Water district wants to increase transparency and public participation

• Editor’s note: Monserrat Solis covers Kings County water issues for SJV Water through the California Local News Fellowship initiative. 

Kings County Water District board members hope to boost public participation at their monthly meetings by moving the start time back one hour.

It will now meet at 2 p.m. on the first Thursday of every month.

“I just think that transparency of the public is very important,” board member Paul Gillum said during the Jan. 9 meeting. “I think it’s important for the public to show up.”

The board will open the meeting asking if the public has any comment on its listed closed session items, which typically can only include personnel matters, potential purchase of property or litigation, per California’s open meetings law. Then it will go into closed session and reopen the public portion of the meeting at least 30 minutes later.

The idea is that the public will know if there was reportable action after the closed session, instead of having to call the office or not knowing at all, Gillum said.

The water district, which covers areas within Kings County including portions of Hanford, was in the hot seat last year when farmers accused board members of making decisions without their input.

It was also the impetus behind the Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) implosion, after board members voted to leave Mid-Kings and start their own GSA. 

Under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, every area of an overdrafted basin must be covered by a GSA. So the Kings County Board of Supervisors picked up the pieces and rebuilt the Mid-Kings GSA.

• Republication or broadcast of SJV Water content is allowed with our reporter’s byline, SJV Water and the following tagline:
  SJV Water is an independent, nonprofit news site covering water in the San Joaquin Valley, www.sjvwater.org. Email us at sjvwater@sjvwater.org