Mark Dolson
Board approves some contracts but seeks further review of outreach strategy.
Director To resigns.
The March 18th SLVWD Board meeting was relatively routine, but there were still some new developments that our community should take note of. The most dramatic of these came at the very start of the meeting when President Mahood announced that Director Tina To, newly elected to the Board this past November, had resigned for personal reasons, effective immediately. President Mahood said the agenda for the next meeting of the Board will include a discussion on how to fill the vacancy. She also announced that Director Fultz was absent due to illness, so there were only three Board members present. The most substantial discussion of the evening centered around the Staff recommendation to extend the District’s contract with The Buzz PR (formerly Chatterbox) for another nine months. Chatterbox was hired roughly one year ago to help the District connect more effectively with its customers. An initial survey of around 1000 (out of 8000) mostly-older customers established that satisfaction levels were fairly high and that the vast majority wanted to receive email communications (and, for some customers, printed communications as well). Since then, Chatterbox/Buzz has been assisting with outreach including an e-newsletter, social media posting, and media tours. The discussion Thursday evening focused more on the specific objectives the District is seeking to achieve and also on the use and misuse of social media. District Manager Rick Rogers said that a longstanding objective has been to better educate the community about upcoming infrastructure improvement projects, and a growing source of frustration has been customers posting water problems to social media instead of coming straight to the District for help. In the end, the Board agreed to extend the Buzz PR contract from month to month while it delves deeper into the underlying challenges and objectives. Buzz is providing logistical assistance for increasing customer awareness, but the District ultimately needs to increase customer understanding and engagement so that customers will interact with the District more effectively and so that there will be improved community support for essential investments and better-informed community participation in elections for Board members. The District also needs to be staffed appropriately to pursue these objectives. In other news, the Board approved a $196,000 contract for recoating the Little Lyon water storage tank (whose interior coating was contaminated by volatile organic compounds during the CZU Fire) and approved an $11,000 contract for habitat restoration and a required annual report on the Olympia Conservation Area. The Board asked for further revisions to a follow-up letter to PG&E requesting that the utility substantially improve some of its current practices aimed at reducing wildfire risk. The District wants PG&E to harden its power infrastructure (to avoid both PSPS shutoffs and fires), to be more selective in its tree removal (so that slopes are not denuded of vegetation), and to be more responsible about carting away debris following its tree removal. Lastly, President Mahood revised some of the committee assignments.
