Purissima Candidate Answers For Town Crier

How long have you lived in Los Altos Hills?  6 years

What is your background experience in local government and community leadership?

In addition to my four years on the Purissima Hills board, I served on the town council's Water Conservation Advisory Committee.  I've also been a classroom volunteer in a local public elementary school.  I've been active in the county Libertarian Party, and have helped the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association draft ballot arguments against tax increases.

How does your professional experience compliment your work on the Purissima Hills Water District board?

In my software engineering career in Silicon Valley, I've experienced first-hand the importance of customer service and controlling expenses. Analytical and problem-solving skills have also proved useful in my board service. However, the main qualification for a candidate is having a policy compass of governance principles, along with the diligence to apply those principles.

To a new resident of Los Altos Hills or someone from outside of our area, how would you describe what the Purissima Hills Water District does?

The District provides potable water and firefighting levels of water pressure to every address within its boundaries.

Why are you running for re-election to the Purissima Hills Water district?

To help ensure that the District runs efficiently and respects the property rights of the ratepayer-owners of the district.

There are four candidates for three open seats.  Why should voters choose you?

Voters should choose me if they agree with my principles and priorities.   My principles are rooted in property rights.  You as a ratepayer own a share of Purissima's two main assets: $20M of pipes/tanks, and the right to buy 1.62M gallons/day of water from SFPUC (the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission). For each household, that's $10K and 780 gallons/day. I defend those property rights, including the right to use the water you buy as you wish (as long as it doesn't harm the rest of us). Ideally, I would like you to be able to sell the water you don't use to community members who want to buy more than their share, so that you could profit from your conservation efforts.

My priorities are to maintain reliable and cost-effective water supply while exploring alternative arrangements for  water sourcing and district operations.

What are the greatest challenges associated with water supply locally?

Purissima's entire supply currently comes from SFPUC's Hetch Hetchy system. We've spent years pursuing other potential sources: well water, Quarry Lake water, recycled water from Palo Alto to our North, and county water from Cal Water to our South. None of these options has yet proved workable, though we are still talking to Cal Water.

In recent years Purissima was using nearly 125% of its SFPUC allocation, even as the overall Hetch Hetchy system  was approaching its capacity limits.  However, as SFPUC has raised wholesale rates to pay for long-deferred seismic upgrades, the rising prices have caused system demand to fall sharply, and there is no longer any imminent prospect of Purissima being limited to just its allocation. Nevertheless, we've tried to buy additional allocation from other agencies that are SFPUC customers, but none is for sale at a reasonable price.

We also consider conservation to be a valid water "source", and so we continue our conservation programs and tiered pricing.  We've successfully cut our usage to 105% of SFPUC allocation.

Can you highlight your accomplishments on the PHWD Board?

A Sacramento law was going to make the Hills adopt 33 pages of default irrigation rules. I proposed an alternative that added a simple water budget to the town's permitting process, leaving property owners free to decide how to meet their budget. The town adopted my alternative.

Another accomplishment has been to question an expensive project to make Quarry Lake an emergency water source. When you look hard at the range of scenarios in which that water could actually be useful, it seems that this insurance is just not worth the price.

Why do you deserve to be re-elected to the board?

Re-election should not be considered a reward for past performance.  Voters should vote for whomever they expect will best implement the voter's principles and priorities. Of course, past performance can be a useful predictor of those principles and priorities.

What goals would you like the PHWD board to set for the next four years?  Are there any long-term goals?

Our goals over the next four years should be to 1) continue our capital spending program to improve seismic reliability and operational efficiency, and 2) explore alternative arrangements for water supply and district operations.

For the long-term, I would like to see Purissima extract itself from the unsound CalPERS retirement system, or at least remain vigilant about keeping our retiree obligations explicit, cost-contained, and fully funded. I would also like Purissima ratepayer-owners to have explicit ownership of their shares of the system -- i.e. the infrastructure buy-in share and the right-to-buy share of Purissima's SFPUC allocation.  Ratepayers who buy less than their share could potentially turn a net profit on their water bill.  This would promote conservation, and would get the District out of the business of setting conservation prices.

Info About Purissima Hills

• 2011 LAFCO review of PHWD - 21pp overview of PHWD by the Santa Clara County agency that oversees county special districts
• 2012 rate hearing presentation - 42pp PDF of the slides we presented
• 2012 review by Los Altos Hills - 11pp PDF presentation Sep 20 by town's ad hoc review committee
• finances summary 1995-2011 - 60-row Excel spreadsheet summarizing PHWD finances 1995-2011
• 2010 financial audit report - 38pp PDF of balance sheets, etc.
• 2015 BAWSCA annual report -  154pp PDF about the peninsula agencies like PHWD that buy water from SFPUC

A Battleship Would Not Float In A Bathtub

Update on 2020-07-31: I was wrong. My mistake was in thinking that Archimedes' Principle required there to be a direct mechanical balance between the weight of the floating object and the weight of the water that is being held above what was the level of the water before the object was inserted. I had thought that when an object is inserted into the water, it will sink to the point where it has displaced upward an amount of the existing water equal to its weight. And that happens to be true any time there is more water than the object can displace.

But fluid mechanics makes no distinction between the existing water and the battleship. The battleship can be modeled as a weightless transparent arbitrarily-thin battleship-shaped water bowl that is filled with water to the battleship's waterline. Seen this way, it's obviously not just the water outside the ship-shaped bowl that is contributing to the final water volume in the tub. Each virtual column of water within the footprint of the ship has to be in balance with every other virtual column of water in the tub. For the ship to settle below its waterline (i.e. for the ship to sink to the bottom and maintain a cavity above it), it would require that a taller column of water outside the ship's footprint is balanced by a shorter column of water inside the ship's footprint. That's impossible. So the ship will stop sinking when the water in the bathtub -- no matter how small its original volume -- rises to the level of the ship's waterline.

Archimedes' principle states that "the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces."  It does not mean "the fluid that the body has displaced".  It means "the fluid that the body is taking the place of" i.e. "the fluid that would fill the cavity created by the body". It doesn't matter if there isn't enough of the original fluid at hand, because the body itself acts like a very large particle of the fluid.

Credit for enlightening me goes to the explanations at https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/304245/can-a-ship-float-in-a-big-bathtub, especially the diagram at http://www.wiskit.com/marilyn/battleship.jpeg.

Original post from 2012-09-08:

The world thinks (e.g. here, here, here, here, here) that a battleship could float in form-fitting tub of water after it displaced all but a tiny fraction of the water in the tub.  These writers cite Archimedes' Principle that the upward buoyant force exerted on a body immersed in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid the body displaces. They ignore Archimedes' assumption that the body of water has enough water and enough unused volume to combine together to balance the weight of the immersed body.

A floating ship is hydraulically balanced against the mass of the top layer of water that the ship has displaced upward in the body of water on which the ship floats.  A ship can only float if the body of water can contain that top layer of water and that water has a mass equal to that of the ship. If that water escapes or is otherwise not present, the equilibrium fails and the ship sinks.

Another way to think about it is to ask whether the battleship in the empty bathtub could be floated simply by pouring in the water to fill the bathtub around it. Battleship floaters claim this would work with an arbitrarily small amount of water.  But there is no free lunch -- you can't do the enormous work of lifting a massive ship merely by balancing it against a small mass of water.

Some floaters point to canal locks (e.g. the Miraflores in Panama) that can float a ship with just a foot of clearance on the sides (and allegedly the bottom).  However, they ignore the clearance at the front and back. After a ship enters a canal lock, you can bet that there is a new top layer of water (relative to the prior water level) whose mass is equal to that of the ship.

Floaters tell naive skeptics that when an object is floated in a full tub, the system doesn't remember that some water overflowed when the object was added, and that it floats just as well when it is taken out and then added back to the tub -- which now will not overflow at all.  However, what the floaters don't notice is that the no-overflow system has just enough room at the top to hold the mass of water that balances the object.

Some floaters point out that large machines like telescopes are often "afloat" on a thin film of oil. However, these lubricants are kept pressurized in a sealed system, and the pool of oil is not open to the atmosphere. It's a safe bet that such a telescope cannot be levitated (i.e. lifted) by a thin film of oil unless there is some balancing mass of oil (or some other way of pressurizing the oil).

It seems the physics folks who promote the bathtub battleship meme need to talk to some hydraulic engineers.

Argument Against SCVWD Parcel Tax

I drafted for the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association the following ballot argument against Measure B. The Registrar of Voters instead chose an opposing ballot argument that didn't mention the county grand jury criticisms of SCVWD, and that instead based its opposition only on environmentalism.

The only part of the county not in one of five "flood control zones" is the remote area beyond Mount Hamilton. So you pay for "flood control", no matter how high or dry.

SCVWD says the tax has "helped reduce the flood threat" for only 16,000 parcels. Flood protection should be paid for by the 1% who buy flood-prone property, not by the 99% who don't. The tax is also to "ensure safe, reliable water supply". However, SCVWD already directly bills those who buy its water or pump from its aquifers. Improvements to water reliability or quality should be reflected in water price, in order to promote conservation and efficient use. Instead, SCVWD sells water to farmers at a 90% discount.

Grand jury reports have criticized SCVWD over high salaries and wasteful spending. In "Gold Street Education Center -- $1.38M For What?", a grand jury said "educational efforts should no longer be masqueraded as Environmental Enhancements". It noted the center was built adjacent to a trailer park owned a SCVWD director's family.

In "SCVWD Awash In Cash As County and Cities Drown In Red Ink", jurors said that in 2000 the district "polled the public on price points and found $39 would be what voters would accept. Program funding was NOT based on the cost of needed projects." SCVWD has already spent $27,000 in Measure B polling.

Last time, district employees were fined $24,000 for failing to report 75% of pro-tax contributions.

Last time, tax proponents told us that this parcel tax "will end in 15 years".

What are tax proponents telling us this time that will prove to be false in hindsight? What will the next grand jury report tell us about mismanagement at this district?

4 Extra Quizzes Hidden At PoliticalCompass.org

The Political Compass quiz buries the analytic elegance of the 2-D Nolan Chart under the creaking weight of at least four other political dimensions.  The Nolan Chart diagnoses the left/right spectrum as a diagonal slice across a 2-D space defined by dimensions of economic self-governance and personal self-governance.  It reveals that libertarianism and authoritarianism are neither left nor right, and that left-authoritarians are similar to right-authoritarians.

Political Compass has 30 questions that are almost evenly divided between measuring economic self-governance and personal self-governance. These 30 questions would make a reasonably good Nolan quiz -- if the Compass designers hadn't tilted the chart 45 degrees when they mistakenly labeled the two ends of the economic axis as "left" and "right".  Compounding their errors, they add 32 other questions that don't measure either of the two Nolan dimensions, but instead measure four other attitudes that the quiz designers seem to think correlate with the labels they want to examine.  Here they are:

Jingoism

1. I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.
2. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
3. Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.
4. No one chooses his or her country of birth, so it's foolish to be proud of it.
5. Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races.
6. There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.
7. People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.
8. All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind.
9. First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.

Authoritarianism

1. All authority should be questioned.
2. Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.
3. The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline.
4. Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.
5. It's natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.
6. In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.

Commercialism

1. The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.
2. What's good for the most successful corporations is always, ultimately, good for all of us.
3. Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all.
4. The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.
5. If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.
6. It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.
   
7. There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.
8. It's a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product.

Moralism

1. Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.
2. You cannot be moral without being religious.
3. It is important that my child's school instills religious values.
4. Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.
5. No one can feel naturally homosexual.
6. It's fine for society to be open about sex, but these days it's going too far.

None of the above 29 questions addresses whether one thinks politics should govern ones personal or economic choices.  The remaining 3 of the 32 non-germane questions are simply bizarre:

1. When you are troubled, it's better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.
2. Some people are naturally unlucky.
3. Astrology accurately explains many things.

The Compass doubles down on its silliness by then precisely plotting quiz results for Ghandi and the Dalai Lama and two dozen classical music composers.  And in its eagerness to diagnose so many kinds of political incorrectness, the 60+ questions of the quiz fail to cover the following issues:

• Personal
  
• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of religion
• Personal risk-taking
• Self-defense
• Drugs other than marijuana
• Economic
  
• Corporate & farm subsidies
• Retirement
• Education
• Health care
• Financial risk-taking
  
• Freedom of contract

Fortunately, there is a high-precision Nolan quiz that covers a full menu of policy questions without extraneous questions trying to measure political correctness.  For an interactive version of the quiz, click this image: