The North Coast County Water District Board of Directors had a jam packed agenda to cover and the public part of the meeting of April 20 lasted until 10:30 p.m. The first item on the agenda was the resolution to prohibit any further cell towers or equipment on NCCWD property.
Director Brown recused himself from the conversation as he contracts with AT&T for service. Two of the directors thought a blanket prohibition went too far since there are other sites which are not near homes. The vote was tied, therefore this resolution was defeated but the issue will be put on next month’s agenda.
Since there were several people in the audience, Director Brown asked them to stay to hear the discussion on the budget and they agreed. Since the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has indicated that they will raise their price for water to us by 47 percent, the NCCWD Board had asked to see budgets that showed customer rate increases of 0 percent, 2.5 percent and 5 percent. There was much discussion about whether this was the right time to be asking for an increase versus the fact that 60 percent of the infrastructure is past its stated lifetime, and it would cost $80 million to replace or repair all of these items.
The Board decided that it would accept the 0 percent rate increase for this year. This budget includes no increase in salaries for any employee and does not anticipate any employee layoffs or furloughs. (There was an article on the front page of the Local News section of the San Mateo County Times on Thursday, April 21 covering the issue of the 47 percent increase in cost of water.) Art Jensen, the CEO of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency (BAWSCA) was present to explain what BAWSCA is all about and to present a video on the progress of the retrofit of the Hetch Hetchy pipeline system.
The auditor gave the Annual Financial Report of the NCCWD for the fiscal year 2009/10. He found the District to have met all financial requirements.
