Sacramento grand jury report finds dysfunction at small water district. ‘Chaotic with bickering’
A Sacramento County Grand Jury investigation found “severe, almost paralyzing, dysfunction” on the board of directors for the Florin County Water District.
The small independent water district serves about 8,000 residents in the unincorporated area of south Sacramento. The eight-month investigation, based in part on a long overdue financial audit and 20 interviews, revealed infighting and turmoil that has left the district’s board and its staff “severely unprepared for future challenges,” according to a grand jury news release.
“For decades, no one was watching what the FCWD was doing,” Steve Caruso, the grand jury foreperson, said in the news release. “As an independent special district, the elected board is answerable only to its constituents. If customers and voters aren’t involved, there is no check on the system.”
The investigation’s findings were detailed in a 14-page grand jury report released Monday. A former general manager, who retired in 2022, dominated the district for 25 years. The grand jury said the board’s actions became little more than a “rubber stamp” as the directors acted more like “a social club” and leaned on this former general manager to run the water district’s daily operations.
That led to “ineffective, almost non-existent, oversight” by the board, and no annual financial audit was conducted for four consecutive years — the fiscal years ending 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, the grand jury said.
A four-year audit was done in 2022. That audit revealed the former general manager took significant financial actions without specific board approval, according to the grand jury.
The former general manager, who was planning to retire, abruptly retired at a 2022 board meeting after the board’s confidence in him began to erode and challenged his representations on district water wells, according to the grand jury report. A board member at that meeting had presented documentation that some district water wells were not operating.
The general manager’s sudden retirement left the board in disarray.
“Board members had no training in how to serve as an elected official and no policy handbooks to follow,” Caruso said in the news release. “Board meetings became chaotic with bickering taking precedence over governance.”
The district with low water rates — some customers pay as little as $20 a month — could soon be overwhelmed by the costs of installation and operation of state-mandated water meters, along with future infrastructure upgrades and maintenance on its 65-year-old system.
“The Grand Jury’s investigation found the Board members can’t reach agreements to set long-term policy, and they fight constantly among themselves and with the interim general manager,” Caruso said in the news release.
The district covers a 2.5 square-mile area with boundaries on Florin Road on the north, Gerber Road on the south, Power Inn Road on the west and Gardner Avenue on the east. It has 10 groundwater wells and serves residential customers and small businesses, along with a few large commercial water users, such as Pepsi and Mission Laundry.
The grand jury report offered 15 recommendations for ways to improve Florin County Water District operations, including training in elected official behavior for the board members, adopting official polices and procedures and learning more about regional groundwater management and work to prepare for the impact of climate change on drought.
The grand jury requested a response to its report from the district’s board of directors within 90 days.
