Our assistant deputy rector who not only oversees all of operations and maintenance but also has taken on this task.

So thank you for taking the time, and this is we're really excited to bring this a lot of information back to committee.

I think you'll find it very helpful.

We really heard what you all said when we were in front of environment committee just a few months ago in full council.

Since then, we're happy to report some more information that we've developed as a result of in response to the audit.

A lot of that is listening to stakeholder input, which gave us extremely valuable feedback and what the community hears, what they expect, and what resonates with them.

We also will be presenting information on likely surveys that we did from likely voters throughout the city, which I think will be very important for your information as we march forward with the uh proposed 2020 to 2022 ballot measure in November.

And with that, I will turn it over to Bethany.

Thank you so much, Chris, and it's a pleasure to be with all of you this afternoon.

Uh, we appreciate the opportunity to be presenting the update to the stormwater funding strategy.

So, as Chris mentioned, we wanted to mark the significant advancements since January and February of this year when we presented to environment committee and to council.

There's been a significant amount of work that has occurred over the past six months, and there will be a significant amount of ramp up that will be occurring in the fiscal year 2022.

So we wanted to provide you with a look ahead of what that will entail.

Before we do so, wanted to present the overall timeline associated with this effort.

Um, after this update today in July, we anticipate coming back in November because a lot of stakeholder engagement will be occurring over the next several months.

So wanted to present an update in November.

Ultimately, we will come back to present the formal recommendation updates to audit recommendation number six in January of 2022.

Beyond that time frame, if we are to stay on track for the potential of a November 2022 ballot measure, we would go to rules committee around March, and then ultimately a city council vote in June.

There is a significant amount of work that needs to be done.

We anticipate staying on schedule, but there will be a significant ramp up to the stakeholder engagement over the next several months.

Before we go into the next steps, we wanted to document that there still remains a significant deficit in terms of stormwater funding.

In terms of the fiscal 21 funding, as everyone knows, we are heavily supported by the general fund, around 50 million dollars per year.

The overall need in fiscal 21 for stormwater for our existing stormwater infrastructure is addition in addition to extra CIP projects is over 500 million dollars.

So there remains a significant gap.

Ultimately, what we have seen is that status quo is no longer acceptable.

We've had an additional 11 emergency failures, both at our pump stations and our pipe failures as well.

We've also seen significant delays in our environmental water quality progress.

That being said, we did want to celebrate significant momentum that the stormwater department has had over the past six months and will be having as we move forward into fiscal 2022.

We've considerably progressed modernizing our stormwater infrastructure.

Many of our teams have fully converted into the city's enterprise asset management system.

We have gone away from paper forms and we're fully on tablets now moving forward.

That allows us to unlock real-time data and be and it allows us to optimize our program in real time.

I'd also like to note that there's been uh several wins for us in terms of financing.

So both the SRF and the WIFIA loans have unlocked over 700 million dollars for WIFIA and for SRF, over 54 million dollars of low-interest loans that allow uh stormwater projects, over a hundred additional stormwater green infrastructure and flood resilience projects to move forward.

These are significant wins for us.

It demonstrates that outside entities understand the value for stormwater and the need for stormwater funding in San Diego.

I'd also like to highlight that there's been significant progress as far as the increase in funding for stormwater.

Uh, it demonstrates a commitment by council and the mayor as well.

Um, over $8.6 million of additional funding was provided to the stormwater department over the fiscal 21 levels.

Um, that will allow us to expand our water quality response team or our bacteria tactical team will be able to perform over 20 additional in-depth investigations and over 1,500 code enforcement investigations with that new team.

In addition to that, that also unlocks us to be able to increase our pipe repairs by over 2,500 lineal feet of repairs of urgent infrastructure upgrades that are needed because of the addition of an in-house piper peer team as well.

So significant wins in addition to the fact that $2.5 million was allocated to advancing this stormwater funding strategy.

So really wanted to highlight that there's been significant dedication in the recent past months towards stormwater.

So all of that being said, there is still a significant gap in funding resources year over year that we expect for at least the next 20 years or so.

You can see that what is represented here on the fiscal 2022 need is that there's a significant funding gap because we continue to push forward that backlog of projects, both the operations and maintenance needs for our existing system as well as capital repairs that need to be performed.

The bottom line is a dedicated funding measure is still needed, even with the recent wins that we've had.

I will also highlight though that commercial paper will be going forward to council in August.

That will unlock around 50 million dollars of additional funding for these critical infrastructure repairs as well.

So wanted to recognize that that's also very important for us moving forward.

Moving forward as far as the long-term funding strategy is concerned, what we presented in January and February is that we benchmarked several communities in terms of how they've been successful with dedicated funding measures for stormwater.

What's represented here on the slide are several different areas that we've advanced in terms of our commitment to the funding strategy.

A highlight two, in particular, as far as stakeholder engagement is concerned.

Both the opportunity for the focus groups and surveys was conducted over the past several months, which has really unleashed additional information as far as community engagement and their willingness to pay.

In March, we launched a voter survey in terms of people's willingness to pay, what they care about about stormwater and what the language is that resonates with them.

We also held focus groups in May of this year.

Both of these opportunities have given us additional knowledge about people, their understanding for stormwater, and ultimately at the potential for a ballot measure in November of 2022.

I'd like to spend a few minutes here to help folks understand the different stormwater methods for testing that we ultimately could continue to evaluate moving forward.

The first is an impermeable area method, which is relates to assessing the amount of impermeable or impervious surface on a lot that would include things like roofs and walkways and driveways within a parcel, and then a sense per square foot would be assessed on that amount on the lot.

The additional extra type that we're considering is a property type related to single-family residential and multifamily residential and then other property types.

These are two options that we are considering.