Waterways Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. If we may have a roll call, please.

Board Member Wright.

Here.

Board Member Misler. Here. Board Member DeWitt.

Present.

Board Member Battenfort. Here. Vice Chair Arnone. Here. And Chair Galvin.

Here.

Let the record reflect that all board members are present.

Thank you. Any statements of abstention by board members? Hearing none, we will move then to item 4.1, which is a proclamation, which I have here in front of me. I'm going to read for all of you. This is regarding Jerry Winterlin. Where are you, Jerry? Thanks for being here. So here's the proclamation. Whereas Jerry Winterlin has been a devoted employee of the City of Santa Rosa for 20 years, and whereas Mr. Winterlin began his career in 2006 as a temporary civil engineering technician in the Transportation and Public Works Department, promoting to permanent civil engineering technician in 2007, and in 2023 was promoted to assistant engineer in the Water Department's Asset Management Division. And whereas throughout his distinguished career, Mr. Winterlin contributed to the design and construction of countless capital improvement projects, demonstrating exceptional technical skill, professionalism, and dedication to public service, And whereas Mr. Winterland's commitment to the quality, sustainability, and stewardship of the water departments and the city's resources has ensured that the city's infrastructure was built to serve the community for generations to come, And whereas, given Mr. Wendland's vast and impressive knowledge of the Water Department's infrastructure, most notably with the water reuse system, as well as local water and local sewer infrastructure, combined with his extensive experience with capital improvement projects and his warm, personal nature, Mr. Wendland is known as the go-to source for historical and reliable system information. And whereas Mr. Wendland will be leaving the city on July 13th, 2026, embarking on a well-earned retirement involving home improvement projects, vacationing and spending time with family, and he will be greatly missed by all who have had the pleasure to work with him. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Public Utilities of the City of Santa Rosa does hereby recognize, commend, and express our sincere and heartfelt appreciation to Jerry Winterlin for 20 years of outstanding service and contribution to the City of Santa Rosa and the community. And I happily have signed the resolution. Congratulations on your retirement. At this time, I'll open it up for any board member comments or the director, if she would like to make any comments.

Sure, thank you. Jerry, I just want to say congratulations on behalf of the Water Department. We've really appreciated all of your work and support over the years. I think you were even integral in helping us design our first ever hydration station, which we still use to this day, and was awesome and amazing and just a true innovative approach. And so always appreciated all your work, all your support out at the plant, and we're sorry to see you go and leave us, but very happy for you on a very well-deserved retirement. Congratulations.

Again, we wish you all the best and we'll give you an opportunity should you desire to make any comments. That'd be great.

Is this a good place?

Okay. Thank you for your many kind words and for this honor. I'm not the type that the lights and attention are standing in front of large groups, but I've enjoyed very much my 20 plus years working at the City of Santa Rosa. As was mentioned, I came as a mid-career change. I worked at the Optical Coating Lab until I was laid off there and then, I got hired as a temp, it was mentioned, and then took classes at the JC and finished up there in their civil engineering technician program, and then was able to get hired by the city. So some of the projects that were noteworthy, I think that I worked on, it's kind of fun to see looking back. One was the Hearn Avenue widening at the small railroad crossing. That was a two-lane road and now is a four-lane road. I assisted on that. Also Farmers Land Extension Project from Bennett Valley Road to Yolanda Avenue. That project has been fully designed, but it has not been constructed. Also, I worked with Stony Point Widening Project from Sebastopol Road to Hearn Avenue. And then later I worked on, The most interesting project at the treatment plant was the UV project, helping with the design portion of that, and now it's in construction. So a couple of unique projects that I got to work on. One was mentioned, the water hydration station, where a van was converted into pumps and tanks and made a station where it can... dispense water at different events. That was a fun project. Another one was early on at the Laguna Treatment Plant. There was a pilot project, an algae digester project with Sonoma State and the Laguna Treatment Plant. Here there was, We purchased and installed equipment to digest algae and duckweed and then burn it in a portable generator to see how that would work in a larger environment than in the lab that Sonoma State had done that before. So those were some fun projects that I got to work with. I don't want to be offensive to anyone with my next comments. I realize there are many life beliefs But I'm a Christian and I want to honor my God, Jesus, the Messiah, who has helped me through my entire life. If I'm a kind and caring person, it is because Jesus has changed me from being stubborn, selfish, self-willed. He can change you too if you ask him. One person I'd like to thank for her help and assistance through the years here at the city is Lori Urbanik. She was my first supervisor and later my supervising engineer and the one who I worked with when I moved to asset management. Thank you, Lori, for all your help in my career and the work at the city. Also wanted to thank my supervisor, Liz Haley, and Lee, I'm sorry, and Candace Michael for their aid and help and direction, making the asset management group a great place to work. I also want to thank my other coworkers, those in local operations, sub-regional operations, asset management, and CIP, who have not only been fun to work with, but have enriched my life. I think the city is a better place because of the work that has been accomplished and the project still to be completed. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate and enjoyed very much working at the City of Santa Rosa. Thank you.

Board Member DeWitt. I'd like to make a comment and say that it's nice. Your story was inspiring, especially for the local educational program. Junior college is a good thing. It's also nice that you didn't mind being a faith based guy. So do the things that you do and maybe come back and what's that called? A consultant. Yeah, maybe you'll be that consultant out there or a volunteer over in Roseland. We got a creek that needs some assistance. Thank you.

Any other board member questions or comments? All right, we'll open it up for public comment on item number 4.1. If you wish to make a public comment, please move to the podium.

I just wanted to say it's Janice Carmen here. What a refreshing way to start the meeting. and how good it was to hear from him and hear his career and how he evolved. And I reiterate what Dwayne said about his, the way he thinks and his spiritual entry. It was very nice. And congratulations to him. And water is a wonderful thing to be proud of. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. So at this time, if you'd like to come down, we'll present you with the proclamation and take a photo. And if you have your wife or whoever's with you, if you want to have her come down as well, that'd be great. Okay, the next item on our agenda is the approval for the minutes of May 21st. So we'll open it up for any public comment on those minutes. Seeing no one rise, the minutes will be approved and entered. We have one staff briefing. Director Burke.

Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Our staff briefing today is our Water Smart Commercial Sustained Reduction Rebate Program Update, and Lisa Cuellar, our Sustainability Coordinator for Water Use Efficiency, will be making the presentation.

Welcome, Ms. Cuellar.

Thank you, and bear with me while I pull up the presentation. Great. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Thank you for the introduction, Director Burke. I'm going to provide a brief update today about our commercial sustained reduction rebate and happy to jump into the details. So the sustained reduction rebate program came about as early as 2000, I believe. It predates me, but it's been around for some time. The goal was to help incentivize our commercial, industrial, and institutional accounts to save water via technological enhancements or hardware upgrades. system optimizations so that additional water savings could be achieved that can't by our standing water smart rebate programs, things like cash for grass, irrigation efficiency, commercial clothes washers, things like that. The rebate is $400 per 1,000 gallons of average monthly water reductions that the technology or the system optimization provides. It has a pretty attractive cost benefit when we compare what we pay for to purchase wholesale from Sonoma Water one acre foot of water. It's currently $1,400 approximately. This rebate achieves an acre foot of savings at $724. So again, a great cost benefit there. Today I'll be sharing with you one of our latest participants in the sustained reduction program, that's Santa Rosa Junior College, to provide some background. Santa Rosa Junior College has been around since 1918. Their current enrollment at the Santa Rosa campus is 13,000 students. Back in 2016, Santa Rosa Water, the water use efficiency staff went on site and performed a water use efficiency assessment and provided the campus with several suggestions on how to make water efficiency upgrades throughout their facilities. A phased facilities upgrade began in 2016 with numerous system designs to enhance water savings across those campus upgrades. I also just wanted to acknowledge Santa Rosa Junior College as a community partner that has valued water use efficiency over the years. They were, in 2019, a recipient of our Water Use Efficiency Award for their investment in some low water use and firewise landscaping templates, which they then installed on campus and used as essentially a live learning lab for students to engage with directly. So Santa Rosa Junior College, they were fortunate enough to use Measure H funding. For those who aren't aware what that is, taxpayers in Sonoma County approved the measure in 2014. It was valued at $410 million. It was the largest district-wide facilities upgrade initiative in the Sonoma County Junior College District's 100-year history. It was aimed at improving educational experience and to deal with potential overcrowding issues. And through that work, facilities were renovated and seismic upgrades were conducted. So the facility staff approached the Water Use Efficiency Department at Santa Rosa Water and said, hey, can we leverage Your rebate funding, with this funding we are receiving through Measure H and enhance some of the facility upgrades so that we really maximize water savings. And we said, sure. If you meet criteria, we'd be happy to process a rebate, evaluate and process a rebate for you. They are fortunate in that they have a local groundwater source that generates about six million gallons of on-site water annually. They refer to it as nuisance water because for several years they were pumping it off a campus facility, but realized that it could be integrated into their new design work to offset potable water purchases from Santa Rosa Water. So part of the water reclamation project under Measure H was to install a 50,000 gallon cistern to capture and redistribute that water to multiple facilities across campus. It was estimated that that would reduce campus-wide consumption by 20%. So water use efficiency staff went out onto the site. We have on contract an engineering firm that ran some estimates for us to see what the potential savings could be by utilizing this groundwater source. We worked with the campus and eventually approved two updates, one indoors and the second outdoor facilities updates, which included non-potable water, the groundwater for flushing toilets, as well as an intake source for two new 300-ton cooling towers that were installed at the campus. We also approved the use of the groundwater for irrigating landscape upgrades and existing landscapes across campus. So the work, it was a phased approach, commenced in 2016 and actually continues to this day. But for the phases that were pre-approved through the rebate, those have concluded. We monitored water usage for a year. In total, 64 toilets went in at the numbers two through four up above those facilities. and 21 urinals as well were installed. The quintessential cooling tower, as I mentioned, was a two large 310 cooling tower installation that uses groundwater for intake. And the landscape upgrades or renovations include a new turf soccer field, an athletic complex with some landscaping. The new STEM building, which is a 95,000 square foot STEM building, surrounding the structure. In total, we approved over 200,000 square feet of landscape to be irrigated with a groundwater source. And to summarize, we are providing them with a rebate of just over $77,000. That's attributed to savings that total just over, or approaching, I should say, 400,000 gallons per month. Just to offer some additional perspective, that's about 4.6 million gallons annually of potable water that's offset by these facility upgrades, or 14.2 acre feet. In 2019, we asked the board for the water director to have the authority to approve these rebates and as part of that action, we said we would periodically and get you up to speed or up to date with current participants in the rebate program and that's why I'm here today. So just wanted to note that yes, it is a large rebate, but Director Burke does. well, has already approved the rebate and will be providing those funds to the junior college. And that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. It's a great program and happy to see the junior college get a rebate and our rate payers know that junior college is doing what it can to save water. So that's wonderful. I'll open it up for any board member questions or comments.

Board Member DeWitt? I'm gonna say it's an inspiring program. This is just an inspiring day. Good, thank you kindly.

Very good. We'll now take public comment on item number 7.1. If you wish to make a public comment, please move to the podium. I see no one rise. Thank you again for the presentation. That'll take care of item 7.1. We have two items on the consent calendar.

I'll move adoption of the consent calendar. Second.

We have a motion by Vice Chair Arnone and a second by Board Member Badenford to approve the consent calendar. We'll open it up for public comment before taking a vote. If anybody wishes to make a comment. Seeing no one rise, may we have a roll call vote, please?

Board Member Wright.

Aye.

Board Member Meisler. Aye. Board Member DeWitt.

Yes. Yes.

Board Member Baden-Fort. Aye. Vice Chair Noni.

Aye.

And Chair Galvin.

Aye.

Let the record reflect the consent calendar passes unanimously.

Thank you. We'll now move to item 9.1, which is our first report item. Director Burke.

Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 9.1 is a professional services agreement approval for engineering design and consultant services with Black and Beach for the water master plan update. And Candice Michael, our acting supervising engineer over asset management will be making the presentation.

Testing. Hi, first of all, I wanna congratulate Jerry. It's been a pleasure working with you. He's always my go-to for any kind of historical knowledge and he has probably the best memory I've ever encountered in my life. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. My name is Candace Michael and I'm the Acting Supervising Engineer for Asset Management Team in the Water Department. Today I will be presenting on the Professional Services Agreement for Engineering Design and Consultant Services with Black & Veatch for the Water Master Plan Update. The City of Santa Rosa Water Department conducts master planning studies for water and sewer infrastructure approximately every five years. The City's latest master plan update was completed in 2022 by Black & Veatch and is due for another update. The distribution hydraulic model of our water delivery system is an important tool for prioritizing capital improvement projects for water mains and facilities, and for determining appropriate water main size for development projects. The model update and subsequent improvements increase our system's resiliency. The project objectives are to further develop the existing water distribution model, recommend permanent locations for AMI meters that will give local operations real-time pressure and flow monitoring through SCADA, evaluate system deficiencies for both existing population density and demand, and city build out from the general plan. evaluate existing emergency wells for future well production, complete a distribution system risk and redundancy analysis, and develop a water distribution capital improvement plan. Our request for proposal for a PSA was the selected contract method to reach a broader audience of qualified firms outside of our MPSA list. The request for proposal was advertised on January 5th, and two proposals were received by January 26th. Black & Veatch, who completed the last update, was selected as the consultant on February 16th. After selection, asset management in Black and Beach held meetings with local operations and water resources planning staff to further divine the individual team's needs and refine the scope of services. The resulting cost proposal for the water master plan update is approximately $730,000. The Black and Beach cost proposal was nearly two times the amount of consultant number two. This was mostly due to the difference in base costs. The scope in the Black and Beach proposal was more detailed and aligned with the purpose of our update. The second consultant's cost proposal came in under $400,000, which was less than the previous update that was proposed in like 2018 or 2019, I believe was when that contract was awarded. The previous update, oh wait, and lacked, this consultant number two, their proposal lacked detail in the scope of services and then the breakdown of tasks was rudimentary and it was deemed unlikely to meet our needs at the Water Department. Oops, sorry. When the RFP was released, Black & Veatch made effort to contact the asset management team to set up meetings to better understand our expectation and further refine the scope and costs. During this process, we were able to coordinate meetings with Black & Veatch and local operations and water resources planning. Black & Veatch has a team of experts that have been assigned to our water master plan update All members of the team that they assembled have experience with other master plans, including our most recent water master plan update, and this makes them the best selection for the continued work. The scope of services includes base services provided through tasks 100 to 600, and task 700 covers the ongoing costs after the update is delivered and completed. Task 100, project administration, is primarily for managing the project timelines, budget, and facilitation of meetings. I will cover tasks 200 through 700 on the following slides. Each task includes a stakeholder meeting and technical memo that will result in separate chapters that make up the water master plan update. Task 200, Water System Demand Projections, includes a review of relevant planning documents to identify existing and future service area changes since the last Water Master Plan update. Afterward, population projections will be completed citywide and by pressure zones. Billing data and SCADA will be used to determine current use and develop future uses. SCADA will also be used to develop diurnal demand curves for pressure zones and neighborhood groups within pressure zones. Finally, capacity for pump stations and water reservoirs will be integrated into the demand scenarios for existing and future uses. Black & Veatch will integrate service goals for the city to further develop demand requirements beyond our actual needs. For task 300, distribution system modeling, the hydraulic model will be updated using our GIS and as-built from projects completed since the last update. The demand scenarios from task 200 will then be integrated into the model. Black & Veatch will install temporary pressure and flow monitors and use hydrant testing to calibrate the model. This task will also verify where permanent monitoring will best serve our local operations team. For task 400, system risk and redundancy analysis, Black & Veatch will evaluate the distribution system hydraulics to identify potential operational issues. This will assist in developing recommended improvements. For well conversions, operational requirements for various scenarios will be run for converting emergency wells to production wells. This was part of the scope refinement from our water resources planning team. For fire flow evaluations, which is continued from our last master plan update, they did the 2018 fire resiliency, areas will be identified where pressure and flow can further be optimized for public safety. For Task 500, Capital Improvement Planning and Prioritization, Black & Beach will review the previous Water Master Plan update and compare the previously recommended projects against the results of this new risk and redundancy analysis. They'll work with asset management, local operations, and water resources planning teams to confirm, modify, or cancel any of the projects from our CIP database that that need editing or adjustment. They will also help us to further develop our risk and prioritization methodology for water CIP. This will include a business risk exposure for each of the projects. Recently, you guys have seen three different BRBAs come out of the regional system, so it's gonna be a similar process to that. An optimization engine will be used to incorporate budget and other constraints that'll help the timing with each of our projects. Finally, a risk assessment dashboard created using inputs and outputs for prioritization will be presented. This dashboard will be capable of being used across all divisions of the Water Department for consistent evaluation and prioritizing projects against each other. So as you can imagine, it's probably pretty easy, or it is easy to weigh a water main project against another water main project or a sewer project against a sewer project. But to weigh projects between local sewer and the regional projects against each other, it's a difficult process. So this will help with that. For task 600, the master plan report will be submitted as a draft, which will be reviewed by stakeholders. A meeting between Black and Beach and the city will be held to address comments that will be incorporated into the final update. Additionally, Black and Beach will deliver the hydraulic model and risk matrix visualization tools to the city. Ongoing support after the delivery of the update includes annual updates of our hydraulic model until the next water master plan update is complete. And Black & Veatch will also provide several modeling scenarios for CIP and development projects and the well projects over until the next update is completed as well. That completes the summary of scope for this next update, and with that, it is recommended by the Water Department that the Board of Public Utilities by motion approve a professional services agreement with Black & Veatch to provide professional services for the Water Master Plan update in the amount not to exceed $733,136. Any questions or comments?

Thank you very much for your presentation. I'll open it up for board member questions or comments.

Board member DeWitt. Yes. The consultant comparison. I'm a person that believes we should try to save as much money as possible. And whenever someone comes in with a lower bid, I believe if they could perform just as well as the higher bid, they should be taken. So as I looked at this, I was especially if you'll excuse the expression, surprised that it was like, oh, we're just going with the same folks we've had. I think these other folks have come forward and nowhere in the presentation has it been shown that they cannot do any of these tasks that are required. So why is it that we're picking the higher cost consultant? Is it continuity or something like that?

It would have, what would have happened is because the scope that the second consultant presented was so rudimentary and basic, they didn't have like a generalized idea of what our needs as the city would be. It was almost like a copy and paste of our RFP and lacked a lot of detail. That probably would have resulted in me coming back to the Board of Public Utilities several times for additional funding requests.

With that in mind, is it considered inappropriate for the staff to approach someone who's given them a rudimentary proposal and say we need to flesh this out better and hear from you folks if you can actually do everything we need?

Would you mind taking this, Director Burke? Sure. We would treat all, we put out a request for proposals and they need to respond and we evaluate the proposals based on the response. So it would not be appropriate. That would give an unfair advantage to one versus the other.

Finally, for that explanation.

Other board member questions or comments? Board Member Wright. Yeah, I'd just like to comment that this is a request for proposals and not a bid. It's a totally different thing. The consultant has to prove in their proposal that they're qualified to do the work and that is judged by staff. So it appears to me, in this case, the consultant didn't make that cut. and so that's why they weren't chosen. So I know from personal experience that if you go down the low bid or the low cost consultant, it can actually cost you a lot in the future if things actually just don't work. So those are my comments, thank you.

Thank you, other board member questions or comments? All right.

I'll make a motion.

Let's open it up for public comment first on item 9.1. If you wish to make a public comment, please move to the podium. I see no one rise. Now I'll allow you to make a motion.

Thank you.

I would like to move that the Board of Public Utilities approve a professional services agreement with Black and Vich to provide engineering design and consultant services for the water master plan update in the amount not to exceed $733,136. Second. Oh, we got a tie second. Give it to the other guy.

We have a motion by Vice Chair Arnone, seconded by Board Member Wright. May we have a roll call vote, please?

Board Member Wright.

Aye.

Board Member Misler. Aye. Board Member DeWitt.

No.

Board Member Battenfort.

Aye.

Vice Chair Arnone.

Aye.

Chair Galvin.

Aye.

Let the record reflect that motion passes with five affirmative votes with Board Member DeWitt voting no.

Thank you again for the presentation. We'll now move to item 9.2. Director Burke.

Thank you, Chair Govan and members of the board. Our second report item is a contract award, Fulton Road Sewer Main Improvements, West Third Street to Santa Rosa Creek, contract number C02117. And Landon Lockrey, Assistant Engineer with our Capital Improvement Projects Team will be making the presentation.

Welcome, Mr. Lockrey.

Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. My name is Landon Lockery. I'm an assistant engineer and project manager for Transportation and Public Works Capital Improvement Project Engineering. Today, staff are bringing to the board a recommendation for the award of construction contract for the Fulton Road Sewer Main Improvements Project. The presentation today will cover these five key components. First some information and project background details. Next, we will cover some of the key components that make up the project. Then we will review the results of our bid opening in April. Then I will review the request for withdrawal by the apparent low bidder. And finally, we will present our staff recommendation. Some background information on the project. The project is located on Fulton Road at the crossing of Santa Rosa Creek between West College Avenue and West Third Street, notated with the purple color line in the map. The sewer main to be replaced and relocated serves the Countryside North community, which is notated with the blue sewer lines. South of the new sewer main installation, indicated by green circles, is where existing sewer manholes will be abandoned. The 18-inch sewer main was originally installed in 1969. In 1984, the Fulton Road Bridge was widened, and in 1985, the 18-inch sewer pipeline was lined with a polyethylene liner. The liner is currently deformed and constricting flow, with conditions gradually getting worse. This has resulted in a need for high-frequency maintenance of the sewer line. This is an inspection photo from the 2014 of some of the damage between manholes 13 and 12. The elliptical shape is evident in the photo. Video evidence since that time has indicated the problem is only getting worse. In 2018, our consultant team completed review and analysis of the repair and replacement options available for the defective sewer main. The five alternatives analyzed were slip lining, open cut replacement, open cut with siphon, directional drilling with siphon, and pump station with force main. The final recommendation was open cut replacement. Next I will be reviewing some of the key components of this project, which include the following. acquisition of permanent easements and temporary construction easements, obtaining regulatory permits, determining and finalizing the mitigation, monitoring, and reporting program requirements, construction of a sewer mainline to be installed at significant depth, and the Santa Rosa Creek crossing and bypass of creek flow. The City of Santa Rosa completed the acquisition of public sewer easements as well as temporary construction easement portion on the property owned by Countryside North Owners Association as well as Sonoma County Water Agency. The public sewer easement and temporary construction easement are shown in the green hatch where the new sewer line will be constructed crossing the creek. The next key component is regulatory permits. The project required review and approval from several regulatory agencies. The agencies requiring regulatory approval and permitting included the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The next key project component I will cover is the mitigation, monitoring, and reporting program. Completion of the CEQA process and obtaining the necessary permits from the regulatory agencies, the following were identified as biological resources that required specialized monitoring, reporting, and planning. Roosting bats, nesting birds, yellow-legged frogs, western pond turtle, a fish management plan, and rare plant surveys. An archeological and tribal cultural resources treatment plan was approved by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria after an extended review and approval process. As part of the offsite riparian mitigation plan, planting at Peterson Park shall take place from February to March 15th. One of the key components that makes this project unique and somewhat complex is the depth of the new eight inch sewer main to be installed. At some locations will be 25 to 30 feet in approximate depth. Other elements of the creek crossing that make the project unique is that the new eight inch sewer main will be installed in an 18 inch PVC pipe as a casing pipe to provide additional protection and durability for the section of the sewer main that is directly below the creek bed and channel. This area leader shows the limits of dewatering work in the Creek Channel, which is limited to occur between August 1st and October 15th, per the CDFW permit restrictions. This note indicates the limits of the Creek Channel work to take place between June 15th and October 15th, per the CDFW permit restrictions. And finally, these are the pathways on each side of the creek, which the contractor is required to have at least temporarily restored by August 20th due to the Santa Rosa Marathon scheduled to take place that weekend. Here is a picture of the bridge and the creek where our new sewer main will be installed. And here is an example of a creek bypass at another City of Santa Rosa project. The project was advertised for bid on April 9th, 2026. Five bids were received on April 28th, 2026, a low apparent bid of approximately 2.0 million and a high bid of approximately 3.8 million. The apparent low bidder, Argonaut Constructors Inc. of Santa Rosa submitted a request to be relieved of bid on April 29th, 2026. Per public contract code 5100, this request to be relieved is permissible if specific parameters are found to have been met. Pursuant to public contract code, the bidder shall establish that the mistake was made in filling out the bid and not due to error in judgment or carelessness in inspecting the site of the work or reading the plans and specifications. This request to be relieved was received in a timely manner. The request has been reviewed by the City Attorney's Office and Transportation and Public Works have found this request to be relieved of their bid to meet the requirements identified in Public Contract Code Section 5100. It is recommended by staff that the Board, by motion, relieve Argonaut Constructors, Inc. of Santa Rosa of their bid Award contract number C02117, Fulton Road Sewer Main Improvements, West Third Street to Santa Rosa Creek in the amount of $3,028,600 to the second lowest responsible bidder, Team Gelati Inc. of Petaluma, California. Approve a 10% contract contingency and authorize a total contract amount of $3,331,460. Thank you for your time, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for your presentation. I'll open up now for any Board Member questions or comments. Board Member DeWitt.

Yes, thank you for the presentation. Thank you for choosing the second lowest bidder. I'm curious about the mitigation being at Peterson Park. Is there a way the mitigation could be done at place to play, which is closer to this site and which is in need of basic improvements, if you will?

Yeah, I'm not sure I can speak to whether or not the mitigation could be done elsewhere. I know that this mitigation was reviewed and approved through the CEQA and permitting process. I think the original intention was to attempt to do mitigation on site where the construction was taking place. And then through the course of the permitting process, it was determined that the mitigation should take place Peterson Park, and that's all through the permitting process. So I'm not sure that we could pivot at this point to change the mitigation.

Thank you for that explanation. I'm hoping there'll be a way in the future where should something like this come up where numerous parks are nearby, you can look and see what the Parks Department might think be a really good way to enhance their abilities, because they've been struggling with place to play for decades. Thank you kindly.

Other board member questions or comments? All right. We'll open it up for public comment on item number 9.2. If you wish to make a public comment, please move to the podium. Seeing no one rise, we'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

Okay, I'll make a motion, and I'll move that the Board of Public Utilities Relieve, number one, Relieve Argonaut Contractors, Inc., of the Santa Rosa of their bid. Number two, award contract number C-02117, Fulton Road Sewer Main Improvements, West 3rd Street to Santa Rosa Creek, in the amount of $3,028,600 to the second lowest responsible bidder, Team Gelati, Inc., of Petaluma, California. Number three, approve a 10% contract contingency. And number four, authorize a total contract amount of $3,331,460. Second.

We have a motion by Vice Chair Arnone, seconded by Board Member Badenfort. We have a roll call vote, please. I already asked for public comments. That's okay.

Board Member Wright is absent. Board Member Meisler? Aye. Board Member DeWitt.

Yes.

Board Member Badenfort. Aye. Vice Chair Inouye. Aye. Chair Galvin.

Aye.

Okay, let the record reflect that resolution passes unanimously with Board Member Wright absent.

Thank you again for the presentation. Good luck with the project. Next item on our agenda is public comments on non-agenda matters. If you wish to make a comment on non-agenda matters, move to the podium. Please state your name for the record and wait until the timer starts.

Janice Carmen, and I'm going to bring up PG&E again. After the first time I brought them up about six weeks ago or two months ago when this board was allowing the easement on Harville Road, Anyway, they still haven't paid their fire victims, and we had a terrible scare about two weeks ago with that awful wind. And on the block where I live in Rincon Valley, two big limbs fell down on someone's house, and the wind was so terrible everywhere. was petrified the fires were going to be here any minute, you know. But somebody did die that weekend and I'm also noticing trees that are in the wires and that was supposed to be their responsibility after the fires. So I just want to keep this in public knowledge that PG&E should be paying attention and they're actually trying to sell the company, and they're also very involved in trying to get out from liability with the dams on the Eel River, which is really important to Sonoma County as well. So that's it, but thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you for your comments. Any other public comments? We have no referrals, we have no written communications.

Board Member DeWitt. This isn't a report, this is a comment and a question because I'm still learning and I'm trying to figure it out. When I see people get proclamations here and I see good things happening, I wonder, do they do retirement parties still? Back in the day, if people had been around in a spot for 20, 30 years, there'd also be, besides the piece of paper and the picture, there'd be some fun involved. So I was curious and I went to the TAC, the Technical Advisory Committee, Water Advisory Committee at the beginning of the week and I didn't speak so well. I'm not really good at public speaking. So I had wanted to see if it was possible to have a regular citizen, somebody that comes to meetings and participates get some kind of retirement um appreciation also in this case uh brendel edelman who's been doing good things for decades they'd already given her a paper proclamation and i didn't explain i was looking for a party i was looking for a way to celebrate these people that get involved we've had dick dowd Excuse me, yeah, Richard Dowd. We've had Richard Carlisle, Mr. Mullen that just left. We've had people who've been really involved for many years. Is there a way that we can do some sort of a meet and greet with these kind of people? Have Jerry come and talk to us newbies and let us all learn in a nice, fun way and not be so officially constrained, if you will. My apologies if I'm too irreverent, but thank you kindly for the time.

Appreciate the comments. I'm sure we can talk to staff and at least address the issue.

I can help cover refreshments. Right.

Okay. Any public comments on our board member report? Seeing none, director's report.

Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. I have a couple things I wanted to update the board on. First, I wanted to let the board know that at the Wednesday night market on May 20th, we had our City Works Festival and it was a great success. We had our local water and sewer operations team, our asset management team, administrative team, as well as some of our sustainability folks, and we had incredibly long lines of participation at our City Works Festival, in particular with our sewer cleaning exhibit, which the kids had a great kick out of, so I just wanted to acknowledge and thank the team it's a lot of work that they put in to do these kind of events and it was fantastic i also wanted to remind the board that we have another big event coming up which is our water smart expo on june 17th from 5 to 8 30 and that'll be at the wednesday night market that'll be highlighting all of our water use efficiency related programs as well as vendors and other team members in the water department I wanted to let the board know that thank you to the board's leadership and work and the council's leadership as well. We had our kickoff meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers for the design and environmental of phase two of our Lano trunk lining project. As you may recall, we worked really hard with our local assembly members as well as our senators from California to receive a Water Resources Development Act appropriation which allows us to start this project so a little over three and a half million dollars and we are we've kicked that off so it's very exciting to finally get that project moving forward and then last again thank you to the board's leadership I wanted to let you know that the PG&E fleet program accepted our application we have a signed project and been assigned a program manager. So we're going to be able to move forward on that project, which we brought forward to the board at the last meeting. And very last, just a reminder more for the public, that we still have an opening on the Board of Public Utilities. And so if anyone is interested, they should submit an application. Information is available online at srcity.org. i think it's clerk but i could be wrong on that address but if you go to srcity.org you will definitely find where you can submit your applications for boards and commissions and that's my report and i'm happy to answer any questions

Thank you, any questions for the director, yes.

Yes, thank you for that report. I was curious because earlier it was mentioned we're doing a lining project, polyethylene liner, it became deformed after 40 years. Have they stepped away from using that type of material in this new liner that's going on and, Bill?

This will be a CIPP liner, cast in place liner. We had provided some updates in the past, but I can get you more definition. It's a very good way to reinforce our sewer trunks and will last for numerous years.

Great, good to hear that. I was just curious, is it typically considered 40 years for these things to last?

I'd have to get you back on that. I don't wanna give wrong information.

I'll catch up with you another time. Thank you for the information.

Other board member questions or comments for the director? All right, we'll open it up for public comment on item number 15. If he was to make a public comment, please move to the podium. Seeing no one rise, that concludes our agenda for today. So we are adjourned. See you in a couple weeks. Thank you.