October 4, 2010
VALLEY CENTER MUNICIPAL WATER DISTRICT
Regular Board Meeting
Monday, October 4, 2010
Time: 2:00 P.M.
Place: Board Room
29300 Valley Center Road
Valley Center, CA 92082
The Valley Center Municipal Water District Board of Directors’ meeting was called to order by President Broomell at 2:00 P.M.
ROLL CALL
Board members present were: Directors Broomell, Aleshire and Haskell. Directors Polito and Stone were absent. Staff members present were: General Manager Arant, General Counsel de Sousa, District Engineer Grabbe, Director of Finance Jeffrey, Director of Operations Hoyle, Board Secretary Stetson and Manager of IT Pilve. Spectators present were: Mr. Eric Larson, San Diego County Farm Bureau and Dave Ross, Roadrunner Newspaper.
CONSENT CALENDAR
1. Upon motion by Aleshire, seconded by Haskell and unanimously carried, the following consent calendar items were approved:
• Minutes of the Board meeting held September 20, 2010
• Audit demand check numbers 126885 through 126989
• Treasurer’s Report for the period ended August 31, 2010
ACTION AGENDA
2. San Diego Region Irrigated Lands Group for Agricultural Runoff Monitoring:
Eric Larson, Executive Director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau, and Administrator of the San Diego Region Irrigated Lands Group, reviewed that in 2007 the Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted a waiver under the Federal Clean Water Act that mandates that all farmers with $1,000 or more in gross sales per year participate in the development, submittal and implementation of a runoff monitoring program. To be in compliance with this requirement, farmers may complete the process as an individual or as a member of a monitoring and reporting group. The agricultural runoff monitoring must provide for testing, monitoring and reporting of runoff that leaves their farm.
The San Diego County Farm Bureau created a monitoring group, the San Diego Region Irrigated Lands Group, for its members to fulfill runoff monitoring requirements. Membership in the San Diego County Farm Bureau is required to join the San Diego Region Irrigated Lands Group, and a fee is established to generate revenue to fund the monitoring program. The deadline to submit the data (parcel numbers and size, acreage dedicated to agriculture, crops grown, ownership information, Best Management Practices employed for each crop, and location of farm on a GIS map) to the Regional Water Quality Control Board is January 1, 2011. After the data is sent to the Regional Water Quality Control Board, a monitoring and reporting program plan must be prepared. Due to these deadlines and to allow for the timely submittal of all the data, the enrollment deadline in the San Diego Region Irrigated Lands Group has been set at October 31, 2010. The monitoring group will report on watershed testing and then education efforts to reduce runoff of pollutants would commence. Mr. Larson noted that the requirements may change in 2012 with an issuance of a waiver of the Federal Clean Water Act.
Agricultural growers that do not comply with the development and implementation of a runoff monitoring program as an individual or through a monitoring group could receive a notice of violation and be levied a fine by the Regional Water Quality Control Board. Mr. Larson added that in order to add a farmer to the monitoring group after the deadline, an amended Notice of Intent would need to be obtained from the Regional Water Quality Control Board. General Manager Arant noted that the Rainbow Municipal Water District formed a monitoring group for its agricultural customers and a few District agricultural customers have inquired if the District would be forming a runoff monitoring group. The formation of a monitoring group by the District was not recommended and the Board concurred with this recommendation as it would not be an appropriate role for the District to assist landowners in their efforts to comply with Federal law and such an effort would be duplicative of the San Diego County Farm Bureau’s efforts in forming the San Diego Region Irrigated Lands Group that is available to all San Diego County farmers.
3. Review of New Phone System and Proposed Automated Attendant Feature:
An update on the new phone system, CISCO system with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which had been approved in the budget was provided by IT Manager Pilve. He explained that the District’s existing phone, Nortel’s Norstar, is a 15-year old analog system with feature limitations. Further, there is no manufacturer based support for the Nortel system. The new CISCO phone system will provide VoIP technology that allows use of the computer network for phone communications. Other advantages of the CISCO digital phone system were reviewed, as follows:
Flexibility – Ability to move phones without reprogramming as the digital phone is connected to the network and not tied to a dedicated circuit.
Extendibility – Phone system can be extended to another facility including the Moosa and Woods Valley Treatment Plants with an extension of the phone communications over the network.
Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery - Phones can be relocated to any facility reachable via the District’s network and to individual PCs at remote sites. CISCO’s Survivable Remote Site Telephony technology allows redundant equipment at remote sites for critical functionality. Also, the new phones will provide more flexibility for the routing of incoming and outgoing calls.
Called ID and Database Integration – Caller’s name can be viewed from the phone display and data accessed. In the future, the customer’s records can be queried when the phone rings.
Direct Inward Dial – This service allows outside callers to directly dial an employee’s phone and the creation of dedicated departmental extensions and the routing of calls within a department which is beneficial for customer service calls.
Unified Communications – VoIP allows for better integration of our communication systems such as voice mails to be delivered via an e-mail attachment and voice mails accessed remotely.
Internal Support – District IT personnel are Cisco Certified Network Associate Certified and can handle most of the technical and administrative functions of the CISCO VoIP phone system.
Incoming calls to the District with the CISCO VoIP system will be by the direct access numbers through a Direct Inward Dial number or phone number utilizing an extension or accessing the directory. If the existing main number is called, it is proposed to use an automated attendant function. The script of the proposed automated attendant feature was reviewed, as set forth below:
“You have reached Valley Center Municipal Water District. Please select from the following options:
To report a Water or Wastewater service problem or emergency, press 1 (Field Operations);
For Finance, billing questions or to establish service, press 2 (Finance);
For Engineering, new service installation, construction, or water conservation, press 3 (Engineering);
To reach your party by extension, press 4
For all other questions, press 5 (Rotational Numbers)
To repeat the options, press 9”
General Manager Arant explained that the phone system with the automated attendant will route all calls for the Field Department (Option 1) so that it is answered by a staff person in the event that the “primary agent” is busy as the call could be to report a water or wastewater emergency. There will be multiple “primary agent” numbers and “backup agents” in rotation for the Finance and Engineering Departments (Options 2 & 3). After-hours calls will be routed to the District’s answering service as is the current practice.
All departments will have a direct number that will be printed and listed on the District’s webpage, water bills, letterhead and other publications. Staff members with an assigned desk phone will have a direct phone line in which the caller will have the option to leave a voice mail or contact another “agent” if the employee is not available.
The Board supported the implementation of an automated phone attendant feature when 760-749-1600 is called. Board input on condensing the voice message of the automated system will be provided staff and the revised dialogue will be broadcast to the Board at a subsequent meeting. The new CISCO VoIP digital phone system is expected to be installed by mid-December 2010.
4. Overview of the SBX 7-7 20% by 2020 Water Conservation Implementation:
SBX 7-7, which was signed into law, requires that 20% water conservation be achieved by the year 2020. The law provides that each retail water agency establish a water use target and a plan and timeline to meet a 10% conservation goal by 2015 and the final 20% conservation goal by 2020. General Manager Arant reported that with the dramatic reduction in water sales and likely permanent drop of agricultural deliveries, the District will meet the 20% reduction by 2020 requirement as required by SBX 7-7.
The provisions of SBX 7-7 allow a water agency to measure its conservation efforts against its average annual water demand for a 10-year period. The optimum 10-year period for the District’s baseline usage is Fiscal Year 1998-99 to Fiscal Year 2007-08 in which an average of 48,588 ac. ft. was purchased by the District. Utilizing SANDAG’s population estimate of 25,378 as of June 30th, the District’s baseline is 1,710 gallons per capita/day (GPCD) or a goal of 1,368 GPCD by 2020. A population of 25,378 translates to a GPCD of 1,039. It was noted that the overall water usage allowed under SBX 7-7 increases as the District’s population increases. The differentials between projected water demands with SANDAG growth projections and projected allocations based on a 20% reduction by 2020 indicate that with the drop in water sales since the baseline period, the District will meet the 20% reduction by 2020 requirement, as noted below:
2015 2020 2025 2030 2035
20%x2020 Allocation 44,430 44,480 49,877 55,752 62,010
Projected Actual 29,996 34,894 37,882 42,344 47,097
Differential +14,434 +9,586 +11,995 +13,408 +14,913
Retail water agencies, such as the Valley Center Municipal Water District, with surplus conservation can partner with other water agencies that need assistance in meeting their conservation goals. The partnership could be with one other agency, a small group of agencies or all the San Diego County Water Authority member agencies. A form of consideration would need to be determined for those agencies that have the surplus conservation utilized by another agency in recognition of their reduced costs to achieve the required levels of conservation and the financial cost to the agency that generated the surplus conservation.
GENERAL MANAGER’S AGENDA
5. Review of Miscellaneous Informational Items:
General Manager Arant provided an update on miscellaneous projects/programs, as follows:
• The Board of Directors of the San Diego County Water Authority at the September 23rd Board meeting approved an additional $500,000 expenditure for legal and financial expertise to support the negotiating team in the development of a Water Purchase Agreement with Poseidon Resources for the desalination project.
• A letter was received from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection commending District employees, Anthony LoPresti, Lee Hicks, Gabe Salazar and Tim Sjobring, who responded and assisted with the location of the water supply on August 6th when there was a commercial structure fire on Cool Valley Road. The letter states “Their quick response and knowledge ultimately lead to a quicker knock down of the fire by providing a good water supply for the Firefighters to utilize.”
• The State Water Resources Control Board’s Delta Flow Criteria Report was reviewed at an ACWA workshop. The Report was prepared as part of the Delta Reform Act and had a narrow scope of what the fish need in the Delta in terms of outflow. With this narrow scope, the analysis concluded that the additional Delta outflows should conservatively be increased by 5.5 million acre feet, requiring a correlating reduction in use of water from the Delta Watershed. In considering
the Delta outflow for the needs of the fish population, there was no analysis of health and welfare impacts, upstream fishery impacts, power production and Best Available Science was ignored or omitted and unreliable opinions and published data were relied upon. Recognizing the state’s critical water system, regional organizations are forming to address their concerns such as the Northern California Water Association, the State & Federal Contractors Water Agency, Rural Water Association and Delta Water Use Association.
CLOSED SESSION
6. A Closed Session was called by President Broomell at 3:23 p.m. pursuant to:
• Government Code §54956.9(c), Conference with Legal Counsel, Anticipated
Litigation
Number of potential cases: 1
RECONVENE
7. The Regular Board meeting was reconvened at 3:29 p.m. There was no reportable action.
ADJOURNMENT
8. Upon motion by Aleshire, seconded by Haskell and unanimously carried, the meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.
ATTEST: ATTEST:
____________________________ _______________________________
President Secretary