Technical Work Group Meetings 2009

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Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 9 DRAFT Minutes of March 16 -17, 2009, Meeting deferred, replacement and maintenance of equipment. There are a lot of things falling apart and they don't typically budget enough to replace a lot of the equipment. There were some positions in DASA they were trying to fill especially in the GIS and remote sensing arenas. They also did some reorganization where they moved some people out of the biology program into DASA to provide statistician support and study design support in DASA and that created some funding needs in DASA and the biology program. They were also trying to restore funding for certain projects that were cut at the end of the year. The one most notably was the whole control network was zeroed out in FY09 budget and after a long discussion they decided that needed to be added back in. He was also unaware that Reclamation was establishing a non - native contingency fund but they also created a couple of contingency funds to deal with high priority, unanticipated needs primarily in the overflight they're doing in FY09 and in the non - native control project in FY09. The Summary Table indicates there was $2,332,308 in non - discretionary funds and the sources of that were almost $2.6 million from the annual workplan and the HFE. They received some cash contributions from the Southwest Biological Science Center (SBSC) who they had loaned money to last year to help support the science symposium and they paid GCMRC back this year. There was $207K in the CPI increase and they actually had a reduced burden rate so they were able to free up almost $1 OK for their activities. That equals a total of $2,863,781 that was available. He reviewed the details of the allocations. The members expressed concerns about having sufficient money to do the overflights, $35K to replace a GCMRC, and the amount of money being carried forward, USBR FY2010 -11 Preliminary Budget Development. Dennis distributed copies of his PPT, "Bureau of Reclamation GCDAMP Preliminary FY10 -11 Budget (Attachment 7e). He said the AMWG passed the biennial budget process in 2004 but at the present time it's a rolling 2 -year process rather than a strict two - by -two process. In the second year the budget is reviewed and additions made. He said the draft budget the AMWG requested in 2004 was to assess whether or not their priorities were identified and dealt with. They went through a workshop in 2004 and they ranked their priorities and identified any issues the TWG wanted to alert them to, things they were unable to reach resolution on and wanted feedback. AIF: Public Outreach Ad Hoc Group POAHG Repo . Doug Hendrix distributed copies of the POAHG's progress and gave a corresponding PPT(Attachment 70. He went over POAHG budget for FY2010 -11. He reminded the TWG that any products developed are vetted through the AMWG for a full review and approval before they go into operation, either on the website, on display at Glen Canyon Dam, or for public outreach purposes. Bill Davis said there was an interesting article in the paper this morning about the river washing away and wondered if the POAHG had prepared it. Doug said he wasn't aware of the article. Bill said he was curious that if the POAHG is doing all this really good work, it's disturbing to see an article which undermines what the POAHG is trying to do. Leslie said it was a Park Service article that appeared in the Flagstaff newspaper. Doug said they try to communicate in a consolidated voice on behalf of the program. He said there are times when members have to respond on behalf of their organization. Steve Mietz said the project was funded with Park funds, not AMP funds. GCMRC AMP Preliminary Budget. John Hamill provided a copy his February 13, 2009 memo and spreadsheet (Attachment 8a), and said he would give an overview and explain the differences. He said the majority of the budget was developed with the BAHG conference calls. He went through the individual goals and addressed those which required more focus. Q: Is there a reason why the $1 million of USGS directed toward overhead does not increase with the CPI? 1 know originally there was a deal made but as time goes on, that becomes more significant and it seems like within the USGS budget, the capability would be there to increase with the CPI. (Oster) A: 1 would think so and it's an issue we've raised because this pays what we call our cost -share and our cost -share is increasing and the $1 million isn't enough to cover our needs and part of that is the costs of this program keeps going