fairness and we are looking out for the taxpayers of Santa Clara County.

[3:35:54] When those kind of arrangements or agreements are done, and I think it's very fair, it's very, it's a very fair question.

[3:36:02] I think maybe we ought to have a process for that, so I would suggest that be clarify.

[3:36:11] Thank you.

[3:36:12] Thank you, Chair.

[3:36:14] Direct of Aurella?

[3:36:17] Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[3:36:18] So, recently we've learned that the Lasvaceros project from Costa County has been dissolved

[3:36:28] and being a member of the JPI as a representative of Valley Water and Director Santos as an alternate.

[3:36:39] We've learned that there's approximately $100 million that have been collected from all the various

[3:36:47] partners on this particular project.

[3:36:51] So, in having some discussions with folks in the know, those dollars could potentially be available

[3:37:01] to transfer those partners to the Particle Project.

[3:37:08] And it's not a given, but it's a potential.

[3:37:13] Water storage is extremely important in our region.

[3:37:17] As our county, Santa Clara County, it continues to exponentially grow.

[3:37:23] Water storage is a must.

[3:37:26] Now, I hear people talk about the quality of our water.

[3:37:31] Our treated water is north of Bailey Avenue.

[3:37:34] in southern Santa Clara County up into San Jose.

[3:37:40] Three water treatment facilities, one water purification facility,

[3:37:44] from Bailey Avenue south to Gilroy.

[3:37:47] All the water that is potable water is groundwater.

[3:37:51] No attitudes, no filtration.

[3:37:54] It's the purest cleanest water in our reach.

[3:37:57] Use for agriculture, use for watering our lawns,

[3:38:01] washing our cars, and for drinking and taking a bath.

[3:38:04] So, and that's the largest part of our account, so when we talk about water issues affecting the entire county, it's not affecting South County.

[3:38:13] So I think it's important that we, and by the way, we recently attended a luncheon with Mr. Stock, who is the executive director of the Bureau of Reclamation,

[3:38:24] with the San Luis Delton and daughter water authority members, and ultimately that resulted in a tour with him here at our Anderson Reservoir Project.

[3:38:35] Ryan was there, and others were there, we met him, and we spoke with him, and he has a check-up.

[3:38:42] He represents a federal government, and he has interested to learn how perhaps, perhaps, there could be an involvement with the federal dollars in addition to Lithia

[3:38:53] that we're looking at, how they can involve themselves in water storage projects in the Santa Clara

[3:38:59] County. So again, we're at a what? Approximately two million people, plus or minus? What are we going

[3:39:05] to look like in 10 years? Are all those people going to be leaving and we're going to have less people

[3:39:11] or more people coming into California? A just certain report yesterday. The city of Morgan Hill

[3:39:17] is building an additional 4,000 homes, 4,000 homes in the town that I live in.

[3:39:24] That's one little town, that's insane, that's incredible, but it's happening.

[3:39:29] So I think the exponential growth that we're experiencing,

[3:39:32] there are opportunities to partner with federal agencies, with state agencies,

[3:39:37] all we have to do is ask and sit at the table with these folks.

[3:39:41] They put their hands out, they said, what can we do?

[3:39:44] So let's sit down, let's make a deal.

[3:39:47] That's what I'm talking about. Thank you. Who else about you? Everything's okay, Tom, go right ahead.

[3:39:56] Um, just wanted to ask staff.

[3:40:00] How much money did, from Proposition 1 did the board allocate to, not our board, but I mean, the

[3:40:07] water board allocate to the loss for carols project?

[3:40:12] I don't have that number off the top of my head, but they are voting next week and two on what they

[3:40:20] are going to do with that number or that amount.

[3:40:22] And I'm standing in the case in...

[3:40:25] No, I'm not. Sorry.

[3:40:28] The CWC meeting is the 19th.

[3:40:30] Yes, I understand the indication is that most of the members support distributing that money to all of the other approved projects, including particular.

[3:40:41] That's what it sounds like, but they have not made a formal difference.

[3:40:45] So they have their meeting, yes.

[3:40:47] Okay, I don't have anything further. There's anything further. There's nothing further than we'll move right on to our next item.

[3:40:59] 8.2.

[3:41:04] Thank you, Ryan.

[3:41:06] Yes, good evening.

[3:41:10] I'm a charter deputy operating officer, dam safety and capital, delivery division.

[3:41:15] Yes, tonight we have an item for the Anderson Dam Tunnel Project.

[3:41:19] This is a change order that requires a board approval based on its size of $17 million.

[3:41:25] There's a couple of pieces in your packet that go back on the history of this, the most recent.

[3:41:31] In January of this year, the board approved an additional $40 million in contingency.

[3:41:35] This $17 million dollar change order would be coming out of that $40 million dollars.

[3:41:40] So that's the main thing that that $40 million dollars was allocated for.

[3:41:44] It's for this big change that we knew was coming.

[3:41:47] For quite some time and we finally got a cost in the past couple of weeks.

[3:41:51] And we're bringing this forth because we really need to approve this quickly.

[3:41:55] The steel market is expected to drastically spike in material costs.

[3:42:00] And the contractor needs to get going on this work right away and put in the orders for the steel.

[3:42:04] So appreciate the special CIP committee that was held last week to expedite this item and there's a couple other items that are included in your packet back into 2021 when the contract was awarded we did have a additional or the original contingency of $40 million in the different levels of approvals were stated in that May 2021 or agenda memo.

[3:42:29] The attachment for the April 27, 2021 board agenda memo, actually the wrong attachment got put in there.

[3:42:36] You got 7.1, that was a county parks P-way that was related to Anderson, but what you needed was 7.3.

[3:42:43] And that was the contractor's bid as well as the engineers estimate, but have no fear that was included as an attachment in your January 2025 packet.

[3:42:53] So you could go look at that if you'd like.

[3:42:55] So that's kind of the background. I have a short presentation. If you'd like to see some superstars of this work that we're talking about, it's going to cost us a lot of money to complete.

[3:43:05] Yeah, Ryan, I think it's important to explain how we got here.

[3:43:12] Yes. So go on.

[3:43:13] Yeah, it is quite a history.

[3:43:16] So kind of starting off with the project itself.

[3:43:19] The FERC order compliance project is how the Anderson Dam Tunnel Project came to be.

[3:43:24] It was originally part of the ADSRP conglomerate as Dr. Shua mentioned or the program as I like to call it.

[3:43:33] And so that came out in 2021 and sort of pulled the Anderson Dam Tunnel portion out of that program and became its own contract.

[3:43:40] And we were only at about a 60% design at that time, so we seriously worked to complete a package to put out to bid for construction to expedite this work.

[3:43:49] as fast as possible. So the design wasn't completely approved and a lot of different aspects

[3:43:54] by FERC and DSOD when we did award the contract and we went in knowing that. It's not a preferred

[3:44:01] way to conduct a project, but that's what we were faced with at the time. So there were some changes

[3:44:05] off the bat once we did get the approvals from FERC and DSOD. And then as we went through the

[3:44:11] contractor got the new changes and looked at them and then started developing shop drawings, actual

[3:44:17] rebar details. We noticed some discrepancies where we weren't able to wrap the bars around in the

[3:44:22] section based on their size, the bigger radius for wrapping. It was a pretty technical analysis

[3:44:28] they went through, so we came up with a different way to place these bars in the structural

[3:44:33] section using t-heads and I'll show you some pictures of what I mean by that. And then most recently

[3:44:38] we did a articulated joint mock-up, so we actually built a couple of these sections outside the tunnel

[3:44:44] to see what the kind of construction challenges we're going to be, because it's very complicated.

[3:44:49] It says in your run in the bill, steel reinforcement and concrete structure.

[3:44:53] And so we did a articulated joint mock-up, had some additional changes,

[3:44:56] got an idea of how the sequencing of the work would have to be done.

[3:45:00] In order to complete it efficiently and so that gave us kind of a time and that's how we were able to develop a new cost for this.

[3:45:07] And along with the cost is some material escalation since we awarded the contract. So there has surely been a large impact on steel prices since 2021 when the steel market was a little bit different, then it had become over the subsequent years.

[3:45:22] So that's kind of the history, but now I'll get into what are we actually talking about here with these articulated segments.

[3:45:29] So here you have kind of overview of the tunnel project, the reservoir is on the right side of the screen here.

[3:45:35] And the tunnel takes the water to the left side here into the coyote creek north channel.

[3:45:40] These are going to be the diversion flows for the Anderson dam seismic retrofit project.

[3:45:44] And then we'll be converting this tunnel into basically our utility tunnel during ADSRP and putting a pipe through it.

[3:45:51] of about six and a half foot diameter pipe as well as a smaller three-foot diameter pipe inside

[3:45:56] of this tunnel and crews will be able to walk through and inspect these pipes and these articulated

[3:46:00] segments are built to kind of move throughout the tunnel. I'll show you that on a subsequent slide.

[3:46:06] But what we found during this project and one of the reasons this project has taken quite some time

[3:46:10] is some new fault traces that kind of run pretty much north-south near the dam and those cross

[3:46:17] through the tunnel and we had identified those in geotechnical

[3:46:21] borings and then we found more details on that when we did

[3:46:25] trenching on the surface and then when we tunneled through

[3:46:27] the section we saw those first hand we reached out and touched them

[3:46:31] and map exactly where those are so that's where we place these

[3:46:34] articulated segments that I'll show you on this next page here.

[3:46:38] So let's start on the right this is a 3D analysis software that the

[3:46:42] designer uses and this is showing one of these

[3:46:46] You can see the offset, so a part of the ground is pushing up into the left and the other part next to it.

[3:46:54] On the other side of the fault zone is pushing down to the right, the offset that the tunnel could experience.

[3:46:59] This is like feet, this is like three to four feet of offset that could occur.

[3:47:03] If one of these seismic faults becomes active and displaces right through the tunnel.

[3:47:09] So these articulated segments you can see them along here, they're modeled to be basically discontinuous sections of concrete.

[3:47:15] and very, very heavily structured concrete with a lot of rebar inside of them.

[3:47:20] And so they're either 5 feet or 10 feet in length throughout the tunnel,

[3:47:23] and we place them right where we identify these false zones in order to protect the tunnel

[3:47:28] and then then of one of these seismic events. And then like I said, they'll be

[3:47:31] eventually a pipeline that runs through this tunnel, then the pipeline will be on sliding

[3:47:35] supports. And so if the concrete moves around it, the pipeline can maintain and still be

[3:47:41] able to get water out of the reservoir after a large seismic event.

[3:47:44] And just to give a little bit of scale on the left here, this is the completed tunnel excavation.

[3:47:51] So this is about eight inches of shot-create that was used to just support the ground as we excavated the tunnel.

[3:47:57] So this articulated segment will go inside of this and run the whole length of the tunnel as well as standard

[3:48:03] cast-and-place concrete, but it's about a two-foot thick wall that goes in between this initial excavation

[3:48:10] final or initial lining, and also on the ground of the tunnel or the

[3:48:14] inwards. So it's about a two-foot section all the way around.

[3:48:19] So here's some of the

[3:48:20] the progress of the work. So we've actually started this in the downstream

[3:48:22] leg of the tunnel, so we can see what it looks like. So you see that on the left

[3:48:26] the water proofing is a PVC membrane. This will prevent water from coming into the tunnel

[3:48:32] that's best as we can. And you can kind of see the operation in here in the background.

[3:48:36] There's three different scissor lifts putting in these steel reinforcement bars. And then on

[3:48:40] right, you can see some completed sections of that arch. And so each one of these five foot

[3:48:45] sections. So from here to here this is one five foot section. There's 24 of these large

[3:48:50] diameter steel bars that go all the way around the arch of the tunnel. And then these little dots

[3:48:55] you can see are the the t-heads I was talking about. So instead of wrapping those transverse bars

[3:48:59] around the large bars we have t-heads that kind of just really just look like a t at the end

[3:49:04] and lock in all those bars into place. So that's kind of what the profile looks like and then they

[3:49:09] start of putting in the form work for the invert concrete that will go in the base of the tunnel.

[3:49:15] So you can kind of start to see what the difference in the size of the tunnel look like there.

[3:49:21] So this is when we did our articulating segment mock up outside the tunnel.

[3:49:25] So we've got an idea of what the form work will look like.

[3:49:27] So once we complete all that steel reinforcement or rebar placement,

[3:49:31] we'll start putting in the form work and pouring concrete behind this form.

[3:49:34] So these are collapsible forms made especially for for tunnel concrete work.

[3:49:39] And so you can see that the work going into this is pretty high tech system here and then on the right, you see the completed product here.

[3:49:48] So this is you can see that two foot thick concrete section has all that heavy steel reinforcement in it. We did one five foot section up to this kind of maroon line here and then a 10 foot section. So we practice both.

[3:50:00] Of the different kind of details we have throughout the tunnel. This red section here is actually a low strength

[3:50:06] concrete that we put in between the segments. So there's a gap in between with just air. But we

[3:50:11] fill that with concrete because in order to pass the diversion of flows. Once we start ADSRP, we have to

[3:50:17] actually put water right through this tunnel like this. And then during ADSRP, we make that conversion

[3:50:22] and run the pipeline through it. So this tunnel will at first carry water right through it. And

[3:50:27] that's why we need to fill the gaps.

[3:50:28] And then those, that'll be chipped out later

[3:50:30] when they perform the pipeline work inside.

[3:50:36] That's all I had to share.

[3:50:37] Hopefully that all sunk in real well.

[3:50:39] Thank you.

[3:50:40] Thank you, Ryan.

[3:50:42] Let's see if there's some questions left here.

[3:50:47] Anybody to my left, right?

[3:50:49] Any questions?

[3:50:51] Public?

[3:50:52] OK, let's send it, take a motion then.

[3:50:57] There's a motion by director Verella, a second by director

[3:51:01] issue, there's a now a question was comment by director Eisenberg.

[3:51:10] First of all, I want to say Mr. Carter that I have great respect for your work.

[3:51:15] You do a lot here.

[3:51:17] You contribute a ton and you do many things at the same time and it's I appreciate what

[3:51:24] you do.

[3:51:26] It's not quality and when I say that it's not any criticism of your work.

[3:51:32] I think what the comment I'm making is I think more of a criticism of the way this

[3:51:38] word and this district operates and that is a problem that I have had for a while and again

[3:51:45] it doesn't reflect on any staff member and certainly not on you. And that is that it seems to me that

[3:51:52] we don't

[3:51:54] require ourselves to stick to the budgets we give ourselves and

[3:52:00] We don't have any discipline about that.

[3:52:04] And that has always battled me because I don't come from money.

[3:52:11] You know, and when you don't have an unlimited budget,

[3:52:14] which I think experience many of us share in our,

[3:52:17] as we grew up, you, you have no choice but to stick to your budget.

[3:52:22] There is no going and asking for money.

[3:52:25] You just go without dinner, or you cancel that vacation plan, or you don't replace your car when it breaks.

[3:52:32] I mean, these are things that people on a budget experience.

[3:52:38] Now, here we are managing billions of dollars of public money.

[3:52:45] And I don't feel comfortable that we don't manage it with even more discipline than we manage our person.

[3:52:55] money, because this money is not our money. We hold it in trust on behalf of the taxpayers

[3:53:01] and the right payers. So I think that's why we need to be even more disciplined about this.

[3:53:06] And what I've seen us do is that when we see that we're going over budget, we increase the

[3:53:13] buffer. We increase the size of the, what do you, the allowed to go over zone. And then we increase

[3:53:23] of increase the cost and we say we're not really increasing it because it's within this extra

[3:53:29] money we already set aside for it. That is not something that people can replicate in real life.

[3:53:35] That is something that exists within a reality distortion field that many government entities,

[3:53:40] not just ours. Often exist within where the money does seem like it is unlimited,

[3:53:48] But our money is not unlimited and I, again, you know, I just, I can't keep approving these things because I feel like I'm sending the wrong message and this is not a message to you.

[3:54:03] This is a message to my colleagues that we need more discipline and if we engage in things and this is not to you, but if we engage in things like more audits.

[3:54:12] more if we actually had a finance committee, if we were more transparent about how we're spending

[3:54:19] our money, which I've been demanding from the beginning, if we actually opened our books as we

[3:54:27] should be doing, we then could actually even allow the community to participate in helping us

[3:54:35] improve our systems. But this keeps repeating the same feeling over and over again, asking us to

[3:54:41] trust you, but that there was no other way to do it because my colleagues refused to spend money

[3:54:47] on saving money. I'm not going to support this, although it is not because you. I think you're

[3:54:55] fantastic. It is because I think we need to invest in accountability.

[3:55:00] Transparency, and far more oversight. That is my opinion. Thank you.

[3:55:06] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ryan. Thank you for the good work that you do. It's great.

[3:55:17] So a couple of things that public may not be aware of. How many regulatory agencies are we responsible to that have to sign up on this project?

[3:55:27] I think we say 14 usually when we're asked that question.

[3:55:30] So every time there's a reply,

[3:55:32] there's a request, there's a delay in this project,

[3:55:35] because we have to respond before we can continue on that project.

[3:55:37] Exactly.

[3:55:39] Yeah, there's a lot of processes that are very complicated that require

[3:55:42] approval outside of our control.

[3:55:44] Okay, and also on the contractors that we've hired to do this project,

[3:55:49] we're there to recently into re-emotivating union contracts that

[3:55:54] potentially escalated the cost to the contractor, which in turn has passed on to Valley Water.

[3:55:59] I'm not certain. Well, that's what I understand is occurred. And so some of these costs that

[3:56:06] impacting our decision making are created outside of our bounds, and I just want to make sure that

[3:56:12] the public is aware of what we have, we make decisions, but other people are also making decisions

[3:56:17] on their game and what they benefit from the work that they do on the project and your money that you

[3:56:23] our pain for these projects.

[3:56:25] So that just want to go on the record on that.

[3:56:27] Well, I also want to ask Ryan to explain to us

[3:56:30] as you did to our committee, our CIP committee,

[3:56:36] how we got to this 17 million.

[3:56:38] This is not a situation where we have engineers

[3:56:44] look at a dam and all of a sudden know everything

[3:56:48] that there is to do.

[3:56:50] And therefore, no exactly how much it's going to cost.

[3:56:52] and then can tell us, they won.

[3:56:54] This is what it takes.

[3:56:56] This is what's going to happen.

[3:56:57] Every time we dig in here,

[3:56:58] this is what's happening.

[3:57:00] This is what it's going to cost.

[3:57:01] How do we get here with this $17 million specifically?

[3:57:06] Yes, so once the contract is awarded to the contractor,

[3:57:09] any changes to the design or the scope,

[3:57:13] really kind of opens up the book for them to reprise these things.

[3:57:16] So that's essentially how this went.

[3:57:18] When we got the design finalized by the regulatory agencies

[3:57:22] after the contract was awarded, we gave that to the contractor to review and price out, right?

[3:57:27] And then like I mentioned, they went into great detail and really looking into the shop drawings

[3:57:31] of how they were going to then this rebar and install it and then they had some more questions

[3:57:35] that actually changed the design even more through a request for information process and our

[3:57:40] engineer record. And then that goes back to the contractor for them to price that out again.

[3:57:45] And then as I mentioned, there was kind of the third round of changes through the articulated

[3:57:49] mock-up that would have come when we started installing it in the tunnel, how do we not

[3:57:53] done this mock-up outside the tunnel. So there's some really great lessons learned.

[3:57:57] What we're building here is really a novel idea. I mean, this is we're not copying it from

[3:58:02] another project. This is something that our engineer record came up with to meet the requirements

[3:58:07] that Furkin DSOD had for seismic safety and reliability of this tunnel when we're done with ADSRP.

[3:58:13] That's really kind of the nexus of how we came up with that. But these costs that the

[3:58:19] have tons and tons of backup and spreadsheets. We have a very qualified professional construction

[3:58:24] management team, outside consultant team that works with our own internal staff daily in the

[3:58:29] field that reviews these cost estimates the contractor provides for each and every change order

[3:58:34] and goes through these a great length looking at the schedule and the sequencing and the cost

[3:58:38] of the materials the cost of the labor and really analyzing every single dollar. These guys keep it

[3:58:43] really really tight for us. This is the job that they do and we're overseeing it and they're

[3:58:49] So this is the number we arrived at is just under 17 million for this final lining work

[3:58:54] But there was I think the original bid was about 9 million for the same work. So that was what was in the original

[3:59:01] Mister chair me. I just make us yes, but it sounds like this cathedral look internal

[3:59:07] We probably came the right time because when I read the news this morning it said steel it went up

[3:59:13] I believe over 50% terror.

[3:59:15] So I want to say thank you.

[3:59:17] And John, you're right.

[3:59:18] We started out think, but tell Rick,

[3:59:21] 12 regulatory, and now it's 14.

[3:59:23] So we can go on and on.

[3:59:24] That is, we got to think we have a motion on the floor.

[3:59:29] Yes.

[3:59:30] All right, so we'll call, roll call then.

[3:59:35] Mr. Chair, do we have another comment from the virtualizing room?

[3:59:38] Yes, Derek, that is a burden.

[3:59:40] I just want to say that there are people who are CFOs for hire, who can actually help build risk models into any initial projection of cost.

[3:59:53] So while you don't know how much the price of steel is going to go up, or how contracts are going to be renegotiated.

[4:00:00] A CFO for higher or other financial planning professional can build risk into the model and round up instead of down. Businesses and the private sector do this all the time. It's better to under promise and over deliver. So make your initial, initial estimate higher instead of going over the lower one and you avoid these problems. So that's my point. Thank you.

[4:00:28] Roko.

[4:00:31] Director Baller.

[4:00:33] Director Ball.

[4:00:34] Director Eisenberg.

[4:00:36] Director Shua.

[4:00:39] Vice Chair Santas.

[4:00:41] Director Verella.

[4:00:42] Chair Estimera.

[4:00:45] Motion passes.

[4:00:46] Yes.

[4:00:46] I'm sorry.

[4:00:47] We moved right along to CEO and Chief reports.

[4:00:53] Yes.

[4:00:53] Good afternoon.

[4:00:54] Chair and members of the Board.

[4:00:55] Because of the late hour,

[4:00:57] I'm going to just do one important C.

[4:00:59] report and ask Chris Akes to do that place. Thank you. Good evening. Again,

[4:01:03] Characama members of the board. We have the Storm Report February 25th through March

[4:01:07] 10th attached. We did get a light storm system if through in the area at that point,

[4:01:12] but no flooding was observed. However, we would like to call out the fact that on upper

[4:01:16] penitentiary, we did remove about 90 cubic yards of woody debris in order to mitigate some

[4:01:23] flooding that occurred during the February 13th storm. So that work was completed over

[4:01:28] this weekend, so I'll big shout out to our crews for doing the overtime to get that done.

[4:01:32] Mr. Chair, I also want to comment on that. Thank you, Chris.

[4:01:35] Yes. We get a lot of my residents are calling and they really appreciate the work,

[4:01:38] so thank you.

[4:01:41] Understand, and then some more to come in Wednesday and after?

[4:01:45] Yes. Correct. We've got a forecast. It storms mostly to hit Thursday, two fronts,

[4:01:50] one early and one late. They were supposed to come earlier in the week, but they've shifted back.

[4:01:57] All right.

[4:01:59] There's nothing further on the reports, but move to our review of the fiscal year 2020-2025 board policy planning calendar.

[4:02:11] Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a couple of updates to the board policy and planning calendar.

[4:02:16] The CIP update and the Bichaco Reservoir expansion project update were scheduled for February, but were heard today in March.

[4:02:24] The water supply master plan update scheduled for the March has been canceled due to the lack of new information.

[4:02:32] The greenhouse gas reduction plan will now be presented alongside the Climate Action Plan in June.

[4:02:39] And the proposed revisions to EL6 acid management has been added to the calendar and will be going to the full board for an update in March.

[4:02:47] And that's it. Thank you.

[4:02:50] Thank you. Okay, there's nothing further. We'll move right along to a boy member reports.

[4:02:55] We'll start with direct the bell this time from the other side.

[4:03:06] Quickly, I got, you know, there we go.

[4:03:09] I wanted to tell the staff that a great job with the landscape summit on Zoom that was wonderful.

[4:03:17] Even I learned a lot, I actually tore all the lawn out in my front yard with Pat, my wife and we planted native species in the front yard.

[4:03:31] So, I got inspired and I said, well, what can other people do that?

[4:03:37] Native species, little water users, you know, like we could do more of that.

[4:03:42] So I'm working on my Valley Water Board newsletter, describing how Pat and I did our project.

[4:03:55] Okay, so it's first thing, I went to the Emergency Operational Council chair by members

[4:04:03] We had the discussion of the system of project in Los Banners at the Joint Powers Authority, meaning the Santa Trees, the Fodials Association met with me and staff on the Los Alamedos Canal, which is a several mile long canal.

[4:04:31] that we have an easement in the centuries, the hills behind us over here, and we don't

[4:04:38] use it. We haven't used it for a long time, but we maintain it and we're spending a lot

[4:04:44] of money maintaining it. So I think the city put on their master plan that would be a trail,

[4:04:53] So now everybody's walking along Ark property, a trail, thank you very much.

[4:05:01] Bicycles are not allowed. So, but I think there has to be some kind of transition if we're not going to use it, but we're spending a lot of dough maintaining this. And we got budget problems, we got other money, everything's spent our money on, right? So anyway, so that's the discussion there.

[4:05:23] joint venture state of the valley was very interesting. I think we should have the

[4:05:28] slideshow sent to all the board members.

[4:05:33] And I generally don't like David Brooks,

[4:05:37] the ninth columnist too much, because I certainly like his East Coast snobbery. But he actually

[4:05:45] a good speech at San Jose State. And last night, I attended the VGA. The VGA is working on the

[4:05:54] brand-em station housing. It's located actually on a park and ridelaut that's adjacent to

[4:06:05] Canoe's Creek. Okay, and they have these parking lots that they're going to convert to

[4:06:13] housing sites. And some of these parking lots are adjacent to our property. So there might be some room for some kind of like collaborative

[4:06:24] activity kind of like what we did on Cherria Avenue in terms of the homeless. And, you know, I think I think it's worth looking at that's my opinion. So, and we're going to discuss more of this in our committee,

[4:06:37] with your sandals, and I think next week we're having a meeting, right?

[4:06:44] So, very good week, I just hope that all these federal employees that are being laid off

[4:06:57] aren't working on our projects, I think they are, but I'm particularly worried about the federal

[4:07:06] impact, and here's for more.

[4:07:09] They're not there to give us permits.

[4:07:10] We're really going to be a trouble.

[4:07:12] People want to know if these federal layoffs at these agencies,

[4:07:17] they're supposedly reviewing our projects,

[4:07:20] are working on funding our projects,

[4:07:23] are is this going to cost us more money, taxpayers?

[4:07:28] Yeah, I think we ought to find,

[4:07:30] maybe we have our folks come up with some kind of report for us, okay?

[4:07:34] Anyway, I think that's something to watch out for, okay? Thank you.

[4:07:39] Thank you. And I believe our delegation into Washington DC hopefully will have some answers.

[4:07:48] We'll see. They're right to Eisenberg.

[4:07:53] Yeah, it's a tough time. But I read the books, especially Octavia Butler's parable of a sewer.

[4:07:59] everyone needs to read. You know, and what happens next is the state like California objects,

[4:08:05] then comes the Civil War, and then comes the military dictatorship. So let's not, let's try to figure

[4:08:11] out a way to amicably resolve disagreements, which is what I always say. As to my report,

[4:08:19] you know, it's going to rain and because of the hostility towards the project that protects my

[4:08:25] neighborhood, including my street, which is almost entirely immigrant and not all in English

[4:08:33] speaking. And we were the street among the like the three streets hit the hardest in the 1998

[4:08:38] flood. I was told the what I'm renting. I was told the water went up five feet. Every time

[4:08:44] it rains, I'm surrounded by mostly seniors who don't speak much English who are scared.

[4:08:52] So I hope that's another issue we can resolve amicably and that I can be there to stand up for my neighbors who are wishing I were there.

[4:09:00] So, yeah, thank you.

[4:09:05] Vice Chair.

[4:09:07] Yeah, thank you, Tom.

[4:09:08] I'm just want to show the hand here in the small business development center.

[4:09:13] Yeah, we take out the work of small films for all of us.

[4:09:16] It was given to me at the Royal Toronto table.

[4:09:20] They were very proud of the appreciated artwork to help support small businesses and that's

[4:09:26] our part.

[4:09:26] They were a great job.

[4:09:27] And thank you all.

[4:09:29] Also, I

[4:09:31] want to thank John Barrella, who is meeting with the Anderson Damon or a staff.

[4:09:37] It was still sticks out with such a very excellent meeting with good questions and John's

[4:09:42] on top of all those issues.

[4:09:44] I'm looking forward to meeting soon addressing fire, environment, and all those other issues.

[4:09:50] So, you got the mayor with them and so on and those are good things.

[4:09:53] Now, I've said that it tremendous job.

[4:09:55] I'm answering questions under pressure.

[4:09:57] I wanted to bury us the citizen advisory last night.

[4:10:00] System of the year, and we also had the Portuguese culture event, which former March Matthews, Portuguese American, Vice Mayor Spoke, and myself, mid-Presidentation, which we'll have with Rachel, we'll have here in June. We'll be our Portuguese Heritage Month, right, shallow? All right, these are with us, so also want to take the time to recognize, to recognize you, because we are committed with the JPA and San Francisco.

[4:10:28] It would nice expertise, we're going to make sure it's done properly, accountability, make sure

[4:10:34] the taxpayers getting what's worth, but at the same time, making it a project good to

[4:10:39] save lives.

[4:10:40] The night, thanks for standing up, I've joined you and our staff, I want to thank you for the

[4:10:44] participation and the facts will come out in Melanie, getting the board here, just recently,

[4:10:50] taking a lot of issues on and working with everybody.

[4:10:52] so I'm looking forward to Max and Kenneth. Thanks. Good job today. Thank you.

[4:11:01] Sorry to show.

[4:11:04] Come on, sorry. Direct the valley. Are you forgot me last time too?

[4:11:09] Oh, I know. That's called I'm not there. Are you all the time in a row?

[4:11:15] Sorry about that. I hope we're there at the next meeting, present, so. Yeah. All right.

[4:11:23] things that I've been up to since the last board meeting went to the Urban Water Institute

[4:11:28] conference and that was just amazing. It was nice to network with folks who

[4:11:32] and meet people that I've only seen on Zoom as an alternate to Charistromera on the DCA.

[4:11:38] So that was very cool and I learned a ton. Yesterday did a site visit of a homeless

[4:11:43] encampment that a lot of the folks that I represent in D2 have been interested in and wanted

[4:11:49] give a shout out to our staff, they were there and have been so excellent at working with

[4:11:54] the community and so responsive. And it was nice to just tag along and see how see all that

[4:12:01] works. I've had more briefings as the new board member briefing on face projects in my district in

[4:12:10] particular Guadalupe. Budget had a briefing on the Santa Clara Habitat Agency, which I'm a new

[4:12:18] member of, met with Auditor, met with Deputy and the Housing Department, the City of San Jose,

[4:12:25] again related to the homeless encampment visit yesterday, attended the Special District

[4:12:31] Association meeting, and then the most exciting thing that I wanted to mention was a gathering

[4:12:38] that is going to be a regular thing of the district to appointees to the various committees

[4:12:45] on the water district. So we met for coffee. There were about five of us who serve on committees

[4:12:51] and live in D2 and just sharing information amongst each other, balancing things around,

[4:12:56] talking about upcoming agendas and that kind of stuff. It was really fun.

[4:13:02] All right, sure. Thank you. That worked to show.

[4:13:04] Okay. Thank you, Chair. I'll say it's my last report. I attended our last landscape summit.

[4:13:10] the San Francisco Creek JPA and I want to thank all the staff for your support and just special

[4:13:18] CIP coming the meeting that was CEO 101 and today's for meeting.

[4:13:27] Thank you.

[4:13:27] Eric, do I have a rail?

[4:13:30] Thank you, Chair.

[4:13:31] Thank you.

[4:13:33] Vice Chair Santos, for that shot.

[4:13:34] I want to talk about that meeting that we had in Morgan Hill a couple of weeks ago.

[4:13:39] It was the update on the EIR on Anderson Dam.

[4:13:42] It was very well intended.

[4:13:44] We had 50 people in the room and 40 people online.

[4:13:48] And I got to tell you, our staff, they're just amazing.

[4:13:52] They capture the people in the room,

[4:13:54] they're attentive, they're listening,

[4:13:56] but they're also taking notes.

[4:13:58] And the notes scare me because that's going to be lead to questions.

[4:14:01] And so there were some questions in that

[4:14:02] after the meeting and one of the many of the people had some comments,

[4:14:07] one woman stood up and say, can't you put your IEIR, the thousand page document on a single page?

[4:14:13] That's a great idea. How do we do that? That was an idea. That was a suggestion.

[4:14:19] But the one that really, really captured my attention was this one individual who stood up and talked

[4:14:27] about fire. If fire in the holiday lakes of states, those of you that are not familiar with this,

[4:14:34] This is a, about six to seven thousand residents that live up in the eastern foothills of Morgan Hill, and there's one road in and one road out.

[4:14:45] Think of the Oakland Hills fire 10, 15 years ago.

[4:14:49] This is the exact same situation that exists in the city of Morgan Hill today.

[4:14:55] So we were talking about how do 6,000, 8,000 people.

[4:15:00] A potential fire coming down that one row done Avenue, while wire safety equipment is trying to get up the hill to fight that fire.

[4:15:08] That's a question that we all need to talk about.

[4:15:12] So, the mayor and I, by the way, was interesting as he was talking about that, the mayor was sitting behind this person.

[4:15:19] I was sitting in front of the mayor, Mr. Mayor Turner.

[4:15:22] Sue used to work here for Valleywater for those of you who would not aware.

[4:15:26] And he was looking at me and I'm looking at him because we've been talking about this.

[4:15:30] And so what we're doing is we're going to have a fireware and his fire preparedness

[4:15:35] symposium coming up in the next month or so.

[4:15:38] We're putting together all the pieces.

[4:15:39] We're talking to all the people, you know, there's been a realignment, maybe you're not

[4:15:42] aware.

[4:15:43] There's been a realignment of fire fighting in Santa Clara County, in the southern part of

[4:15:47] the county, which impacts Morgan Hill, Sam Martinez and Gilroy, major alignment.

[4:15:53] And so we want to talk about these things.

[4:15:55] we want to talk about is skate routes. Earlier we talked about one road in one road out, we need

[4:16:00] the county to participate in building an exit route. Well, here's an example of why that

[4:16:04] needs to happen. Because God forbid, if the next fire that happened in Oakland Hills happens in Morgan

[4:16:11] Hill, we've got a real serious problem. So I'll keep you posted as to how this develops and how

[4:16:18] the the committees and the people that want to be involved in this and everybody's calling

[4:16:23] in John, how do I be involved in this? So we're lining them up and we'll keep you posted. So that's my report.

[4:16:30] Thank you. And my report very quickly had of course a number of meetings at a number of agenda review meetings,

[4:16:40] recycled committee, that would the interim CEO, the general council, the BPMC committee meeting,

[4:16:48] special CIP meeting and meetings at CDC and with the board chair, the chair there, the

[4:16:59] CEO there and we're here today. So I asked the clerk to read any of the much

[4:17:11] observances, I don't have the sheet with me so. No problem. Thank you.

[4:17:22] We are closing

[4:17:23] In today's meeting by sharing in the month of March is Women's History, Irish American Heritage,

[4:17:28] and Greek American Heritage Month.

[4:17:32] We invite all of us to reflect on the lived experiences of different communities that make

[4:17:37] up our society and help elevate their histories to raise awareness and build a more inclusive

[4:17:43] and equitable future for all.

[4:17:46] This month we celebrate the achievements of women, as well as Irish and Greek Americans throughout

[4:17:52] history. Thank you. And lastly, the Kirk review and clarification of board requests. I have no

[4:17:59] board requests for this meeting. Thank you. Okay. So we'll move then to adjourn it. So we adjourn

[4:18:05] then to the 1 p.m. regular meeting on March 25th here at our headquarters. Thank you all. Good afternoon.

[4:18:13] I'll close the mean.

Closed Session and Regular Meeting - Mar 11th, 2025

Transcript