Mark Dolson
What Lies Ahead?
The San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD) Board has met only once in Open Session, on
April 17 th , since my last report. This meeting was very brief (just 40 minutes), and the Board
decisions were pretty routine, but this may be a good time for a broader status update.
Board Business
The Board unanimously approved a resolution to extend no-payment status for two more years
for 30 homes destroyed in the 2020 CZU Fire and not yet rebuilt. The Board also authorized the
Board President to vote for Jim Anderson and Lani Faulkner to serve as Regular and Alternate
LAFCO (Local Agency Formation Commission) representatives respectively. (The Board
previously voted for Jim Anderson and Ed Banks, but Lani Faulkner garnered the support of four
of the Board members in this run-off election.)
District Status
This was the final Board meeting for Interim General Manager John Kunkel who submitted his
resignation in order to accept an opportunity closer to his home. The Board is continuing its
search for a permanent General Manager, and also for a permanent Finance Manager, but the
reality is that: (1) the District has searched for two years without identifying any compelling
candidates (it hired a previous Interim General Manager in late 2023 who resigned amidst
controversy in mid-2024), and (2) the District has, in parallel, been extremely slow to address
other critical staffing shortages.
In fairness to the District, it should be noted that qualified candidates for high-level positions
currently appear to be in very short supply. A logical response to this situation, though, might
include an escalation of both recruiting efforts and compensation packages. In the absence of
such a response, District staff are continuing to do their utmost to keep things from falling
apart; however, what our community really needs is a District that is sufficiently well-staffed
that it can act proactively, rather than reactively, on our collective behalf.
/one-half-first]
This Board meeting was also notable for being bracketed by, on the one hand, strong
statements of concern from residents at the end of Lost Acre Drive in Felton about prolonged
lack of progress on a long-promised replacement water tank, and on the other hand, by a
question by Director Largay that revealed a major revenue shortfall. These two issues are
linked and symptomatic of the other top-priority challenge currently facing the District. The
delays on the Felton tank (now spanning a full twelve years) can be partially attributed to a long
list of complications including the CZU Fire, COVID, untimely deaths and resignations,
complicated questions about the tank location, and other even-higher-priority tank
replacements. However, the other major gating factor for this project and for many other
currently budgeted capital improvement projects is that the District is apparently nowhere near
to receiving many of the FEMA reimbursements that it was counting on to fund this work. The
District budget will be the subject of extensive discussion in May, but it seems likely that the
District will need to seek additional loans. (If there is any silver lining in all of this, it is that SLV
voters this past November resoundingly defeated Measure U, which would have made the
District’s current financial situation far more perilous.)
Special Initiatives
The Administration Committee (which I am a member of) met for two hours on April 15 th .
Among other topics, it endorsed two recently-proposed initiatives and forwarded these to the
Budget and Finance Committee because of their implications for the current budget planning
cycle (although, the recommended budget increases total only around 0.3%).
First, the committee was generally supportive of a proposal from the Friends of San Lorenzo
Valley Water (which I am also a member of) to expand the District’s Ratepayer Assistance
Program (RAP). The motivation for this is not only that our District has a moral responsibility to
be more proactive in treating “affordable water” as a fundamental human right but that our
local community has consistently demonstrated that it views this as a very important issue. The
Friends proposal suggests at least three distinct District responses: (1) immediately increasing
the RAP budget to allow more people to enroll and automatically increasing the RAP discount in
tandem with annual rate increases, (2) expanding eligibility by devising ways to include seniors
who annually consume no more than two units per month (and perhaps, eventually, including
renters as well), and (3) augmenting the District’s funding for the RAP by enabling auxiliary
ratepayer donations as a supplement to property tax revenues (which already greatly exceed
the amount budgeted for the RAP). As a first step, the Friends recommend increasing the RAP
discount by $5 per month (from $240 to $300 per year) and budgeting for 30 additional
households. Together, these two actions would increase the RAP budget by $16,200 (from its
current level of $28,000 to $44,200). A letter advocating for the proposed budget increase
(along with the exploration of further enhancements) has already garnered fifty signatures, but
has yet to be formally presented to the Board.
Second, the committee was similarly supportive of a proposal to reinstate the District’s
Watershed Education Grant program. From 2004 through 2018, the District allocated $15,000
to $17,000 per year to a program whereby a five-person committee dispensed grants (typically
of around $2500) in support of a variety of relevant educational and watershed awareness
projects. This program was eliminated by a newly elected Board majority in early 2019 despite
substantial and very vocal public support for the program.
The next regularly scheduled public meeting of the Board of Directors will be on May 1 st at 6:30
PM.