Good morning everyone.

Welcome to the July 9 meeting of the Sacramento Area Sewer District.

Let's see, let's start with, call the roll and establish quorum.

Good morning, directors Hume?

Here.

Kaplan?

Here.

Orozco?

Here.

Aquino?

Here.

Robles?

Present.

Rodriguez?

Here.

Cerner?

Here.

Soon?

Here.

Villegas?

Here.

And Chair Park Carpensky-Costa?

Present.

And we do have a quorum.

I will ask our alternate Sarah Aquino to lead us in the pledge.

I forget your name.

That's kind of crazy.

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.

I got you.

There.

There.

There.

Okay, so then...

Could you 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 cablecast on Metro Cable Channel 14, the local government affairs channel on the Comcast and Direct TV U-verse cable systems.

It is also live streamed at metro14live.satcounty.gov.

Today's meeting replays Sunday, July 13th at 9 o'clock a.m. on Metro Cable Channel 14.

Once posted, the recording of this meeting can be viewed on demand at youtube.com slash metro cable 14.

SAC Sewer board members are compensated $100 for their participation in board meetings.

Compensation for Sacramento County Supervisors and City of Sacramento Council members is paid to the county and city of Sacramento and the city of Citrus Heights, respectively.

To partially offset the cost of these governments.

Compensation for the other agencies is paid directly to the individual board members.

Compensation for these legislative body meetings is verbally disclosed at each board meeting in accordance with California Government Code Section 54952.3.

To make an in-person public comment, please provide 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 saccounty.gov.

Your comment will be routed to the board and filed in the record.

And that concludes our announcements.

Thank you.

At this time we're going to adjourn to closed session.

At this time we're going to adjourn to closed session.

At this time we're going to adjourn to closed session.

We're back from closed session and we have no reportable action.

Could the clerk please call the roll for quorum?

Absolutely.

Director Hume?

Here.

Director Kaplan?

Here.

Director Orozco?

Here.

Plucky Bomb?

Here.

Aquino?

Here.

Robles?

Here.

Rodriguez?

Here.

Sander?

Here.

Serna?

Here.

Soon?

Here.

Villegas?

Here.

And Chair Karpinski-Costa?

Present.

Thank you.

We do have a quorum.

Thank you.

I want to thank our addition of Director Sander.

It adds to the quorum.

For the record it was Sander and Plucky Bomb following.

Okay.

We have two new guys.

I could have left.

See, I could have left at 10 o'clock.

All right.

I'm here.

Could you please read the first item into the record?

Our first item in the record is our consent matters, items number 1 through 10.

Second.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any comments and questions on items 1 through 10?

Second.

Second.

Are there any public comment for these items?

I did not receive any public comment for those items.

Okay.

We'll call for a vote.

And that item does pass unanimously with those members present.

Thank you.

Next item please.

Item number 11 is comments from the public on issues not on the posted agenda.

I have not received any public comment cards.

Okay.

Next item please.

Item number 12 is miscellaneous Director and District Engineer matters.

We're rotating so the District Engineer gets to speak before we go to discussion of issues.

So you're first.

All right.

Good morning, Chair and Board members.

We do not have our second meeting in July.

So our next meeting will be August 13th.

And I do have one section manager who I told we might not do this because we were worried about the quorum.

But now that we have a quorum I'd like to introduce Jeff Vale.

Back there.

There's Jeff.

Jeff is our Information Technology Manager.

He started with the county permanently in 1998 with Public Works MIS before transitioning to DTEC in 2012.

In 2019 Jeff transferred to Saksur where he began reshaping the IT section by forming three new teams and hiring supervisors and staff.

Throughout his work at the county, his private businesses and a nonprofit that he started, Jeff has gained experience in many areas of IT, customer relationship management, process improvement, and business accounting.

Jeff leads four IT teams at Saksur, customer services, IT project management, application support, and IT operations.

These teams ensure the seamless operation and strategic advancement of the district's technology infrastructure and services while adhering to Saksur's core values.

His focus has been to implement industry standard processes around service desk operations, change management, application development, project management, and other core areas of IT.

His ability to navigate complex challenges and deliver results has made him an asset to Saksur.

He strongly believes in continuous improvement and professional development.

He actively engages in training sessions and workshops to stay abreast of the latest industry trends and best practices and encourages his staff to do the same.

Outside of work, Jeff enjoys playing games with his two sons, hiking with his dog, and making endless improvements to his self-designed camper trailer.

He deeply believes in our core values and was excited to be able to volunteer recently at the Sycamore Trail Planning Project.

So he was one of the Saksur employees who went out to West Saksur on that project that we partially funded with a grant from the Confluence Program.

So, Jeff Vail, thank you.

I'd be interested to see what a self-designed camper trailer looked like.

I'm always happy to show it off.

You could post it.

Okay.

Okay.

Next is any discussion or comments by board members.

Madam Chair, if I can just briefly introduce, I have a student intern working for me this summer in my office in District 1 in West Sacramento, Yolo County.

He's a student attending UC Davis in the fall.

His name is Ethan Victor.

And the reason he's here is because he's always wondered when he flushed his toilet, where does that water go?

So I assured him this body would represent well where that water is.

Represent well, not what goes down the toilet.

That's right.

Okay.

Very good.

Very good.

Where is he at?

So you want to wave your hand?

There you go.

There's Ethan there.

He'll be attending UC Davis in the fall.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Terrific.

Go Aggies.

Go Axe.

Any other comments, questions from board members?

I have a question.

Oh, yes.

Just so you see, it is summertime, so occasionally you will see my children joining us and then rightly ignoring us.

So saying hi to my oldest, Viva.

Are they here or are they watching?

Oh, okay.

My vision sucks.

Cue the evil eye and the eye rolling.

Perfect pre-teen.

Perfect pre-teen.

I wanted to ask a question now that Jeff is here.

Do we look into AI at all for some of the things that I've – I talked to an AI.

I could have sworn I was talking to a person on the phone.

Do we look into that as a means of shaving off some redundancy?

We do.

We specifically look at one project around TDR or video inspections.

Yes.

For one project, our TVI video inspections, we did look into an AI solution to automate the analysis of the video.

We ended up not going that direction right now.

But we are in the process of rolling out co-pilot throughout the organization just for kind of general business automation practices and AI.

Yeah.

So we are working on AI initiatives.

Good.

I'm sure you're on top of it.

Oh, yeah.

I just was wondering if we, you know, do something, I'd be interested to know what we're doing with it.

Yeah, right now it's mostly –

I find it fascinating.

Yeah, I'm an old girl.

I'm an old girl.

Yeah, right now it's mostly video meeting recording and notes for meetings and things like that.

We haven't done deep into too many different business processes other than the TVI analysis.

Okay.

Thank you.

But it is on our radar and we're excited about it.

Thank you very much.

Next item, please.

Next item is item number 13, to approve a memorandum of understanding with Professional Engineers Association.

Good morning, Chair and Board members.

This item is our first tentative agreement with our union for our engineers and also scientists.

Basically, everything that we've learned about compensation is that if you are under the market, you will have employees that are not as productive and engaged as they could be.

As you move up to the market, they will improve that engagement and productivity.

Once you get above that market, it doesn't really make them even more productive and engaged.

So you're trying to find that sweet spot and that's what we've done with our compensation policy, setting our target to be the median of the agencies that we are comparing to.

And that is really the outcome that generated with the salary study that we recently completed that generated the data that you can then go out and look at both benefits and base salary.

And the two of those together gets your total compensation.

And this agreement is essentially the outcome from that.

It does both bump up benefits a little bit and the salary as well to keep them both in line with our comparable agencies.

I do want to make one note, and that is that there is an incorrect reference in the MOU to the labor index that we use each year.

However, it's a cost of labor adjustment.

It comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it's referenced in there as a March to March indicator.

And our compensation policy uses the December to December.

And so we would like the motion to include that we would change that to the December to December.

And we have gotten concurrence from the union on that.

They're okay with that.

So with that, I would ask that if you're so inclined, ask for your approval.

Are there any member questions or comments?

I will go ahead and move to approve the item with the corrected dates of December to December.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Call for vote.

That item does pass unanimously with the members present for the record.

That was Rodriguez and Kaplan with first and second.

Thank you.

Next item, please.

And for the record, there were no public comments on that item as well.

Oh, sorry.

I didn't ask.

It's okay.

I didn't see anybody jumping up either.

Item number 14 is to approve revised employee benefits documents for employee groups 4, 6, and 9.

So me again.

Just very quickly, it's a lot of the same information.

The unrepresented employees, we have not looked at equities yet.

Those will be following the union agreements.

So once we have those in place, then we'll be able to look at the unrepresented and either use outside ties where appropriate to the market,

but also have to tie them internally to the employees who've been locked in and those other agreements.

So with that, we are just essentially matching the benefit side of the previous MOU that you just saw.

So we're looking for that same.

And I don't recall if we made the error on that for the, it doesn't have a cost of labor adjustment.

So we don't need to make that adjustment on this one.

Okay.

That was already approved by your board previously.

Okay.

Any member questions or comments on this item?

Seeing none.

Move approval.

Any public comment on this item?

I have not received anything, Chair.

Okay.

Then we need a motion.

I will go ahead and move to approve item number 14.

Second.

For the record, Director Soon moved and so we'll have Member Rodriguez with a second.

Okay.

Call for vote.

Thank you.

And that item does pass unanimously with those members present.

Next item, please.

Item number 15 is to adopt an ordinance amendments to the Sacramento Area Seward District Collection

System Ordinance and Treatment and Resource Recovery System Ordinance.

Good morning, Chair, members of the board.

Mike Hewitt, Director of Policy and Planning.

At our last board meeting on June 11th, the Collection System Ordinance and the Treatment Resource Recovery Ordinance Amendments were introduced.

And your board approved the recommended actions.

But there was a request to clarify the sections on the district engineer's compensation.

And that's been done.

It is now specific in there saying that the board of directors approves the compensation via resolution or written agreement.

And that can be shown in the red line on attachments C and D.

So the environmental review is complete.

The amendments were determined to be exempt from CEQA.

And those are included as attachments E and F.

And those exemption notices were sent to the county clerk of Sacramento and the Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation State Clearinghouse as required.

So since introducing those amendments on June 11th, Sac Seward has conducted outreach.

Metro Cable aired announcements of today's public hearing.

And summaries of the proposed amendments were published in a daily recorder on June 30th.

The notifications, letters, and emails were sent out to interested parties and stakeholders.

And we have not received any comments from anybody on those.

And both the full versions of these amendments were posted online as well.

So if the ordinance amendments are approved today, Sac Seward will send the notification letters of the adopted ordinances out to the interested parties again.

And we'll publish the legal summaries in the daily recorder within 15 days.

That's a government code requirement.

And we'll post the adopted ordinance online.

So with that, our recommendation is to adopt the amendments made to the collection system ordinance and the treatment and resource recovery ordinances.

And recognize the exempt status for the CEQA requirements for the proposed changes.

And these would go in effect if approved August 8th of 2025.

It needs a 30-day waiting period before it becomes effective.

So with that, I'll turn it back over to Director Karpinski-Costa to open and close the public hearing and facilitate the approval process.

Okay.

First, let me check for any questions or comments from our members.

I see a finger.

There's also the name on the screen there.

Oh, okay.

Well, I see the finger.

I didn't see the name.

It was the pointer finger just for reference, by the way.

Yeah, I was going to say it.

I just want to be clear about that.

I happen to like Jane Oak personally, so.

Okay.

Mike, I have two questions for you.

The first one's kind of procedural and then the second one's kind of in the weeds on what we're doing here today.

The first question procedurally is why do we have the personnel policies and the compensation embedded in our collection and treatment ordinances as opposed to some sort of separate administrative ordinance?

I can answer that.

There are some references there, but we do have separate documents.

The compensation policy is a separate document approved by your board and the personnel policies is also a separate document approved by the board.

Are they referenced in these ordinances as well?

Yeah, I don't know if they're referenced by name, but they're in there.

I'd have to look if they're actually referenced, referencing their personnel policies, but just in general, it just touches on the compensation procedure as far as how compensation is established in the ordinances for the executives and the district engineer, which will also be identified in their personnel policies as well.

Okay.

To me, it just seems a little confusing and unwieldy to have something that's more administrative in nature embedded in the business of the organization collecting and treating.

Yeah.

I think it is just that it is consistent with those documents.

I don't believe it has an actual reference to it.

Yeah.

And so you're saying that you do want it kept separate?

I think it should be separate.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then my question is one of the bullet points here.

It says adoption of consistent naming convention for impact fees to improve transparency and usability.

Can you please give me a deeper dive on what that means and what we're doing now?

Yeah.

So over time, there's been two terminologies for impact fees for treatment and for collections.

For collections, it was relief and expansion.

So relief is more of that infill and then expansion is more of that outward growing.

And then for treatment, it was new, which was that outward growth, and then infill.

So what we did is we looked at to simplify and make it easier for staff and developers to understand,

to bring it down to two names for both collections and treatment.

So we narrowed it down to infill for collection treatment and new for actually expansion for collection treatment as well.

So, yeah, I get confused even thinking about it, the four terms sitting in my head.

But, yeah, so basically now there's two terms, two sets of, there's different fees.

So for collection, it has its own fee for infill and expansion.

And then for treatment, there's a different fee as well.

And the distinction is important because there's tiered rates based off of whether it is infill or expansion, correct?

That's right.

That's right.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other fingers or requests?

We'll make a motion to open and close the public hearing.

Before I, okay, I was going to do that.

Thanks for your help.

I opened the public hearing.

Are there any comments from the public?

I have not received any.

Then I will close the public hearing.

Is that okay?

All right.

Thank you.

Call for a vote.

Call for a motion.

I'll make a motion.

Second.

And that item does pass unanimously with those members present.

Okay.

Next item, please.

Item number 16 is collection of delinquent sewer service charges on the property tax roll.

Yeah.

Good morning, Chair.

Members of the Board.

My name is Glennie Lamura, Senior Accounting Manager with the Districts.

Today we are recommending that a public hearing on the delinquent sewer service charges be held

and to adopt the resolution in order to allow for the delinquent sewer service charges to be collected on the property tax roll

and to direct the clerk of the board to file a copy of the levy report with the Sacramento County Auditor

controller on or before August 5, 2025.

And just a little background on the process.

Every year, SAC sewer takes on the steps to ensure that delinquent monthly service charges are placed on the tax roll.

And during the May 14th board meeting, your board adopted the resolution of intention of starting the process

by setting a public hearing for today for the delinquent sewer service charges.

As of June 7th, there was approximately 16,946 accounts,

totaling about $13.4 million that would be potentially transferred to the tax roll.

And typically these numbers decrease slightly as additional payments are made between now

and the time of the transfer date in August.

So we recommend that you take the actions in order to place the delinquent sewer service charges onto the tax roll.

Thank you.

Any questions or comments from our members?

Question, Chair.

Thank you so much for the report.

I commend you for a final collection of over 95%, so that's good.

I was just wondering, though, because over the five-year period,

there's just a general trend of increasing, and I was wondering if you guys take note of that

or have any suspicions as to why that's happening.

You know, there's not one item that pops out that, you know, shows what, you know,

is causing the trend of the increase.

You know, probably just a lot of the general things with the rate increases

and overall costs increasing with all the utilities.

But, yeah, there's really nothing we can pinpoint for the increase.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm just curious.

It's not a huge increase, but the general trend is upward.

So I was just curious.

Thank you.

Just on the trend, previously, prior to COVID, it was about the same level it's at now.

So it was kind of going slowly up.

Then it trended down dramatically during COVID.

We didn't quite figure out what that meant either.

It dropped considerably, and then it's trended back up to where it was.

So we were talking about maybe getting a longer time frame so you can kind of see that,

because right now it's all up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it does actually come down and then back up.

Right.

Yeah, it might be internally for you to look at maybe, like you said, a larger time scale.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions or comments?

Then I'm going to open the public hearing.

Are there any public comment on this item?

Not received any, sure.

I will close public hearing and entertain a motion.

Move staff recommendation.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Please vote.

And that item passes unanimously with those members present.

Next item.

I think it's adjourned.

That is the conclusion of our meeting today, Chair Coffin-Singhouse.

We're adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.