Grand Jury Report, now that I’ve finished reading it.

OK, this is going to be a long one, and a definite flashback to 2008.

The Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury has a long history of negative reports about the SCVWD. While I was campaigning, I met with Sid Seidenstein to discuss the issues raised in the last report, which came out in 2006. It’s not too simplistic to say that the Grand Jury then found that the District spends too much of the public’s money with too little transparency, and this report is no different.

Many people, I among them, believe that higher water prices are necessary to increase water conservation. But a huge hurdle in Santa Clara County is that this increase would go to the SCVWD. My short summary of how wholesale water rates are set in this county is that the District decides how much money it wants to spend, then divides that by acre-feet of water and comes up with what it’s going to charge. Contrast that with the city of San José, which knows how much money it can expect, and budgets to fit that constraint.

It was very striking to me in all of the board meetings I attended last spring, how often the directors, especially Director Kamei, would exclaim in surprise that the County, or San José would want the District to pay for something (be it inspection of boats for quagga mussels, or studies of emergency ferry service in the south San Francisco Bay.) The District is where the money is!

The only review of the District’s budget and spending is the District’s own Board of Directors (BOD). The District proposed in 2005, and the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors (BOS) supported, legislation to sever any District accountability to the BOS as of January 1, 2007, leaving the District with no oversight.

This just makes me crazy. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors is an elected body. The Board of Directors of the Santa Clara County Water District is an elected body. In both cases, the electorate is the oversight. Now, it’s so true that most voters don’t bother to go down to the bottom of the ballot and think about their vote for the SCVWD. Ask me how I know. But it doesn’t mean that the District has “no oversight.” Only 28% of registered voters bothered to show up for the May special election, and no one is claiming that the result on Props 1A-1E is somehow invalid. An elected board is accountable to the public, and, if the public isn’t bothering to hold them accountable, then no added layer of “oversight” is going to change that relationship.

That said, there are lots of juicy quotes that I love in this report. The discussion of Clean Safe Creeks, (Measure B, passed in 2000) shows that the District worked to raise as much money as possible.

An acceptable “price point” was found – $39 per parcel. They polled the public on price points and found $39 would be what voters would accept. Program funding was NOT based on the cost of needed projects.

And, in fact, Measure B funds are not sufficient to complete all of the promised projects.

The first part of the Grand Jury report also presents this great graphic showing the increase in District staffing:

The report states that no persuasive reason was presented for the huge increase.

The second part of the report deals with the new water quality laboratory (WQL). This all happened before I started attending board meetings, so I have no personal insights to offer. But the report is pretty damning.

The initial 1987 study called for a 7000 square foot building. The 2001 cost estimate was $8.1M for a 16,500 square foot building. By the time the building was completed in 2008, the size had increased to 18,400 square feet at a total cost of $21,195,666.
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All existing equipment was moved to the new WQL building. New equipment has been added only to replace existing obsolete equipment. No additional staffing was needed. The WQL occupies the entire building, but rooms, labs, and offices are very sparsely laid out – with possibly 50% of the space remaining unused.

But when the report turns to two Alviso projects, I was there during the Board’s discussions, and at the public meeting in Alviso. Turning to the “Alviso Slough Restoration Project”

In 2002 a simple vegetation removal project was proposed to improve channel maintenance at less than $1M. By 2008, it ballooned into a monstrous $22M project, whose main purpose is actually recreational, not environmental.
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Despite District engineering analysis that removal of vegetation can increase flood risk and attempts by the district to communicate this to Alviso citizens, the Alviso community continues to hold the belief that the vegetation removal from
the Project will reduce flood risk.
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The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Program, will slowly bring in salt water and use natural “scouring” to restore the slough to something closer to its original state. No dredging is involved in this project. It will take more time to achieve the Slough project objectives but with minimal environmental risk.
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While Alviso historically has been neglected and underserved by San Jose, county and district agencies, the District is not within its charter to use funds to correct issues that go so far outside flood control and water management. Funds are needed for other flood control and infrastructure projects. The lack of financial support from the City of San Jose and Santa Clara County is an indication of lower priority relative to other public needs.

In a nutshell, the community of Alviso believes that this is a flood control project, despite direct statements to the contrary by District staff. The true rationale for this project is recreational and economic enhancement for the traditionally underserved community of Alviso. This is not the District’s responsibility, and, in fact, the District has real flood protection commitments elsewhere that it is not meeting. Further, the stated recreational goals can be accomplished, albeit more slowly, by other projects that are already underway. Whether the city of San José owes Alviso for its past suffering has never been discussed over the city as a whole, but Alviso residents certainly believe that they are owed reparations by someone. And, see above, the District is where the money is.

I should also point out that the District has recently re-opened the public comments for the draft Environmental Impact Report for this project, since they initially underestimated the danger of stirring up mercury-laden sediment during the dredging.

Finally, the gazebo. The SCVWD already has two outdoor classrooms that are used maybe 10 times a year. Although Director Sanchez did wonder at the Board meeting I attended, when he could go to a garden supply store and get a gazebo for his backyard for $1000, why it would cost almost $2 million to build this gazebo, the Board went on to authorize adding lighting and bathrooms to this project, somehow imagining that it would be filled with children enough to justify the cost.

No estimates have been published as to how often the Gold Street Education Center would be used as a classroom.
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The GSEC site is at the entrance to the Summerset Mobile Estates, a mobile home park that has been owned for many years by the family of the Board member from District 3. In June, 2006, the same Board member recused himself, upon advice of District Counsel, from participating in any manner on the GSEC because his family owns property near the site. He had failed to recuse himself from voting on the GSEC at earlier Board meetings.

The Director from District 3 is, of course, Richard Santos.

The SCVWD is where the money is, and the community of Alviso, at least, has figured out how to get some of it, although the County and San José have tried. But as long as voters don’t exercise their oversight, no number of Grand Jury reports is going to change how the District works.

Perhaps paradoxically, what I favor is spending more money. That is, making Director positions full time, salaried positions with dedicated staff, but also with term limits. This would attract younger candidates who could devote their full time to the job. Contested races might also attract more interest from voters.