Flood Control and Water Conservation District - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Welcome everyone to the 09/16/2025 Flood Control and Water Conservation District meeting. We will have the roll call, please.

Director Alessio?

Present.

Director Cottrell is en route. Director Dientali? Here. Director Doran? I'm en route too. Here. Director Lopez Ortega? Here. Director Manfrey. Here. Director Moeller.

Here.

Director Ramos. Here. Director Brando Cruz is sitting in for Pierre Washington. Here. Vice chair Sedgley. Here. And chair Gallagher.

Here. Thank you.

Please join me and stand if you are able to the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

All right. Thank you. We do not have any presentations and commendations. We do have consent items 4A through 4D. And do I have any public comment on those consent items? Okay, I'll bring it back to the board. Does anyone have anything that they would like to pull or comment on? All right, motion by Ramos. Second. Second by Manfrey. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. All right. We are now at public comment. If there is anyone who would like to address the board on any matter over which we have jurisdiction but is not on the agenda, please come forward. And I don't see anything. And so we are going to move to our administrative items. Seven

a,

approve and authorize project partnership agreement number 260135 b and amendment three of the project cooperation agreement number two six zero one four nine b between the Department of the Army and the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District for construction of the Napa River Napa Creek flood protection project. Mister Thomassar.

Good morning. Rick Thomassar, district manager. So, yes, this morning, I'm very pleased to finally bring to to you the culmination of a couple years' worth of work here, the agreement that will actually give us access to $48,300,000 and allow the government to reimburse us for our costs on the project. You know, we are, all ready to go, all dressed up and ready to go with the flood walls north of the bypass contract. So it's all very good timing.

We had hoped, the only disappointment, slight disappointment we had is we had hoped today to be hosting the lieutenant colonel from the Sacramento District, to do a little bit of a joint signing and a field visit. Unfortunately, we're not able to do that because the corps has still is awaiting their, delegation of authority from the assistant secretary of the army down to the local commander. So, the corps, you know, sends us greetings and apologizes that they can't be here today. But we do have the finalized agreement. The, the document is literally on the desk of the assistant secretary of the army in in Washington.

The gentleman, his name is Adam Tell. He was just recently appointed by the, administration, effective sometime in mid August, and the the the man's been quite busy. As you can imagine, he, has been apparently testifying in front of Congress for, you know, a couple weeks. So and he was just there yesterday, I believe. So, you know, he he's the one that the law requires approve under the Section two zero four approach that we're using on the project.

He's the one who has to approve the agreement. He's also got on his desk our, it's called the, DRR, the, design recommendations report, which is the local commander has, sent up. They've at a local level, they've approved our design, and they are asking for authorization from the ASA for us to implement it. And he's got also the finding of no significant impact, which is the the NEPA sign off for the course. So he's got all the documents ready to go.

We're just awaiting his approval of that. But a little bit about what the agreement does for so there's two agreements and then an implementation plan that's attached to your staff report. So the first one, let's just talk about the PCA amendment. So the PCA, the Project Cooperation Agreement, is the agreement that we've been operating under for twenty some years, to implement the project. And what PCA amendment three is about is it's a very short amendment that basically just says everything we've built to date, is the project that functioned under the PCA and going forth with these two increments, increment two and increment three, will be all that work will be done under the PPA.

So it's just a formality to draw a line between the two types of agreements because they are the some of the cost share and other financial accounting aspects are a bit different in the way we're going about this because the PCA, the agreement to date, has been something where the federal government expended the funds for federal share of costs. And we had our cost share. Going forward, as you know, we're going to fund the entire project and seek reimbursement, when we complete and our first opportunity to seek reimbursement is when we complete the first discrete segment of increment two, which is the we're going to be building the flood walls, north of the bypass from south to north. So we'll start near the River Terrace Inn basically and complete the segment up to Lincoln Avenue in the first year of construction. And once we've effectively completed that floodwall, we can apply for our first, bout of reimbursement.

So and then when we complete the work North Of Lincoln, we'll apply for that funding, that reimbursement, and then, also the closure on bypass walls. So and simultaneously, we're also advancing the design of Increment 3, which is the flood walls from the Hap Building South to Imola. So that design is underway. You approved the contract for design in your last meeting, I believe. And so we're working on that.

And hopefully, our goal is to have a very careful balance of doing everything as quickly as we can with the cash flow that we have at hand. So need some of the reimbursements to start before we actually start construction of Increment 3, but we have that all laid out. What else can I tell you? So with what I'm asking today is, the board's approval for chair Gallagher to be able to sign the agreement once the army corps actually has the signature page ready with the delegated authority. And that hopefully should maybe be in the next week or couple weeks.

I'm assuming it's it's not going to hold us up in anything we had planned to do. We have a lot of preparatory work where we've also you just approved our, plans and specs, and we are going to go out for bids starting around the end of the month. And we have about a two month window of soliciting, contractors for that construction project. So we have before we actually, sign any contractual requirements, we should have this all buttoned up. I think that's it. Can I answer any questions?

I'm going to check and see if there's any public comment.

Okay.

Any public comment? All right. And anyone have any questions?

No questions. Just a statement on what another milestone this whole that began with Measure A. It's another milestone, progress. I know that there's some impacts to different property owners and residents. But the end result is some amazing work that's done by our district and our community and staff. Like the flood control is all fantastic. So I trust Chair Gatlinger to authorize $48,000,000 in expenditures. Thank

you. Director Abasio.

Great comments. Thank you, Mayor. And I do believe I recall you wrote a letter to Congressman Thompson for support of this funding. Is that correct? Or was that a different letter for different funding for different flood projects? Do you recall that? I recall that. I'm gonna give you credit for it anyway. So, I wanna thank the mayor, for working with congressman Thompson on, this, along with with staff too. I I do have to ask, is there any concern we will not receive the reimbursement? And do we have a reserve or a plan B if that is the case?

I don't believe there's a big concern. There's no the the funding was authorized by congress in fiscal twenty twenty one. So it's already in the the hands of the core. The core has been spending the funding towards this purpose. So they've we've spent many millions of dollars towards design. We're ready to go. The the commander of the Sacramento District has approved the design. The the the corp participated for a couple years here. So they've started to spend the funds. Under normal circumstances, no.

I wouldn't say there's much concern. You know, just need to await the ASA's approval is all that I can really say, I guess.

Okay. Yeah.

And And what we approve this today, the project will move forward and then incrementally we will be applying for reimbursement.

Correct.

That's already been done and dollars have already been spent.

Right. Right. I mean, as soon as the agreement is signed and once we complete a segment of the construction, we can apply for reimbursement, including our design cost to date. We will be submitting a very large reimbursement request. But that's a ways away.

What the bigger milestone we won't award the construction contract without the signatures of the Army. So we're not going to take that risk obviously, without coming to you. There won't be any big expenditure funds beyond what we've already done without the board knowing before Okay.

I'm just a little I don't know if I'm just unique in this where I'm feeling uncertain and not feeling I mean, I not that you're not reassuring me. The time doesn't give me the reassurance that we can count on things that we'd normally be able to count on and not even be able to hesitate. So that's why I asked because we all want to see this project move forward. We know it's all in the best interest for public good, public safety. And it's been a long time coming, and you guys have all done a lot of work on it. So I just had to air that concern. And thank you for your response.

Okay.

Anyone else? All right.

Well, thank you. This is a huge milestone, very exciting for the community, and we need to approve and authorize. Would anyone like to make a motion?

So moved.

Second. Okay.

We have a motion by Alessio, a second by Lopez Ortega. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Thomas, sir.

You're welcome.

We do not have any public hearings. District manager and engineers reports and announcements.

Sure. Well, I can add a little bit more. One thing I didn't mention. So as far as real estate acquisition for the project, we're in good shape. We have effective the September 29, we'll have all property rights secured.

So there's a few properties still in escrow, but we have a provision in our agreement to have access if we need it. And there are a few eminent domain cases are progressing along and we don't have any discussion today under closed session, but next month we probably will have an update on any of those cases. Other than that, I don't know if Andrew, do we do you have any? Okay. So Andrew is going to be busy getting the contract out on the street.

And as I mentioned, that will be a couple months of solicitation. He'll host a meeting of contractors and site walks and things like that. We may start some preparatory vegetation management work in October. So you might start seeing some physical action going on. But other than that, we're full speed ahead.

Okay. Great. Thank you. We will move to Board of Directors reports and announcements. Anyone?

I would just like to say, happy Mexican Independence Day. Great. Happy Mexican Independence Day. Yes. Thanks so much for Today. Recognizing. Celebration in Mexico. Absolutely. Do you have celebrate and do are any jurisdictions having celebrations up and down the county? No. No. Not sure. Last Sunday, a Latino group in Calistoga, they did have a celebration. And today at 03:00, we're gonna raise the flag. Great.

Small ceremony on that. Thank you. Thank you for noting that and for that information as well. You. That was happened in Calistoga. Thank you.

Okay. Anyone have any future agenda item? Alright. I think this might be a record. No closed session. Alright. It is 09:20, and we are going to adjourn to our next meeting, Tuesday, 10/14/2025 at 9AM. And so we are adjourned.

There you

go. That was a question. Oh, I guess not. Okay.