Recording in progress.

Yes.

Directors Desmond.

Dickinson.

Hume here.

Kaplan.

Kennedy.

So please.

Pluckybom.

Aquino?

Here.

Robles?

Rodriguez here.

Sander.

Here.

Soon?

Viegas?

Here.

Karpinski Costa.

President.

I promised a smile.

Here it is.

Thank you.

And Chair Cerna.

Here.

You have a quorum with the members that are present.

Great.

Can you please read our statement?

Yes.

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

It is cable cast on Metro Cable Channel 14, the local government affairs channel on the Comcast and Direct TV Uverse Cable Systems.

It is also live streamed at Metro 14 Live.sackCounty.gov.

Today's meeting will be plays Sunday, June 21st at 9 a.m.

on Metro Cable Channel 14.

Once posted, the recording of this meeting can be viewed on demand at YouTube.com forward slash Metro Cable 14.

SACSUER board members are compensated 100 for their participation in board meetings.

Compensation for Sacramento County supervisors and City of Sacramento and Citrus Heights Council members is paid to the county and cities respectively to partially offset the cost of those governments.

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

Compensation for those 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 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 SACCounty.gov.

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

This concludes your announcement, Mr.

Chair.

Great.

Thank you.

Will we please join Supervisor Hume in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, which is one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Alright, very good.

Uh again, I'd like to welcome everyone to this morning's proceedings.

Uh we have a full agenda, so uh I think we'll go ahead and get started.

Uh Madam Clerk or first item.

Mr.

Chair, your first item are the Sacramento Area Sewer District Consent Matters to approve items one through six.

Okay, any member of the board of directors here wish to poll uh an item or okay similar.

It's been moved, been moved and seconded.

Uh Madam Clerk, do we have any public speakers on this matter?

We do not have any public speakers for this item.

Okay, and we're doing electronic voting.

Are we not?

Yes, we are.

Okay, then please vote.

Your motion passes unanimously 12 to 0.

Very good.

Next item.

Mr.

Chair, the next item is uh comments from the public on issues not on the posted agenda.

We do not have any speaker slips for this item as well.

Very good.

Next item, please.

The next item is adopt the fiscal year 2026-27 final budget.

Presenter Christoph Dobson, district engineer.

Good morning, Chair, and board members.

Um, this is our fiscal year 2627 budget.

We uh brought that forward and introduced it at the last meeting, and so this meeting we're looking for approval.

Um, I do want to highlight a couple things.

First of all, 372 million dollar operating budget and four hundred and eighty-six million dollar capital budget.

Um, and then those are further broken down into collection and uh treatment or two different systems.

Um I just wanted to address a few questions that came up at the last meeting.

Um Director Cerna, Chair Cerna uh asked about the new positions and whether those will be funded through any reserve use of reserves, and just wanted to make that clear that um those positions are funded through our operating revenues, not through reserves.

Um there's a term that we use, unrestricted cash.

Um, that's really you kind of think of it like your uh your checking account.

It's a it's a uh an amount that you you kind of you don't want to have too much in there or too little, and so sometimes we move cash in and out, but it's not it's not a reserve, it's not one of our um uh reserves that are in the reserve schedule.

So uh that was that question.

Um then uh director Kaplan and also Roscoe, um, started to touch on some of our chemical costs.

The chemical costs are very significant.

One of the biggest increases in this budget is due to chemical costs, and it's just the literally the cost of our liquid chlorine increasing.

Um we and that brought us into uh a question about the the salinity that Director Sander brought up, and I just wanted to touch on that.

I will try not to geek out, do this real quick.

But um there was a question about the salinity because if we generate our chlorine on site, we said that that would increase the salinity.

Um the reason for that is just um to summarize the process.

It's a two-step process that uh you take essentially salt sodium chloride and you generate um you generate chlorine gas with that.

The second step, you take that chlorine gas, and with other sodium compounds, you generate the liquid chlorine, which we use in our system.

Um that's sodium hypochlorite, or as Sonny referred to it as hypo, that's what we call it hypo.

Um that process in each case, because it's using sodium, it's using salts, it's generating waste salt.

In the in the current system that we have, that's all happening off-site.

We just get the um the chlorine, we use it, it does have some salinity to it, but not um significant within our permit and everything.

So by generating it on site, we now have these two extra waste streams that have salt in them as well that could be discharged, but that literally takes up all of our available kind of space within our permit.

And of course, uh just from a uh a values perspective, not really our um the way we would want to approach this to add additional salt into the delta essentially.

So that's the issue with the salt.

Hopefully, that kind of resolves that question that you had.

Um, one change that was made to the budget.

We did uh reduce the bond revenues on the treatment side from 150 million down to 100 million, and that was specifically to recognize the fact that we received that additional fifty little 50 million plus dollars from our water storage investment program, the state grant funding for harvest water.

So that means that we when we do issue bonds to cover uh some of the gap in that in that uh cost, that they will be we will be issuing less bonds, and so that's the only change there.

Everything else has remained the same, and um I'll open it up to any questions and otherwise we're looking for the uh approval of the staff recommendation.

Thank you, uh Christoph.

Any questions for our district engineer?

I don't see any uh, do we have any more time to speak on this matter?

I do not have any public comment for this item.

Okay, and then entertain a motion.

So move the budget.

Okay, it's been moved and second, please vote.

Your motion passes unanimously 12 to zero.

Very good.

Next item, please.

Mr.

Chair, the next item is award of contract for the secondary sedimentation tanks 10 and 16 rehabilitation project.

Request for bid number 8529.

Presenter Sunny Lundy.

Um, Chair.

We actually need to address item nine, which is the ordinance.

I'm sorry, number nine is uh a dot-proposed collection system, sewer impact fee and liquid waste hauler disposal charge adjustments and amendments to the Sacramento Area Sewer District Ordinance.

Presenter Mike Hewitt, director of policy and planning.

My apologies.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair.

Members of the board.

Um I'm missing a mic over here, so it looks like I'm getting too close to Christoph.

That's why.

You've been relegated to backup things here today.

So um at our last meeting on May 27th, uh, staff introduced the ordinance amendments for SAC sewer.

Your board approved the recommended actions.

Uh key highlights.

Uh, one of them, probably the main um accomplishment is combining consolidating two ordinances into one.

It's kind of a big deal.

We had a treatment ordinance and a collections ordinance, and now we have one ordinance for SAC sewer.

It's one reference document for staff and also for the public.

We also updated our impact fees for industrial customers on our collection side.

So now that they're consistent with our residential commercial, and then we also lowered the uh liquid waste haul rates, so that provides an incentive for them to bring the waste down to the treatment plant.

Uh the environmental review is complete.

The amendments were determined to be exempt from CEQA, and uh those are attachment C in your board package.

Since introducing amendments on May 27th, there's been a lot of outreach done.

There's been summaries of the proposed amendments uh were published by the to the uh by the daily recorder.

Uh notification letters were sent out to uh interested stakeholders, and we received no comments, and the full versions of the proposed ordinance uh were posted online.

And Metro Cable aired uh the announcements of today's public hearing.

So if the ordinance amendments are adopted today, uh we will send out notification notification letters to our stakeholders, and then we'll publish legal summaries uh in the daily recorder within 15 days as required by government code, and then we'll post the adopted ordinance online.

So a recommendation is to adopt the amendments made to SAC sewers ordinance, which will become effective on July 17th of this year, 30 days after adoption, and then recognize the exempt status for CEQA, um, the requirements for the proposed changes.

So with that, I'll turn over the chair for uh to hold and close the public meeting and then go through adoption and uh approval process.

Very good.

Thank you, Mike.

Uh any questions for staff?

Seeing none, I'll open the public hearing.

Um clerk, any members of the public sign up to speak.

We do not have any public comment.

And we'll close the public hearing.

I'll move for approval.

It's been moved.

Is there a second?

It's been moved and seconded.

Please vote.

Your motion passes unanimously 130.

Very good.

Next item, please.

Your next item is item 10.

Award of contract for the secondary sedimentation tanks 10 and 16 rehabilitation project.

Request for bid number 8529.

Now, presenter Sunny Lundy, Director of Echo Water Operations.

Good morning, Chair, Board of Directors.

Excuse me.

SACSUR is seeking uh board approval to award a contract for the rehabilitation of two sediment secondary sediment tanks at the Echo Water facility.

Umcorporated is identified as the lowest responsive bidder at 3,448,000 dollars, despite a formal protest from Eurostile Management alleging lack of experience.

Staff and counsel deemed the protest meritless and recommend that your board award to the lowest responsible bidder.

Very good, that includes your staff report.

Yes, all right.

Very good.

Any questions for staff from directors?

All right, seeing none, madam clerk, anyone sign up to speak on this matter.

Yes, we do.

We have Mr.

Anthonosis Casuris.

Okay, yeah, Mr.

Anel, please approach the podium.

You have two minutes to make your public comment.

Seeing as we uh have limited public speakers, I'm gonna grant you three minutes here.

Okay, thank you.

Yes.

Good morning, Chair and the board members.

My name is and I'm with your style management.

This protest is not about whether pro builders are a good contractor.

Uh we have never argued that pro builders lacks the has integrity, capacity, and the ability to complete projects.

The issue before you uh board members is much narrower.

The issue is whether the requirements contained in the bid documents apply equally to every bidder.

The request for bid required contractors to demonstrate work similar in magnitude and character, and to demonstrate experience providing the same services to municipal and or public wastewater treatment facilities.

Those requirements are material.

And if they are, then they must be enforced equally.

If they're not material, then the bidder should have been informed before the bid.

County council's memo acknowledges that many of the references relied upon by Sphere Tech Pro builders are schools, state parks, transit districts, community colleges.

Those entities are public agencies, but they are not wastewater treatment facilities.

The specification did not say public agencies.

It said municipal and or public wastewater treatment facilities.

Likewise, appendix G required work similar in magnitude and character.

Magnitude must mean something.

If a project that is a fraction of the size and complexity of this wastewater rehabilitation project is deemed equivalent, then the magnitude requirement has no meaning.

The district's position today is essentially that it already knows pro builders and therefore can rely upon its general experience and reputation rather than the specific requirements contained in appendices G and H.

Our concern is that this changes the rules after bid opening.

Public bidding laws exist to ensure that every bidder competes under the same standards.

The question is not whether the district believes pro builders can perform the work, the question is whether the bid submitted demonstrates compliance with the qualifications that were required of all bidders at the time of bid.

Respectfully request that the board enforce the bid requirements as written and determined that the apparent low bidder is non-responsive.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

My question is actually for staff.

Can you respond to the uh point made about magnitude?

If that was a qualification of the bid, yes.

You can go ahead and have a seat.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, the minimum requirements, and the contractor did list um minimum experience requirements, but it was listed as in um order of magnitude and character and the magnitude of the projects that they're they submitted on where we're near the magnitude of the the requirements.

Um they did represent um and demonstrated that they could do this type of work um of similar magnitude and character.

So then it so then uh as was just mentioned it wasn't a familiarity with the contract that carried the day.

They didn't uh demonstrate that they performed similar work.

Absolutely.

Any other questions for staff?

Okay, uh, Madam Clerk, we have no other speakers on the matter, correct?

No other speakers.

All right, very good idea.

Oh, sorry, director Dickinson.

I just wondered if your mic's not working.

Thank you.

I just wondered if if uh council had any comment on the same same issue uh raised by the speaker.

The same issue brought up right now.

Okay.

Um I don't I think my memo speaks for itself.

Um they are absolutely responsive in their bid.

Their past experience with SACSURA has nothing to do with um the fact that we found their bid responsive for this RFP.

Um they have the requisite experience, and they also have the requisite past experience providing work to public entities and wastewater facilities.

So we did not find anything wrong with the face of their bid.

Okay.

Any other directors have questions?

Not entertain a motion.

Okay, it's been moved.

Is there a second?

Been moved and second, please vote.

Director Begas, you want to see your vote?

Oh, he departed.

I think okay.

Your motion passes unanimously 12 with a member of Viegas not voting.

Thank you.

Next item, please.

Your next item is item 11.

Discuss potential improvements to address quorum issues for the Sacramento Area Sewer District Board of Directors meetings.

I'm particularly interested in this one.

Well, yeah, we were thinking of the irony if we didn't get quorum today.

Not to mention the fact that it would uh throw our budget into chaos.

Yes.

So what I've done, I've I've laid out um basically four kind of areas to look at, kind of ranging from very small things up to maybe larger scale.

Um what I like to do is walk through them.

I'll give you a little introduction of the topic.

If you have questions or comments, um feel free to jump in at the end of that, and maybe collectively throughout this.

What we're trying to get is some input for staff so that we can go back, and if there are any recommendations that we need to bring back to the for to back to the board, we would do that.

So that's the approach.

Before you dive into the weeds here, Christoph, um maybe it's uh useful to uh briefly explain uh the fact that we have members of um boards of supervisors appear, uh both from Sacramento and YOLO.

Um the entirety of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors are members of this board of directors by default per their uh their uh principal seat to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, but that's not the case for the some of the other members, correct?

Correct.

So that's what we would call kind of an own ranks uh appointment.

In other words, the the home governing body uh deliberates and appoints representatives from those bodies.

So it's not the entirety of, for instance, the city of West Sacramento City Council, it's it's a smaller uh uh contingent from that that governing body, correct?

Correct.

Okay, and and that also introduces another challenge, which is that the Board of Supervisors does not have any alternates because there are only five of them.

Right.

That's the way legislation is written.

Whereas the cities at least can have an alternate.

That's a good point.

Thank you.

All right, so just first um briefly on communication.

Uh, we're just really we're redoubling our efforts to make sure we have correct contact information.

Um in fact, if any of you would be willing to give uh Sonny Kenner, my secretary, your cell phone, that would be helpful.

I have several of them, but I don't have all of them.

Um any way that we can just get positive contact is one of the challenges is just not knowing whether someone is gonna be here or not.

Um so any anything there would help.

Um, and again, we're we're redoubling our efforts to make sure we have the correct uh contact information.

Um the other thing is just you or your staff if you have staff if if you can before each board meeting, just uh check in and let us know.

I can't make it.

I understand you you all have a lot of conflicts, um, but then if you could let us know, so we have that information.

Um so that's about it on communications, not not really any big recommendations.

We're just gonna work harder on it.

And I assume, Christoph, you would even be open to receiving if necessary and uh late night text.

Uh, absolutely.

Yeah, okay, I I won't see it till the next morning.

Well, then you'll really scramble.

Depends how late night it is, I guess.

Um all right, so uh next topic is meeting location.

One of the challenges of this chambers is that there are a lot of other things happening in this boardroom, so we have a difficult time ever moving to somewhere uh that might be more convenient or better for your board.

Uh it's this is 17 members, that's hard to find a time that everyone is available, but it doesn't definitely reduces the flexibility, especially right now.

Like today, this is a special meeting.

It's the third Wednesday, not the second or fourth.

That's because county budget hearings were taking over that time frame.

So we already have to scramble a little bit just to get our kind of our standard time slot.

So having an alternate location is definitely an option.

We've done a couple meetings.

We've had one at well, we've had a couple at the Echo Water facility, we've had at least one at Gaty.

Um we could, if nothing else, look into the um the logistics involved in setting up a more permanent.

So if we have a permanent location there, the challenge with let's say gaty right now is if we said well, could we could we have a special meeting there in two weeks from today?

Um, it takes a lot for Metro Cable.

There's a it's a it's a giant effort to get that set up.

It we're we're looking out a year to figure out a good date to do that.

But if we had it set up so that it was standardized and ready to go, then it would be a more flexible um alternate location or permanent location.

So there's there's alternate location and potentially permanent location.

Christoph, can you remind us?

Uh do we have anything uh that's semi-permanent in terms of or um or a general understanding about how many uh meetings we would have in a in a year fiscal or calendar at the plant?

I know that it feels like we have one a year at the plant.

That just feels like it.

Um like I said, we've my recollections we've had a couple uh over so over several years.

So that's also a heavy lift for metro cable, right?

Yes, absolutely.

It's all heavy lift, and that's the thing is if if we were to do this, we would be looking at what would it take to get more permanent facilities there.

The the Gaty location was originally planned, the community room there was planned to be an alternate location, so it's kind of set up.

Um but obviously their work would need to be done to make it more permanent.

Okay.

So that's meeting location.

Uh any more questions or comments on that.

Okay.

Um Director Dickinson.

Thanks, Chair.

I just um I wanted to make just a couple comments before I leave for our next board meeting.

Um, first of all, with respect to the board composition, if there's if there's interest in looking at that, I I would just make a suggestion of a working group, a smaller set of of this board.

Uh it's a little difficult to have these kinds of having been through this a few times, have these discussions with the full complement.

So that's just that's that's like a committee.

Yeah, like a ad hoc committee to to uh consider any changes in in membership.

Uh and with respect to to meeting location, I just would note that historically Metro Cable had covered the cost of other locations.

That's that's not going to continue.

In fact, it's in transition now, I think is most of most of the members of this board know because the the cable uh revenues are declining.

So there they may already be charging uh the district for meetings.

I don't I'm not sure, but if they're not they will be.

And it's and it's gonna cost more to go to any location other than here where it's already set up here, the city council chambers, Sacramento City Council Chambers.

So there'll be a cost element to to going to other locations as uh as well.

And um just uh from a personal perspective, um uh I'd rather see us avoid that, avoid those kinds of costs if we can do it.

There's enough pressure on on the district to try to keep costs down with uh everything that that's that's going on.

Um so and and everything that will be going on in the future, so maybe it's a it's a small item, but nonetheless, where we can save where we can save some money, I think uh that ought to be a consideration.

Thank you, Chair.

Director Hume.

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

I appreciate the comments made by Director Dickinson.

I I agree with him wholeheartedly.

I don't think the district should be spending money trying to duplicate something that already exists, which is a location that can be uh recorded and and has all the technology in place.

Um furthermore, given that we all come from different uh geographies within the region, uh this is a fairly convenient location, and I'm not speaking just for myself.

I mean obviously I like being able to walk downstairs, but um I I think you have people coming from the west, coming from the east, coming from the south, uh and from the north.

And so um uh I think if we're looking at making life easier, at least for me, and I think I've I've I've told you this, Christoph is uh I'm chair of a conservancy that meets one Wednesday that conflicts with this uh board.

And so I think we ought to be looking for a different time slot if we need to find something that works for people better than uh than the time we we've been using um rather than looking for a different location.

That that would be my suggestion.

That uh looking at a different time slot um I don't necessarily uh disagree with.

Um I think it's gonna be a fairly narrow um uh set of options.

Uh and if we if you really wanted to expand it, you'd probably have to start looking at Fridays.

And so I don't know how directors feel about Fridays.

That's what I thought.

Uh Christoph, did you want to uh did you want to move on to the next part of your presentation or was that the conclusion of it?

Yeah, we got um so I I don't have anything else on that topic.

Yeah, so um uh the last topic specific to the to the quorum issue is around governance, and we've started to nibble around the edges of that already.

We have a 17-member board.

Um currently there are two vacancies within the city of Sacramento.

Back in the day when we went from a um one representative per city to a population based, that was uh there was a fair amount of effort put into figuring out what that is.

Currently, City of Sacramento has a five members based on population.

Um there are thresholds that continue to increase.

So um there's actually we're looking at it, the population's not all that far off from the city getting a sixth member.

Um I think Elkgrove is still a ways away from a third, but um over time it's going to continue to grow.

So one thing to consider is to look at that governance.

That's a bigger thing that would require uh legislation.

We have to go in and change our legislation.

Um the uh I I happen to have uh a meeting set up this afternoon with Mayor McCarty to talk about the two vacancies because that puts us down to right off the bat, which makes it a challenge to get the quorum.

Um but these are some of the issues that could be uh that we could we could change.

We could um, for example, have a have a tiered system where you have either one member, two members, or three members, regardless of how if your population continues to grow, that would at least sort of capture the um uh or limit the size to getting larger.

Um we also talked a little bit about if we were to do something like that legislative, we would also want to address uh new members coming in which aren't addressed right now, and and we talk about that just because of our our service uh on a contract basis up to Sutter County is something that when it was discussed way back when we set up those agreements, there was discussion of the potential for them to ultimately be annexed in and and then obviously they'd be on our board.

So um that was kind of aside, it's not really related to the quorum, but um gets to if we were to make some governance changes, we'd want to do it all at once or at least set up the possibility so we could make uh general language to address something like that where a new entity came in.

So that's some of the thoughts on governance.

Any uh response to the suggestion made by Director Dickinson in terms of a ad hoc committee that would be set up to um further vet this.

Yeah, I mean I think that's a good a good approach to take.

We could look at um really we could look at the mix of all of the topics here.

Yeah, um and and in a smaller setting.

Okay, before I get to Director Desmond, I just want to ask uh Diane, I assume we can't take uh action today to set up that committee.

We'd have to agendize that at the next regularly scheduled meeting.

Director Desmond, okay.

Well, you there that answered my question.

I I am supportive of the committee structure and nominating uh council member Dixon Dickinson is the chair, of course.

And ironically, he's not there.

Uh Director Karpinski Costa.

I'm just not in favor of another committee that we can't get a quorum for this one.

It seems to me you would want to request the people who have been consistently absent of why and see what the issue is and that fix those issues because I'm speaking as a person who's never missed a meeting.

So, you know, if you want to move a day, maybe that's more convenient.

And I'm not sure why they're not here, and I don't know that a committee can make them come if they have a problem with getting here.

Although the two extra vacancies do kind of lend themselves to a solution of sorts.

But I don't know that a committee is gonna get any better.

So find out if there's conflicting meetings and why people are missing.

Well, I think your point is well taken.

I think there's enough time before anything might be agendized in terms of an ad-out committee for maybe uh our uh district engineered working with his staff to maybe drill down on that particular issue.

I have and I think that starts today with a meeting with the mayor that you mentioned.

Uh Director Aquino.

Uh just curious.

Do board members and alternates have to be elected officials, or could, for example, the city of Sacramento appoint a non-elected resident to be an alternate or something.

We were hoping that was the case and were thinking that, but no, they do have to be elected officials because and again it's the way, so this is the way the legislation is written.

It could be changed.

We could change that to allow for say a high-level staff person to be an alternate, but that's not the case right now.

Like a chief of staff.

Yeah.

Okay.

Uh well then this is not uh an action item today.

This is just a discussion.

What uh I think I'd like to see happen is um maybe you and I can talk uh offline after you have your meeting with the mayor, kind of see where um we think that's going.

Um I don't want to ignore um what uh director Karpinski Costa has um referenced because I too am uh I get a nervous twitch when I hear committees uh suggesting suggestions.

But uh but that may be the fairest way to move forward on this.

Um, but again, I think for from a practical standpoint, at least as it relates to the balance of the year, it would be extraordinarily helpful, I think, if appointments could be made post-hase from from the mayor to fill those two vacant positions.

I I can name a couple of instances where if we had those vacancy fills filled, we we wouldn't probably be having this discussion.

So I think that's across that bridge first.

Yeah, I I think it really is a combination of all of these things, um, including addressing why people aren't getting to the meeting.

But I think it would, you know, my my opinion is it would be helpful to have that.

I'm twitching too, but that uh ad hoc committee to discuss those issues.

Is that a course of action that directors are generally agreeable?

Okay, I'm seeing nodding heads.

Okay, very good.

Uh any public speakers on this matter, madam clerk.

We do not have any public comment for this item.

Okay, again, non-action item, so we'll move on to item 12.

Mr.

Chair, item 12 is harvest water quarterly quarterly report for January 1 through March 31st.

Presenters Joe Phil Borha, environmental legislative and regulatory affairs manager, and Mike Crooks, Deputy Director of Echo Water Operations.

This is okay.

Do you need it?

Good morning, Chair Cerna, members of the board.

Uh, my name is Mike Crooks.

I'm the Harvest Water Capital Program Manager.

Um, the clicker.

Uh so these are the items that we're gonna cover in this brief presentation.

I'm gonna take the first couple bullets, uh, the capital program updates, and then also more specifically our capital program financials, and then Joe Phil will jump in and he'll cover the administrative program updates, total program funding, and then upcoming uh board actions.

So starting with the capital program, this is one of my favorite maps.

Um, this is a map that we use to track our pipeline construction.

And Mr.

Hume's as well.

So the the green color indicates um basically all contract work on the pipeline construction projects is complete.

Um they are still out there addressing defective areas, punchless items, but the contract work is done, including the um final paving and and surfacing of the streets, and so it's a really nice feeling to be at this point in time.

The contractors really making good progress.

What you see here are the two different main components of the station.

On the left is the actual where the pumps are going to go and the discharge pipes, making good progress there, and then same with the control building.

One area where they have been challenged recently with respect to schedule is the fabrication of the actual pumps.

These are really big, complicated pumps.

So we're hopeful that the pumps will no longer continue to slip and can stick on the November time frame.

Road construction.

This is a shot of final surfacing in City of Elk Grove on Franklin Boulevard.

This I think is Laguna, the intersection with Laguna.

Anyway, so this work, the final surfacing started at the beginning of June.

That work is now done.

They've been very active on striping since then.

This shot here shows the striping that's been completed.

They actually they've completed all the striping as of Saturday of last weekend.

The striping that we put down, the design for it was provided to us by the City of Elk Grove.

So this is a change compared to what was there originally.

And so just further uh collaboration and working with the city on this particular project.

In the South County area, this was a kind of a cool shot.

The roads are done and available for use by the residents and the growers and the farmers down there.

Kind of a common occurrence.

Pretty much every time you go down there, you see equipment like this being moved around.

So it's kind of a cool shot.

This is at Twin Cities in Franklin.

The other project that is active in construction is the on-farm connection assemblies.

This is being done through two different phases or two different contracts.

First phase started construction work last year in September, has 56 sites, contractors, ranger pipelines.

They expect to be complete if excuse me in early 2027.

Phase two, we just awarded this contract at the board meeting on May 27.

Ended up being the same contractor, which offers some benefits.

This contract has 35 sites, less than we were hoping, but those are the numbers that we managed to attain through through agreements with the growers.

We're still pursuing people who haven't signed up yet, so there's a chance that we may see some additions to this, but right now that's what we're working with.

This is a shot of actual on-farm connection assembly construction in progress.

This is phase one.

Um so they're actually starting to do quite a bit of above-ground work.

Um, and so again, this contract is making really good progress, and phase two should get going in July-August time frame.

Construction budget.

Um currently our budget is for for construction only, 323.4 million.

As of the end of quarter one, we spent almost 250 million.

The table below represents all the contracts that have been awarded, their original bid price, approved change orders, and then also a projection of where we think they're gonna finish with respect to change orders.

And based on this information, we're projecting um uh 6.9% change order uh rate for covering all the projects.

So combine that with the original bid price.

We're looking at completing somewhere around $310 million dollars spent on construction.

So that's quite a bit less than our budget, which is $323.

A lot of that is because we didn't get the number of on-farm connections signed up that we had hoped and and formed the basis of our budget.

And so if we do get more signed up, then these numbers will increase.

That's all I have, unless you have any questions for me before Joe Phil jumps in.

Very good.

Thank you.

Any questions for staff?

All right.

I don't think.

Thank you.

Uh non-n-action item, correct?

No.

Okay.

The second half.

All right.

Second and exciting half.

Well, he has a pretty exciting half too.

So thank you, Mr.

Crooks.

Good morning, Chair Cerna, members of the board.

Joe Fulboja, I am the uh manager over at the APMO program and here to provide to you our updates and highlights of the last quarter.

Our outreach partnerships and engagement continues.

We continue to have one-on-one meetings with key stakeholders, and our phase two AFCA agreements and easement meetings also continue to be in the community.

Our continued Eco Plan development had some recent successes in the last quarter with the new crane forage fuel trial that began in Q1.

We also continue to have our meetings with both the California Water Commission and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife on the potential expansion of ecological benefits.

On a side note, as we're speaking right now, the California Water Commission is actually reviewing a potential request of our partners over in the north, the sites project at a significant cost of their WISIP program.

And so we have staff right now that's not in this meeting that's actually vigilantly watching to see how that conversation goes and what opportunities we may have post decision making for the site's project on the remaining funds for the WISIP program.

Multiple landowners continue to express interest in our riparian and wetland improvements, and we continue to explore additional site assessments and conducting them in the properties.

The pictures that you see there at the very top is our GPS surveying of our staff looking at the elevations at both riparian and wetland fields.

The second picture on the bottom left is an infiltrometer, is actually looking at the assessment at our Spencer Crane field trial to see how much of the water is seeping, what kind of minerals and nutrients are seeping into the water, because as you know you're familiar with, we're going to be inundating certain fields for both crane foraging and crane roosting.

And so we want to be able to look at the health of the soil data for that.

And the picture in the third is an air gap again at the uh crane pilot implementation.

We continue to push for recycled water service agreement, even though we've uh, as Mr.

Crooks had mentioned, have surpassed uh a comfortable number of our AFCs.

Uh, we are hitting our delivery goal at that is required by our CAPBs at 33,500 acre feet per year.

Our demand goals at 39,000 acre feet per year.

At phase one, like Mr.

Crooks had mentioned, we've had 56 AFKs, which again got us to about 66% of that demand.

Our phase two, an additional 28 AUCAS was secured or were secured, that added 9,000 acre feet of estimated demands that now brings us to that very safe number, that dark blue number of 94% of our delivery goal, which is what is required to us contractually with our CAPVs, but again, we want to be able to have that buffer to making sure that we have enough water to equitably deliver throughout the hot days of the summer when it's needed, and that's sitting at 78%.

Now we are uh anticipating seven additional AFCAs that would push us to above that requirement by the state and really get us very close to our demand goal.

The map on your right shows us where the phase one AFCAS and the phase two AFCAs are there, and of course, we're striving to make sure that we have equitable geographic delivery of the water, because as you know, water does not just stay in one area, it ebbs and flows at uh at this location.

Um, wanted to highlight our participation at the California Water Commission.

Um staff presented on February 18th as required by the California Water Commission about the annual improvements in any annual uh reporting with our project.

We provided the reports on our progress, requested our inflationary adjustment and shared conceptual mechanisms as to how we are going to be providing expanded benefits for new habitats and species on uh on extra dollars that made possible by both proposition four and projects that exited proposition one.

I would like to uh extend our sincere thanks to Director Yume, um Commissioner Flores, um Canonetto, who's also leading our Ag Advisory Committee and members of the Friends at the Stone Lake, who joined staff on our April 15th Advocacy Day, where we actually presented or was requested by the California Water Commission when they made the decision to again approve an additional 52.1 million dollars of supplemental funding for inflationary adjustment, bringing a very significant boost to our program.

So thank you, Director Yu.

That brings us to program funding.

WISIP is the lion's share of our grants, and at to date, we are just a hair shy of 417 million awarded from the WISIP program.

We've submitted invoices through work as of 20 September 2025, and the district has received checks as to amounting to about 184.2 million up to date.

We continue to work with the water commission staff to execute a grant agreement update or an amendment for the additional funds that were awarded earlier this year.

We are excited that we continue to have additional um grants in process.

So we have the federal wind grant that is 30 million dollars that we anticipate reimbursement of funding in FY26 and 27.

We uh are very also excited with a state water uh grant at phase one of 15 million, and we do um anticipate a grant uh execution later this year.

Um thanks to Congresswoman Matsui, we were able to receive a federal USDA grant of another million dollars that we continue to coordinate with the USDA to identify both the eligible costs and also executing the grant agreement and hopefully by this summer, crossing my fingers and toes that we will continue to bring you another amount that's between five to fifteen million dollars as part of the state WRFP program.

The staff uh anticipates that they're going to be providing a revised intended use plan this summer that could potentially include um an amount of between five to fifteen million dollars that's anticipated for the large scale grants that was made possible by proposition four, and we continue to receive consultative questions with the um wildlife conservation board grant application that we've uh submitted with the wildlife conservation board that is valued up to 1.7 million dollars for both riparian enhancements and habitat protections along the consumness river.

Brings our Harvest water program budget through Q1 of 2026.

Again, we continue to be at 597.2 million.

Our total expenditures is at 332.6, our APMO budget stays at 120 million with cost accumulated at 19.4.

The CPMO budget is at 477.2, and they have spent 313.2 million, and the blue and the red is the split with both the program total, what is being remaining and what's being spent.

So this is a chart that essentially shows you a snapshot of all of the program anticipated funding.

And I'd like to point to you at the bottom of the screen where harvest water through the hard work of staff and the partnership with our board and our elected officials and a community members have gotten us to about near 80% grant funding for this program, and we are not done yet.

We could we are excited to continue closing that gap, shrinking the shrinking the potential avenues, and really looking at opportunities for us to be able to get one step closer for having this a fully funded project that is outside of just SACSURES Financials, and we're very excited to continue that upcoming board actions.

So additional CPMO consultant amendments during uh for services during construction.

We're going to be doing a resolution of necessity to acquire pipeline and AFCA easements through a friendly condemnation in July 2026, and we continue to make improvements on the Eco Plan procurement activities that would be needed to implement the benefits as we look forward to having to turn on the water in 2027.

Uh this slides just for questions, but again, thank you so much for your uh advocacy, your support for this program, and Mr.

Crooks and I are happy to answer any questions or hearing your feedback.

Thank you, Joe.

Thank you, sir.

Thanks, Mike.

Uh, any questions for our presenters?

Don't see any.

Uh Madam Clerk, do we have any one time?

We do not have any public comment for this item.

Thank you.

Thanks again.

Thank you.

Next item.

Next item is miscellaneous district engineers matters.

Uh presenter Christoph Dobson, District Engineer.

All right.

Um, this is uh an item that I started a while back, just introducing our section managers.

Um, I haven't done one in a while because we went through the backlog of the section managers, but we have a couple of new ones.

And so I would like first to introduce Pat Flaherty.

He is our risk manager.

Pat recently joined SAC Sewer in December after 20 years as the risk manager for the city of Sacramento, uh overseeing that risk management program, including budget insurance, liability, workers' comp, and safety.

Does Pat want to stand so we know who Pat is?

Thank you.

There you go.

There's Pat.

I told them they did not have to speak.

So he also spent uh five years in the same role for the city of Bakersfield, and 10 years as a risk and safety manager for the Perrier Group.

Perrier is a division of Nestle and owned most of the large water companies in the U.S., including Arrowhead, Calistoga, and Poland Spring.

So I learned something new when I read this as well.

He's also been a longstanding member of the PRISM Claims Committee, which approves large liability and workers' comp claims settlements for the organization.

PRISM is the risk sharing pool where SACSURA and many public entities in California purchase their insurance.

Pat has a bachelor of science in political science from the University of Oregon, Go Ducks, and a Masters of Public Administration from Cal State Bakersfield, Go Roadrunners.

As you might expect, Pat also has numerous insurance designations.

We're very fortunate to have Pat on board to help SACSUER build a best of class risk management program, no pressure at all, and welcome Pat.

All right, our second one is Christopher Borders.

Over there.

Chris is the Human Resources Manager for SAC Sewer, where he oversees all HR programs and serves as the lead advisor on employee and labor relations recruitment, classification, compensation, performance management, and compliance.

He brings more than 15 years of public sector HR experience, including progressively senior HR roles with the county of Sacramento.

Uh there, he ultimately served as a principal human resources analyst, supporting multiple departments, including SACSUR as one of his clients at the time on complex disciplinary matters and investigations and served as a lead for the Equal Employment Opportunity Office and the employee relations staff.

He's also served as human resource manager for the Sacramento Superior Court and held HR roles at California State Library, State Personnel Board, and the Fair Oaks Wreck and Park District.

Sacramento native, Chris holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from SAC State.

That's I guess stingers up, right?

Okay.

With a focus on human resources and organizational behavior.

He's also graduate of Sacramento County's Leadership Development Academy and is an association of workplace investigations certificate holder.

Outside of work, Chris enjoys concerts, Broadway musicals, and predicting the Academy Award nominee each year.

How what is your record?

Okay.

So this is it gets even interesting more interesting.

He's also a dedicated pro wrestling fan who is confident he could explain HR policy through wrestling analogies.

Though he hopes never to be asked to demonstrate that particular skill.

Chris is also a committed puzzle enthusiast and has completed every New York Times daily crossword puzzle since 2011.

He has auditioned for Jeopardy five times and is cautiously optimistic that the new pop culture jeopardy might finally be his moment.

Chris brings curiosity, balance, and a love of good trivia to every team he supports.

He hopes his experience, humor, and people-centered approach will contribute to a workplace culture where Saks Sewer employees feel supported, understood, and able to do their best work.

Welcome, Chris.

And I don't have anything else.

Our uh next board meeting is the um first meeting in uh July.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Uh any questions for our general or uh district engineer?

All right, seeing none.

Last item on today's agenda must miscellaneous board member matters.

Any matters this board would like to bring up, seeing none.

I believe then, madam Clerk, that concludes today's board meeting.

Does it not?

Yes, it does.

All right, very good.

If there's no further business, we stand adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.