SLVWD Board Meeting Summary
April 20, 2023
Mark Dolson
Highlights:
Vegetation and Fuels Management Contract Award
Biennial Draft Budget Fiscal Year 2023-2025
Next Board meeting is at 6:30 PM on May 4th
Preliminaries
Director Ackemann was not present due to an excused absence.
There was no report from Closed Session.
There was no President’s Report.
Unfinished Business
None.
New Business
Vegetation and Fuels Management Contract Award
Environmental Planner Carly Blanchard introduced this agenda item. In 2021 the Board adopted the Post-Fire Recovery, Critical Asset Hardening, Vegetation, and Fuels Management Plan. Related grants were award in Fiscal Year 2021-2022 through the California Coastal Commission (CCC) ($200,000) and CAL FIRE ($360,000). The CCC grant was used to complete fuel reduction on nine sites in 2021. The CAL FIRE grant is still underway due to partnership with the Fire Safe Council of Santa Cruz County which is leading the grant implementation effort. Funds for this grant are expected to be available into Fiscal Year 2023-2024.
The District has over 85 infrastructure sites (tanks, pump houses, wells, and treatment facilities) in need of fuel reduction. The District’s goal is to complete initial treatment on all sites and then maintain the sites annually. To date, ten sites have received initial treatment. $50,000 has been budgeted for the current Fiscal Year, and $100,000 is in the draft budget for the upcoming Fiscal Year.
In February 2023 the District released a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for Fire/Vegetation Management Maintenance work. The RFQ closed on February 17th, 2023 and qualifications were received from local, regional, and statewide contractors. Travis Tree, Julian Tree Care, Go Native, Powers Forestry, P31 Enterprises, Ecological Concerns, California Reforestation, and Helix all submitted Statements of Qualifications (SOQs). All submittals were qualified to complete fire/vegetation management maintenance work on District owned properties.
Staff recommended that the Board approve a contract with Powers Forestry; Powers has a Registered Professional Forester (RPF) on staff, and has professional oversight experience combined with cost-effective labor. Compared to the other contractors who submitted SOQs, Powers also has the ability to complete site layouts including marking property boundaries, and sensitive biological resources. Other solution providers also tended to have higher costs.
President Smolley reported that this was discussed at the April 7th Engineering and Environmental Committee meeting, and the committee concurred with the Staff recommendation.
Director Hill sought some clarification on the status of the CAL FIRE grant. Director Fultz asked about the potential to continue obtaining grant funding for fire-related work and also about the appropriateness of planning to devote skilled staff personnel to this task in the future. Carly said the District will continue to pursue grant opportunities. District Manager Rick Rogers said this effort would initially be a heavy lift but would subsequently become more routine, and the District would then seek less expensive, local solutions. However, some environmental background work will still be needed.
President Smolley moved to direct the District Manager to enter into a contract with Powers Forestry in an amount not to exceed $150,000 for the purpose of Fire/Vegetation Management Maintenance in fiscal years 2022/2023 and 2023/2024. Director Hill seconded this. There was no public comment. The motion passed 4-0.
Biennial Draft Budget Fiscal Year 2023-2025
Director of Finance, Kendra Reed, introduced this agenda item. She briefly summarized the first-draft of the operating budget provided in the Board packet. Much of the ensuing discussion centered around the very preliminary nature of this document.
Director Mahood, Chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, opened the discussion by emphasizing that the budget presented by Kendra was best understood as a placeholder because many of the numbers will be further refined and/or continue to evolve; in particular, labor costs will change as a result on ongoing negotiations for a new contract, and a new rate structure will emerge from the 2023 rate study. In addition, assumptions concerning revenue need to be refined to reflect a possibly permanent decrease in consumption due to drought messaging, and to more accurately reflect the number of CZU-Fire-damaged homes that will be rebuilt and when. On the expense side, the annual contribution to SMGWA would most appropriately be charged to the operating budget.
Director Fultz said he understood this but still wanted to express a number of concerns. He said he was a little disturbed that the summary did not separate out the fire surcharge because the operating margins without this revenue are reduced to $1.7 million and $1.5 million, whereas he felt that the District needed a minimum of $5 million per year. Director Fultz also had detailed questions about the projected water consumption; this led to a discussion of the public’s continued effectiveness in minimizing water use and of estimated 2024 water consumption by Bracken Brae and Forest Springs. Director Fultz also pushed for more thorough scrutiny of Kendra’s projected operating costs because these resulted in cost increases well below the historical trend line. Kendra explained that the budgets for each department were prepared bottom-up by the department heads based on their best estimates of future costs. The Director of Operations explained that costs have not increased at the rate they have in the past because recent retirements and departures of senior staff, together with their replacement by more junior staff, have resulted in lower salaries. Lastly, Director Fultz sought sufficiently convenient access to underlying data for him to perform his own analyses. Director Mahood stated that Director Fultz was not going to be given access to the spreadsheets Kendra uses, as this was inappropriate. Kendra pointed out that all the data used in her analysis was available to Director Fultz in the agenda packet.
President Smolley and Director Hill supported Director Fultz’s request for more careful assessment of the assumptions behind projected costs and revenues. Rick pointed out that some of the lower costs in the upcoming budget can be tied to Staff turnover (noted above) and the wet winter allowing greater use of surface water instead of groundwater, which is more expensive in terms of electricity and chemicals. There was general agreement that management of cash flow was going to remain an important concern as FEMA reimbursements were taking a very long time to materialize.
Given the length of the previous discussion, Director Hill said he would submit his (relatively minor) questions to Kendra offline. There was no public comment.
Consent Agenda
These items are deemed adopted if nobody pulls any of them for further discussion. Director Fultz expressed concern that the minutes of the April 6th Board meeting provided no detail regarding his comments in response to the agenda item about replacing him on the SMGWA Board. District Secretary Holly Hossack explained that she was unable to decipher Director Fultz’s remarks due to the extremely poor quality of the audio recording.
Director Fultz said he wanted to provide his own summary of his remarks. Director Mahood then responded that if Bob was going to do that, she would want to do the same, and so should Director Smolley (as their remarks also had not been captured due to the sound quality). District Counsel Gina Nicholls advised that any changes in the minutes would need to be read into the next Board meeting before being approved. A further question arose as to amending the summary of public input. Jim Mosher said he had no need to have his comments included, but he would prefer to be able to review any revised statements attributed to him. Gina advised that Holly should summarize whatever input she receives in a way that is consistent with how the minutes are typically prepared.
District Manager’s Report
Rick said a federal funding request has been submitted by Congressman Panetta. He is allowed submit up to 15 projects, and one of these was a request for $1.5 million for the Forest Springs / Bracken Brae storage tank. Rick also reported that the RFP for the District Manager recruitment contract has now been released.
Department Status Reports
Director Fultz had various detailed questions relating to each of the four departmental reports.
The meeting adjourned at 7:40 PM.