The Buena Vista Water Storage District’s board of directors met on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 at its Buttonwillow headquarters. It was a much-welcomed wet morning as I drove from Clovis to Buttonwillow. I have to get up a little earlier than usual to get there on time for the 8:30 am kick off. The traffic was a little slower than usual with the heavy rain and I arrived somewhere between eight and ten minutes late. As I walked into the BVWSD offices I thought it strange there would be so many people in the front room and not the boardroom. Engineer Andrew Bell greeted me and told me the meeting had adjourned into closed session at 8:36 am. It was six minutes long. The entire public portion of the meeting was six minutes long. I’ve gone to literally thousands of water meetings in the past 17 years and that was the shortest meeting I’ve ever attended or that I know of.
Buena Vista has an elected board. It’s a legal entity under the State of California. Under the Brown Act it has a right to exclude the public from the discussion of legal items concerning real estate negotiations, personnel matters and lawsuits. It has a right to place items of a routine nature on the consent calendar. However, in the interest of the public – does just because you can equal yes you should?
Of the 18 separate items listed on today’s agenda six of them were not on consent calendar. The six in the order they appeared: 1. Call to order, 2. Minutes of February 21, 2018, 3. Public Statements, 4. Consent Calendar, 9. (c) Northern area pipeline – east extension update – i) Adopt mitigated negative declaration and resolution, and 13. Directors Forum. There were seven items in executive session.
Besides the meeting being six minutes long I found out BVWSD currently has 2,000 a/f of storage at Lake Isabella. And that’s all I have to say about this meeting.
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Buena Vista Water Storage District was organized in 1924 to manage the irrigation, drainage systems and water rights originally held by Miller & Lux. The district controls an average 130,000 a/f of Kern River water and approximately 21,000 a/f of supplies from the State Water Project. BVWSD is its own GSA. Board of Directors meetings are held the 3rd Wednesday of the month at district headquarters located at: 525 North Main Street, Buttonwillow, CA 93206. Phone: 661/324-1101 www.bvh20.com General Manager/Engineer: Tim Ashlock, Attorney: Robert Hartsock. Board-President: John Vidovich, VP: Terry Chicca, Secretary: Jeof Wyrick, John Cauzza, Larry Ritchie
