January 23, 2001 BOS Meeting notes by the Board Watcher **Amendment 11 passed 5-0 54. Governance Options for Monte Rio: Back to restudy. 58. Vote to oppose offshore drilling, 5-0 Chairman Smith called the meeting to order and made changes to the agenda: Item 57 the appointment of the new Human Resources director was rescheduled to 2 PM. The Special Districts Consent Calendar, Items 1-11 was passed 5-0. No questions. Items 12, 13, and 14 Sonoma Valley Sanitation District (3-member board) emergency repair projects, were passed. Sonoma Mayor Ken Brown was absent. Passed 2-0-1. Board of Supervisors Consent Calendar: 15-46 Supervisor Kelley voted no on Item 21, [Emergency due to dirty needle contamination caused by HIV and Hepatitis C. Board resolution makes clean needle exchange legal.] Chair announced for those people waiting for Item 28, Sears Point Raceway, the Lillys allowed the sound monitoring station to be put on their property. That monitoring will start in May. Supervisor Kelley suggested the board adopt the Rabbit Ridge Winery scheduling issue now. Jim Olmstead representing the winery said there may be a scheduling difficulty on the 27th. He recommended that the board move on Item 29. [Resolution to take original jurisdiction and set February 27 at 2:15 for the hearing to revoke or modify the use permit for the winery located at 3291 Westside Road and if the permit is modified, consider an appeal of the design review approval of the winery's landscape and parking circulation plan.] He asked if all the board members have a copy of the memo he sent. [They did.] Chairman Smith: Questions? Any objections to adopting the Consent Calendar? Hearing none, Madame Clerk, record 5-0. ***Mr. Poole, the question I have for you in the conversation I had this morning, the press reported that Petaluma had become a signatory to Amendment 11. I believe our order to you is to come back to us and tell us what the intentions of the agency are. County Counsel Steven Woodside: Before you do so, a couple of things: One, under the Brown Act, you need to make a finding that this is a subject that arose subsequent to the posting of the agenda. I take it you're referring to this morning's newspaper article? [Chair: "Yes"]...which did, in fact, arise subsequent to the posting. This board needs to make that finding. [Chair: OK, do I need to take a vote on that?] Yes, it needs to be four members voting. Chairman Smith: All right, I'll do that, picked up the paper, Petaluma did become a signatory to Amendment 11 and given that this came up last night and was reported this morning, it was certainly after the posting of the notice. Is there any objection to making that finding? Someone asked, Is that a newspaper notice? Chairman Smith: Ha, ha, ha, hearing none, Madame Clerk, record a 5-0 on that if you would. Steven Woodside: And secondly, just to clarify the background: This board, I believe in August, approved Amendment 1l, and the direction that was given at that time was the direction was to Mr. Poole to sign the official final document. Then, I believe in a subsequent meeting, you asked Mr. Poole to simply report to the board before he actually signed the document. Chairman Smith: That's correct. I want to know basically if that's where we're headed. Yes. Randy Poole: Good morning, Randy Poole, General Manager of the Water Agency. Ah, yes, back in the month of September, I brought to you a question of signing Amendment 11 should all the contractors approved it. It has been approved by all the contractors. I expect the City of Petaluma to sign the document later this week, maybe even possibly today. It was my intent to sign that document based on your prior direction. And just to report to you that I'm actually doing that. So with that, I guess I'm proceeding as directed by the board from previous action. Chairman Smith: All right, very good. Any questions about it? Supervisor Kelley: I think as a matter of clarity, we had directed that you wait until all those different entities adopted it before you signed it. Which prior to that September action, we had already approved it and were ready to sign it so I think that's in conformance with what the board asked. Supervisor Reilly: Is this item also on our Closed Session agenda? Chair: Yes, it is. Ah, very good. Thank you very much. Ok that takes us to the uh...uh...resolutions that we uh...Oh no, we don't have those yet. Jumping the gun. Takes us to Item 47, Ag Preservation and Open Space District: Real property purchase contracts. REGULAR CALENDAR 47. Resolution authorizing the General Manager to enter into real property contracts subject to certain contingencies. This was passed 5-0 and allows the GM to make a $10,000 deposit on properties under consideration. It will expedite purchases. Previously someone with a higher offer bought the property before the county could act. 48. Acquisition of a conservation easement over the Dewar property. The property is located near the Estrero Americano near another county property. Dewar provides important migratory waterfowl, shorebird and salmon species habitat. It has a steelhead stream and is an important riparian corridor. Vote: 5-0 WATER AGENCY 49. Authorize Chair to execute Legal services agreement with Hallisey & Johnson re salmonid conservation and restoration. Randy Poole: The agreement is with National Marine Fisheries (NMFS), Army Corps, Bodega Marine Lab dealing with the Section 7 Consultation (salmoids restoration). We hope to take Resources Agency, Mary Nichols up in an airplane to survey the watershed and the ocean. We hope to discover whether it's an ocean problem or a land problem. This is one step of many we're going to bringing to you in the next several months. Mr. Poole said that included Marin, Sonoma and parts of Mendocino County. That doesn't cover the entire area. We'll be looking at Salmon Creek, the Petaluma River, as well as the Russian River in total. All those require the GIS system, the KRIS system, genetic research, various watershed councils. NMFS is the lead agency. It's going to need the help of DFG and the Marine Lab. What are we going to do with the fish hatchery at Warm Springs Dam? It's very complex. Vote: 5-0 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BOARD/SHERIFF 51. Business Crime Prevention Task Force Report Staff member Mr. Stone reported along with Sheriff Piccinni.The sheriff said it was a great partnership between law enforcement and the business community. Together they came up with a booklet describing office security, workplace violence, personal safety, credit card fraud, bad checks, verification of employee theft. It's a business version of Neighborhood Watch. Vote 5-0 52. Bodega Bay Visitors Center Services Contract It ensures more accountability in terms of hours, and flexibility for the EDB director to make modifications to the contract. Vote 5-0 53. 2001 Business Confidence Report Very optimistic report on the Sonoma County economy. They are forming a task force to work with PG&E and the Water Agency. They're having a conference on energy and water conservation. Vote 5-0 PRMD 56. Process review of PRMD from Consultant Zucker Systems, Inc. Gayle Goldberg of County Administrator's office reporting. The task was divided into two parts: 1) assess the extent to which the 1994 goals of county reorganization were achieved. 2) To provide recommendations on how to improve operations. Mr. Zucker: We presented a 266 page report to you. I assume you've read it. I want to give you a brief summary this morning. First of all methodology: It was a six month effort. Three staff members worked on it, off and on. We interviewed the Board of Supervisors, the Planning Commission, Board of Zoning Adjustments, worked with the Steering Committee, did a mailing survey to the nine committees the county uses in development, did two exit surveys with customers, did a staff questionnaire, and two focus groups with your customers. Each of the above acts as a check on the others. Here we're talking about a whole cultural change within PRMD. It could take three to five years, sometimes five to ten years to really get an organizational change in place. You've been at it five years. Time is for this organization to jell. You took a bold step in creating PRMD. Secondly, planning and permitting is controversial. Many customers feel PRMD is operating similarly to the way it did before it was merged. In the beginning we think there were a few things that could have been done better. The first one is the number of staff. You cut staff. The initial phase is not the time to do it. Secondly, there are a variety of places where we think staff was misplaced. They did not have the qualifications for their new position. PRMD realizes that, but there are several places where retraining staff would be useful. In the first years of PRMD you did not have stability within the director's position. In the first two years you had three separate department heads. You had a three-month period where there was no department head. That created some glitches. There was a lot of thought about technology when PRMD was created. But the technology really did not arrive.Today the department is really technology deficient. You have a good structure going in co-location. You've got five years of experience. The employees' attitudes have really stood out. Your customers feel the staff treats them in a courteous professional way. We got almost 100% positive response on the exit surveys.Your department head is well respected within the department and technology is coming. We had 271 specific recommendations. We've pulled out eight key recommendations. 1) Management and supervisors: Most of these arrive at their jobs the same way. They're good at doing something. Then they are promoted. You do have this problem at PRMD. There's a lack of clear policy and procedures in the department, lack of a good training program and there's lack of monitoring the work load and the quality. We say, Managers must manage. The second point is technology. You're going to have a minimum of a 2 or 3 year shakedown period. We're talking about a good GIS system. Today if a customer comes into PRMD and asks a question, staff may have to go to 3, 4, or 5 different documents to answer that question. We're talking about a new permit system, a new email system, getting data bases in place. the Big Daddy around the country in permitting is to use the internet. You're getting a modest start but you're barely scratching the surface. The permit center itself still has some problems.When you set up PRMD, you talked about having the permit specialist be a generalist that could work at cross functions. That's really not happening. Your permit specialists are really upgraded clerks in many respects. Try to go back and get closer to the original intent. The customer does most of the leg work in this county rather than the bureaucracy. There's a lack of continuity in staffing. Instead of having one or two people serving customers you might have nine or ten people rotating through a cubicle and that means you are not really evolving your customer service methodology. The technical support division: these are really people who came out of Public Works. Of all the divisions, this is still the one that lacks integration, lacks careful management and supervision. Project review: these are really the planning kinds of review. Span of control is very large which results in lack of quality control and timing. We're recommending a project management system where a planner takes on a project and is held responsible across the entire department. Telephones and pagers: This may seem a little strange put into a list of eight key items, but in fact it's one of the things driving your customers crazy. A focus group said, The only way to do business with PRMD is to come down to the county building. They have trouble getting through on the telephone. Our recommendations: you don't go home at night until you answer all your phone calls. A pager system is used within the department. It may take 15 or 20 minutes to answer the pager. We recommend a 5 minute timeline on pagers which would help with customer service. On the technology issue: timelines. Timelines on the permits was perhaps the greatest frustration. The board has had a policy for some time to use consultants if they can't meet timelines. The board also has a policy to use local consultants. That's not really workable. We recommend that you set timelines, use consultants if you can't meet them, but you need to open that up to a much broader cadre of consultants than simply local. Finally, staffing: we're reluctant to add staffing, but you have some key positions which are not in place particularly in management in PRMD. Five or six positions need to be added. But if development does not increase, the department needs to come back and show you how to reduce the same number of positions. That concludes the Power Point presentation. Chris Arnold, PRMD: We will return in May with a plan for implementing those recommendations. Supervisors liked the report and felt that they were very open to criticism and that was a plus. "We learn by our mistakes." The plan creates a road map we can follow. There was a comment that we do not have a required element of environmental expertise. We need to be sure we have it. We need to send out problems with archaeology, geology, geomorphology and environmental specialties. Supervisor Kerns said he was glad to see Item 6, returning phone calls saying sometimes he had to wait for two or three days to get a response. The report was accepted. Return to the board in May with a plan of action. There was a resolution recognizing PRMD Process Steering Committee. The vote was 5-0. [BW: I listed the committee on the Agenda Notes.] 55. LAFCO Memo of Understanding and Employment Contract for 2000-01. Four resolutions. 1) Chair authorized to sign MOU for Fiscal Year 00-01. 2) Position allocation list amended to add .5 FTE Administrative Analyst II for LAFCO. 3) Approve amendment to Salary Resolution regarding premium for Admin Analyst designated as LAFCO Executive Officer. 4) Resolution authorizing chairman to sign the Extra Help Employment Contract with David Woltering. Supervisor Cale recommended we adopt it as presented. Changes may be coming in the future. Vote 5-0. PRMD 54. Governance options for Monte Rio Wastewater System Ted Walker: Six different options were considered: 1) Formation of a zone of benefit under County Service Area Zone 41. The system to be managed by a private contractor and administered by PRMD. It appears this is possible. The advantages are the project could proceed. It would keep our grant commitments from the state and federal government. A local entity could take over the project in the future. No legal challenges to our project. This would keep us on our timeline. The county does retain liability but a portion would be shared with the private contractor through insurance. Disadvantages: a new zone of benefit, county retains some liability, and the county and the operator would be responsible for meeting waste discharge requirements. Staff would have to be added to PRMD. 2) Annexation to the Russian River Sanitation District and connection to the existing treatment plant. This was rejected by the board in June. There is the advantage of consolidation of sewer services in the river area. It would require the acquisition of Sheridan Ranch for the disposal of wastewater in the summer and the annexation of the Monte Rio area to the RRCSD. Advantages are cost-sharing between districts, existing governmental infrastructure. No new treatment plant necessary. Greater flexibility for bringing more areas into the district. The Guerneville plant produces tertiary wastewater. Disadvantages: lose grant commitments of over $6.5 million. Project costs for connection to the Russian River would be substantially higher and would exceed the USDA affordability index. The Monte Rio Advisory Committee does not favor this option. There would be an increased risk of litigation on the EIR. Operations and maintenance costs would be about 10% higher. Waste discharge requirements would have to be revised. Annexation would be required. Construction would be delayed substantially. Sections of Monte Christo would not be able to hook into the system due to the fact that it would be treated wastewater. Costs for connection to Guerneville would be about $2 million more. The 3rd option would be a new independent district in the Monte Rio area. It could be done through a county sanitation district, a community services district, county water district. The basic difference is the degree of governance they could achieve. Formation would require LAFCO approval taking between 6 to 12 months. It would have taxing authority through county tax rolls. An interim zone of benefit under CSA 41 would have to be formed. It would be necessary to get federal and state grant moneys prior to the formation of the local district. Advantages: local board of directors, maybe consolidate other special districts in the area. It would have liability for the sewer system. It still would allow Option #1 to be utilized if the district did not get formed. The disadvantages are Monte Rio already has 5 special districts: Park and Rec District, street lighting district, a fire district, a school district, and a water district. LAFCO may favor consolidation of districts. The fourth option is annexation to the RRCSD and have Russian River CSD operate the proposed project. The advantages here are existing management staff to be shared. No new governmental entity is needed and this will keep the project on schedule and meet timelines. There is possible savings in operations and maintenance. Disadvantages would be no local control. The district would be managed by the supervisors/directors of the Water Agency who would have to hire additional staff. It may not be acceptable to the Water Agency due to their different design requirements. Possible reduction in response to emergencies. RRCSD and the Water Agency would retain liability for the system. 5) Operation by Sweetwater Springs Water District. This was rejected at their December meeting. 6) Operation of the system by the Parks and Rec District. This is being used in Camp Meeker. We don't know if Parks and Rec is interested. We haven't talked to them. Advantages are reduction in personnel. It would be a governmental entity with a board of directors. There would be a greater range of services. Disadvantages are that the Parks and Rec District would have to have special legislation at the state level. There is no trained staff for operating the sewage system and they still have to follow CSA 41 to get grant money. That concludes the report. Supervisor Reilly said he thought the goal of the full board was to move to local control options, get the Water Agency out of the business of operating small systems. It's not economical for them. Keep us on a timeline, not jeopardize funding. The Regional Board says it meets Basin Plan standards.There are several districts out in the Monte Rio area. LAFCO is interested in combining districts. In any of those cases we would need to find a private operator and create a zone of benefit CSA 41 and receive some benefit for a period of time. Supervisor Kerns: Mr. Chairman, I would just request that before we take public comment that you restrict it to the issue before us today. Phyllis Sands: I served on the CAC for four years. I ask you to please proceed with this project. I hope for local control. I'm a newly elected director of the North Bay Association of Realtors. I favor the Parks and Rec District option. Rich Davis: I'm a businessman in Monte Rio for 25 years. I've watched the erosion in that small community for the last 10 to 15 years. It's time to go forward on this project. I'm sure whichever project you select will be the right one. Larry Sikes, resident of Monte Rio: Ten year resident and businessman. We need the sewer. This town is dying. Gregory Haas: In Monte Rio the Russian River is our Number One resource. We must quit contaminating it with outdated septic systems. We've come too far not to move ahead. Chair said the issue before us is how the system should be governed. Chuck Berger: Berger Construction and I'm also a resident. Local control of the system would be the best approach. There are lots of failing systems out there. Waste is running into the creek. The main thing is getting a system in place. Wanda Holman: I've lived in Ville Grande for 20 years. There are a whole bunch of people out there opposed to a project. Mostly because it's in their back yard. I support Project #1. Lee Torr IV, citizen of Monte Rio and member CAC. I would like to endorse going with Option 1. And I look to #3 for CSD or #6, one of the two. Alan Fox: I'm a businessman in the area. I support No.1. Right now it's a hot topic in town. I don't think there's a district that would dare to take it. Brenda Adelman, Russian River Watershed Protection Committee: I support local control. That's very important. I don't have a strong preference for any of the options. I don't think the Water Agency should continue to be in charge of these small systems. I don't want to be negative but I feel there's a potential problem that needs to be looked at. The system is dependent on electricity and with periods of outages, we don't know how that's going to affect the system. How the costs are going to affect the ratepayers. The system is easily upset by things like egg shells, and they have to be completely replaced at great expense every 10 to 12 years. I think this has to be revisited. I think when the community realizes what the project is, they'll have a real problem. There is a major conference in Texas next month for innovative septic systems. There's a major push by EPA right now to go back to supporting individual systems. Maybe you could look at an on site septic district as well. As for pollution of the Russian River, I am almost more concerned than anybody. In the EIR and most of the documents I've seen there's no strong evidence that these septic systems are polluting the Russian River. One of the benefits of having all those trees out there is the taking up of wastewater. There are other environmental problems that I don't think are being sufficiently looked at here. I do have this suggestion that you can throw into the pot: an onsite septic management district. Chris Mahler: I'm sorry to have to be here again. I have to agree with Brenda. An onsite septic system wasn't looked at. I would favor local control. You don't want to take this on because of liability. I think one of the reasons Sweetwater didn't want to take it on was liability. We have grave concerns about whether or not this system will work. PRMD must not be running this system by remote control. It doesn't work. During flood events, 116 is 6' deep for 4 or 5 days. There will be no electric or access to the site. Supervisor Cale: At this time I'm not even sure we have to select a form of governance. I think we should give it through May. At that time we'll be at 90% design level. Then they can make well informed decisions on what the costs are actually going to be. Local governance can evaluate on actual cost. I'm also concerned about our credibility with funding agencies on future projects if we step away. County Counsel: There are certain timelines in adding to the assessment rolls. There are timelines in calling the election. You have to back up several months under the State Board of Equalization rules and LAFCO rules. I would caution postponing the decision until the last minute. Supervisor Kelley: A concern I have about administering it initially through PRMD and the construction phase is that it could create a potential trail of liability and probably for the same reasons Sweetwater said no and other entities have said no up to now. That's where my concern is - the trail of fingerprints on the liability chain. I prefer to see an independent district created to make this happen. Chairman Smith: The good news is I can live with half of these things. The bad news, half of them I can't. 2, 5 and 6 are all palatable to me. Connection to Russian River CSD by pipe. That's fine. Sweetwater Springs rejected that. And 6, the operation by Monte Rio park district has not been explored. If LAFCO had initiated there would have to be some consolidation. I have no interest in losing an opportunity for funding. I am not at all interested in having the Water Agency running a new sanitation district. Other districts out there have found ways around that. There's a divided community out there. I guess we'll find out when we get to a 218 vote to see if people are willing to fund this or not. I'm not going to replicate a nightmare to the county or to the people who are the customers. I would very much like to take care of a serious pollution threat to the Russian River. You could argue, let's go out and red tag houses and make it so miserable through the regulatory process that people have it on themselves to go take care of new septic systems. It's ludicrous to have so many districts out there. I think there are more people on boards and commissions than residents. It's time to get real and find out the right way to go out and do some kind of consolidation, get some sort of district set up where this thing can be handed off. Now, I understand the county is going to get a little bit wet because we still have to shuffle this through PRMD. We're going to get off this bandwagon. I'll tell you it's not going to come back where PRMD or the Water Agency is going to be operating this thing at least as far as I'm concerned. If people really want local control, let's see it! And thus far, I haven't! Very frustrating. Supervisor Reilly: I would certainly support that direction. If we can move in the interim under an assessment district under CSA 41 and with a private contractor, an element of our liability problem. A transition with the same contractor would be most desirable. I would commit to working with staff, with community members to move forward. Frankly, Sweetwater makes the most sense. When the smoke clears there are advantages for Sweetwater in taking over this. Supervisor Cale: I'm not committing to build. I'm committing to 90% design. You're going to have to make some decision on who's going to ride the pony. And you're right it's not going to be PRMD not going to be the Water Agency. We are not going to build it, then get stuck holding it. Somebody's going to have to step forward. I'll go no further than May under CSA 41 to get to the 90% point to get to the vote and see where we are. Supervisor Kelley: It is a liability on the county's part if we go through CSA 41 and through construction before we find out we can't form an independent district? Chairman Smith: We could go with CSA 41 take us up to a receiver of funds and go to 90% design. In the interim a new district is not likely to be established. The choice then is do we want to follow through with construction? It's a mistake to think we're going to have all that done by May. It'll probably take a year, and that's probably optimistic if you're talking about some consolidation study that would have to be initiated by LAFCO. I don't know if LAFCO would go along. Counsel: You need to have the zone of benefit described so that you know who votes. Calling the election requires more than two months. Whether you will have this ready to appear on the tax roll the following year is very problematic. You'd almost have to start today to hold the election in April or May. That would be about the last day you could hold the election to get it on the tax roll for the following fiscal year. But it is possible to continue to go forward and call the election recognizing that it would be prospective. That would provide your revenue stream necessary to operate the system. In the meantime you could consider the range of options for local control. Chair: The goal is to get to an independent district out there appointed by the citizens of Monte Rio and they have their own water system to take care of. That's very simple. Supervisor Cale: We could go forward with the formation of the district, establishing the boundaries, getting it on the ballot and having a level of comfort with the 50% level. Supervisor Reilly: It's my understanding that why you normally wait for 90% is when you choose a number for the CSA costs, then that's all you can get. Chair: I'm not skilled enough to figure out where I want to go with this. We need to get as much information because once you go to a 218 vote, this is it.Your deal is done. Do we need CSA 41 to get this zone of benefit described for the 218 vote? Counsel: You need something you already have in place, the county service area. Within that you can describe the zone. Or another district or definitional boundary so that you can conduct the vote. You have to have some district that has a boundary and a governance structure. You would then have an election within that preexisting district or some newly created district. You need a vehicle to conduct the election, and the only vehicle currently in place that would permit you to zone it to the area is CSA 41. That's the only one I know of unless one of the districts involved here were to step forward very quickly and indicate willingness. They would have to call the election. That's the problem with using another entity. Staff: If you want to form an independent special district, you're probably talking about 6 months to a year, some sort of feasibility analysis, fiscal analysis, something to present to LAFCO, which oversees the formation and consolidation of districts. Isn't the vote the last step after all the other work has been done? asked Supervisor Reilly. You aren't going to make that by May. Chairman Smith: A typical decision maker that's unable to make a decision. I sense there's a lot of agreement about where we want to get. I think to some degree that's been agreed to by the community. Does it kill us to take a week or two to come back...appoint like a subcommittee of this board...Supervisor Kelley will probably shoot me...but I ask him and Supervisor Reilly to meet with Mr. Woodside and Mr. Sharp, Mr. Holmer, Mr. Walker, and Mr. Hanshee and hopefully, it will be one recommendation. Is that going to kill us on any timeline for the next week or two? Ok, I'm going to ask that this be brought back February 6th. Hopefully keep our eye on the target and hand this off to another entity. Thank you for your indulgence, a most interesting and difficult problem. 50. A very interesting report on a study done by Keyser Marston on recommendations for enhancing the Roseland Redevelopment area. 58. Resolution responding to the Interior Department's request for comments on the preparation of an EIS for the proposed 5- Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2002-2007 Chairman Smith commented that the board has always opposed offshore drilling as long as he could remember. The potential environmental damage is just to me complete nonsense. I actively and enthusiastically endorse the resolution. Record 5-0. _______________________end Adjourned at 11:20. I did not return for afternoon session. The Closed Session report is very brief. The only issue is the appointment of the new Human Resources director.