Bolinas Community Public Utility District
Amendment to the Minutes of the August 18,
2004 Board of Directors Meeting approved by the BCPUD Board of Directors
at its regular meeting on April 19, 2006
Transcription of Item number 8– Mosquito Abatement West Nile Virus
Task Force Update
BCPUD Board President Joan Bertsch: “We are going to move to Item number
8, the Mosquito Abatement West Nile Virus Task Force Update Report.”
Stacey Henderson: “Yes, I apologize. I left only briefly and
it was just when you called my item. I was actually sitting outside waiting
up until a few moments before that. I do apologize for not being here
when the item was called. This is just a summary of the action in California.
I wait until the morning of because it changes so rapidly these days.”
Cela O’Connor: “Stacey, pardon me, do you have the results of the Fairfax
meeting?”
Stacey: “The meeting?”
Cela: “Yes, the meeting. They had a meeting on the … “
Stacey: “My understanding was that they were able to postpone… this
is based on reading the paper just as I was just coming in here is that that
they managed to come to an agreement on how it was going to be solved.
Her question was that, of course, there is a big controversy going on in
Fairfax right now regarding a spraying issue. Fairfax had to get passed
an ordinance against, specifically against, insecticide use; whereas,
with the conditions currently in place, the health issue would give the mosquito
abatement district the authority, if they wished to, to go in and take care
of the health issue whichever way was necessary. Rather then going
against what anybody wished, they worked out a way . . . the town council
has agreed to get the information out so everybody will take care of their
own backyard sources, so that it won’t be necessary. And that they
will take responsibility for getting that out to the individuals because
that would be what the mosquito abatement agency would want anyway.
This spraying of anything is always their last choice, when all else fails,
to prevent death and injury to, you know, to human beings. So, they
were very happy to negotiate that kind of settlement. Jim’s real good at
that stuff. So, that’s the answer to that, as long as that continues
working, it’s not a problem.
“Again, I’m Stacey Henderson and I represent the BCPUD to the West Nile Task
Force of Marin County. This is what the map looks like today as far
as California goes.”
Director Don Smith: “I guess we’ve been hit, eh?”
Stacey: “Yes. . . “
Director Jack McClellan: “Fairfax, right?”
Stacey” “Fairfax; that’s where the bird decided to stop and die, in
Fairfax.”
[Discussion in the background devolving into comments about rabid bats.]
Director Joan Bertsch: “Okay, let’s try to leave this to Stacey’s reporting
here.”
Stacey: “Yes, bats in Bolinas and the birds are in Fairfax. At
any rate, it is starting to pick-up. I do have some good news for you in
that . . . everything’s very much coming together. There’s been
a lot of cooperation -- really, really, wonderful cooperation as far
as getting the services of our mosquito abatement district out here. It’s
gone to the LAFCO’s and I actually found that with getting enough questions
. . . where I had to go and find out what they were saying about us . . .
and if anybody’s interested I do have the, both the Marin and the Sonoma
County LAFCO’s reports about what we’re doing here. And its really
good stuff. It looks like its going to go through both the recommendations
from both the staff reports, from both the LAFCO’s, Marin and the Sonoma,
both agencies are both recommending that they go ahead and go forth with
the election. So, it looks like its going to go ahead and go out as
planned. They wanted some slight wording difference from Marin County.
I couldn’t understand what was going on; because there are two different
counties involved, they defer to whichever one has the greater percentage
of value of assessment. So it has to go as the lead agency being the
Sonoma’s LAFCO --but it goes to Marin County for an advisory . . . to evaluate
for information and input. And, the input they’ve gotten is remarkably
positive. I just thought I’d mention this because, with all the things
that tend to be controversial in this county, and one hand not knowing what
the other one is doing, this is unique in the sense that everybody’s coming
together on this one issue. This is where we’re all started talking.
As far as Marin County comments received, staff has received comments in
the form of the attached joint statement issued by the County of Marin Public
Health Officer and the Chief of Environmental Health Services and the joint
statement supports the proposed annexation for a lengthy series of reasons,
and goes on about this. So they are absolutely in unison. Even the
Sonoma County draft report comments that this is the very first time they
have seen this many agencies coming together and working together on a single
cause. It’s turned out to be a real blessing that area. And even in
the environmental area, the San Francisco Bay Joint Ventures has put together
their own communication guidelines for the wetlands because they’re concerned
that people are going to perceive them as causing a problem and contributing
to the disease, with mosquitoes and wetlands, and therefore they’re very
concerned about this. So they have contacted mosquito abatement agencies,
both the Contra Costa and Alameda County are very involved in helping write
this. As was Sarah Warnock and our PRBO. So it’s really showing
that everybody’s coming together on this. What I would like to hopefully
ask is that . . . I would like to ask the BCPUD if they’d be willing
to make a statement in support of this annexation. If you have any
questions that need to be answered, if you have any issues that you haven’t
addressed . . we can get those taken care of so that you can make a
joint consensus statement that you as a group are unified in supporting this.
Matt Lewis: “Supporting what? The annexation . . .”
Stacey: “Right, exactly, into the mosquito abatement agency, before
the election on November 7th .”
Director Vic Amoroso: “We support a “yes” vote on that; is that what
you mean?”
Stacey: “Right, that you support the annexation in joining the district.
That you understand that you will have the opportunity to appoint a representative
from our area to their board. And that governs what they do, in the
same way as you do make decisions for our water board that he asks for permission
to do something and makes recommendation and you folks grant that permission.
And the same way as we’d be electing someone who would serve in that capacity.”
Andy Blake: “I have some late breaking information on drainage that
ties in with this. The mosquito abatement district that Stacey is mentioning,
that we should become part of -- does have a permit with the Corps of Engineers
to do drainage maintenance and it was suggested to me by Liza Crosse today..
not Liza Crosse, excuse me Liz Lewis…
[Inaudible discussion.]
Andy: “Yeah, yeah.. I talked to both of them today, so I’m getting
a little confused. Anyhow, Liz suggested that they need . . .”
Director Amoroso: “Who’s this?”
Andy: “Liz Lewis is the Marin County DPW Watershed and Creeks Naturalist.”
Director Amoroso: “Okay, alright.”
Andy: “And she suggested that, possibly, if we join this group, then
we may be able to get either funds or assistance with doing our drainage
work. And I have the permit, I actually pulled that off the web, and
took a look at it. It doesn’t go far enough, of course, for what we
want to do, but it’s something and they do have equipment, people and resources
so . . “
Stacey: “Once you’re part of the district, yes. They have the permit,
if necessary, to do what’s necessary to control mosquitoes and if that means
opening up the drainage that’s gotten plugged, they can absolutely do that.
If that’s the best way of going about it.”
Andy: “Well, no . . . I’m hedging that because the permit’s very
specific with how far you can go with dealing with drainage . . . you can’t
radically alter a drainage, you can certainly do some maintenance and some
brushwork.”
Director Bertsch: “Okay, well I think that the question is, are we
going to support that so… “
Stacey: “That would be my question.”
Director Bersch: “Jack?”
[Inaudible discussion.]
Director Amoroso: “What ballot is it on?”
Stacey: “It will be a mail out ballot that will be mailed to all homeowners
and property owners in the areas. The assessment would be $19.00 a
year, total cost, which would be re-evaluated and may well go down in the
end of five years. People up north are paying less, but that’s the
start-up cost.”
Director Amoroso: “$19.00 a year?”
Stacey: “ $19.00, per household, per year.”
Director McClellan: “That includes downtown, as well as the Mesa?”
Stacey: “That is the cost per property owner. That’s what would be
attached on. I’m not aware that’s there any other cost. They currently
get a small percentage of the property tax revenue, but that percentage isn’t
going to change because of this, very likely.”
Matt Lewis: “Stacey, this is the ballot going out to all of the West
Marin areas that are not incorporated so far into that . . . “
Stacey: “ . . . that are not currently part of the district.
That includes all of western Sonoma County, as well. Now, my understanding
is that when the vote gets tabulated though, its weighted for the amount
of assets in the area. So, we could, technically, if they didn’t vote
completely positive we couldn’t necessarily overcome that because they carry
more weight then we do. So hopefully I would like to see a very large percentage
of positives and to address anybody’s issues long before we get there.
There’s a lot of mistaken beliefs about what mosquito control does that I’d
like to correct before that time, so there will be a lot of education happening.
And I’ve been in touch with a couple of the bird groups too, PRBO and the
Audubon Canyon. I didn’t know until today that Audubon Canyon has nothing
whatsoever to do with the Audubon Society. I learned today.”
Director Smith: “I have a question Stacey. Suppose that the mosquito
abatement district decides that they’ve tried everything else and its not
working and they want to spray. Do we have an opportunity to say “yes”
or “no”, whether we want that spraying to occur? Or is that .
. . once we join the district, do we have to accept what they decide
to do?”
Stacey: “Joining the district will not change that. They can
do that now. If it’s a public health emergency they don’t have to ask
us. But they don’t generally do that because they do they job very
well. Very, very, rarely they’ll adulticide; and when they do, they
don’t use planes. So that’s the answer . . . the best way to
not get sprayed, is to be part of their district. But if it comes down
to a public health emergency, they are mandated to abate that nuisance, however
they can. They still put the notice out they, and they still tell everybody,
and they try to avoid any area where there’s sensitive people. And
they don’t to do that, as witnessed in Fairfax -- that is not their
knee-jerk reaction to things. I’ve never seen anybody bend over backwards
farther to try to work something out with somebody. They can use their,
“I have to and you have to put up with it” attitude, they don’t do that.
There is always a way, in the way that Jim works, to find a way to solve
the problem without going to extremes like that. He’s one of the most
moderate people I have ever met in my life. He just managed to beautifully
sidestep this confrontation in Fairfax, which was getting very heated, and
managed to find a way to work through that so that people would be safe and
didn’t have to deal with chemicals they felt afraid of. And so, I think
he does a beautiful job of that. So, if you’re thinking of, if we join
them, suddenly we will have to put up with something we don’t have to put
up with now, the answer is no, it’s not like that.”
Matt: “And it seems to me there needs to be some education based on
whether spraying really does work and the health concerns around spraying
before people jump on the bandwagon… “
Stacey: “The representative from the IJ, one of the writers, came to
our West Nile Task Force meeting and basically got an earful. We were
trying to be very tactful about it, this poor lady. There was a lot
of comments about the inflammatory front page article that was really misrepresenting
what was going on there. And that, I think the headline was “Pesticide
Peril”. And it was very, it was not accurately portrayed and I think she
got that clear. Today’s paper, by the way, was much much better about
portraying things accurately. We felt like that was really heard. Because
it can do a great disservice to the community making them afraid of something
which either they didn’t need to be afraid of or not cooperating in a way
which they could solve the problem themselves. There doesn’t need to
be that fear, they’re not going to come down and spray things with you, it’s
not like . . . they were never involved with malathyon by the way,
that was another agency. Talking about the fruit fly business, Mediterranean
fruit fly, that was not them, they weren’t doing that.”
Director Bertsch: “Okay, do we have a .. did you have a comment?”
Stacey: “Any questions?”
Director Amoroso: “This is all you want us to do, is just pass a motion
that we support our entry. . . a positive motion . . . “
Stacey: “To be annexed into it . . . that you would look forward to
this and support it. That we would hopefully have a letter to that
effect that could be public.”
[Unknown speaker]: “So this is allowing the district to be annexed
by the mosquito abatement district?”
Stacey: “Right, so that all of Marin and all of Sonoma will then have
their services the way that the east side has now.”
Director Bertsch: “Second to that motion?”
Director Smith: “I’ll second it.”
Director Bertsch: “All in favor?”
[“Ayes”]
Stacey: “Thank you very much. And the work was going on -- I
had a long list of people, I’ve answered calls, I’ve done it on a pretty
much daily basis for either advice or mosquito fish. And I do a lot
of information and I’ve put together little packets for screening roofs that
I hand out with screening and zip ties, and it looks like this. I’d
like to make it look a little more elegant, so that we can do roofs and that’s
working out real well with my little diagram. If I was into the money
here, I would copyright this thing but I think it’s just better to hand them
out.”
Director Bertsch: “Okay, Stacey. Thank you very much.”
Stacey: “Thank you.”
Cela: “Stacey, a question. How about the guppies?
The water bodies that feed into creek systems and you can’t use those . ..
”
Stacey: “You can’t use those. The studies are still going on,
so I haven’t gotten the authority to say “use this instead” by anybody who
said its okay to do that yet.”
Cela: “I thought Fish & Game did okay that.”
Stacey: “Well, it hasn’t gotten down to me. I guess I answer
to the Marin/Sonoma Mosquito Abatement Agency as the authority to whom I’ve
been trained and who I . . . you know, I’m the liasion . . .”
Cela: “I’m just wondering who has the . . . [inaudible]”
Stacey: “I don’t know, but I know that [inaudible] was trying to work
on it, to find out if they could get it replaced, the one we’re currently
using. And when that happens, I look forward to it.”
[Unknown speaker]: You only have one guppy?”
Stacey: “I don’t have any! [laughter]”
Director Bertsch: “Okay, we are going to go along to Item number 15,
the Pine Gulch Creek Access Easement and Property Appraisal . . . “