February 22, 2023 Study Session
Transcript
Describer:
CPNMD Study Session Agenda
Wednesday, February, 2023, at 5:30 p.m.
7404 Yorkshire Drive, Castle Pines, CO 80108
I. Call study session to order.
II. Presentation of new CPNMD Website (Nathan Travis)
III. Board comments, questions, suggestions.
IV. Adjourn
Board President Chuck Lowen:
Welcome, everybody, to the, study session for the Castle Pines North Metro District. Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023 at 5:34 p.m. I like to call the meeting to order. In doing so, I also want to welcome Matt. I don't know your last name Matt. Google. Welcome. And, I'm not sure you're going to learn much from the study session, but Matt is, considering, running for one of our open positions.
So, so welcome. The agenda presentation of the New Castle Pines North Metro District website. Nathan Travis. It is all yours.
District Manager Nathan Travis:
All right. I'll make a couple of quick introductions. I think we might be having, some sort of trouble with the initial zoom link that I sent out. So, we should be hearing from Chris and then also having a representative from, Streamline join us. Let me get my get my screen share going up here, and, we'll get going.
Describer:
On Screen. CPNMD.org website, Nathan describes.
Nathan:
All right, you guys see that? Okay. Up on the main screen, at least enough to get a general idea. So we are working with a good. Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So we, have engaged with a company called Streamline. They are a communications and website platform. They work, very. They're very specialized for special districts.
And so what we were able to do is, poured over the majority of the information from our existing website. So this one is, working under a temporary web address right now. We're scheduled for March 1st to go live under the CPNMD.org headline or, web address. And so this is where we at. So if we get the main page, right here, it's just got a much cleaner look.
I don't know if how many of you spent a lot of time on the other website, but, this is very outdated. Lots of lost drop down menus, things like that. And so we really wanted to make everything a little bit more, a lot more accessible. And then also, the way that we currently manage our website involves emailing a graphic designer as well as, a web programmer, anytime we need to do any changes, especially, it's especially cumbersome, with things like newsletters, any minor updates kind of take some time to get through.
And the biggest lag that we've seen around that is the ability to immediately and easily create like, like public notices in emergencies. And so you can see right there at the top of this one, I have put in an incredibly accurate example, of how that public notification works. And so the front this is front and front.
Front facing all looks like this for a customer. One of the nice things about the public notifications when you're, using the website is if you hit this dismiss button, it drops a cookie on that specific computer. And then if they need to continue to view the website, that won't keep popping up for them.
Chuck:
Wondering how to get that off.
Nathan:
Yeah. So we'll I'll show you how to permanently remove it in a second. If there are any suggestions you guys have or anything, like, either from tonight or as we kind of work through the meeting in the work flow, let me know. But really, basically we've got on our main page, we have an about section, which would drop you to welcome meet our staff.
It lets you build like custom profiles for everyone. So this was all relatively easy to do. Go through there. Right now the board sits under, governance. And so if you go to governance, click the board meetings and meet the board will drop you in here. And so one of the especially helpful things with this website, because it's specifically geared towards special districts, is it automatically, shows you exactly what you need and tracks everything that you're supposed to have for compliance reasons.
And so you'll notice some differences here, even on your own profiles with information that wasn't necessarily included previously. That's now been added. The appointing authority is a is one. And the terms I got posted in there and then your profiles were copied and pasted and brought over. And you can kind of individually go in and check things out if you want to take a better look at Mr. Lowen, and we can jump in there and, and go do that.
The menus always hold off to the side. So it's really easy to continue to kind of navigate through. I've still got a few things to work through, so you'll see like where else this item appears. And we'll, we'll kind of keep looking for a little bit of those redundancies out. Most of these pages can be accessed from different points, and it's incredibly quick and easy to customize.
The other one to keep track of here is this district. District transparency. This is something that the website automatically generates for for us as we continue to update more information. And so if you go to this district Transfer Transparency website or page, it'll give you basically a directory of where all of the required information that we need to have is and then allow you to link directly to it.
We still have a few things to add. The biggest area that we're not fully uploaded yet is the finance section, but you'll see links to all of that start to pour into here. And then also, under finances, this will get a lot more data put into it. This is basically, as it was on the old website.
So we just need to go and change some dates and then get a bunch of forms uploaded. But as we add things like audits and all of those, those will get captured here as well as on the specific finance page.
Board Member Director Jason Blankaert:
Nathan, how about, chat link? Are we going to make it available for people to chat with somebody about their bills?
For example?
Nathan:
We don't have an active chat. And I don't know that we'd really add something I could talk to them about. We do we do have the ability to put some sort of, like, widgets and HTML stuff in place. I can talk, I can look at that. I'm not sure if we have necessarily like the staff capacity to handle that as well as the phones.
But I could definitely talk to, Susan along those lines. If you go to, our Contact Us page, this is a little bit different than the other one. And so obviously we've got the normal emergency phone number, office hours, location, phone number. This allows us to create basically forms for any direct contact that we want.
And so the way that that functions currently now is, you know, you go in, send out a contact for form and it goes to everybody and their little sister. Every board member ends up getting it, I end up getting it. And then we have to filter all of those manually and direct them to the appropriate staff members. What this allows us to do is be much more selective in terms of who gets those emails directly.
So I'll be copied on absolutely everything. I still need to build one of these. It's like email the board directly. And so you've got like your billing and account questions, contact form, water quality contact form, and then, report non-emergency damage to district facilities. one that I still need to build out is, direct link to the board of directors.
And those forms are all, very customizable as well. So if we go in to water quality, for example. It'll allow you to just enter these. We can pick which fields are mandatory, which fields aren't mandatory. And then so for example, if you fill out a water quality form send this in. It's going to automatically copy me. It'll be sent to Will Parker, our operations manager.
And then in it will also copy Susan in case of work order needs to be generated. But the primary contact will be Will. And so that'll allow us to turn that around a lot, a lot faster, rather than me having to see the email and then forwarded to everybody else, billing, for example, we'll go straight to Susan.
And then, whatever that other one's damage will go straight to operations manager and we'll have another contact form to reach out to the board.
Chuck:
Nathan, on that, billing and account questions. You just click on that and write your own question or. Yep. Okay. And who's monitoring this? If it's an emergency, if they call and say, hey, I got a pipe leak outside in my yard and blown up 300ft.
Nathan:
So the it does direct you. So, you know, if you go into the reported damage, for example, it'll direct you to our emergency contact number after hours, or it'll tell you instruct you to call the office directly. So.
Chuck:
And where does that again?
Nathan:
Where does it direct you to. So it says like non-emergency. So if you look at the the overall contact us page, right out there is the after hours emergency phone number.
It's the first thing listed on top. And so and then if you're looking to report a damage, it specifically says to put non-emergency damage to district facilities. ....Okay. Yeah. So we don't we don't want to encourage people to use a web form for emergencies. We just don't have a good mechanism on the back end to make sure that gets there.
I don't have anybody that's going to be monitoring their email 24 hours a day. So I don't want somebody to send in a contact form for an emergency. Because they're not going to hear back from anybody until somebody remembers to check their email.
Chuck:
So that number is, standard. It doesn't, change when somebody and one of the employees has a different pager. And this is
Nathan:
Correct. Yeah. It's a way that we've always had it set up. And so the, the, the way to get to our emergency after hours number is just to call our main office. And then we on the website, we give them the information that it's extension nine after hours.
It'll tell you to either leave a message or if it's an emergency, press nine. And that goes to our emergency duty pager number.
Chuck:
This is after hours of emergency. What if somebody calls in and wants to complain about their bill?
Nathan:
If they call that phone number, it'll be answered during our normal business hours. And then if it's an emergency,
Chuck:
So it's not just an after hours emergency number.
Nathan:
You're right. The extension, the extension nine is and I can I can make that a little bit more clear here. for sure. But if you go into office hours, location and phone number, it's the same phone number. We just keep the emergency one up top after hours, and then they hit extension nine and it'll take them straight to the pager.
Okay? Okay.
All right, so I want to get a little bit into, the actual website functionality.
Jason:
Do we not have a DID for that?
Nathan:
I don't know what a DID is.
Jason:
A direct a direct number for the emergency number.
Nathan:
We stopped giving it out publicly because it causes confusion. So we're we're looking at, actually moving to an answering service to handle that so we can have a direct emergency number.
We do have a direct line to that pager number. We've basically run into the problem that not enough people know how pagers work. And so without getting the instruction from our
Jason:
We still use pagers?
Nathan:
Correct? Yeah. It's a it's a virtual pager. But it's an easy way to allow us to, like, send that to a ton of people. So when that emergency page comes in, because it's a virtual plate pager, that phone number actually goes out to like 15 different people.
And then it's just the responsibility of the person who's actually on call to respond to it and go in. But so I see every page, every emergency page that comes out, we're working we've been working with Semocor and talking about they've got a number of clients that use a direct answering service that work a lot with utilities.
Which would be better if we have somebody that, you know, they'll have a call list that they go down, or they can also reach out to multiple people at a time. But we'd also be able to get more information. So the pager system isn't fantastic for, customer response. It's just something we haven't been able to take a really hard look at.
Really.
Chuck:
So this is, if we dial, the emergency number, it extension nine, it leaves a message.
Nathan:
It's like an old pager. You type in a phone number?
Chuck:
An then we have to, wait for the call back.
Nathan:
As a resident. Yeah. So right now you'll go. You'll get
Chuck:
It's kind of unsettling when you have an emergency in your house and you to play around with the pager and phone number, and that's my only concern.
Nathan:
Yeah. Completely agree with you. And so that's not that isn't functionality that we created as part of that, this website, that's old functionality that we're looking at the best way to manage. And so that's definitely on my list of things to take care of.
Chuck:
I think that could be a real problem if we don't get that, but, changed so that they can speak to a body.
Nathan:
Yeah. I'll, I'll, I can, I can,
Jason:
How far down the list is this?
Nathan:
How far down the list is what?
Jason:
Getting this addressed, getting off of this virtual patron into, a call center.
Nathan:
It's getting closer. So, I mean, when, like, coming across and having, like, my primary focus be getting things like, you know, now, two years of audits, court back up and trying to get under a bunch of compliance advisories, getting new staff hired, getting everybody back fit and replace, like getting the human beings in place to take care of it was definitely the priority.
Getting Semocor set up to run all of their operations, management budget, stuff like that. I can definitely move it to the top. I can get that. I can get that rolling next week.
Jason:
How many calls do we get?
Nathan:
Emergency calls. It it really it really varies. On average, after our emergency calls, we probably get maybe 1 or 2 a week.
Chuck:
That many, most of them for brown water.
Nathan:
The emergency pager number is actually it's usually, we don't get a lot of calls for brown water unless we're having, like, a severe system event come through the emergency pager number. The vast majority of it is people that have a small leak in their basement, and they need us to come shut water off. Or is a really common one.
If we have a line break, we'll get those occasionally of the of the like couple, maybe 2 or 3 calls we get a week. We usually actually physically go out to like one or less of them. We get a lot of calls for things that just really aren't actual emergencies. So we'll get emergency pages for a billing question or somebody that can't get a piece of information that they're looking for.
So we really we do direct a lot of the calls. We get back to our normal business hours so that we can handle them that way.
Chuck:
Walk me through the pager again. I've called the phone number. I hit extension nine. Now what am I expected to hear?
Nathan:
I mean, nobody's gonna answer the phone. Let's just do it.
Jason:
Let's just call it right now. Yeah.
Chuck:
Are you calling it right now? Yeah. Perfect.
Jason:
I really didn't anticipate this being a topic, but this is something that needs to get addressed.
Chuck:
Oh, yeah. I know, I don't want to be here when. You're in. Your house is on fire.
Describer:
Nathan calls the after hours number to demonstrate how the process goes in an emergency,
District Call Response:
Thank you for calling the Castles Pines Metropolitan district. Our offices are currently closed. If you have an emergency, please press nine now. If you know you're being transferred to our emergency pager, please enter your phone number when prompted and then hang up.
Our, call technician will call you back.
Nathan:
What's your cell phone Chuck? What's your cell phone number?
Chuck:
(303) 898-3056.
Now, there is a human being on the other side of that though.
Nathan:
15 of us. 15 of us.
Chuck:
15 of you. But one authorized to answer those calls.
Nathan:
One that's required to. We're all we're all authorized to. And so if we don't get that, if that page doesn't get responded to, it'll start dropping down the list. The other side of that is it takes a little there's going to be a quite a bit of work on the back end, which is very doable.
But that same pager number is also attached to, all of our systems at the water treatment plant, each one of the lift stations, all of those automatically call that pager number to get that information out as well. And so we may end up with like a split system or we can look at, those other options we're not going to move away from.
We won't want to completely move away from the pager system on the water treatment plant side, because it's already part of a built in redundancy and so on. The water treatment plant and the lift stations, if there's a bunch of set points that the number of alarms are going to be triggered automatically. And so when those go out, they go out via email and they go, actually, I'll be via the pager twice.
So they go through an auto dialer system. And then they go through a, cellular phone line. And so we get every, every one of those events comes to us three separate times, and they're done in three different ways. So one goes out over a landline, one goes out over the internet, and one goes out over cellular.
And that's how we get our redundancy. So the pager system all stay in place to some extent. But getting somebody on board to, like an answer and after hours answering service, it could actually collect that information is something that's possible. What we're probably what would be more challenging is figuring out how to direct somebody calling in with an after hours emergency directly to a talking staff member at CPNMD.
I'm not exactly sure how we would do that, but it's something that I can I can look into.
Jason:
I think as long as there's a person on the other end of that phone call, customer facing anyways, the pager system, you're right. It's probably time for your alarms and stuff to go on, but, customer facing, it doesn't have to be a member of our staff.
You know, if it is, like you said, a call center, and they just take down the information. As long as they're talking to somebody, that would be huge. a huge help.
Nathan:
Cool. I'll get that. Do you happen to have an extra pen? Both of my brand new pens aren't working. And he's helpful. Yeah, I will get working on that this week.
Chuck:
Is there a page for new homeowners, wanting to set up their account, or do they just call the office number? And is there a, page or a number for,
Well, I guess my I can answer my own question. Do you have the office number? You can call that and really talk to anybody during office hours. Correct. That recording said that. So, do we need a number or do we need anything different for, homeowners that are selling their homes? How do they end their bill?
Again,
Nathan:
So there's those are there's one of the areas that we need to, we need to and I plan on building out is a much more robust, robust FAQ. Our existing website has almost nothing in that regard anyway. But along those lines, if you do go to the contact us form, and go to the billing and account questions, it does give you,
The ability to, to do any of those things. So if you need to and it tells you kind of what you're looking for here. So if you have a billing question, high usage a new account or transfer of a service update customer contact information, or you need your water shut on or turned on or turn back off. You can do that through that contact form and that will go to multiple customer service staff members.
So Susan, our, our office operations manager, our customer service specialist, and our billing office will get notified of all of those at the same time. And whoever's available first can call the customer back. The vast majority of those requests come in via phone anyway. We don't get a lot of, a lot of those things through email.
Most of the account questions that come through are actually just contact update forms. And so that's something that's a generally speaking, pretty easy, easy for us to do. But that's already handled inside one of the forms.
Chuck:
Yeah. I was just trying to think of some of the, phone numbers or, the, messages we get in our email of, different things that are happening and people are sort of impatient.
Nathan:
Yeah. And that's what I did when I built out these initial contact forms. And there's obviously they're very simple to update and kind of make better as we go along.
But I sat down with Susan, our office staff, and kind of went through both what we remembered, and then we also trace back through our emails, looking at those contacts, submission forms, and really looked at all of the all of the variety of questions that we did and then tried to incorporate those into as few contact forms as we reasonably could.
I don't want to cross the boundary of having like, you know, 500 different contacts that you have, contact forms you have to go through to make sure you get the right one. But getting them into like 3 or 4 really common sense categories, because there's so few of the staff members, they'll go to the same people anyway. It really gives us a heads up in terms of what we're looking at and what we're what we can do from there, but so trying to find that balance between having a lot of options but not having so many that it becomes cumbersome.
Chuck:
Well, I just I was just thinking about the, community. And, you know, there's a lot of seniors here that are not, like me, not that, equipped to handle, computers as quickly as we want to. And especially if there's an emergency. So I want to make sure that we make it as simple as possible.
But I'm also assuming that we're going to have the district's, web page address and phone number on our monthly billings. Correct. So that's always a resource people can jump to if they had an emergency.
Nathan:
Correct. Exactly. from a billing perspective, we have a couple different ways you can get to your, pay to the bill pay.
We didn't actually have to really do much with this, the back end of our bill payment system all remains the same. It was never directly integrated into our website anyway. So all we really had to do is link it. So if you want, from our main page, as soon as you come in, it always stays up top.
You can just click the Pay my bill online now and it'll take you straight to the customer web portal. And so we're during the interview, during the transition meeting next week. or I'm sorry, the first, the the first week of the month. That's something that we'll go through and we'll verify all of this functionality.
And then also if you go to billing under the billing dropdown, you can go to my payment options. And this will run through directly all of the different ways that you can pay your bill. And so if you look at the column on the left hand, left hand side, it kind of gives you some other, some other options in there.
Understanding my bill billing frequently asked questions, which is linked to the main frequently asked question pay our page. But under ways to pay your bill, you can either pay online, you can use the bill stub. It gives you directions in the address to send it to, you can sign up for an automatic bank draft. This form, was absolutely buried on our old website.
And it also didn't give a lot of instruction. And so you can either click the link, that's directly linked from the text, or you can click it on, access it through the dropdown on the left hand side. And generally speaking, we're navigating people to this over the phone anyway. And so we were able to actually add instructions to it rather than just have a lost form kind of hanging out on the website, like lets you know what your payment options are and aren't. You
Download the, bill payment authorization form. And then that's one that you either have to physically bring in, or email back to us.
Jason:
You know, observing this, automatic bill payment page. all the links are still in the same colored text as the because the body of the, the body of the page and, like you said, where do we download it from, even though it's right there up top?
It's hard to kind of tell that that's a link. So can we start differentiating the links on the pages?
Nathan:
I can, I can ask, there's some functionality. That I don't have. Changing text color is one of them. I can change font and I can change the size, and I can also change the content of the link.
Jason:
We can bold them then?
Nathan:
Yeah, we can bold them, make them bigger. And actually, you know, why don't we do this? I'll kind of walk you through a little bit of the functionality around that really quick. And so this is what it looks like when you log in. as like the administrator, it kind of gives you these other options.
And so for example, if we want to make some adjustments to that we can go to edit this page.
We can. Oh that's actually put in that. We can. So that one's put in there as a direct link to a document.
Chuck:
You can make it blue or red or yellow or something that stands out.
Nathan:
We can't change our color. But what we can do is change the text on it so we can change it to bold.
I can italicize it and you can say.
Describer:
On screen. Nathan is editing the website live.
Chuck:
Nathan, when do you want to go live with this?
Nathan:
We're looking to go live, March 1st, March 3rd. March to March 1st. Yeah.
Chuck:
We'll have obviously a loaded question. It'll be ready in two weeks.
Nathan:
In terms of functionality, navigation, in terms of like how it functions and how it navigates, it already is superior to our existing website in every way.
So like these kinds of changes or things that will constantly be doing and looking for ways to improve and update, we're not going to have it 100% perfect ever. Because we're like so many things, we're just going to continue to,
Upgrade it as we move along. Sorry I can't talk and chew gum at the same time. So save and close and then it'll reload that page and.
Jason:
Yeah. That's better.
Board Member Director Chris Lewis:
That's a lot better.
Jason:
I'd rather have a different color too, but.
Nathan:
Yeah, and that's I that's something I can ask about, I don't know, did we ever end up getting either Chris or the Stream Line representative to join? yes.
Streamline Rep:
Yes. I'm the I'm the Streamline person in the in the meeting so I can answer the I can answer any questions that you guys might have.
Nathan:
Perfect. Yeah. So the question that they had was specifically around text color. Is that something that we have the option or ability to change inside of those pages? as far as the actual text color of the PDF link, that'll be something that it's very limited to. So we just prefer that it's worked out great for us, whether it's just gray, or to be blue.
So we haven't we, we personally, we haven't gotten that question in the past. But at the moment we currently don't have that capability. But you do have the capability, like, you just, presented Nathan to change the actual text of the link.
Nathan:
There you go.
Chris:
Okay. Nathan, can you guys hear me, by the way?
Nathan:
Yeah, we can now I. Okay, so while we're in here, there's a couple things that I wanted to highlight. Really quick. The first one, let me get my zoom window out of the way. Is that emergency feature. And so you could see that, headline that I had put on there.
And so this is right where it's at, you can to add a to add new emergency posting. It is as simple as going in here, typing it out and hitting enter. I'm going to go through one of the things I'll work out, work on kind of over time is building out some baseline forms that we can just copy and paste into this, you all and that's that like linked content that you can add to there.
So you can actually have it go to a page. I just haven't gone through and developed any of that because we've never had that functionality in the past. And so we haven't gotten there. So, you know, especially for things that we know we're going to have emergency notifications for occasionally, occasionally just discolored water calls, service interruptions for water main breaks, stuff like that.
If, we ever have, really anything else that we need to send out for any reason, we can do that. And not everything has to go out as an emergency either. It also gives us the option to just set it up as a, like a notification. And so we use that for something like, you know, scheduled maintenance on the billing system is going to be down.
If we have something planned that we're going to take offline. We'd put that out as a notification so people can get in, but it's not necessarily that emergency status. What's also nice about this is I can access this from literally anywhere that I've got my laptop. So if I'm out in the field, I don't have to get my way back to the office or send an email to three different people to get an emergency notification posted, we can just get that set up.
And then we also have, currently we also have Susan and Emily set up, so that they could they can both log in and do it as well. So we've got some training that I'm going to be doing with them that they've already got the baseline protocol. So even if I'm not around or if I'm on vacation, we'll have multiple staff members that have access to the system and can make those changes really quickly and effectively.
Chuck:
I did get a call back from your whoever was answering the pager. Yeah. No, that's I just concert in and out of and said, no problem, we're all underwater anyway.
Nathan:
Yeah. And the, the page did come through appropriately so.
Chuck:
Good. Yeah. He's. I call him off. Sounds good. But it did work. Good to see.
Nathan:
Yeah. And so the and there are some some flaws with that system.
And the, the biggest issue that we have with the pager system honestly is people not getting their entire phone number in or giving us one extra digit. So especially in my times I've been on call, I can't even tell you how many times I've sat there with my phone for half an hour, trying all the different combinations of removing one number or trying to guess what the appropriate number is.
And there's so many combinations, it's almost impossible that we try.
Jason:
What about the response time? Just seeing the message with a response time would be?
Nathan:
The message doesn't specifically say, generally speaking, we try to maintain, a 30 minute 30. Well, your total time on site shouldn't be any more than 45 minutes. We usually beat that by a lot.
30 minute is pretty industry standard for like, once you've made contact with the customer to get here. And so they and that can be thrown off a little bit if we have a larger event. You know, if we have a like a large main break that takes multiple people out of service, for example, the the operator that's on call may be much more focused on just getting the situation under control before they are able to go through and call everybody back.
They may have called in to report it. And so there is some mitigating factors that can do that. We've also been in triage situations occasionally, a district our size, it doesn't happen often. But if you've got a situation where you have two line breaks occur really, really close to each other, those types of things can kind of throw off those response times in general.
But 90% of the time we've got somebody on site within 30 minutes.
Chuck:
I know I can tell there's a lot of information still needs to be put into it. Who in the district office is going to be responsible for filling in the blanks, adding pictures, addressing news?
Nathan:
Yeah, that'll that'll be me. I'll be using those. Yeah.
Primarily. Primarily me. That's part of the. And we'll kind of see how that goes and what that ultimate time commitment looks like. But really once this web once this page is completely built out, a lot of those things become relatively simple. Reintroducing things like Nathan's notes and that kind of stuff will pull in. And then if we have, you know, special events, things that we want to promote, special products that we want to go through.
One of the things that Streamline does offer is, PR assistance with that. And so we do have, both a design team and a team with through them that will help that can add additional assistance if it's anything beyond kind of like our day to day operations, putting out normal notices and information so that that stuff is in place.
Then, I mean, realistically, like Nathan's notes anyway, like, those are things I was already spending a relatively significant amount of time, getting put together and getting put out and then sending them off to get the final touches put on. And we're we're even saving time for me on the back end, because now there's not that kind of convoluted publishing process that we have to go through anymore.
Yeah.
So the other really nice part about, Streamline is this, compliance tab. This one is especially helpful. Part of what their company does is make sure that your website is compliant with everything that needs to be put up on it.
Chuck:
Where are you on this?
Nathan:
You guys won't be able to see this because I'm logged in.
Yeah. So we're we're in the administrative side. Okay. And so this is a if you for me, I'd navigate to the compliance tab, and it tells me exactly what we need to have updated, what we're what we have, what we don't have. So you can see right now those green checks are all things that are great that we have taken care of.
And the red exclamation points are things that we need to get moved over. A lot of these things, especially like financial, a lot of those are already on there. I just need to navigate this, this tab to them and then clean, clean a lot of them up. And so the that's just generally an area that I haven't gotten to yet.
And so we'll, we'll get that the majority of that stuff put in place, there will be some things on the financial side that's remain a red exclamation point for a little while. Symptomatic of like, we just don't have them done yet. So like the, the 20 the most recent audit, for example, the 2021 and 2022 audit, this already expects to see the 2021 2021 audit in there.
We don't have one to post, so there'll be a whole like a placeholder page there that if you follow that link, it'll go through and kind of explain to you where we're at in the process, when do expect to see that posted. And so we can get those types of information. \
Chuck:
So you're the only one that can get into that page.
Nathan:
Anybody that has the log inside of it can get in here.
Chuck:
Would that be appropriate for, compliance for like, Kim Seter.
Nathan:
Yeah. We can. Yeah, whoever we want. And then it's like any ...
Chuck:
Seems like a critical issue for us to state to be in and stay in compliance. And, another set of eyes maybe isn't that bad.
Nathan:
Yeah. And that's, absolutely helpful. I've already been, emailing back and forth with their office a little bit, getting some information, just verifying that we need it, like getting getting appropriate links to the governing statutes and things like that put in, public information request is stuff I got information on from his office today so that I can get that.
I haven't attached that to this yet, but so I can get that updated and going through. We can get access to anybody that we want. We can also control users ability as, like the main admin. I can control what their what they can and can't do. So for like our front office staff, we don't really want them to accidentally or inadvertently move pages around or like change web trees or anything like that.
So they'll be limited to like the notifications tab.
Chuck:
You can add dates to this. add dates. I mean add issues you had. How many do you have there? Five, 4 or 5. complaints. Yeah. I mean, for compliance. I was thinking of when the budgets are due, when the mill levy is to be set. Other compliance issues that I know that we get a lot of information from Michelle.
Nathan:
And so that's part of part of what's nice about Streamline is because it's built for special and special districts. So that is not information that we give the website, that is information that the website gives us. So we can set notifications on all of that stuff so we don't have to go in and manually enter all of this compliance information, Streamline is actively tracking.
They're actually getting ready to roll out a new update for Colorado based on some recent legislation. But so this this tab is generated by Streamline to tell us what we need to upload when we need to upload it. And so things like budget deadlines, audit deadlines, election information, this website prompts you to enter it. And then you just have to make sure that you give it the information that it's asking for.
And so that's the compliance feature is like it's kind of like an automated version of Kim's office, just for like letting you know when deadlines are passing when you need to get them in. So for example, when I've got, you can see right here under the governing board, this one current, yellow because you're not out of compliance yet is, regarding the agenda.
So what that little yellow notification is letting me know is that I need to post an agenda prior to Monday night's board meeting. And so it's it's letting me know that this information is due, And so that's what's super cool about the compliance side is it's it helps keep us there. There's not a lot of work we have to do to make sure it's updated.
Same thing for. And so another great feature of this is the engage feature. This is one that we were able to get navigator imported in from. I can't remember whatever whatever service we use, there's an external service that we, that we've used historically that's like a navigation feature. I always want to call it Data Monkey, but that's not what it is.
I can never remember the name of the site. And so the engage, we basically were allowed to import our entire contact list for our newsletter and everything else roughly 44,000 some odd contacts were able to be put in. And so we can use this feature to send out directly all of our newsletters. We can also do public notifications for emergencies or information.
Anything we want we can do from the inside of this web page. And it's incredibly it's as simple as sending an email for the most part. And there's also some, you can you can build a website page so that, you know, it's not just a text infographic that they necessarily get to actually get, like a pretty professionally done, very polished document.
So that's the the function that will be able to send our newsletters out with, for example. And then because that is integrated into the website, you know, they're going to basically get in their email exactly what they would get if they came onto the site and went to the recent news section and pulled that up. And so the the engage is also really, really helpful because again, that was a pretty convoluted process before.
And this really just brings it all into one space.
Chris:
So, hey, Nathan. Yes, sir. Do you have a link that that at least because I haven't seen this new website. Can I go to it? Can you send a link, an email or something, or have you done that already?
Nathan:
Yeah. So there was a link included with Friday. a link went out to, all of the board members, so you should already have it.
Chris:
Okay, I'll go in there and check it. Thank you.
Chuck:
Will this, page include just questioning, rates and fees, maybe, or, comparable(s)? How in-depth are we getting? How informative are we getting? How competitive are we getting with our rates and fees? We get a lot of those questions. And I'm just curious if this is.
So. This is the kind of stuff.
Nathan:
Yeah. This is the under the understanding my bill FAQ. And so you have how are waste and how are the fees calculated. what is a water budget. How is it calculated. It gives you a breakdown of what the individual fees are on your bill. If you go into billing FAQs, it kind of gives you an explanation of why our rates are as high as they are.
And then this also has and the comparison data that was used here is a little bit older. It could probably stand to be, updated but also tells you kind of like why some comparison cities are a little bit lower. And then it has, at least from 2017 data. The rates and for the, I think, I think it was 2017.
But yeah. And so this kind of walks through regional comparison average bills. And so we already do have some of that. Those are some of the things that we'll have to keep working on. You know, continually updating and just staying on top of that will be a lot easier as we move, especially after we get through these audit cycles.
And it's going to take a little bit of time, and get ourselves in a position to do a full blown new rates and fees study. Those are things that we can, as we do those, bring that information in and use it to get the the website updated. We also do have a build calculator function. I don't have it linked yet and put in because I want to make sure that it's actually accurate.
So I'm not sure. It was on the old website. I'd never actually used it. So we do have the ability to retain that functionality. But before I bring that live on this site, I want to make sure that it will actually give you an accurate description of what your bill would be with various usages. And I'm, I want to look at just look into that and understand it a little bit more before I throw it out there.
Chuck:
You got anything? No. Chris. Chris, are you online?
Chris:
I am I it's good. I, like I said, I didn't go looked at it prior, but I've been listening to a lot of what, Nathan has been demonstrating. And, I definitely agree with the the link in a different color, but it looks like being able to change the font and at least going into, italics sizing, that would help.
Nathan:
Yeah. And and specifically with that one thing that I wanted to one thing that I'll probably look into, at some point down the line is with that ACH form, there's no there's no real technical reason why we couldn't have that ACH built into a website form, that you could just automatically fill out and send in. I do want to just be have conversations with Greystone.
I want to have some conversations with Streamline and also, CRS around, like, the security of it. Realistically, I don't see how it would be any less secure than somebody writing that form out longhand, scanning it and emailing it to us. I just want to make sure that we that there's no, like, either legal or security reason that we shouldn't do that before I get it set up.
But, and, you know, you could still have the option to download that form and then email it or bring it in. But I think that in terms of functionality for getting signed up on that ACH, which is something we really, really want people to do, it makes our lives a lot easier. It eliminates a lot of mistakes.
The, mailing process to Texas, to the mail processing or to the, bill processing facilities that our bank switched to a couple of years ago has definitely caused us issues. We've had the Postal Service lose entire like, I don't know what you call entire trays of our bills before. And so the more we can encourage people to get on ACH, the better.
And, it saves us and postage and all kinds of stuff. And so we really want to drive people to do that. And the easier we can make it, the better. I just want to make sure that we're doing it in a way that's responsible with their data and information. And it who knows? I mean, the answer very well could come back that like, it's more secure to go through that online web submission form, especially if we control, you know, who it goes to.
I just don't know what the security looks like or the recommendation is on that. And so it's a conversation to be had with a, a few other agencies before we make a, an official do
Jason:
I like the cleaner look at the site. The trees are kind of bothering me. Can we change that to like, a three slide slideshow?
But to have we can so rotate so that you're not just looking at the trees.
Nathan:
We can. Yeah. And so that's the so the in terms of Streamline that's the function that's called the carousel. We can do all kinds of stuff with that. So we can not only have it like rotate pictures, we can put any image that we want to in there.
And then as that carousel rotates, we also have the ability to have it be like a rotating link thing. So it can kind of move through different options. So you can go from like the main page to recent news to really literally anything we want it to be,
Jason:
Special notices and stuff like that. No emergency, no special.
Nathan:
No. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So that's that's definitely something that something that we can do, in terms of getting everything ported over to the website, that was a little bit lower on the list. But those are kind of those are the kinds of adjustments we can constantly improve and make.
Chuck:
Nathan, you've done a great job on this.
It it appears to me that it still needs to mature a little bit.
Nathan:
Yeah. And that's, it's something that will continue, will continually grow, like I said, in terms of its maturity, it already it already far outpaces our existing site. We've got info, we've already got information and access that we haven't ever had available built into this.
And so it's something that we're going to want to continue working on and growing, especially as we get that compliance stuff in, it's it's much easier and faster to do that on, on this platform as well.
Chuck:
If you would. And it doesn't add more to your workload, I would appreciate, as a board member to hear from you, at a any work session.
Study session? If there are any major changes, something we should be aware of, something we should see. We as board members probably won't get into this as much as the residents will. Because we know who we are. We know the phone number. We know where the meetings are and what dates they are. But, we should still stay abreast of it.
So if we missed a time where you've made a substantial change or even a small change, I'd like, your comment on that and a study session just to keep us, tuned in. And you said possibly by March 1st. I don't know if you want to set a deadline for that or not, but, don't get too aggressive if you still have work to do.
March 10th. March 15th. It's that that's your call.
Nathan:
Yeah. And so that's part of the, you know, once we get the baseline financial stuff up, part of the desire to move to this before it's even, really at like where I would consider it, like 100% complete is, like I said, like we're already this website is already better functioning for a lot of reasons than our existing one.
And so even if I'm not at where I want to be 100%, ultimately with this one, we're already past where our current site is, and so it makes sense to go ahead and do the move and continue to build the functionality on this one, because it's going to be an improvement either way.
Chuck:
Are you going to make an announcement i.e. the billing cycle?
Nathan:
Well, yeah. We'll put one through. Yeah. We'll send it'll be include our next billing insert, just a blurb about, hey, check out our new website. Okay. If you have any feedback. And, I've also been directing them to, reach out through the website comment section if they have any other suggestions or things they'd like to see on the website.
We'll kind of put that in that billing insert to kind of drive people to, to engage with it a little bit.
Chris:
Hey Nathan. Yes, sir. Yeah. So will we have a transition period where both websites are activated at the same time, or is it just going to be a cut?
Nathan:
Yeah. There's there's no way this this kind of is the transition period where we have both websites active at the same time.
Under the CPNMD.org, web address, there's no real way to, without, without sending, without having two separate pages attached to that one. So you'd have to type in the company web address, and then it would bring up a link to go to either page, which is just be ugly and confusing. There's no real way to do that.
But once you have that, you know, CPNMD.org designated line, there's no way to have both of them up and functioning. We will be, sitting with it. So when we, when we move over to, the website, the new website will have some kind of I been told by Streamline that for, you know, maybe a couple hours is all of that stuff kind of like transfers over there may be some bizarre, like, visual stuff.
The website may have some functionality issues. So we'll put up a notification on the existing website a couple days, but at least before that happens, let them know we'll be doing a transition that some web functionality may not be functioning for, a portion of a day. And then after that, this one should fully route and and and work fine.
But if it's, if it's functioning under this web address, this is a live front facing web address. Anybody that wants to could go hit this up and get to it. That's the link that I sent you guys. And so we know that it's functioning as it should in a web environment. It's just going to be changing until under our domain name.
Chris:
Okay. When we say Jason, is that good, is that normal?
Jason:
Yeah Chris that's the way it's going to. That's the way it will happen. So, there will be two hours or they say 2 to 24 hours where you have some cash credentials sitting out there in the internet. And so when somebody types in cpmd.org, depending on what DNS servers cache that address, it could take them to the old site or it could take them to the new site.
But after about 24 hours it'll all just be gone to the new site. Okay. Thanks.
Chuck:
Will we do anything other than a bill sure. To, announce this, like, connection or any other, periodical you were or could be thinking about?
Nathan:
Yeah, I can definitely reach out, and, you know, it would be included. We're past.
What date is it here? we're past the submission deadline on those. I have been talking to. Especially the past. Past Castle Pines connection. Excuse me about, you know, just really reestablishing ourselves there. And so that will be something that will be going back to putting a monthly something in place. It may be a blurb that we add, but this next month, upcoming will probably be geared much toward much more toward the, parks and Open Space IGA.
Jason:
How about putting just a simple banner upfront saying, check out our new website website?
Nathan:
Cool. I like it.
Chuck:
Low tech and put one on your. Put those magnetic things on your car. Drive around, wrap my car. Thank you very much, Nathan. a lot of work, I can tell. And a good job. I'm looking forward to watching it mature as it as we, add more and then, you know, fix what might go wrong or where some of the, constituents of the public might call us and go, this is not working.
And it sounds like we're on top of that. We can change it. We can make modify it. Make it work. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Chris, have any final questions?
Chris:
No. I'm good, thank you.
Nathan:
And then do we have any question? Is the Streamline did we lose the Streamline? Go.
Chris:
Yeah. He sent the text. He left, ten, 15 minutes ago.
Nathan:
Got it. Yeah. So Streamline, they have been incredibly responsive. We just had the the unfortunate circumstance of scheduling this meeting on a night that they had a full company, mandatory training, and so they kind of sprung one of their sales guys for us just to answer questions as those have come up. But that's certainly not representative of how available they are.
If I send them an email or call them, if they don't immediately answer the phone. The longest I've had to wait is about ten minutes for somebody to get back to me. So they've been absolutely, fantastically helpful with all of this stuff.
Chuck:
I think as we work through this over the next few months, if we can't get questions answered from you, we'll get it from them.
They'll be back.
Chuck:
Sounds good. Other issues that we want to mention tonight. Kim. The IGA for, park trails and open space. We are going to review this document and have you been able to email one to Denise and Chris, since you're not here tonight to get a copy?
Legal Counsel Kim Seter, Esq.:
I have not, but I'll do it in the morning.
Okay, so in the copy, you have is an initial draft with some of my handwritten comments on it, some of them just things to for you to take note of, and some of them that we may want to change.
Chuck:
One of the, issues that, I know is near and dear to Chris, and that's our skateboard park.
Also, to Tera, who would like to see it, at Coyote Ridge, not at Elkridge Park. Is there anything in this document today that, is requesting that, if the city signs it, the city will provide a skateboard park and it will be in a location appropriate with Coyote Ridge.
Kim:
There is a provision in there that talks about the skateboard park, the pickle ball courts and the tennis courts and that, the since they have been budgeted at it currently says that the city will cooperate in the construction of those.
So I think we'll want to strengthen that that language. But okay. It is discussed.
Chuck:
If you would please. And then I had another question and it just went bye, bye.
Jason:
I had a quick question. If I could go ahead. Yeah. Sticking with the skate park thing, you know, I'm, I'm kind of opposed to it. And, can we put language in there that says that, we will give the city the funds that we have set aside for the skateboard park and let them use those funds in our district somewhere to to provide an amenity.
Yes, whether it be a skateboard park or something else. But whatever the whatever the city decides from whatever the public decides, you know, can we just put the, the verbiage in there that says that the money doesn't have to be slated specifically for that, but just for any amenity that,
Kim:
We could that'll have to be a board decision if you want to go that direction.
I think the last time I talked to the city about this, the idea was that they would receive the money and they would build a skateboard park, but the location was not identified. So it sounds like there may be more discussion here about that. Okay. Yep. And then, yeah,
Chris:
I thought I thought that, exactly what you said, Kim.
That's what we agreed to, but but Jason just did make me think about something else, which was so based on the fact that we're providing the funds. And if the city decided that, you know, it's beneficial to build it across the highway in the canyons, does this, does our IGA prohibit them from doing that?
Kim:
Not currently.
Chris:
Okay. And and it's not that I'm opposed to that. So let me just say this. Right. Because I think the skateboard for, for the skateboard park going wherever is best. But I was just wondering if, because of the funds coming from, you know, our side of the highway or whatever, or from the metro district, if that would be a problem with them, if they decide, you know, they had a location on the other side that they wanted to put it.
Kim:
You will have to have a board discussion about that to, the document is currently drafted, says it has an effective date of March 1st, but, Nathan and I had already talked about this earlier, and but I haven't talked about the two of them about it. The other agreement, I believe, says that this agreement won't be effective until March 31st.
So our thinking was you get a first crack at this on Monday. We discussed changes, and then the next month you would approve it. So not until the end of March.
Nathan:
And I was able to touch base with, Michael Penny, about that timeline. And he was fine with it. So, yeah, there would be an initial draft that you guys have for this upcoming board meeting.
Likely a, presentation at the next studying study session and then a final vote, at the board meeting next month. And then, assuming everything goes well with our vote, the city would actually be voting on it. I think, like the next day. And then that would put it into effect for that April 1st timeline.
And so that gives us time to get all of the exhibits together that we need, identify assets. The this is a pretty heavy change in direction. I think in a good way, in terms of moving forward with, like getting assets and all that thing put across. But we have a lot to figure out in terms of how we're going to identify easements, what that plan looks like.
We don't have to have that done by the execution date, but we need to make sure we have a process to get it done after that. And so, the city is, at least Michael, when I talked to him, was on board with that timeline.
Chuck:
Do we know Kim or Nathan has the city, purchased the property They were looking at in Elkridge? I mean, I'm sorry, Coyote Park. Park.
Nathan:
They're still working on it. The city is still, committed to getting it done. I didn't get a lot of details as to, why it happened, but what I was told by Michael is that Douglas County has just been, like, really, really dragging their feet and just not being super, super responsive.
So it's something they're still moving forward on. It's just something that the county doesn't seem motivated to get. Or at least the school district doesn't seem something seem like. I feel like it doesn't seem like the school district is super motivated to get that done quickly. But it's still it's still in the works. It's still their plan, but it has not.
It hasn't happened yet.
Chuck:
Kim, is that something just as a attorney to attorney you could talk to Michelle about?
Kim:
Yeah, I sure can. during a conference call ahead with her, I heard pretty much the same thing that Nate just said that, they're still optimistic that they'll get it done, but it's. It's a hard pull.
Chuck:
The other thing I would like to discuss on Monday is just an explanation, Kim, about, the transfer of funds to the city to operate Coyote Ridge and if, they need a mill levy increase, they're going to have to go to the community.
If the community votes it down, it comes back to the metro district. And I just want to make sure this board understands that circular, possibility.
Kim:
You know, we'll talk about that quite a bit. There is, a provision, of course, in this draft that came out a little different than what I was anticipating. And it states at the present time that if they don't have a mill levy by the end of 2024, the city may choose to turn the property back to the district.
which is not what we had talked about before, but I'm not sure where the board's thinking is on that. So
Chuck:
Is that in here?
Kim:
On Monday? Yes, it is, and I highlighted it and noted it because I'm not sure which way we want to go. Okay. Let's.
Chris:
Yeah. Why would we want to do that. I thought the whole intention is to move the responsibility, along with the funding over to the city to, be able to, you know, fully fund and execute on the services.
Why would we want to resend? Why would we want to go back? Not we. Why would the city want to go back and stand? Because they don't have their levy. But it's fully funded based on the levy we have, what we're funding them with. Right?
Kim:
That's correct. And I think, Chris, the question will be and I anticipated your reaction.
I don't know about anybody else's, but I did anticipate yours. And, you know, we can change the agreement to say we'll continue providing the funding until they do get them. Mill levy. Or we can address it in some other way and not go through the trouble of returning the property. But we'll have to make some changes in the agreement.
It's hard for me to see how they don't get their mill levy in 23 or 24, because when they request their mill levy, we're going to go out and tell them we're going to our mill levy is going away. All right. So it's not changing taxes. It's simply shifting who's getting them.
Chuck:
We more logical people would think that.
But I've always seen that over the last 20 years when the city has asked for mill levy increase, it's failed miserably. So it's just the way the personalities are. And so I think we need to be. And I think, Nathan, you mentioned it. Well, we got to get out and let people understand that. Kim. Yeah. And it's not a bottom line ad.
It's a net. Net. Yes. So good. Okay.
Chris, anything else?
Chris:
Yeah. The only thing I. And I know, Nathan responded to my email, I do want to put in the agenda, the, you know, next step. So we talked about the two IGAs probably let's just say they're done for argument's sake. You know, what is our next step? And I put an email I don't know if Nathan, did you send that out to the other board members?
Nathan:
No, I have not.
Chris:
Okay. So so, Jason, you should get an email and I sent from Nathan, but, essentially, what is what is our next step after the IGAs are done? Right? So we've got water and sewer, and that's the only thing left for the district. And if you look at where we have been. Right. And I summarized it a little bit, we've talked to all the out of water districts out there and we've gotten their response.
So I, I put a little email together and he has put it out, but I want to put it on the agenda. But I didn't want it to just spring as an everybody on Monday. So just look at that email if you can please.
Jason:
Thanks, Chris. Yeah. That's something that interests me too, just to kind of get it out there and see what, see what our next steps.
Thank you very much. Right.
Chuck:
Thanks, Chris. Nathan. Sure. You're good?
Nathan:
I'm good. I'm forwarding that email as we speak.
Chuck:
Kim, you got anything we ought to address? Nothing for me. We're moving forward on, the election and and candidates and that sort of stuff next, which is taking that on.
Kim:
Yep. We are. I meant to ask her today if we've received nominations, but I forgot to do that.
But I will have that for you on Monday. All that information.
Chuck:
Okay. Thank you. Very good. No other questions. motion to adjourn the meeting.
Jason:
There's no motions, and we can adjourn.
Chuck:
And I am exactly no motions. And. And I the meeting is adjourned.
Chris:
And I second that or third that good night.
Chuck:
Thanks, Chris, for being here. Thanks, guys. All righty. Bye.
All right. Thank you for coming.