Okay, well welcome Elk Grove. Happy you could make it. With that we'll go ahead and call

to order the Wednesday November 13th 2024 regular meeting of the Sacramento area sewer

district and ask for a roll call to establish a court. Good morning. Member Aquino here

Desmond Desmond Frost here Kathleen here Carpensie Costa President Kennedy maple here

Orozco Robles here Serna here Swen

um towel here Vegas and Hume here and you do have a quorum. Thank you very much. Would

you join director Robles in the Pledge of Allegiance please?

Please.

End of our pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to

the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and one not indivisible with liberty

and justice for all.

Thank you and now if the clerk would please read the Metro Cable Replay Statement and

the public comment procedures.

bodies is required to be verbally disclosed. The amount of $100 will be paid for each member

participating today as a member of the Sacramento area sewer district. Compensation for Sacramento

County supervisors and City of Sacramento council members is paid to the county and

city respectively to offset to partially offset the cost of those governments. Compensation

for other board members is delivered to the individuals. To make a public comment please

complete a speaker request form and hand it to the clerk. The chairperson will call your

name when it's your turn to make a comment. You may send written comments by email to

board clerk at satcanny dot gov. Your comment will be routed to the board and filed in the

record and that concludes the clerk statement. Excellent. Thank you. That brings us on to

the first items which is the consent matters. Items 1 through 14. There any item that a

director would like to ask questions or have pulled from the consent? I have a motion from

director Cerna. A second. Was that from Desmond? Okay. All those in favor signify by saying

aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Consent calendar passes. Onto item number 15 which

is public comment for items not on the agenda. Looking into the audience I don't note any

members of the public rushing the podium. So we'll dispense with item 15. Move on to

item 16. Sacramento area sewer district separate matters. The miscellaneous director and district

engineer matters. Good morning chair and board members. As far as our meetings go we have

one meeting in November and one in December. So our next meeting right around Thanksgiving

is canceled so happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. And then we're going to do our

continuing series of meeting our section managers so I've got a couple of section managers today

Paige Betagrew and Linda Stevens. And I'm going to start with Paige Betagrew. It's back

there. I'd like to introduce you to Paige Betagrew, Sac Sewers public information manager.

Paige's journey began with us in 2008 when she first interned in our communications department

while earning her bachelors in public relations at California State University Sacramento.

Until did she know that her passion for sewer systems would become a career calling. She

gained invaluable experience in the private sector where she designed and implemented

communication strategies for a number of clients including several utilities. Driven by her

goal to fulfill the duties of what we like to call a sewer nerd. She rejoined our team

in 2018 as a senior public information officer. She championed many of our major initiatives

in this role from advertising and stakeholder awareness to community engagement and construction

communications. Promoted to public information manager in 2022 Paige is now responsible for

strategic communications, media relations, regional partnerships and leading the teams

responsible for carrying out communications work for the communities we serve. Thank you

very much Paige.

All right and next up is Linda Stevens. Linda started working for Sac Sewer in 2002 in the

wastewater source control section of the policy and planning department. She's currently an

environmental program manager too and has been the section manager since 2021. She started

her career in environmental consulting and occupational health and safety services before

working at Sac Sewer. Her section implements the federal pretreatment program and local

program permits, tracks pollutants of concern and provides pollution prevention outreach.

She and her staff are responsible for protecting the conveyance system, workers, the environment

and the treatment plant from the harmful effects of sewage discharges. And I believe Linda

would like to say a few words.

Okay. Thank you. Good morning Chairman and members of the board. Thank you Christophe for

the intro and the opportunity to say a few words I'd like to highlight my staff. Our

program is in its 41st year so we're ensuring compliance with the discharges from the industrial

users. And it's been such a long time that we had our program. I just want to highlight

a couple of things. Our pretreatment program is highly respected by the regional and state

board. They audit our program and report out that our program is excellent. They've used

our materials as examples of a good program at other program audits. And we've also developed

an electronic reporting system that they had us train them on and present at conferences.

That's just shows that we're really good at our job. And my credit this to our staff.

We have 13 proficient environmental specialists, a mix of inspectors and supervisors, and they're

out in the field and in the office most of the time. What else? They have an interesting

balance of duties because they're billing our industrial users for sewer service and it

has to be accurate but at the same time they're inspecting and sampling for compliance and

sometimes enforcement. And this requires excellent communication skills, also collaboration.

But I'm really proud of them. They have and maintain really good collaborative relationships

with their permatees and it results in a high compliance rate. So I'm proud to report out

that the wastewater source control section is the leader in pre-treatment program implementation.

Thanks.

That's all for me. That's it. That's it. Okay. Very good. How about directors? Anything

from directors? Yeah, director Villegas.

I don't think your mic is working.

Neither. But it is now. I'll grow up here. My wife said she heard some PSAs recently

on the television discussing sex sewer's sort of role and what we're doing. Is that right?

And I'm just curious if that's...

That's correct. So as part of our customer awareness campaign, it's a dirty job but we're

happy to do it every fall. Sorry, yeah, fall to winter. We launch a strategic communications

campaign to make sure that people know who to call if they have a problem at home. And

so, yes, I'm glad to actually hear that it's being heard in the community and that's definitely

the goal. Right. Well, I didn't hear it. She heard it and I said, well, what did you think

of it? And she said, I don't really listen. I just heard that you guys do really good

stuff for the community. And then that was it. So it's working because she knows we're

doing good stuff. So thank you, Mr. Chair. That's good. She knows where you go when you

leave the house every day. She didn't say I was doing good stuff. She said, everybody

else wants one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Vice Chair. I have a question. It might be

a little off point. I'm not sure where I saw it, but then there's some event going on at

the buffer lands this next month or so. Did I see something somewhere? On the website,

did I see it? Oh, it's right here. Sorry. Still on on. There we go. Appreciate the offer.

I'd have to follow up. It's hard. The buffer lands has a handful of events throughout the

year and I'm not exactly sure which one's coming out. Absolutely. Okay, thanks. And

there is a way to get on that mailing list if you're interested and they'll they send

out emails. There's events typically maybe monthly. And so you get firsthand awareness

of the events and you can always sign up and join if you want. I thought I saw something

and that you had to sign up. And so I thought I didn't know if there was a deadline for

signing up and anyways, we'll get that information to you. Thank you. Okay. Any other director

comments or questions? Director Sun.

Thank you. Sergio can help you out. I think you're over with director Frost's.

Just hit the button on the screen. Thank you. Just around the subject of a buffer land.

So I did a quick tour. You all recall that Mackenzie Weezer and Splash came out the last

meeting and I had a chance to do my own tour there. Thank you, Kristoff and Nicole for

joining me out there. It was very educational and if you haven't gotten a chance to go out

there, please do. I know Chair Hume and I have also been to the buffer lands annual event

that they do do and if you ever have a chance to go to that, that also is a very great educational

event. So just want to put a plug into those things. Thank you. Thank you. And somewhat

related, I would say that maybe after the new year might be a good opportunity for us

to do a field trip for the whole board to go out and visit the plant. I think it's been

a while since and maybe some folks have not been out there at all. It's just worth seeing.

Okay. Anything else? Okay. On to item 17, please.

Item number 17 is contract number 70221 to approve the 7th amendment to the agreement

with Senagro Organic Fertilizer Company of Sacramento, Inc. for the biosolids recycling

facility. Can you cue the presentation for item 17, please?

One side today. All right. Good morning, Chair. Good morning.

Members of the board, I'm Steve Nabozek and I'm here today to discuss the biosolids recycling

facility. Last year we shared some of the, we shared the results of our biosolids recycling

evaluation with your board and that evaluation identified the BRF, biosolids recycling facility

as the most cost effective way to continue our commitments to recycling biosolids. And

after the discussion, your board directed staff to negotiate a 10 year extension with

Senagro. So I'm going to kick off the discussion with a brief overview of our solids process.

Then I'm going to share some background on the BRF and our partnership with Senagro before

diving into the specifics of the extension. I'll also discuss some of the bigger picture

considerations regarding our solids operations before closing with staff's recommendation.

So solids are collected in our primary and secondary processes and those are shown in

the blue and green boxes. And they're sent to the digesters for treatment where they

are broken down and stabilized. The digesters are, digesters are shown in the red box. Leaving

the digesters, one or two pathways can occur after digestion. About 25, 20, 25% of our biosolids

go to the biosolids recycling facility that's shown in purple on the screen. And there it's

dewatered, thermally dried and processed into renewable fertilizer pellets used locally

on farms. The remainder of our biosolids, about 75 to 80%, they're sent out to our

solid storage basins and those are depicted in yellow, the yellow boxes up on the slide.

The SSBs provide additional stabilization for the biosolids. We get rid of a little

of the material in there as they stabilize. But really it's acting as a wide spot in our

line and lets us provide storage because we are only harvesting biosolids out of those

ponds for application onto the line dedicated land disposal units during the summer months.

So the land dedicated, the lined dedicated land disposal units, our LDLDs, are the four

rectangular boxes shown with the yellow arrows going to it. We are in the process, you're

board approved over the summer, we're in the process of designing LDLD, designing to line

a LDLD that's been closed for some time to provide us with a little additional on-site

disposal. We just kicked off that design in January. So the CineGro partnership, the BRF,

it's a public-private partnership, it was initiated in 2002. That's when the contract

documents were signed. CineGro achieved commercial operation in December of 2004. That's what

started the 20-year clock ticking on this agreement. The agreement will expire next month

if no action is taken today. And as part of the agreement, Regional Sand pays a capital

and an operational fee and CineGro is responsible for all aspects of the operation. They own

and they operate the facility. They have for the last 20 years and we're proposing that

they continue that for the next 10. The BRF produces 7,300 dry tons of fertilizer pellets

annually, and as I said in the previous slide, those are used at a local farm, Silva Valley

farms. And it's really this commitment to these types of efforts that reinforce SAC

Sewers value of environmental stewardship. Hang on, just a second. Director Villegas,

did you want to speak now or at the end? Oh, okay. Sorry. That's all right. I'll keep

it brief if you guys do your part. The Seventh Amendment includes the following terms. It's

a 10-year contract extension. It includes capital projects, requirements, and the other

requirements required for safety compliance and system reliability. And I'm going to talk

more about the capital projects and the cost of those in the next slide. It updates the

consumer price index from 75% to 100% for the base operating cost. And it also updates

the variable operating cost. And the variable operating cost is just a price that we've

established for additional processing of the biosolids above the base 7,300 dry tons a

year. So it gives us the ability to process a little bit more, create a little bit more

fertilizer pellet. There are some other minor administrative revisions, like we are SAC

Sewer now, we're not regional sands, some minor things like that. As far as capital

projects, we've identified about 12.4 million in capital costs. And they're pretty much

required to meet safety compliance and our system reliability needs. The projects that

are listed on the slides, they haven't broken down to what's considered safety versus reliability

upgrades. They're going to be delivered in the first two years of the contract extension.

And SAC Sewer will have oversight on the process, the design, and the oversight of the construction

of those projects. The safety compliance upgrades represent over 40% of that 12.4 million dollars

of capital costs that I mentioned. And the reliability upgrades are needed, even though

this facility, Senegro's been a great steward of the facility, they've heavily maintained

this facility. But just the drying of these biosolids is very abrasive. This equipment

is just at the end of its useful life. There's only so much repair you do before you replace

and you start over. So these are the improvements that we've identified that we're going to

need to meet our reliability needs we have over the next 10 years.

Ten-year estimated costs. This table isn't super intuitive, so I'm just going to walk

through a couple lines. Really what we're trying to do here is just be as transparent

with your board as we can and let you know where the monies have the ability to outflow

on this contract. The capital project costs with contingency, just as stated on the previous

couple of slides, 12.4 million. Senegro is on the hook if the capital improvements

come in above 12.4. That's where we've left it. If there's any reason for additional monies

beyond 12.4, we'll be standing in front of your board to ask for it. The based operating

cost of about $50 million over these 10 years, that's the cost for them to operate the facility

and produce the pellet. It ranges from about 4.5 million in year one to about 5.5 million

in year 10. It is just the cost to keep them operating the facility. The variable operating

cost? If Saksur hit the lever and ask Senegro to produce all the overage that were allowed

to over the 7300 dry ton base that were allowed to ask them to produce in the contract, that's

the additional amount that we would pay if we hit that lever. So it's to let your board

know that we have the ability to do that depending on our solids inventory and our needs. The

outbound cost? That's just if we want to walk from this contract, $327,000 in year one and

year 10 and in any other year. The electricity and natural gas, really what we're trying

to point out there is it is expensive. Biosolids are very wet and we have to dry them out and

it's the first step. So anytime you're going to get a beneficial use out of the biosolids,

a lot of time, a lot of energy and what not is involved because of the water content.

So we are paying for the electricity and the natural gas to process these biosolids. We

pay those bills directly to PG&E and SMUD. But they do support the contract and the production

of the fertilizer pellet so we want to make sure that you're aware that they exist. But

all that said, if you take the terms of this contract, this 10 years versus the terms of

the previous 20 year contract, we're saving about a million, million and a half dollars

over the 10 year term to a comparable 10 year term on the first and where you're saving

the money is on the capital. We're paying about 3 million less in capital over the next 10

years because we have smaller capital expenditures and we're paying slightly more for the next

year. So we're paying a little bit more on the

terms of the cost of the, the staffing of the facility but it's a net comparable decrease

in cost on the order of a million dollars over the 10 years.

So just before closing out this presentation, just one minute.

The footnote there, are you looking at, you have a number of light items that are referencing

cost due to inflation. Is that an inflation factor that's based simply on cost of living

or is that an inflation factor that is specialized per some industrial comparable like ENR is

used for capital projects?

This is just the basic California consumer price index that was used in this contract

and to estimate the values for all of those start lines we're estimating 3%. So that's

the escalator that we put in there for CPI and Cinegro under the terms of this contract

is there at the receiving end of 100% of that CPI.

As far as you know that's a typically well used or referenced inflation factor, the change

in CPI.

Not being an expert in that field, what I will say is it served us well I think for the first

20 years.

Okay, thanks.

Director Carpensi-Casem, Vice-Chair.

Is this on? Okay.

I'm not sure how to phrase the question but is this taken into consideration that SMUD

plans to have no electricity by 2030 and I know a lot of industrial and manufacturing.

But will HILM still have electricity just be carbon free?

I know that a lot of our businesses cannot establish what their electricity needs because

of SMUD's policies. Is this considered that? That there may be challenges to electricity

issues?

Well, I see it in other businesses. I just wonder if it pours over to us.

I'm not aware of that pouring over to us and we are in the process of situating ourselves

and bolstering our renewable energy delivery with the BioGEM project. That should be delivering

a significant amount of our needs. We're going to grossly reduce our load or the amount of

electricity SMUD has to provide us in about a year and a half when that project comes

online.

This is a bill to them, not to us, right? This is a bill they bear. That's why we give

them an extra...

We actually bear. We, the SACs who are bears the natural gas and the electricity cost and

we receive those bills directly.

So that's an addition? Okay.

We're situated if we invoke the variable operating clause.

So the payment to CineGro is 70 and then ours. Okay.

Yeah. Sorry. Okay.

Thank you. Any other questions on this slide before we move on?

Okay. Thank you.

All right. Just a really quick big picture, solid operation before closing out the presentation

and stating the recommendation.

I just think it's important to understand the role that the CineGro contract plays in

our solids operations. And for this discussion, not from a recycling standpoint, this is just

purely from an inventory, a solids inventory on our site standpoint. Most of your board

members have heard reference to or been involved with the discussions over the last year regarding

the solids emergency. And to put it somewhat simplistically with our new liquid processes,

the dynamics of our solids operations have changed. We're essentially capturing more

solids. We have the same wastewater that we did before BNR. We're capturing more solids

in our process and those solids that are captured are less volatile. So we're not breaking them

down as much in our digesters. So that snowball is the effect a little bit. And when we do

process them, they're not settling as well. And when you remember the slide towards the

beginning of the presentation with all those yellow storage areas we have, those are challenged

right now. We're having trouble getting three to five years of storage out of those with

the way these biosolids settle. So what all that means is when you look at this table,

38,000 dry tons or 38,000 dry tons of biosolids, BRF can get rid of 7,300 of those for us.

A recycled pellet going to local farms at a cost effective price. That leads us with

a net loading of about 31,000. We lose a little bit of that through stabilization in the ponds

of the biosolids. We're left where on site we now need to deal with, we'll use the lower

end numbers, about 28,000 dry tons of biosolids. We're able to get rid of about 18 to 20,000

dry tons of biosolids on an annual basis for our harvest operation. So for the foreseeable

future we have a net harvest deficit. You guys have already heard some items that deal

with our supplemental harvest and the supplemental harvest comes at a cost. And really I think

the takeaway point here is the BRF and a 10-year extension with Cinegro is the most cost effective

way to manage our inventory along with the supplemental harvest efforts until permanent

measures are in place to handle kind of this new, the new characteristics of our solids

that we're working through right now. So with that our staff recommendation is that the

board approve the Seventh Amendment to the Cinegro contract extending operations for

10 years and I'll take any additional questions.

We have some. Director Kennedy.

Thank you. Okay so this is other than the compliance and reliability upgrades which

makes sense. This is mostly an operations contract.

Yes sir and pretty much status quo at that.

Okay so why just out of curiosity did we pick five years instead of ten years and the reason

I ask the question is you know I'm always looking at that. That makes this 30-year technology

with enhancements I understand but so that makes this go up to a 30-year technology and

there is new technology on the horizon I can only imagine in this area. So why the five

years, why ten years instead of five?

Well one reason for ten is to get the reliability we need. We have to make some investments and

we have to make the 12 million dollars of investment and we do want to try to get somewhere

out of those. The facility is operating well. It is an older technology, thermal drying,

understood. There are newer fancer technologies that we will be considering for the end of

this ten-year run but for where we are right now with the complications of our new solids,

the solids paradigm we are in and everything, it is just for us it makes the most sense

to go with what we are trying to do with what we are used to, something that we know is

reliable to keep processing and being able to get the solids inventory off of our site

in the near term.

Thank you.

Let me add one thing to that. We did an analysis before we came to your board and asked for

the direction to negotiate with CineGro and that analysis showed that this technology

as old as it is was both the most cost effective and the strongest from an environmental perspective

so that is why we ended up down this path.

Thank you. Director Cernan.

Thank you. So on the last point though, to what extent is this recommendation that we

have been a function of an intent which is well understood to get solids off site and

I know we have had and we continue to have some challenges with kind of storage on site

but how has that affected I guess the negotiations in terms of maybe placing the advantage with

the contractor?

Because I assume they know of the challenge.

They do know of the challenge. They are one of the contractors that heavily bid on the

supplemental harvest.

Thank you.

We know CineGro is aware of the situation. When we came to your board with the recommendation,

we had a first discussion in May of 23 and then followed that up in July of 23. At that

time, this recommendation that we brought to you was pretty much purely on the recycling

aspects of the technology and it was almost as we were delivering our July recommendation

to you which was a follow up from our May recommendation that the solids emergency was

taking its way and I think by September, October of 23, you were hearing about it at your board

meeting. So towards the tail end of the middle to end of negotiations with CineGro aware,

absolutely they were. At the beginning when this decision was made, it was solely to support

our commitment to recycling and things that we have done to try to really level set, try

to protect our risk, the rate payer dollars is to be really involved with that. We did a lot of

negotiation on the $12.4 million of capital projects to limit that to what was strictly

necessary and push continued rehab in areas where that was more appropriate. But we were

able to do that. So when it comes to the end of the day, as a staff person, I feel like the

capital improvements that I put in front of your board for reliability purposes are truly

needed and it's the best interest for us to be able to continue processing the solids.

I have no doubt that you have the district's best interest and the rate payer's best interest

and the rate payer's best interest.

I think that is the end of the discussion.

The end of the discussion is the totality of the negotiation environment. For instance, do we

know, do we have comparables? Do we know what perhaps other like districts with like facilities

and needs across the state or country are paying in terms of comparables?

I think that's the advantage of in a time of crisis.

I do think that we're paying equitable rate. It's hard to compare specifics. A lot of it has to do with

haul distance, things like that. So it all depends on that dischargers.

There are certain situations, but what I can say is we've now done a few rounds of supplemental

harvest. We have our own costs for passive dewatering, geobags, supplemental harvest.

This class A, and again, I'm comparing this to biosolids treatment, the supplemental

harvest, it's producing a class B biosolids. It has some restrictions. It's not unrestricted

reuse like the class A renewable fertilizer pellet. It should cost less.

But I think geobags were on the order of a little less than $1,000 a dry ton for us to

process onsite. Some of the supplemental harvest mechanical dewatering that is going to be

disposed of on our line dedicated land disposal units on the order of $1,000 to $1,100 a dry

ton. That is about what it will cost to process a dry ton of Cinegro if we do the maximum amount

that we're able to process under that contract. Now if you take the supplemental harvest on

mechanical dewatering and when we have to drive it offsite, that's a little over $1,250

a dry ton. Cinegro, base production of 7,300 dry tons a year, we actually get a little break

when we hit that variable operating cost. So it's most expensive for us to just do the 7,300

dry tons a year. We do that with Cinegro. It's about $1,250 a dry ton. So these Cinegro numbers

are comparable with what we're paying contractors to off-haul class B from our site. We're getting

a pellet and delivering it to local farms. So I think we've done our best.

Last question. How specialized is this operation?

It's not too fancy. It's a centrifuge. I guess what I'm asking is how many others can do the same thing?

Well, all of our equipment is and ritz and Cinegro works with and ritz. So to replace and rehab in our

facility, we'd be going with and ritz equipment. I can't speak to the amount of other thermal dryers

out there besides and ritz at this point. I know there's one or two others. I don't know the names

off the top of my head. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions from directors at this point? I have a couple. Director Kennedy.

Yeah, thank you, chair. I just wanted to thank you, Supervisor Cernan, for asking that question, because I do think that we need to always be

cognizant of the level of competition that's out there when we're handing extensions of contracts and so forth and that we look

and investigate, you know, are there others and how many others are capable of doing this? It's just good governance. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other director comments, questions? I have a couple. I'll start with the first line of questions from director Kennedy.

The reason for the 10-year extension is to get some useful life out of the capital upgrades that we will be doing in order to bring the equipment, wear and tear and such.

That is definitely one of the reasons. I think the time period also happens to complement kind of where we are with the biosolid situation now.

That said, when we recommended 10 years, we wasn't really aware of the biosolid situation, but it does seem to be about the right amount of time to let us develop what our future in biosolids processing might look like.

And if it does not include a facility like the BRF or does, it's kind of the 10 years is kind of a good time period about when we'd be making that decision, I think.

It is about the, it's going to take us a few years to design the processing improvements that we're working on right now. We call it our biosolids disposal plan.

And then that's going to be a series of projects, mechanical dewatering type things to implement in order to bring permanent measures on place and replace the supplemental harvest.

It's going to take us a couple years of design, construction and whatnot. It's going to take us probably a better part of five years before we start seeing some of those permanent things in place.

So the 10 years seems to be about right.

And so when you reference the biosolid situation, that was the report we heard where the ponds weren't flowing correctly and we had islands being created and having to be mechanically macerated.

That is correct.

Okay, and agitated.

Okay. And so then now I want to turn to kind of what Supervisor Sernor was asking about. And that is the way this contract is set up.

We cover the cost of the utilities, the cost of the operations. We pay Centigrow for the operations and the work that they're doing.

Do they then charge the end user for the Class A pellets that get delivered?

The marketing and disposal, you know, the ultimate disposal of that is under Centigrow's responsibility.

So yes, and I couldn't tell you if they give that, you know, that it's their responsibility.

Okay. So essentially then we cover the cost to produce these pellets, but then they are responsible for actually making sure that they end up in the market and get put to good use.

That's correct. That decision was made for the original contract and it seemed to suit us well and we've continued with it for this tenure extension.

Okay. And so then again, kind of keeping with the line of questioning that Director Sernor had gone on.

So we have a harvest deficit of 8 to 11 dry tons.

11,000 dry tons.

11,000 dry tons.

And it's $1,000 per dry ton roughly no matter what process we consider.

I don't want to take up too much time here because I'm going to kind of get down in the weeds on this, but I went out and visited a no-till organic farm in my district that is incorporating essentially green waste or wood chips and then manure and then wood chips.

And then manure, he calls it the lasagna sort of method and then also worm farming.

And so I think as we look at whether we have the space onsite or as you mentioned to truck it offsite, we're back into that $1,000 per ton.

But if we look at onsite, if there's a way to do some combination, bless you, some combination of lasagna layering, if we can work with Sac County's Department of Waste and recycling and offload some of that organic compost material, mix that in with the biosolids.

We don't like to think about necessarily using our own biosolids for those purposes, but to the extent it works, it's worth exploring.

Question about that.

Is that, do you know whether or not to be certified organic yet to use Class A or Class B?

I know nothing about certifications.

I probably need to answer that question first.

Yeah.

There is a, we can look into the lasagna making organic farm as we're giving.

We'll look into it and figure out what's going on.

Sure.

Okay.

Any other questions before we move off this item?

All right.

So I think we have to, are there any public comments?

We don't have any members of the public.

And so I would look for a motion.

Second.

Motion from Director Villegas to adopt the resolution for staff's recommendation and second from Director Maple.

Any further comments or questions?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Motion carries unanimously.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Onto item 18 now.

Item 18 is to approve a salary schedule.

Director Villegas.

I think Sergio keeps doing it.

Do we need to call the MPs?

Have the member restrain?

Shall I go ahead?

Sure.

All right.

This would be pretty quick.

This is our salary schedule.

If things go as planned, you won't see it again until after we have transitioned our staff from the county to the county.

We have to have the staff to the district, but essentially establishes the salaries of each employee.

You have to have that in order for them to get paid.

There are several, I would say there's three categories of changes that we're making.

First of all, there are four classes that we're adding.

These are classes that exist within the county or they're tied to classes that exist within the county.

And we're just making those classes available because we will need them in the future.

So there will be a salary for them.

The second category is basically some administrative changes.

I would categorize it that way.

And then the third category are some minor adjustments.

We're talking hourly in the sense range, just basically to conform our schedule to the counties.

The county uses a document called the Alpha Alpha Class schedule.

And we want to make sure that it is identical because when you're calculating salaries,

when you're talking about equity increases, colas and differentials,

depending on which ones you apply first, you can get a slightly different number.

And so we want to just make sure it's exactly the same as the counties.

So those are the changes that we're proposing and we're asking for your approval to make those changes.

Okay.

Supervisor Serna.

Thank you, Chair.

So I've had a chance to look at the salary schedule.

And it appears that in terms of trying to avoid the concept of an impaction here,

you've done a good job, but I haven't scanned all steps and I haven't scanned it per each unit.

I've kind of just looked at a few.

But are you feeling confident, Christoph, that there's not going to be any foreseeable issue with folks that,

for instance, are in the same unit that are getting paid less than, you know,

as supervisors for someone that's under them at the highest step?

Yes.

So, well, first of all, I'll say there are existing compaction issues in various places within the county.

But what you're seeing here is essentially the county's salaries with anything that's been approved by the county or the board.

So really, at this point, board of directors, nothing is changing.

Then we're in the middle of a salary survey where we're looking at all the classifications.

That information is going to be fed in and there could be adjustments made based on that.

That would be effective July of 2025.

Well, having been on the board of supervisors long enough to have dealt with the, you know, 20,

whatever, 28 bargaining news that we have and knowing the nuances to and the sensitivities to compaction in the past.

And actually seeing where it has been completely obvious that there are some inequities in terms of what compaction was doing in some units,

some departments, I would really recommend that once the salary survey is complete,

it gets fed into this after you use this as a kind of a base starting place, that that be a high priority.

Because that can certainly weave its way in a sometimes ugly way into bargaining unit negotiations and other nuanced parts of what we are asked to do on occasion in terms of making decisions about salary adjustments.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other director comments?

I just have a question about methodology, not to get into the weeds on the individual class codes or steps,

but for particularly for the executive team, was there a compensation survey that was performed and what sort of pool of utilities and or comparables was used in that survey?

Yes. So we brought a compensation policy to your board, which was approved that has 10 agencies.

It's basically a mix of larger sanitation districts.

There's a few cities in there that also provide wastewater collection treatment and resource recovery.

So we have our comparable agencies.

A study was done, which your board also approved, and that was then recommended as a as a phase in.

So it was over a three year period.

And we're trying to do everything so that it is treating all employees within the district the same.

And so knowing that in the future, we could the executives are only, you know, seven people.

There was a few more because we had some unrepresented management included, but it's a small number of people.

It wouldn't have a significant budget impact.

But if there were potentially much more people involved in increases with the completion of the salary survey, we wanted to provide flexibility to be able to phase it in over over time if there were significant budget impacts.

So we made sure that that happened to the executives as well.

So this is basically the results of the salary survey and the phasing approach.

And then thank you for that reminder.

I remember that we had check ins of the process along the way.

I just couldn't remember exactly what they were.

And so will employees move over at current steps or does everybody kind of start out at step one or how is that going to work?

No, they're going to they're going to move over in their current step or the closest available step.

Okay.

All right. Thank you.

Any other questions from directors?

No.

Okay.

Any members of the public that would like to comment on this item?

No.

That case we would entertain a motion at this point.

Motion from director Desmond.

Second.

Second from director Serna.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Director Villegas, did you have an indad?

Hearing none, I believe that brings us to the end of our agenda.

Yes, sir.

We're adjourned.