Good morning. Director Kennedy having arrived, we will now go ahead and call the meeting

to order at 9.32 a.m. And I would ask the clerk to please call roll and establish a

quorum. Good morning. Happy new year.

Member Aquino. Here.

Desmond. Dickinson. Kaplan.

Carpinsi Costa. President.

Kennedy. Here.

Orozco. Here.

Talamantes. Here.

Rodriguez. Here.

Robles. Here.

Sander. Here.

Serna. Here.

Soon. Here.

Villegas. Here.

And Hume and you have a quorum.

Okay, great. Would you please address the flag and join Reserve Member Robles in the

Pledge of Allegiance?

And it is 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, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, thank you. We will note for the record the arrival of Director Kaplan does not affect

quorum. And now would the clerk please read the statement and public comment procedures.

Yes.

This meeting of the Sacramento Area Sewer District is live and recorded with closed captioning.

It is cable cast on Metro Cable 14, the local government affairs channel on the Comcast

and direct TV U-verse cable systems. It is also live streamed at Metro14live.scicounty.gov.

Today's meeting replays Sunday, January 12th at 9 a.m. on Metro Cable Channel 14. Once

posted, the recording of this meeting will be viewed on demand at youtube.com. Backslash

Metro Cable 14.

And in accordance with government code 54952.3, compensation for meeting of these legislative

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 partially offset the cost of those governments. Compensation for

other board members is delivered to the individuals. To make an in-person public comment, please

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

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

board clerk at satcounty.gov. Your comments will be routed to the board and filed in the

record. And that concludes the clerk's statement.

Thank you so much. All right, then if the clerk would please move us on to item number

one.

Item number one is the election of board chair and vice chair for 2025.

Good morning chair and vice chair. Good morning chair and board members. This is our annual,

I guess you could call it a peaceful transfer of power. We do this every year. It's a two-year

commitment. So you typically go vice chair the first year and chair the second year.

We bounce back and forth between a county member and a city member. And we also have

the history of this. So we've kept track of the order. And so if you follow past practice,

this year the incoming chair would be director Karpinski-Costa from the city of Citrus Heights.

And the incoming vice chair would be director Serna from the county of Sacramento. So that's

kind of just laying the stage and I'll turn it back over to chair Hume to facilitate.

Very good. Thank you, Christoph. So the only certainty in all of this is that I will no longer be

chair and please hold your applause. And so I'll go ahead and check if there's any public comments

on this item. We do not have any speaker slips. Very good. Is that thank you, Roger, just in time.

Notify Roger's no vote. Is there a motion in the second? Second. And I would assume that's for

the recommendation of Karpinski-Costa's chair and Serna's vice chair. Yes. Okay. Very good. And so

that was a motion by director Aquino seconded by director soon. I believe that was correct. Thank

you. All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anybody saying no? Roger. Okay. Very good. Then

that business having been conducted, I will now shift the gavel over to the new chair and bid my

thank you.

This is my trusty assistant. Here we go. Item number two. Thank you. Is the option to nominate a

sex or a board member to join the Sacramento local agency formation commission special district

advisory committee. Good morning, chair. Good morning, chair. Members of the board. Mike Hewitt,

director of policy and planning. So we received a letter from Lafko. As most of you know, it's a

local agency formation committee or commission. And they're asking for nominations for from our

board to be a part of the special district advisory committee. A few of you are on the Lafko board,

but those of you that don't know Lafko does, they're a countywide commission

that ensures the orderly formation of local agencies. They preserve open space and discourage

spa sprawl. Something relative to us is they actually participated and approved the merger of

the districts into one as we are now today. This is a chance for a sex sewer to have a voice on the

SDAC. They weigh in on water district consolidation efforts. They participate in

minnowsable services review discussions. They do talk about financial issues that might affect

special districts. And they also opine on Lafko staffing. So they, the committee consists of

nine to 17 members on that committee. Two of them are special district members. They,

it's a two year commitment. They meet quarterly on the fifth Tuesday of every month at 7pm.

So we recommend that your board nominate someone from the board to be on that committee.

We meet generally at five, not seven. Or are you talking just the specials?

I'm talking the special district committee. So they have nine to 17 members. Yeah. So,

yeah, if you, if you select a member, then we'll, we'll arrange to get the chair to sign that,

actually send it to Lafko. That nominations due January 31st. So with that, I'll turn it back over

to Dr. Kepinski-Costa. Question. Is the nomination a sure thing or is it just competitive with other

nominations from other special districts? Notting. Dr. Kaplan, I, I believe it's a competitive. You're,

you're being nominated. I don't know the chances of actually getting approved, but

Dr. Kaplan might know a little more. So this is generally, since it's not necessarily Lafko

committee appointment, this is the special part. I don't believe it. It's that competitive.

I guess I'll start with volunteers. We do, we have a volunteer who wants to be our nomination.

Uh-oh. It's pretty fun. And if you like development and talking policy issues, water,

connection, it is fun to be on if that is your jam.

Okay. We have a volunteer, uh, supervisor, Rodriguez. Any other volunteers?

I'll nominate supervisor Rodriguez. And I'll second. Okay. All those in favor say aye.

Okay. I'll sign it. And that was a nomination or a motion by, um, chairperson Carpinski-Costa

and a second by director Kaplan. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. That works. Until I learn everybody

where they're sitting. Um, item number three is to approve the revised board delegated authorities

document. All right. Good morning, chair. Members of the board.

I cue it. Director Paul, same planning. I'll be presenting, uh, recommended changes to the

board delegated authorities and, um, asking for your approval to adopt the resolution or the revisions.

So the background, the delegate authorities have been in place since 1998. Uh, there,

they were, um, last revised in October, 2017. They are two documents currently. Uh, they're

identical, but there's one for regional San and one for SASD. So with the legal, with the merger,

it paved the way and it kind of triggered us to look into consolidating it. One of the benefits

of merging, uh, to consolidate those two documents into one. Uh, we looked into, uh, the, what other

agencies are doing and making sure we're in the ballpark there. There's also been a lot of inflationary,

um, cost increases over the years, which, uh, you know, drove us to look at the cost thresholds.

And, um, we also have approved a number of other policies and delegate authorities that's, um,

elsewhere in documentation that we're trying to bring together in one document. So it's easier

for folks to find and manage. So summary of the changes. Uh, we did just, uh, we updated language,

you know, for example, regional San and the district and SASD, it's just all now,

Saxewer. Um, it's, there's, there's more clarity and functionality and it's more consistent throughout.

We did update and make sure the references to contract codes are updated and a lot of, uh,

maybe, uh, not repetitive, but, uh, similar type of language that were kind of condensed and made

into one. So it makes it easier to follow and read. And we did a count for the merger,

um, combining two into one and the other associated things as well.

And being a new employer, there's some other authorities that we needed to have employees to be

a independent employer. We also are increasing the approval thresholds for a number of things.

Again, the cost driver, the inflation and even comparing with other agencies, um, triggered us

to do that. Um, I won't go through all of them, but I'll go through just a few examples. On the

lower end, uh, purchasing goods and services, uh, were suggesting bumping it up from 5,000 to 10,000.

That's for just, you know, buying like, you know, pipe or renting equipment to doing work in the

field. Um, and then we have like funding support and research studies. Uh, there's a number of things

we participate in with other organizations that's more statewide that is more pooled and a good

resource for us. And we're suggesting upping that from 100,000 to 200,000. And similarly, uh, we're

suggesting, uh, upping the contracts for consultants and agreements and, uh, um, you know, works of

improvements or construction from 150,000, uh, also up to 200,000. And on, on a little bit of

larger scale, uh, we're recommending upping the authority for Kristoff, uh, to approve award, uh,

contracts, uh, from $5 million up to $8 million. So, uh, contracts come to the board for advertisement

to bid. But when the bids come in, if, uh, there's a, you know, the low bid, uh, if there's no protest

and it comes under the engineer's estimate, gives Kristoff the approval to, uh, to award that bid.

There are a couple of thresholds that we cannot adjust because they're statutorily in place. So,

we'd have to do some legislation to, to make that change. Uh, for example, you know, over 35,000,

you have to do a competitive formal bid process for construction contracts. So, there's a couple

places where that's in place. The other changes is consolidating authorities, um, and adding new

authorities. An example of consolidating an authority, uh, uh, uh, Delgate authority number 20.

That's management of real property interest. Um, we absorbed that within Delgate authority 19 and 21,

which are the real property acquisition and relocation assistance and asset management

disposal. It just trimmed it down from having three authorities down to two, um, with little

change, but, you know, the same outcome. And then we also, uh, pulled in other policies and

delegated authorities and different documentation, different board actions into this Delgate

authorities document. Uh, some examples of that are the, uh, subrogation claims, uh, the backups

and the structures. Um, we have the Confluence policy, which, uh, is based on the Confluence

program is how we manage our non-rate and non-fee monies and then our, our personnel, um, authorities.

So that, that came from the personnel, our new personnel policies, uh, employer, employee, um,

relations policies, et cetera. There is one additional, uh, authority that we added to the

personnel authorities. It is the reallocation of, uh, a position from, you know, if you have a

vacant position, reallocating it to a different type of position. If it is less than, uh, $75,000

in salary over the year, uh, Kristoff has the authority to make that change.

And then two brand new authorities is the risk management. This allows, um, Kristoff to sign

applications to get quotes from insurance agencies and, uh, and then we have the claims authority,

which gives, uh, Kristoff, the authority, the district engineer, the authority to negotiate

and settle claims for like a property liability workers comp, um, cyber, you know, employment

claims, things like that. It allows, uh, him to settle the claims up to $100,000. And if it's

over $50,000, he needs concurrence from legal counsel. So with that, I'll wrap it back to the

recommendation is, um, recommending your board to adopt the revisions, um, to the delegated

authorities document and rescind their two previous ones. Thank you, Mike. Are there any, uh,

comments or questions from our staff, our board members? Go for it. Thank you, Mike, for the,

thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mike, for the presentation. I just wanted to clarify, and I

think for the most part, staff's pretty good at letting us know when there are these, uh, these

sort of change orders or whether override those, anything that has to do with, um, moving the dial

off budget and off the timing were updated pretty regularly. And I think staff's an amazing job of

that. I agree with the concept ideas that are presented in terms of the language and the dollar

amounts for the thresholds, the delegated authority. But I think it's, it's imperative that we as a board

are aware of when those sort of settlement claims are being taken care of, when those additional

contract costs that are now from five to eight million, that's a lot of money. Yeah. Um, it's a

lot, it's, it's not relative to our budget, but things have been flow. And so I just think there

needs to be clarity around how much information flows out of the office that now has additional

delegated authority to this body so that we are aware, because we are accountable to the public

for every dollar, because these are rate payer dollars, right? So yeah. And quite a few of these

delegated authorities have a requirement to report and a lot of them we report annually. Um, so that

is in play for us to be transparent on things that do, you know, fall into the threshold, but are

still worthy of bringing to your board and into public for transparency. That's what I'd be looking

for. Thank you, Madam Chair. One thing also on the construction contracts, the five million to

eight million, that would be something where you would see the initial authorization to advertise

for bid at that point, we would inform you. And by the way, if this comes in under the engineer's

estimate and no protest, then I would be able to award it, but we'll let you know that at that

board meeting as well. Director Sanders. Yeah, thank you. Um, you know, this is kind of unique,

I guess, from, from my perspective, um, as a city representative and as someone who, you know,

founded a city, there was no city government when I first got elected, we had to build everything

from the ground up. And we saw the transition from county to non-county to, you know, our

provision of services as opposed to the county was way of doing it. And this agency, you know,

moving forward is doing something similar in a way, being relaunched essentially independently of,

of how we were born and managed under the county. And so I just want to

encourage you to be really creative about how you think about management, because you're no longer

bound by the structures that would have artificially contained what you may have done before.

This is an opportunity to be really creative and cutting edge and make us, you know, more efficient

for our ratepayers, because you don't have to fit into a system that wasn't designed for what we do,

right? Because you're not part of that larger organization. So, you know, as a city, we found

enormous, enormous efficiencies in shifting from county level service. I'm not blaming the county,

it's just, that's the way institutions function. Right? I'm here in your house saying this too.

But just, you know, dialing stuff in for exactly what we wanted, we were able to offer our residents

a lot more for a lot less in cost. And I suspect we as an agency can do the same thing, assuming we

can get, like, the blinders off to be able to look and figure that out. So I don't have problems

with any of the authorities here. I would actually wonder if we're still being too restrictive.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a good comment and I appreciate that. And we did, you know, have some discussions on what,

you know, is the right authority level. I think this is a good first step and we'll,

we'll look at, you know, again, the future. And I get to speak on behalf of

the sole executive team. We are looking outside the box and trying to find other ways to be more

innovative and efficient as well. So I appreciate that.

Director Kaplan.

Thank you, Chair. Just following up a little bit on what Director Villegas said. I mean, the key is,

I think, the authority and the delegation and the cleaning up much needed. You're no longer,

you're a new organization. And so you're, you're counting for that. But one of the things I heard

you say, Mike, is while there is mechanisms for reporting, that reporting is annual. And generally,

if something happened in February, but you don't report it till January the next year,

the transparency and accountability piece is kind of lost. So I don't know if there are items where

certain things should just be reported quarterly. And it could be a consent item, or it's something

that, Christoph, you just, it's a, it's a report that comes out just FYI. I want you guys to know

we had the settlement or this is what's going on. Any questions? Let me know. But I think it's the

balance of one giving more authority, but making sure that it's timely. And sometimes annual reports

are not timely. Right. I don't think all of them are annual, but most of them are annual. And

one thing I want to clarify is this is not new. We had the, we had the vast majority of these

already. Mostly it's pulling them together. But if there's anything that is specific that you

have a concern about, you'd like to see reported more frequently, we're happy to do that.

You know, I think it gets concerning when, if there's settlements or lawsuits, you know, of,

of, it's discussed mostly in closed session, but annual reports on that may be not as timely,

because if we need to also be responsive to our constituents, if we hear things

that maybe if it's a bigger item, not, you know, there's little stuff happening all the time.

But I think on bigger stuff, I don't know how my fellow directors feel, but sometimes

it's more of just being in the know. And an annual report is, is hard because sure we may read it,

but it may not have reference to, you know, what we, what we could have helped you with or needed

to know at the time. So that, that's something that we can put in practice immediately. I would

think that would be something that we would report back soon thereafter, obviously with any legal

requirements attached to that as far as what we would disclose. But so we can, we can make an edit

to that to maybe a time period, you know, within 30 days or something like that. That, and I'm kind

of looking over to council, but I can barely count quite see her, but how about this? I trust you

guys to figure out the right language of things that need to come back and making it a timely

report back to the diet. We'll do that. Thanks. Any other comments or questions? Seeing none,

entertain a motion. Second. Moved by director Vegas, seconded by director soon, I think.

All those in favor say aye. Okay. Moving on to the next item.

Thank you.

Your next item is a receive a presentation on the soar lifeline rate assistance program

outreach plans and potential budget impacts.

Thank you.

Good morning chair, members of the board. Still my cue it. Director of policy and planning.

So this discussion is going to focus on the sewer lifeline rate assistance program and our

outreach that we're planning on doing and the potential budget impacts of this outreach.

So a little bit of background, you know, that I know a lot of you know some of you are new here.

Sac sewer has what's called a sewer lifeline rate assistance program that provides rate

assistance to low income customers. And if customers pay their bill and meet the income

eligibility requirements, they can qualify and get the Silwrap discount. The Silwrap discount,

a little bit more overview before I go into the discount itself. As you know, and most of you

know, Sac sewer is does treatment and collection services. The treatment covers a little broader

area. It covers majority of Sacramento County and then West Sacramento. Collections covers

all that area with exception to West Sacramento. The majority of Folsom and about half of the

city of Sacramento, those jurisdictions also have collection sewage collection services. And so

if you are in a treatment and collection area and you do meet these eligibility requirements,

you'll receive 1375 off your monthly bill for treatment and you'll receive 250 off your monthly

bill for collection. If you're in, for example, West Sacramento, you'd only get 1375 off your

bill for treatment and they may have their own programs for collection. So and back in later 2023,

you went to your board and suggested a three year rate increase. The first rate increase was effective

July 1st, 2024. And your board at that time suggests that we look in expanding outreach

and also increasing the discount of the Silwrap program for those customers that qualify.

Okay, we did do that and staff did do additional outreach and we saw a bump in participation

levels. We also did get approval to increase the Silwrap discount, which was really proportional

to the rate increase that went into play July 1st, 2024. And then concurrently during that time,

we also are reaching out to SMUD and PG&E. SMUD and PG&E have rate assistance programs

and their qualification threshold is exactly the same as ours for the Silwrap program.

Now there is one distinct caveat that the Silwrap for SAC sewer does not apply to folks that are

renters who don't pay their bill do not qualify for that. SMUD and PG&E do not limit that. So

we did get at the address list from SMUD and PG&E. It took some time. We had to get non-disclosure

agreements in place and so forth. And we were a bit shocked about the number of addresses in SAC

County. But I saw, hold on here, there's more to this. There were 51,000 addresses in SAC County,

particularly when comparing to the SMUD program who receive SMUD's rate assistance program but

does not receive SAC sewer Silwrap. But there is a majority of these we anticipate are renters.

As you can see that first line, the low over 13,000 are owner occupied or renters living at that

resident that receive the bill. The others, the nearly 10,000 are likely single family residences

or renters are renting from that resident and the owner is receiving the bill at a different

address. And then the 26,000 likely a lot of that is the apartment complexes and home parks where

there's a central office receiving the bill for the whole complex but it's not broken up for the

individual customers. And those individual customers are likely renting those places.

And then there is the 1760 which are not in our database. We need to dig into that a little bit

more but we do suspect, you know, perhaps it could be a lot of those might be folks that are not

connected to the sewer system but are receiving SMUD services. So similar exercise in West Sacramento

where we looked at the PG&E customer list and compared to our Silwrap customers and there's

just almost 5,400 customers that receive rate assistance for PG&E in West Sacramento.

This one's a little more tricky to dive into the details like we do with SMUD. I think we're

going to get there but we internally do not have this GIS information to break it down. So we're

working closely with West Sacramento folks to see if we can get that breakdown through their staff

and their GIS information. But in totality we have about 56,000 customers that receive the

SMUD and PG&E rate assistance but not the Silwrap. A little context on some numbers for the Silwrap.

First of all, the Silwrap is a non-rate non-fee funded program. It is part of the overarching

confidence program. At the end of last year, we spent, last fiscal year, we spent $2 million

on the Silwrap. Our budget is $3.35 million. So we have about $1.3 million cushion there

and we have about close to 11,000 customers currently enrolled. So we looked at that, okay,

what would be the impact if we got folks on board with the Silwrap program? So we did a sensitive

analysis on if we sent all 56,000 customers notices and we got let's say half of them responded,

qualify and enroll in our Silwrap program. That would cost us about $5.3 million and would essentially

be a lot more enrollees, almost triple the amount we have now. And then 25%, it would be a 2.6 million

and if 10% of those folks would be 1.1 million. So that was a lot at once. So we say, well,

how do we go through this? Do we email or do we notify everyone at once or do a phase approach?

We're suggesting a phase approach and that would be notifying the first row here where there's

a little over 13,000 that we think is that there's a high likelihood that these folks qualify,

whether or not they do apply or whether or they still live there, that's still be determined.

But we would notify them and see if, you know, and see what that response is and then we'd hold

the rest for a phase two or phase three process later. So we did a sensitivity analysis on that.

If we just notify the phase one group, let's say 75% of those folks qualified and enrolled,

well, that would be about a $1.9 million hit. And then if, you know, 55% enrolled 1.4 million and

down to 35% would be 900,000. Now, putting all these numbers in perspective,

the range of the CILRAP costs, if we notified the phase one customers would be $900,000 to 1.9

million. Now, this does not include WestSAC. So if we added WestSAC, we're expecting, you know,

maybe it's $100,000, $200,000 on each end. So maybe it's about $1 to $2 million we're expecting

to have to increase what we're spending on CILRAP. Again, in 2023, 24 fiscal year end,

we have a $1.3 million, $1.3 million buffer there. The Confluence Program as a whole has

about $3 million cushion if you're looking at the numbers at the end of last fiscal year. So

Kristoff has the authority to move monies from other programs if we needed to move some money

over to cover the CILRAP budget if it did go over budget. Let me go back here real quick,

because I don't know if I could go back, maybe not. But what I do want to say is I did do a quick

look the other day on how we're trending as far as our numbers go. And as of the first half this

year, we've spent about $2.5 million in the Confluence Program. So if you double that,

that'd be $5 million by the end of the year. So it's trending more than what we spent last year.

So we may only have $2 million in the Confluence Program to play with there.

So next steps would be to notify the Phase 1 potential CILRAP candidates and give it about

two months to see what the response looks like. And then at that time, prepare what our Phase 2

and Phase 3 plan would look like and bring that back to your board on the results we got from the

Phase 1 outreach and then what our plan of attack is for Phase 2 and Phase 3. And with that, I'll

open up to feedback and questions or comments. Thank you. Director Arrozco. Thank you very much.

And thank you for the presentation. I do remember a few years ago discussing this

in depth around the table and we all had a lot of feedback to offer when it came to this very

important program. I just wanted to ask my request to speak because you said and if we add WSAC. Now

I'm just wondering, you do mean when we add WSAC? Okay. When is that a bit? All right, good. And

then ultimately I would love to talk further about how our staff is working with the team because I

know we are a different set of beasts over there given that we have PG&E only. But how we can outreach

in person to our community if that's even a possibility. I'd like to see that we have a lot

of non-English speaking residents in West Sacramento. But we do have a lot of community events where we

could perhaps have a table out there and really outreach to folks and let them know what's available

to them because I know that with PG&E hikes coming up, we just got noticed that we have a gas increase

coming to our community and lots of folks on fixed income. We definitely want to make sure we're

getting all the information out as much as possible. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, sounds good. And just to

add that we just did get some contact information within the last week or two. And so we're in the

early stages of working with your West Sacramento staff. But we'll keep that in mind and pursue that

as well. And let me know if there's anything that I can do on that end to help facilitate. Sounds good.

Thank you. Director Kino. Thank you. So just a question about the qualification process.

So in the city of Folsom, our utility bill has a line item charged for a sex sewer, which is right.

We collect and pass through to you. But we made a change a few years ago that our utility bill

must be in the name of the property owner. But we can have a duplicate bill sent to the renter.

I assume in most cases if the renter is getting the duplicate bill, it's because they are

responsible for paying the bill. But so how would somebody who's renting but paying the utility bill,

how would they prove that they're doing that in order to qualify for this program if the actual

bill is in the name of the property owner? What do you need from them? I'm going to look over to

Tepe. Do you have knowledge on that? That's an interesting one. I don't know that we have a

set way of going around that. We'll have to get creative to see what kind of evidence we would

ask the customer to show that they actually financially responsible for that bill. So I

don't have a clear answer here, but we could get back to you. Okay. Maybe I'll connect you guys

with our staff. Yeah, I agree. I can say that we did. There was a apartment complex in the city

of Sacramento that we worked. It's been a number of years now, but we worked with and I don't even

know how successful it was, but we were working on a process to get the landlord to be able to

provide us some sort of written evidence that they were actually paying the bill. So we can,

that may take some process to set up, but we can work and as long as we can establish that they're

paying, then they would be eligible. Okay. Thank you. Just to add on, I know one thing that we do

now is if the renter has a lease agreement that specifies that as part of renting, they're responsible,

that is acceptable as well. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Is that your phase two though? Is

definition of the phase two people where people who might be mobile home parks or

who pay their rent, which includes their sewer? Yeah, but I think this is kind of a quasi that,

you know, it might be that the renter is actually paying the bill. So they might be part of the

phase one if they actually identified as the person paying the bill. And if they could show proof

that they'd pay the bill, then that would also support that phase one. But you said SMUD has

a program that you don't have to have your name on the bill, right? Right. That's right. And that

would be the phase two and the phase three. The phase two and phase three are most likely

majority, if not all renters. Okay.

I have no more requests to speak unless somebody wants to push the button. Are there any public

comment on this? I do not have any speaker slips for this item. Okay. Is this an action item?

It is a receive a file. Received file. Received, filed. Thank you.

Next item, please. Next item is the miscellaneous director and district engineer matters.

I'll go ahead and jump in and let's okay. So first of all, I just wanted to welcome all our

new board members because we've got a few new ones and some returning members as well.

So thank you all for joining us. We got a full quorum today and that's good.

Our next board meeting is January 22nd. So we do have two meetings this month. So just keep that

in mind. And then the only thing I had, oh, and I also wanted to just mention that director Kino,

this is her last board meeting because they're doing a little bit of reshuffling in the city of

Folsom and with their regional assignments. So I just wanted to recognize you for your service.

Thank you. And the last thing I have is just to introduce some, a couple of new staff, not new

staff, but I've been going through and introducing our section managers and giving you a chance to

get to know them a little bit. So we have two more section managers coming along. Dylan Mealy

and Sreedvi Ramamorthi. And I'll start with Dylan.

Dylan's a principal civil engineer in the policy and planning department overseeing long-range

planning efforts, community-wide septic to public sewer conversion projects, managing the sphere

of influence and service area boundaries for SAC sewer, leading rate and fee updates, and developing

staff. Dylan has over 20 years of experience in various roles and positions within SAC sewer,

including serving as a project manager for rehabilitation and repair projects,

completing in-house design work, responding to sewer spills, and managing the development services

group. And this is an aside, it wasn't in his bio, but I have done that job, the development services

group. It's a senior civil engineer. It's a very difficult job. So anyone who's been through that

has been through quite a bit. He has a bachelor's science degree in civil engineering from Sacramento

State University and is a licensed professional engineer in the state of California. So Dylan.

Welcome. Welcome. And our lab manager, Sreedvi Ramamorthi. Dr. Ramamorthi is an environmental

microbiologist with a PhD from the University of Montana with over 15 years of experience in the

field. Her research has focused on microbial sulfate reduction and its role in controlling

metals in contaminated freshwater environments. She also holds a master's in biophysics and

crystallography and a bachelor's in physics, both from the University of Madras, India.

She's going to challenge me on all of her qualifications, just being able to say them.

Sreedvi joined SACSEWR in 2005 as laboratory quality assurance officer, where she developed and

implemented the lab's QA program and coordinated ELAP certification and our NPDES, it's our permit

related testing. She now serves since September 2012 as a lab manager at the SACSEWR Environmental

at our EcoWater Facility, overseeing lab operations, maintaining our ELAP certification

and ensuring compliance with the environmental regulations for wastewater drinking water and

biosolids. The Environmental Lab is a full service facility performing over 90,000 tests annually

across various environmental analyses, field monitoring and sampling services. The lab's

staffed by 33 full-time employees with expertise in chemistry and biology.

In addition to her lab management roles, Sreedvi and her staff provide technical consultation

across a variety of district projects, working closely with teams from policy and planning,

operations and maintenance, WISCAS, which is our source control section, and external agencies.

She also supports regulatory compliance investigations and ensures the laboratory's work

emits all necessary standards. And I'm not going to go into any more detail on this, but also

she's taught microbiology at the college level as an adjunct faculty member at Folsom Lake College

and Kasumis River College. So Sreedvi. Wow. Gives us a little elevated, you know. Okay, great.

All right, that's all I had. That's all you have. What's next?

I just wanted to say that I've enjoyed working and serving with all of you the past two years.

It was never my intention to be a short timer. I took over this position when Carrie Halla

left our council, but as Kristoff alluded to, we recently welcomed two new members to the Folsom

City Council, and it seemed like a good time to rebalance our board and our committee assignments

so that every member of the council gets to have a regional assignment or two. As you know,

it's important to establish those regional relationships. So I'm going to stay on as the

alternate, so you may see me now and then, but Justin Rathal, one of our new council members,

will be taking over. He is an engineer, and he spent the past four years on the county's planning

commission serving with Joe Phil. So you will be in good hands, and I just want to extend my

thanks to the district staff. I am typically the first member here because I have a long way to come

and it gives me some opportunity to chit chat with these folks and get to know them, and

I think this is a very, very well-run organization doing really important work and very innovative

work. So I appreciate getting to know all of you and thank you for your service.

And thank you for yours. We look forward to meeting your successor. I hope he

fills the shoes that you have here. So let's, I'll miss you, Sarah.

Okay, is there any other comments?

Are you, did you want to speak? I'm back here. Director, is she still here?

Director Roscoe? Did you have a comment? It was from before. I apologize.

Did you put your name up? I did. I forgot one thing. I just wanted to say. You could pump in any time.

So for our new members, we want to offer you a staff, I mean a plant tour for sure. Our

ecowater facility is the second largest in the U.S. of its kind. You'll love it. You will be a

certified sewer nerd when you're done. So if you haven't had the opportunity to do that yet,

absolutely, take us up on that. And then we'll be setting up briefings as well for anyone who's new

just to get you up to speed on what our challenges and issues are. Thank you.

And be sure to take a tour of the Nicholas Dairy, which is, you know, to me just amazing.

That's another tour we can set up as well. If you're interested, it's our educational program.

Okay, moving on. What's next? I'm moving item to item number six. This is public comment.

Comments from the public on issues not on the posted agenda. And I do not have any speaker

requests for. Item number seven is concern through nine or consent items? Yes, ma'am.

Who moved? Who seconded? Was that a motion by director Vegas? Kennedy. Thank you. Kennedy.

Who seconded? Rodriguez. Okay. All those in favor say aye. I can't always see when I look down real fast.

Okay. And that concludes the business. There are no other items.

That concludes the salaneous items. So the next on the agenda is adjourn, right?

Yes. So do I bang this? Yes. Thank you.