At their Jan. 16 meeting, the board of the Fern Valley Water District elected new officers for 2025. Vice President Kevin Scott is the new Board President. He succeeds Director Jon Brown, who served as President for two years.

Director Chrissie Teeling is the new Vice President. She had been serving as the Secretary/Treasurer. Director Mike LaFata was chosen as the new Secretary/Treasurer.

Brown made the motion, and it was passed unanimously.

The committee assignments for 2025 were also approved. For example, Directors Scott and LaFata will be the Budget Committee, which will begin meeting this spring to have a proposed budget available for the May and June meetings. For other committee assignments see the accompanying sidebar.

In other action, the Board decided to make a $250,000 payment to the California Employers' Pension Plan Trust Fund, thus reducing their unfunded retirement liability.

The funds will come from the District’s money market account. Since interest rates have declined some this fall, except for $5,000, the balance of the money market account will be transferred to the District’s Local Agency Investment Fund, which the State manages.

Assistant General Manager Jessica Priefer presented the Board with several money market options. The interest rates on these ranged from 4.5% for a five-year Treasury note to 4.15% for a one-year Treasury note. Currently LAIF pays about 4.62% interest on cash.

Since the interest on the unfunded retirement liability is around 9%, the Board determined that reducing this liability was the best investment of its cash.

While this seems to reduce the District’s cash reserves, there will be three more billing periods before the end of the fiscal year (June 30). FVWD collects about $150,000 from each bi-monthly billing. Also, in May, Riverside County will make another property tax payment to public agencies. FVWD will receive likely receive more than $400,000 for its property taxes.

Through the first half of fiscal year 2024-25, which ends June 30, expenses exceeded revenue by about $230,000. About 45% of revenue has been collected and nearly two-thirds of the capital budget has already been expended.

Renovation of the office is the capital project that remains to be done. General Manager Victor Jimenez said that he met with the architect last week and expects the plans next week. After review and approval, the plans will be submitted to Riverside County for approval.

While the recent power outage also affected FVWD facilities, no major problems resulted, Jimenez told the Board. A fallen tree did cause some fuses to blow out. They were replaced and the District’s generators supplied power in the absence of Southern California Edison’s electricity.

“The production during the power outage was affected only while we repaired blown fuses from power surge when the tree damaged the power lines,” Jimenez said in an email to the Town Crier. “Once we repaired the fuses, we were able to run the plant at full capacity off our generator. We ran on generator for about 67.5 hours.” The generators to keep the wells running and the office open during this period.

He also reported, “The Creeks are still full and producing.” In December, streamflow provided more than 90% of the water production, which is significant since rainfall on the Hill has been trivial since autumn.

Since rainfall has been less than inch, the Board asked Jimenez if he was considering an emergency water stage decision. In response, Jimenez referred to the adequacy of stream flow and said he was waiting until spring before a decision since it is possible that some precipitation may arrive in the next few months.

“So far people are conserving,” he stated. “There is not a lot of waste.

Water production was up 22.5% for this billing period (November and December) compared to the comparable period in 2023. A significant portion was the new fire flow water supply to Tahquitz Pines.

Unaccounted for water did grow to 20% for this period. Jimenez identified several contributors. During December, there were four fires in the district, several considerable leaks and possible meter registering. He has already spoken to the manufacturer of the meters to address this concern.

For the full year, total production was 35.9 million gallons, only 40,400 gallons more than the 2023 full year production. The first half of the year saw a significant decrease in usage, while it increased in the last half, the late summer and December periods had significant increases in usage.