Flood Control and Water Conservation District - Regular Meeting

The mic's in second. There it is. Alright. It is officially 90 1. Okay.

Get ready. Stand by. We will call the meeting to order, our February 17 meeting of the Napa County Water Conservation Flood Control District. Our first order of business is election of officers.

Actually, first we need to do the roll call.

Oh, we do roll call first?

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. Let's do roll call.

Thank you. Director Gemelch? Gamacher, excuse me. Director Ramos? Here. Director Moeller? Here. Director Doring? Here. Director Denethal?

Here.

Director Alessio?

Here.

And Vice Chair Sedgley? Present. Excused from the meeting today We is

will call the meeting to order for February 17 meeting of the United States. That sounds familiar.

Sorry about that. Thank you for that. Okay. So excused from the meeting today is Director Washington, Director Gift, Director Cottrell, and Chair Gallagher. Director Manfrey. And Director Manfrey's

on her way. She's almost in.

It's almost here. Very good. Well, I learned I was going to chair this meeting about five minutes before nine. So if I'm a little off on the roll call, too. It's interesting. We all know when you chair a meeting, takes a little extra effort to read the agenda. Not that I haven't, but here I am. So now, will first order of business is the election of our chair and vice chair.

Sir, one more item on the agenda would be the Pledge of Allegiance.

Okay. My agenda shows this first before the pledge, but we can do the pledge first. All right. You're able, you could please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. One more time.

I'm not gonna volunteer to be the chair. You got me? So I think it's my rotation. So to start this off, it's basically you have to affirm the fact that the city of Napa now will assume the role of chair for the next year and the county will have the vice chair. I imagine that's the chair of the Board of Supervisors.

I'll need

So yes, second. Is there a selection? Who's the chair and vice chair?

It would be myself as chair. Uh-huh.

Vice chair.

Joelle as vice.

Excellent. Second.

So we have a motion by Director Mueller, seconded by Director Lethe. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed to that action? Carries unanimously. Thank you. I promise to do better. We have two consent items on the agenda today, item 4A and 4B. Have we received any interest in removing a consent? We have a motion by Director Mueller.

Second.

Second by Director Alessio to remove the consent calendar. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Carries unanimously. Thank you. Public comment, item six on the agenda at this time. Anyone may address the board, the Mapa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District regarding any subject not on the agenda over which the board has jurisdiction. Individuals be limited to a three minute presentation. No action will be taken by the board of the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District as a result of any item presented at this time.

Public comment. Good morning, mister Hackett.

I don't even have to introduce myself. This is unusual. I am Mike Hackett. I live in Angouin, and I'm here at the behest of the Save Napa Valley Foundation, of which I'm president. Because some of you don't know who we are and what we do, I'll read our mission statement, which is pretty self explanatory: Protect the long term economic and environmental viability of Napa Valley by addressing climate change through the preservation and the restoration of the natural environment and resources upon which the health of our vineyards, wineries and the entire community relies.

We came about in 2018 because we put an initiative of Measure C on the ballot where we barely lost, but we're a group all about restoration and preservation of our water resources. That includes the fish and the aquatic resources that are surrounding those creeks. Over the last several years, we took out a dam up in, with help, West Of St. Helena, and we've been working extensively with the county to examine the projects that come through before the planning commission. We've seen some inadequacies there and that brought us to working with an attorney at Water Audit who has filed several appeals and comment letters, one of which, several of which, but the most recent of which really reached fruition.

Silvira, I may run over three minutes, but it looks like an empty house, so you can gavel me down when you need, Scott, but I'll be quick. We realized that Silverado wanted to build a 12,000 square foot, an additional meeting room and another structure right in the heart of the grove. And many of you have probably seen Marriages There. Anyway, it's a group of beautiful old oak trees, heritage oaks that have been there a long, long time. And in examining that project, we came to realize that right now, neither in California nor in Napa is there any way to preserve oak trees, really, something like that.

So, in our negotiations with them, we found out also that they have been extracting an unknown quantity of water from because of the, you know, it's a golf course and because a very important creek, Milliken Creek, runs across there. And so we assembled a team, and I'll say just very quickly, Rob Leidy, who's an Academy of Science in California expert, he's really quite the guy, Terry Jo Barber, who's not only a hydrologist but a plant expert, Chad Edwards, who many of you know because he worked for NOAA and RCD for at least twenty years around here. But most importantly, we've got the significant member from CDFW who is in charge of this region. Good morning, Amber. I don't mean to point out that you're late, but I have a sense of humor and I hope you do too.

Corey Gray, who is the regional manager for CDFW, and she's on board as well. So we have reached a settlement with them and in in that really? In that settlement, we have agreed to work collaboratively with the people at Silverado to remediate the creek along their property. We've already met with them. It's a work in progress already.

We to do this creek, then we're going to do Suscoe Creek after that. But the whole idea is to return the creek and Millikan to a sustainable steelhead spawning grounds. And right now, we the flood control district's support. I believe we have the city of Napa support and their water manager. And with our team and with a small slush fund of money that we got from Silverado and their collaboration, we believe we can do this over the next year.

Getting, of course, then we're going to need more funding. So we're not here to ask for funding. We're not here to ask for anything. We're just we've already talked with Jeremy at the steam maintenance program at flood control. He seems reasonably interested. And so I want to just plant a seed that we're going to need the help of the flood control district to move forward. I thank you for your time very much. Thank you.

Thank you for the update. Any other general public comment? No cards, no phone calls, no requests? Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike. Our next item of business, item seven on the agenda, is our award of construction contract to Shimick Construction Company. This is for the next phase of our flood project, the wall north of the bypass.

For clarification purposes, just a regular majority vote is required, not forfeits.

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Andrew Butler. I'm the district engineer. This item is for the recommended award of the flood walls north of the bypass construction project. We started advertisement of the project on 09/30/2025 and we opened bids on 01/20/2026.

The three lowest bidders were Cemig Construction for $32,812,575 Goodfellow Brothers for $38,063,017 and Gordon Ball for $41,515,116 Our engineers estimate for the project was 34,671,000. We we are with the award of this project, we're gonna be the first project to go to construction under the Section 204 process for with the Army Corps of Engineers. This allows the local sponsor to take control of the design and construction of the project directly. It's been a pretty long road to get here, but I think it's a big accomplishment that we finally made it. I just want to thank everyone who's been involved.

And with that, I would like to recommend award of the flood walls north of the bypass construction project to Shimick Construction Company for their low bid of 32,812,575. You can take any questions.

Thank you, Andrew. Before questions of the Board, do we have any public comment on the item?

You did receive an email this morning from friends of the Napa River. So I'm making note of that. It was sent to all the board members.

Okay. Thank you. I'll bring it back to the board. Any clarifications, comments, or action? Has Shimick done work locally before or done work with the district, with our district?

Not with the district. It sounds like they haven't worked with County Public Works either.

GREGORY DELL: I looked them up. Big outfit. They're all

GREGORY They're pretty large. They've done a number of large projects.

Well, it's exciting. I mean oh, Rick Manfrey.

Yeah, yeah. I'll just jump in and say this is a really wonderful thing to be able to move forward. Looking forward to it. And there's been a lot of little steps along the way. And I really appreciate all that staff did to keep it moving for years to get to this point. And we're really after trying to remember what year it is like thirty years about closing in on a vision that started a long, long time ago. So that's a wonderful thing for the community, for everyone. And I know this is going to be really enjoyed once it's finished.

Thank you all. I echo that comment that 1998, I think, to be exact. We were concerned for a while there about funding and where we were going to get stalled on this phase. But through the good work of our staff and our local legislators, we were able to come across this phase. So everybody's talking about the next phase already now, before this one's even started, really, but the next one from the end of Main Street down Limoa. That's going to be an exciting piece of this also. So yeah, it's exciting. Any other comment? Well, then I'll look for some form of

I'd like to make a motion to approve.

Second.

We have a motion by director Manfrey, seconded by director Dina Tali. Doring. Oh, it was Doring.

Well, I I didn't hear him, but, I made one. Yeah, second. Sorry. Doring. Doring. Okay. Doring.

Alright. Director Doring.

Alright.

We have motion and second. So I don't think it requires a roll call vote. So just a, audible all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Onward. All right. That was a big deal. Thank you, Barry, for being here to report out on that. I know we saw an earlier piece in the local paper about it. But it seems like the Lincoln Avenue project that we're embarking on gets a little bit more attention right now versus this magnificent project. Any reports from district manager?

Just briefly, so next month at your meeting, Chris Silk, our engineering manager for water resources, will do a full water resources update, how we're doing with the state water project and a variety of things. And Director Doring's request, it's going to be a full administrative item. So there'll be a written report, he will come next month. And I don't know, Andrew, if we want as you mentioned, we are working now on the design for Increment 3, the Riverside Drive to Imola reach. And stay tuned for some public meetings on that design coming up.

When would be our first meeting, Andrew, do you think?

Probably towards the middle of the year, we'll have our first public meeting on the design. Yeah. So stay tuned for that.

We're working hard with the city, because there's a lot of roadway, impacts and or effects, not impacts so much, but effects, through that reach. So a lot of involvement with city staff.

Understood.

That's it.

Thank you. Thank you, Rick and Andrew, for your report in the business. Back to the directors. Any comments from directors or announcements that we want to share? Quiet group this morning, always. And any future agenda items? I don't have any to announce at this time. We do not have closed session. So at 09:19, that's starting a little late, we will adjourn. Thank you everyone. Stay dry. Stay safe.