SLVWD 9.1.22

SLVWD Board Meeting Summary

September 1, 2022

Mark Dolson

Highlights:

Outreach Contract Award
Next Board meeting is at 6:30 PM on September 15th.

Preliminaries

There was one item to report from the just-concluded Closed Session. District Counsel Gina Nicholls announced that the Board voted unanimously to authorize the District’s labor negotiators (District Manager and District Counsel) to give notice of the District’s intention to engage in negotiations with union representatives regarding the Classified Employees’ Memorandum of Understanding.

There was one non-agenda-related public comment. Randy Egner spoke on behalf of his brother living off of Zayante Road. He said they had been trying to get a long-line agreement before the Board for approval. This was now urgent as his brother is currently without water. District Manager Rick Rogers said this matter would be going before the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) on September 7th for approval and would come before the Board at its next meeting. He said these things typically take time, but he hadn’t been aware that the customer was out of water. Given this situation, it would be possible to seek emergency approval from LAFCO (which has provisions for hardship). Gina advised that the Brown Act prevented the Board from conducting an in-depth discussion on a non-agendized topic, and President Mahood advised Randy to contact Rick directly.

There was no President’s Report.

Unfinished Business

Outreach Contract Award

Environmental Programs Manager Carly Blanchard introduced this agenda item. The Administration Committee agreed in early 2022 that the District had significant outreach needs beyond those being addressed by Buzz PR. It recommended that the budget be increased from $35,000 to $50,000, but the Board deferred action on this until it could review the proposals from the new candidate consultants. The Board voted at its May 19th meeting to authorize Staff to prepare a Request for Proposals (RFP), and the Administration Committee approved an RFP to be released in June. The RFP closed on July 28th, and proposals were received from Buzz PR, Dudek, and Miller Maxfield.

Staff rated both Dudek and Miller Maxfield as strong candidates. In the Administration Committee, Staff initially recommended Miller Maxfield but then withdrew its recommendation in the face of disagreement between committee members. As a result, the Administration Committee ended up approving the revised Staff recommendation of either Dudek or Miller Maxfield.

Staff subsequently contacted references for both firms and reinstated its recommendation that the contract be awarded to Miller Maxfield. Staff described Miller Maxfield as the respondent who best demonstrated a strong understanding of the local area, clear ability to understand local water policy issues based on past work, and the full range of public outreach and event planning capabilities which would be required to meet all the needs outlined in the RFP. Miller Maxfield is a local firm with water agency experience and a deep understanding of the San Lorenzo Valley and its community. Miller Maxfield is currently the outreach consultant for the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency (SMGWA), is working with other local similar sized water districts, and has experience working with SLVWD.

Rick Rogers noted that the District has a working relationship with Miller Maxfield (which worked for the District from 2014 to 2018) and said he was really impressed by their understanding of the different communities in the valley.

Director Ackemann, Chair of the Administration Committee, moved to adopt the Staff recommendation of Miller Maxfield. Director Smolley seconded. Director Ackemann noted that the Administration Committee was still searching for a third public member, and one of the two current public members was missing at its most recent meeting. This left it with only three participating members, and there was some disagreement within the meeting as to whether this was a sufficient number. This disagreement may have motivated the withdrawal of the original Staff recommendation.

Director Ackemann said Dudek and Miller Maxfield clearly stood above Buzz. She preferred Miller Maxfield because they are actively working in our community whereas Dudek's communications work is being done from an office in Southern California. She felt that local resources were vital for the District’s needs. She also thought Miller Maxfield really understood the SLV. She said Director Fultz had expressed concerns about their political campaign work, but she felt confident that they would take the District’s direction re: messaging. She also noted that they ran a successful campaign against Measure D.

Director Fultz, also a member of the Administration Committee, disagreed. He argued that the main issue that requires community involvement and education plays much more to Dudek's strengths. He said he had a longer history with Miller-Maxfield and didn’t see them as able to address the District’s needs. He viewed them as political, and he had concerns about how they managed projects which made him skeptical that they would be able to meet their commitments. He said the District needed to provide the best educational information that it could to the community regarding the raw water pipeline, and he believed Dudek could organize community events without being locally based. He thought the Administration Committee discussion was a good one.

Director Hill noted that Miller Maxfield has worked for several local water agencies. He asked if they were currently working for a neighboring water district, and he wondered whether this could pose a conflict of interest. Rick confirmed that they work for Scotts Valley and sometimes Soquel and the City of Santa Cruz. President Mahood said she saw this less as a conflict of interest than a readiness to perform, as it could enable the District to piggyback on work that Miller Maxfield has done for other agencies. She didn’t see a potential conflict of interest.

Director Ackemann agreed. She said she had hired a lot of these kinds of public affairs firms, and it was very common for a public affairs firm to have done work for different local districts. She could only imagine a conflict of interest if there were an issue involving a dispute with Scotts Valley. However, Miller Maxfield would still be obligated to represent the District’s interest in work that it performs for the District. With regard to Director Fultz’s concern about Miller Maxfield adhering to budgets, she said they may have previously had change orders, but it was very likely that Dudek has done this as well. Also, Dudek’s communications arm is only a subgroup of their engineering and environmental effort.

Director Smolley said, with respect to education, Miller Maxfield worked on the groundwater information session at the Felton Community Hall in 2019. He attended and was extremely impressed. He counted 135 attendees and thought this was very well done. He added that Miller Maxfield’s Executive Summary describes the Valley's unique aspects whereas Dudek's was generic. You could change a few words and substitute a different district. In addition, Dudek's lead is based in Encinitas. His feeling was that Miller Maxfield was the better choice.

President Mahood said she had read all three proposals. She felt very strongly that Miller Maxfield was the best choice. Buzz PR wasn’t up to the challenge in terms of technical ability. She expected Dudek to have an especially strong grasp of the technical aspects, but the proposal, except for one page, was generic, and that one page revealed that they have no understanding of the District’s situation. For example, they wrote, "The primary water source has been surface water,” but this is not true. Their statement about the impact of the CZU Fire was also incorrect. They didn’t mention SMGWA at all. She was shocked that an engineering firm could be so off the mark. She added that she has paid a lot of attention to what Miller Maxfield has done for SMGWA, and their work has been technically accurate, visually appealing, and appropriate in terms of the target audience. She strongly favored Miller Maxfield.

Director Fultz said he also attended the 2019 meeting at the Felton Community Hall. He didn’t recall much of the content being produced by Miller Maxfield. They were primarily responsible for organizing the event. He saw Miller Maxfield as more of a sales organization than an education organization, but he also said he could see where the Board was going on this issue.

There was one public comment. Mark Dolson, speaking as a public member of the Administration Committee, expressed frustration with the committee’s deliberations. He said there were actually two questions that he hoped the Board would address. The first question was who to award the contract to. The Administration Committee actually spent two hours on this question. Staff recommended Miller Maxfield in the second Administration Committee meeting, and Mark seconded a motion by Director Ackemann to approve this recommendation. Directors Ackemann and Fultz each made arguments similar to those they were making at this evening’s Board meeting, whereas Mark focused his comments on what he saw as deficiencies in Staff’s assessment process. Despite his concerns, he was prepared to vote in favor of the Staff recommendation when Staff unexpectedly withdrew its recommendation. This prevented the committee from approving Miller Maxfield and led, instead, to the committee ultimately approving a revised Staff recommendation to accept either Dudek or Miller Maxfield. The Staff memo in the agenda packet substantially misrepresents this sequence of events.

This led to Mark’s second question: is the committee responsible for vetting the candidates directly, or is the committee responsible for vetting the District’s assessment of the candidates? Mark assumed the latter, but this was apparently not a common understanding. Staff initially declined to perform any vetting at all and then inexplicably revised its recommendation at the last minute during the committee meeting. Mark asked the Board to provide clearer direction.

Director Fultz responded. He said the Administration Committee went through a very lengthy process to select the District’s attorney. This involved interviews and more than two meetings, and the committee was deeply involved in helping to make the recommendation. He recommended that Mark's question should be clarified via future discussion. His view was that the committee should be involved in making a recommendation.

President Mahood said she agreed that this was an interesting question, and she didn’t know the answer. She asked Gina if she had a legal perspective. Gina said the thought this was more philosophical. She said it was not addressed in the Board Policy Manual, but she didn’t think the Brown Act allowed for any further discussion at this time.

President Mahood made a friendly amendment to Director Ackemann’s motion, stipulating that the District would not spend more than $55,000. Director Ackemann accepted this, and the motion passed 4-1 with Director Fultz opposing it.

Remote Meeting Authorization Under AB361

The Board unanimously approved a recurring monthly resolution enabling meetings to continue being conducted remotely. This item was included in the agenda for the current meeting in case the Board opted not to hold its second September meeting.

New Business

Authorization to Shop for Replacement Vehicles

Rick announced that this item was being pulled from the agenda so that additional information could be provided. This item will be on the agenda for the next Board meeting.

Consent Agenda

There were no requests to pull any items, so the published minutes were accepted without objection.

District Manager’s Report

Rick noted that the state is experiencing an extreme heat wave and that PG&E has sent out notices to be prepared for rolling blackouts. The District has generators, but outage-related switching back and forth causes problems for its large pumps. Rick reported that Operations has moved into emergency response mode, and the District has increased and updated its social messaging. The District has tested its pumps, and water storage is currently near 100%. In general, fire outages and fire are huge concerns for the District, and especially so due to the fact that the District’s surface water sources remain limited in the wake of the CZU Fire.

FSLVW