diff --git a/charts/steward/Chart.lock b/charts/steward/Chart.lock
index af26ef62c..3c91c278a 100644
--- a/charts/steward/Chart.lock
+++ b/charts/steward/Chart.lock
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 dependencies:
 - name: steward-etcd
   repository: oci://ghcr.io/butlerdotdev/charts
-  version: 0.15.0
-digest: sha256:663d3fd0f7a85a1dc1991e68551661aceba601cf67917d81bec4ad8deb56635d
-generated: "2026-02-25T23:12:26.194154-06:00"
+  version: 0.16.0
+digest: sha256:31d7b44707c9620938d3bed4e1444ed94e5ac9307e11b85f73c1dc61cb0645ef
+generated: "2026-06-09T08:31:29.211661-05:00"
diff --git a/charts/steward/Chart.yaml b/charts/steward/Chart.yaml
index 1c9f3f80a..5d56d26bd 100644
--- a/charts/steward/Chart.yaml
+++ b/charts/steward/Chart.yaml
@@ -12,10 +12,10 @@ name: steward
 sources:
   - https://github.com/butlerdotdev/steward
 type: application
-version: 0.4.0
+version: 0.4.1
 dependencies:
   - name: steward-etcd
-    version: "0.15.0"
+    version: "0.16.0"
     repository: "oci://ghcr.io/butlerdotdev/charts"
     condition: steward-etcd.deploy
 annotations:
diff --git a/charts/steward/charts/steward-etcd-0.15.0.tgz b/charts/steward/charts/steward-etcd-0.15.0.tgz
deleted file mode 100644
index 00f7f1c6a..000000000
Binary files a/charts/steward/charts/steward-etcd-0.15.0.tgz and /dev/null differ
diff --git a/charts/steward/charts/steward-etcd-0.16.0.tgz b/charts/steward/charts/steward-etcd-0.16.0.tgz
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..560d83ddf
Binary files /dev/null and b/charts/steward/charts/steward-etcd-0.16.0.tgz differ
diff --git a/charts/steward/values.yaml b/charts/steward/values.yaml
index d2004b4be..dcca91a22 100644
--- a/charts/steward/values.yaml
+++ b/charts/steward/values.yaml
@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 # This is a YAML-formatted file.
 # Declare variables to be passed into your templates.
 
+# During a load-shed the operator is held at 0 out-of-band; setting this knob on a
+# helm upgrade keeps it pinned instead of re-rendering 1 and unpausing as a side effect.
 # -- The number of the pod replicas for the Steward controller.
 replicaCount: 1