Full Council Meeting

Cloverdale Veterans Memorial 9-11AM

Thanks to Fred Euphrat for facilitating the meeting! Additional hard copies of the Plan of Action are available upon request to the coordinator.

AGENDA/MINUTES APPROVAL-No quorum was present. By 10:30 only 20 voting members had arrived. Count at meeting conclusion: 2 economic representatives, 6 environmental representatives, 8 agency representatives, and 11 public members.

ANNOUNCEMENTS-Chuck Vaughn announced grass identification workshops being held at the UC Hopland Field Station from 9AM-3PM on May 20 Introductory Native Grasses and May 21 for Advanced Grasses. $35/course contact Amber Shrum to register 707-744-1424 or email anshrum@ucdavis.edu .

Zeno Swijtink announced the availability of the draft report for the first flush monitoring conducted by community volunteers last fall. An event was held on April 5 to review the results. Large amounts of diazonon were reported for most urban streams sampled. Zeno circulated a signup for the final report and encourage interested members to contact him about preparations for Fall 2003.

Additional monitoring will occur on Snapshot Day on May 17, 2003. Sierra Cantor at Sotoyome RCD is training volunteers for additional stream monitoring.

Derek Acomb announced the availability of the Ross Taylor culvert assessment report for Sonoma County roads. He provided a CD to the coordinator.

Scott Barrow announced the Steering Committee encourages each caucus to meet and identify candidates for the officer positions before our July meeting. This is the motion that was approved at our March meeting. The final version of the outline will be posted on the website soon. Basically each caucus selects candidates and the Council votes for the positions at large. The Steering Committee will be reformed so that officers fill 4 of the positions and the remaining 5 will be backfilled with existing Steering Committee members.

Zeno Swijtink announced the availability of the watershed assessment performed by Laurel Marcus for the Atascadero-Green Valley Watershed in cooperation with the Gold Ridge RCD. Having the assessment completed will help their group be more eligible for grant funding. Their website is available through yahoo groups. Search for AGV Watershed.

Scott Barrow reminded folks that Watershed Day will be held at Salmon Creek Middle School on Saturday May 17 from 10AM-4PM. Mike Reilly, Jeff Holtzmann are speaking. Workshops on household toxics, poetry, music, food and games for the whole family will be available.

Joan Kelley announced Russian River cleanups beginning in Mendocino County on May 31 Redwood Valley to Ukiah, June 21 Ukiah to Hopland and August 16 Hopland to Cloverdale. Contact Russian River Unlimited at 707-462-4649.
Eric Sunswheat announced continuing efforts of the Russian River Watershed Association to enlist local water purveyors. Santa Rosa, Ukiah, Windsor, and Healdsburg have all signed the MOU to become members of the association. The Mendocino Board of Supervisors will consider the matter Tuesday, May 13.

MOTIONS-Members discussed pending motions while hoping for a quorum. The RRWC has supported the Celebration of the Russian River for the last 4 years. Support for the cleanups has not been as formal, however members have been participating in cleanups throughout the Council's existence and endorse river cleanups as a means to keep the riparian habitat healthy. Neither motion had any opposition from those present.

RRWAMP TECHNICAL PANEL-David Lewis, who is the Watershed Management Advisor for the UC Cooperative Extension, reviewed his participation in the scope of work development for the Russian River Watershed Adaptive Management Plan. After the April 8 meeting, David developed a proposal that outlined the composition and scope for a technical panel to peer review the work already accomplished by the committee members. David and Karen reviewed the proposed timeline for the panel and past chronology of the scope of work development.

The panel would be formed between June and August with inputs from the RRWaMP committee. A retreat would be held in September where experts could convene and review our documents and watershed conditions during field trips over a 3 or 4 day period. Verifying whether the concept of representative watersheds as outlined in the scope of work is feasible will be one of the tasks for the panel's consideration. By November a report would detail the expert assessment of our scope of work viability with recommendations for improvement.

Having external peer review will be compensated through honoraria and travel expenses. There will be distinct roles for the RRWaMP committee to advise the panel and agendize the panel's results, the panel to review the scope of work and provide recommendations, and the RRWC to approve the final work product. The budget ($45K) will be part of the existing funding for this Corps of Engineers fiscal year. Current international events present competition for limited funding. Several members pointed out that the cost of the panel represents less than 3% of the total 2.1M dedicated to the management plan budget.

Members reviewed their involvement with the RRWaMP committee, concerns with the current draft and technical panel composition. Regulatory accountability, public outreach and water budget need to be explicitly covered. One flaw of the process to date has been different people at every RRWaMP committee meeting, so there is always a learning curve and room for misunderstanding references to previous work of the committee.
Eliminating the 4/24 RRWaMP meeting caused some concerns among members that intended to attend. It is unrealistic to expect any volunteer to be able to attend every meeting of the committee due to the frequency and content. Future RRWaMP meetings should be convened throughout the summer to prioritize POA issues for the panel. Karen should not be expected to lead the meeting, take notes and summarize agreements as often there is not a clear path from one draft to the next and some opinions appear to receive more weight. The group should have explicit approval throughout the process with recorded agreements. Interactions between the panel and RRWaMP should be frequent and sufficient enough to ensure panel members get a sense of what the Council makeup and intents are. Conflict of interests should be explicitly dealt with so that panel members are precluded from bidding on the contract when it is posted.

The strengths of having a panel perform a peer review include having the work of our volunteers validated by scientists, getting a sense for the feasibility of the tasks we have outlined, and building community buy-in by continuing with an open process that acknowledges existing agency programs and avoids duplication. Using the elements of the RRIIS system as communication tools to gather community feedback is possible once the system is released. Panel composition should include RRWC members with needed expertise to preserve organizational knowledge.

Group voted 19 ayes, 1 no for the technical panel.

VOTING-As a quorum was never reached, 5 members of the Steering Committee present agreed that the intent of the Council from the meeting was for Karen Rippey to proceed in establishing the technical panel for the scope of work. After reviewing several proposals for conducting a vote to satisfy the motions presented today, the group agreed there was lack of support for voting without a quorum. Thirteen members agreed the Steering Committee approval for Karen was sufficient. Ten members approved voting by email or electronic means. Twelve members agreed that changes to the voting rules and quorum are needed. The Steering Committee will make recommendations during the officer nomination process in early June. One potential solution is to explicitly charter the Steering Committee and its officers with the ability to decide for the Council when impasses occur or timing is short.