At a special meeting on June 27, the San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD) board of directors received public input on criticism received from the Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury about the SLVWD board’s communication practices with the public. This public discussion became somewhat acrimonious as it progressed, with a small group of citizens agreeing wholeheartedly with the findings and recommendations of the Grand Jury.
A few members of the public urged the SLVWD board to agree with and explain one finding in the report, “Lack of effective District communication practices has reduced public access to the decision-making process, and contributed to acrimony and on-going relationship challenges with the community, causing stress on elected officials and staff, as well as frustration among ratepayers.”
Board Director Gene Ratcliffe acknowledged that efforts to improve communication with the public may not have always been successful, but was not for lack of trying. “We’ve had our shortcomings…we’ve tried experiments that didn’t always work, but our efforts to hear and listen to everyone need to be acknowledged, even if they weren’t always successful,” Ratcliffe said at the meeting.
Two of the three findings of the report had to do with the board’s communication with and support of the Lompico Assessment District Oversight Committee (LADOC), and six of the eight recommendations for corrective action were related to improving the performance of the LADOC. The LADOC was established as part of the 2016 merger of the Lompico Water District with the SLVWD, as a citizen oversight committee of a special, voter-approved assessment district established for water-related infrastructure projects that only effect Lompico.
The cost and construction timeline of projects funded by the Lompico assessment district have been contentious issues, and, according to the report, the district board has not provided sufficient staff support or training to the LADOC to properly conduct its oversight responsibilities. The Grand Jury reported that one of the expected duties of the oversight committee is to produce an annual report to keep rate payers informed of the income and expenditures of the assessment district, which was not forthcoming after the first year the LADOC was in operation.
The 2017-18 Civil Grand Jury, empaneled each year to investigate and report on the practices and problems of local public agencies throughout the county, entitled their report “San Lorenzo Valley Water District: Encouraging the Flow of information to the Public.” The District is legally required to respond to the findings and recommendations of the report by August 29, 2018.
The SLVWD board voted to form an ad hoc committee of board chair Chuck Baughman and newly appointed director John Hayes to prepare a draft response. The board is given the choice to agree, partially disagree and fully disagree with any of the Grand Jury’s findings and recommendations, with the expectation of an explanation as to why. After the public and board discussion of the findings, it appeared the board was prepared to agree with all the findings and recommendations, with a few exceptions and need for explanation, and the board’s response will include more detail on corrective actions to be taken, according to Baughman.
The Grand Jury report noted the number of special meetings, in addition to regularly scheduled board meetings, doubled in number from 10 in 2016 to 20 in 2017, and only five of those special meetings were recorded by Community T.V. for access by the community. The SLVWD board also moved to provide only “action minutes” of these meetings in 2017, which, “reduced publicly available sources of information about District issues for all ratepayers not in attendance at the meetings,” according to the Grand Jury Report.
“You have refused to talk to us, and you don’t follow your own rules,” John Schneider said to the board, in a discussion about Brown Act requirements, referred to as California’s “open meeting law” that governs the conduct of public meetings. While this law can be somewhat complicated in what elected officials can and cannot discuss at public meetings, generally the public can talk about anything within the jurisdiction of the agency being addressed, but the legislative body or board of directors generally cannot act on or discuss an item not on the agenda.
In other SLVWD related news, Nick Johnson, Senior Managing Scientist of an international consulting firm and long-time consultant to the SLVWD, gave a detailed overview of the entire San Lorenzo Valley Water District in terms of historically available supply of water, demand, steam flow and ground water resources at the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency (SMGWA) board of directors meeting on June 28. Johnson’s 42- slide PowerPoint presentation including statistical analysis is available on the SLVWD’s website at: http://www.slvwd.com.
The SMGWA board of director’s adopted their FY2018/19 budget at the June 28 meeting, which will be funded by the three member agencies of this joint powers authority, which are Scotts Valley Water District, the SLVWD and the County of Santa Cruz. The total proposed budget of $647,235 has a cost allocation 60 per cent paid by Scotts Valley Water District, 30 percent by the SLVWD, and 10 percent by the County of Santa Cruz. This budget is almost entirely for the preparation of a Groundwater Sustainability Plan for the Santa Margarita aquifer, which is required by the State of California.
