September 25, 2023
Gustav Larsson, Chairperson of the Board of Directors
Nicole Sankulla, Chief Executive Officer
Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency (BAWSCA)
155 Bovet Road, Suite 650
San Mateo, California 94402
Re: Conduct hybrid in-person and livestreamed meetings
Dear Mr. Larsson and Ms. Sankulla,
To meet its obligation to the public to provide democratic access to decision making for our public water supplies, BAWSCA must conduct hybrid meetings. We call on BAWSCA to resume this practice, which offers several points of value to BAWSCA board members and their constituents.
BAWSCA was given agency status in order to act as a public entity with more publicly sanctioned representational power in its dealing with SFPUC. Along with that charge comes the obligation to the public to offer the same online access that is now the norm of state agencies and municipal commissions. BAWSCA’s office, for example, is located in San Mateo, which has long televised its meetings and now conducts hybrid meetings of committees and city council. The same is true of the County of San Mateo and nearly all of BAWSCA members' cities as well as state agencies. The SFPUC conducts televised live-streamed meetings with opportunities for public comments both in person and by telephone. These agencies post video recordings of their meetings to their websites (as was asked of BAWSCA in 2021 with no response). This is easy to do.
BAWSCA board members likely would appreciate the option of attending meetings via Zoom again, especially when they cannot drive during rush hour to Foster City.
BAWSCA must be especially responsible for public access given that one of its members, California Water Services, is a private for-profit company offering no democratic public-input opportunities.
Given the importance of water supply in California and its attendant logistical, financial, regulatory, and political issues, providing access to BAWSCA meetings is especially critical.
We look forward to hearing that BAWSCA has resumed Zoom or other livestream hybrid access to meetings. This is entirely feasible with wi-fi internet service, as we see with Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (conducts Zoom meetings via wifi with more than 100 attendees from around the region) and local municipal meetings. The claim that an ethernet connection is needed for the number of average BAWSCA meeting attendees should be evaluated by an IT specialist.
We appreciate that BAWSCA has been responsive to requests as we saw with the water-supply diversification roundtable that the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter proposed and BAWSCA deployed. Thank you.
Please vote to conduct hybrid meetings.
Sincerely,
Carol Steinfeld,
Water Committee Co-Chair
Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter
Peter Drekmeier
Policy Director
Tuolumne River Trust
Molly Culton
Water Organizer
Sierra Club California
CC: Josh Becker, California State Senator
Dave Pine, President, County of San Mateo Board of Supervisors