January 24, 2022 Video Board Meeting

Transcript

AGENDA
Board of Directors Meeting
Monday, January 24, 2022, at 6:00 p.m.
7404 Yorkshire Drive, Castle Pines, CO 80108

1. Welcome. Call meeting to order. Pledge of Allegiance.
2. Roll call. Determination of quorum. Disclosure of potential conflicts.
3. Consider approving January 24, 2022, board meeting agenda.
4. Consider approving December 13, 2021, board meeting minutes.
5. Opening public comment period (three-minute maximum per person).
6. Update from Ron Redd, General Manager, Parker Water & Sanitation District (PWSD), regarding his perspective on the status of CPNMD’s water & wastewater utility Inclusion.
7. Open Space Manager’s report.
   A. Mitigation re: Monarch Blvd rights-of-way notice of damages letters from CPNMD to City, dated May 7, 2021 and July 27, 2021.
8. Distribution & Collections Systems Foreman report.
   A. Odor in Forest Park & Castle Point neighborhoods.
   B. Backflow prevention and cross-connection control (BPCCC) violation notice.
9. Finance Director’s report.
   A. Consider approving financial report, payables, and claims for payment, including check #26576 - #26680 (December 1, 2021 – January 14, 2022)
   
   

General Fund & Debt Service Approve $104,181.25 Ratify $94,878.80 Totals $199,060.05

Enterprise Funds Approve $1,119,395.63 Ratify $1,117,297.21 Totals $2,236,692.84
Electronic Payments (all funds) Approve $0.00 Ratify $111,542.52 Totals $111,542.52
Total Expenditures Approve $0.00 Ratify $0.00 Totals $2,547,295.41

B. PWSD’s request for additional funding for Inclusion-related unforseens.
C. Consideration of temporary reduction in fee on monthly water bills.

1. Legal Counsel’s report.
   A. City of Brighton’s water rights lawsuit.
   B. Consent decree from CDPHE.
   C. Ground water rights letter from CPNMD’s water attorney, Austin Hamre.
   D. Centennial/PWSD Emergency Water Agreement.
   E. Participation/reimbursement fees for new partners in Chatfield Reservoir.
   F. Conveyances of water & wastewater infrastructure easements and property rights.
2. District Manager’s report.
   A. Project to replace, upgrade, and reposition CPNMD’s existing 10” water main with a 12” water main beneath Castle Pines Pkwy, between Yorkshire Dr and Monarch Blvd, is complete.
   B. Operations & maintenance status of CPNMD’s ten water wells.
   C. Operations & maintenance status of CPNMD’s water treatment facility.
   D. CPNMD’s installation of new pickleball courts at Coyote Ridge Park.
3. Directors’ matters.
4. Closing public comment period (three-minute maximum per person).
5. Adjourn.

Describer: The video starts on graphic with a white background and forest green letters which says “Castle Pines North Metro District Board Meeting January 24, 2022”. The meeting opens on a shot of all board members present. There is also a T.V. screen showing the Zoom meeting for people joining the meeting via Zoom.

Board President David McEntire:

Good evening everyone. Colleagues, those in the audience, those that are visiting and watching the meeting online. Welcome. Appreciate you taking your time this evening to be with us. At this time I would like to call the meeting to order and invite everyone to join us in saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

Describer:

The board members and the audience rise from their seats and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. When they are done, they sit down again.

All Speak:

I Pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

David:

Thank you, I'm going to call roll. At which time I call your name. If you would indicate your presence. And disclose any potential conflicts if any.

Board Member Director Chris Lewis:

Director Christopher Lewis. Present. No conflicts.

Board President Chuck Lowen:

Director Chuck Lowen. Present. No conflicts.

Board Member Director Robert Merritt:

Director Robert Merritt. Present. No conflicts.

Board Member Director Denise Crew:

Director, Directrice Denise Crew. Present. No conflicts. Except maybe Directrice.

David:

David McEntire is here. No conflicts.

We have a quorum. Item three and item four. We typically have the opportunity to condense into one. If there's any reason that we cannot let me know. Otherwise be looking for a motion to approve the January 24th, 2022 board meeting agenda. That's the one we have before this evening. As well as the December 13th, 2021 board meeting minutes. Is there a motion?

Chris:

I make a motion to approve the January 24th board meeting agenda, and the minutes from December 13th, 2021.

Chuck:

I second that motion.

David:

We have a motion and a second to approve the agenda for this evening as well as minutes of December 13th, 2021. Is there any further conversation? Comments, questions, concerns? Hearing none, I'll call for the vote.

Board Voting All Speak:

Director Crew. Approved. Director Merritt. Approved. Director Lowen. Approved. Director Lewis. Approved. Motion carries unanimously.

David:

Item six or excuse me. Item five. Item five is, is where we open the public comment period. We have a sign up sheet in the back. We have a number of folks that are with us tonight. Any of them wishing to speak?

Describer:

Jim hands David a sheet of paper that includes the list of people that want to speak for the public comment period.

David:

Thank you sir.

Describer:

Marv is speaking at the podium. When he is done he will sit down.

Marv Tibbitts Castle Pines Resident:

Good evening. Oh. On? Now it's on, okay.

David:

Happy new year, Marv.

Marv:

Thank you. Happy New year to everybody else. Hopefully 2022 will be better than 2021. I'm going to hold my comments until after the presentation. So, your item number 13, but I just want to make my presence known. Thank you.

David:

Very good. Thanks, Marv.

Describer:

Jim turners off the microphone.

David:

We have a Mr. Kreider.

Describer:

Jim turners on the microphone.

David:

Thank you. Jim.

Describer:

Matthew is speaking at the podium. When he is done he will sit down.

Matthew Kreider Castle Pines Resident:

Hi. Thank you. My name is Matthew Kreider. I'm at 22 Klingen Gate Ln in the Hamlet in District Two. So just a few notes here. In reflection on the recent Marshall fire, we in Castle Pines are certainly in an even more susceptible terrain for wildfire. 10 to 12,000 of our residents were evacuated in October of 2003. During our last major wildfire in this area.

I'm sure many of you remember that event. In just the past two years we've also seen two recent grassland fires causing evacuations near the backcountry and Highlands Ranch. As well as four fires along I-25 near Castle Pines Parkway. Three on the West side and one on the East. So I'm here tonight to encourage the Castle Pines North Metro District in three areas in respect to wildfire mitigation. First, water distribution systems.

Second, managing our open space, and three collaborating with other jurisdictions. Early lessons learned by the Town of Superior were that the loss, that with the loss of power, their water distribution system relied on backup generators. These generators succumbed to fire since they were not housed in fireproof or fire resistant buildings. This left the town with dry hydrants.

Do we at Castle Pines North Metro District and Parker Water have similar infrastructure that would be vulnerable to wildfire and therefore not be functioning when we need it the most? What enhancements are needed to protect our current and future water distribution assets? Growing up in the Lewisville area, acreage. And open space that is still leased by my father was actually a firebreak northeast of Avista hospital.

This open space and pasture was heavily grazed by cattle and therefore left little fuel for the fire to proceed. Castle Pines North Metro District has 352 acres of open space surrounding our homes. How much of our open space is managed in a way to mitigate fire? Seeing goat herds in one small area of our community for a few weeks each year is great publicity and awareness. But having a few acres out of hundreds being managed in this way is only a start.

Additional mowing along roadways and trails will help enhance natural firebreaks. While continuing the removal of dead trees and debris will reduce risk. The Ridge Golf Course manages a lot of land in our community. I encourage you to work with them on reducing fuels, mowing their rough annually to extend natural firebreaks. And develop a water usage plan in the event of another evacuation.

In 2003, the Ridge Golf Course operated their sprinklers as a firebreak across the, the golf course. While seemingly beneficial, what is the current fire management plan and how does the plan affect other infrastructure specific water pressure? Lastly, I encourage the Castle Pines North Metro District to collaborate with the City of Castle Pines, Douglas County, Castle Rock, the South Metro Fire District, and area HOAs in efforts to develop and implement fire mitigation plans. In topics of construction materials, zoning, landscaping materials, ordinances, and other means to keep this topic in mind where applicable in decision making.

Just as budget noise and safety are concerns with any decision so should fire mitigation. I have reached out to Ben Price of District Two with similar information. Thank you for your time serving on the Castle Pines North Metro District Board. Please keep fire mitigation in mind with our water distribution system, open space management. And by maximizing efforts by collaborating with other jurisdictions in the area. Thank you. Thank you.

Chuck:

Mr. President, could we take a moment and ask Mr. Kreider, any questions? If we have any on this particular topic?

David:

Sure. Are you up for it? Sure. Great, absolutely go ahead.

Chuck:

I just want to say that Mr. Kreider, and I have known each other for several years living in the same community. And he sent me this email that I found at this time in our lives. Out here in Castle Pines was spot on and extremely important.

And so I invited him here tonight to, to address his concerns. And I hope that this board takes his suggestions seriously. I hope we can meet with the appropriate representatives around the, the county to come up with some sort of plan that we can share with our residents about what we can do, cannot do.

Address for fire safety. Now unfortunately, the Marshall Fire was a perfect storm. I'm not sure what could have been done differently to prevent that. But I like where Mr. Kreider is going on. His topics is noted concerns and suggestions. And I'm hoping this board can take this up later in our directors matters. And discuss it with some seriousness. Okay that. Any questions from Matthew was pretty succinct in what he was, what he wrote. And thank you for coming.

Matthew:

Sure, thank you.

Chris:

So I do have a comment. And this, when would we take it up? Because I do have a lot of comments on this one too. I got reached out by many people in my community about this. So if we're going to take this up in the director's area, that's fine. We can hold it till that discussion.

David:

I'm sure, Chris, that Mr. Kreider would benefit from your comments. As we have benefited from his. And it's my understanding that he may have a previously made a commitment to leave here shortly. But if you have a few minutes, we'll break in protocol or M.O. And, and listen to your questions and your comments and your concerns. With Mr. Kreider’s help and participation. Come, come on back up if you like.

Describer:

There is a poster in front of the direction’s desk that is titled “Drought Severity & Fire Risk”. Under that it shows four triangles in a dome/umbrella shape. The one on the far left side is a green triangle that says low, the blue triangle next to that says moderate, the yellow triangle in the middle says high, the orange triangle to the right says very high, and the red triangle on the farthest right side says extreme.

Chris:

So we appreciate you coming here tonight. And for also the folks that are listening online and are here at present. We do, we do live in a, a drought high desert area. And one of the things that this board has taken really seriously is drought mitigation and fire, right? As you can see, our good old Smokey Bear is here tonight in at an opportune time.

So I did talk to a couple homeowners in my area. And they approached me because we had our HOA meeting this week. Or last week sometime. And one of the homeowners. Or a couple of them actually had South Suburban Fire marshal. A person come out to their lots after the Marshall fire and review it and come up with suggestions as to what we needed to do to mitigate. Or to come up with some type of a means to at least protect our area.

So I reached out to Jim, and I sent him an email question in what, what is it that we're doing and inquiring? And I'm sure he brought Craig into it. And they did a very extensive email that they put out to, to the group. And I think I'm going to defer to him to actually explain some of the things that were suggested from the in the memo.

But I just want to make sure that everyone understand that this is very important and this is near and dear to me. I was actually moving in the week when we had the Cherokee Fire. I was moving from Ohio. And I'm moving here after the fire that they had out in the West. And you know, we move in, we had a blizzard, feet of snow. And then we had a fire and we got evacuated.

And I'm going, what am I moving into? Right. And since then, you know, I just came back from deployment last year and I saw the fire on 25. I'm going, what's the deal? This is not the first time we've brought it up. We've made attempts to get, you know, signs. And notifications out there asking for us to make sure that the community knows that this is definitely a serious concern to all of us. And we're still trying to get it approved for whatever reason or the other.

But with your involvement and other folks in the community. I think it's important that they make their voices known. I would continue to email us, continue to email the city council, continue to get on the news, raise this. Because it seems like we're only well, some of us are bringing it up. And we can't seem to get any progress on any type of mitigation.

Now, I know we have a plan from the metro district. I'm going to turn it over to Jim. Or if any of my other colleagues want to say something. But Jim can report on some of the investigation that him and Craig did.

District Manager Jim Worley:

Shall I go? Thank you. Thanks for being here. Appreciate, you bet. Two people are online here that can address a lot of the questions that Matthew just stated. One is Craig Miller. He's one who's in charge of our open space, parks, trails. All of that information he has worked very closely with, Einar Jensen. Einar Jensen.

He works for South Metro Fire and Rescue. And we sent, I sent to you an email this afternoon. And some of you, I think late last week that there's a request from the village down South of us. They've got a very similar issue. I think they're probably a little tighter than we are. As far as the area that can burn.

And so, in the information I sent to you is questions. And answers that Einar has addressed. Then there was a piece of it. Which actually I sent to you this afternoon that Craig addressed some of those questions. So I'll let him talk about some of that information. And really where we ought to focus. Nathan Travis is also on this call tonight. And he's our, he's a guy who runs our plants and all of our water distribution.

And he can go into some detail on that one. But the thing that happened in Superior and Lewisville. Very tragic. Absolutely. But as I think Chuck stated it was a perfect storm. We had gale winds and you just can't stop something like that. And so I'll take a little bit of Nathan's thunder. One of the many good things that we have here is in the event. We had one of those catastrophic events. And it shut down our treatment plant or our wells or whatever the case is. Unless it's covering this whole north part of Douglas County.

The good news is we have this interconnect pipeline with Centennial. So the where the water comes from is right in the edge of Highlands Ranch. If you go down Monarch. Got a pipeline on the ground. It comes out. As a matter of fact, we're drinking that water right now as what we had from October 1st through April 30th.

And so that's, that's really the good news. In the event of a major fire like what happened up there damages all of our facilities unless it includes Highlands Ranch in it then that's kind of the good news on it. So I think I'll turn it over to Craig. And let him focus on his working with Einar. And some of the information that was put out. And some of the questions which I think we should somehow put together. And put it on a website or something on that. Yes, sir. Go ahead.

Describer:

Craig is joining the meeting via Zoom.

Craig Miller, Supervisor, Parks, Trails, and Open Space, CPNMD:

Thanks Jim, can everybody hear me fine?

David:

Yeah. Before we turn it over to, to Craig. Mr. Kreider, you have to know that I've read these. This corresponded to Jim's making reference to. First thing that comes to my mind is that there's nothing in all of that communication. Which we'd be happy to share with you. That not only Craig Miller, who is in charge of and oversees our open space, trails and parks. Is not currently observing. But is being currently sought as a, as the go to professional in this realm and in this lane for recommendations and for evaluations.

We, if I turn it over to Craig, he's going to share with you everything that we're already doing. And I'm not going to say that he walks on water. But again he's sought out. Has been sought out by many. To advise on this matter given his area of expertise. So I'm going to, I'm going to ask Craig to be patient in this regard and, and not go into that dissertation.

And, but rather work with our communications director Nathan and Craig. Work with our communications director through Jim. To put out the next communication to the residents. Having everything to do with the drought plan that the district holds close to its best. And exercises on. An every day, all day basis.

Mr. Kreider, you also have to know that this board. And I'll keep it short as well. We've got a lengthy agenda. This board when being sworn in, in 2018. Was told by then the district manager as we were approaching summertime. And it was probably the middle of summer 2018. And he said to the board. And you can view the minutes online should you wish. But he said to the board that to be prepared for a number of calls that could potentially come your way. From the residents of the city. And, and he was specifically relating to the fact that he had shared with us that if the drought back then continued, never mentioning that. As Chris pointed out, we live in a high desert, arid community climate. As long as the fact that we live in the Black Forest area truly live in a forested area. He said if the drought continues. We're going to have to turn the water off to the parks and all the open space that's what goes first.

And, and that didn't sit well with my colleagues and I. So we just asked the dumb question at that point went something like this. So Jim, what is our drought plan? And. Yeah. This is the previous, not this. Thank you for that clarification.

And I can quote him within a word or two. We don't have one. So this board set out to create a drought plan for this community. That 350 plus acres of trails. Those parks of which the majority of this community on the west side of the, of the highway. This district board is responsible for. So we embarked on a relationship with the county commissioners as well as South Metro. A number of HOAs, Einar was involved. A number of other professionals.

And we came up with a drought plan that we, in fact, this drought plan that we came up with was more of an information system. Much like you're promoting here. Where anyone coming and going from the city would be reminded that we not only live in the forest. But what the what? The conditions are outside. Morning, noon, night, whenever at every entryway.

We were going to integrate on a professional level. Smokey for the nostalgia and for the nuance of living in a forest and a meter. Much like you see in the village right now. And many other fire stations and other places that are similar to our situation. We had two county commissioners support. We had South Metro support.

Describer:

The camera pans to a Smokey Bear statue to the left of the drought and fire risk poster.

We still have that. In fact everywhere we went we had support. Except for the leadership at the city at the time. We're prayerful that with the new leadership we'll have another opportunity to brief. Or bring the issue back up. I could not be more disappointed. As my colleagues and I are. I’m frustrated that it's not in place. Or that there's not a program in place as we speak.

And that we are on the heels of this tragedy that took place in Boulder County. But it is what it is. And we're going to remain steadfast. In hopes that we can get a program that is palatable to everybody. And sooner than later. That's an update and unless my colleagues have anything else to say. I again, I'd like to wait on Nathan and Craig's comment specifically about it. Because there's nothing that, again, they're being sought by others to answer. And provide some input on that. We're not doing already here, okay.

Chuck:

Just, just as a sidebar, Mr. President Matthew and I in the hamlet received a correspondence from our president written by Einar Jensen. Who is a risk reduction specialist with South Metro on six really good specific points that the residents should take into consideration in their own homes.

I don't know if this document can be sent out to our bill payers or residents. Or if every association got this. I don't think they did. But it's certainly something that I'd like to see if this metro district would add to their billing this month.

David:

You’ll. And if you'll work with Jim and Craig and Nathan. And of course, our communications folks on that piece. There's nothing that's off the table. The more information that we have as residents. As we've talked about being behind the Smoky effort. The better we'll all be off. So thank you Chuck, thank you Mr. Kreider.

Robert:

And just want to bring up that we did have 50% support from the fire department. At time with costs if that is still. If we can revisit that as well.

David:

All right I'm, If there's nobody else. Mr. Kreider, thank you again for being here. Marv will visit on at the end. I'm going to close item number five and open up item six. Which is the update on our agenda from Ron Redd. Ron had texted me. And let me know that he is still infected with Covid.

Did not. This was on Friday morning. Did not believe that he was going to be cleared. In order to make the meeting. And I'm going to then assert. By virtue of what we have to share with everyone in this meeting. That the update from Parker was, was denoted in the connection as an update to the inclusion with Castle Pines North Metro District.

And so with that top of mind, I'm going to close item six and open up item number seven. That is Open Space manager's report. Craig Miller, you have the floor, sir.

Craig:

Thank you. You all have a copy of my report. Does anybody have any questions?

David:

Craig, I do have a follow up question to last month. And I'm sorry to bring this up again. But my notes to myself were not clear. It had everything to do with the rework on Castle Pines Parkway. This was the section of road that had been reconstructed from Yorkshire to Monarch.

And in your report, you had indicated that there was approximately. Or what was estimated to be about $185,000 in work. That is going to take place this spring. Or as soon as the weather's conducive for it. You had indicated that 70% of that was attributable to the work that was done. And that the city, it acknowledged that. You went on to say that. There's approximately $65,000 additional. Depending on the amount of sod that needed to be replaced. And the extent of the irrigation damages that was being estimated for all of the irrigation damages, including valve boxes. And mainlines and whatnot.

So we're talking upwards to almost $200,000. The question is Craig, was I clear in asking you to make sure that that commitment was in hand before? You began to expend those dollars in behalf of the residents and the city?

Craig:

Yes, that is correct. For the most part I've been working with Larry Nimmo, the public works director at the city.

He understands the requirements that the contractor is going to have to fulfill. As I noted 70% of that is the contractors responsibility. The other 30% is plant material that's been lost over the years. Mainly due to excessive road deicer being applied. But we can't really pin that on the contractor. So far as the irrigation work is concerned.

David Anderson, our parks foreman will be working on that. As soon as the ground thaws enough. And we have an opportunity to start examining what exactly was damaged. We are not going to know until spring when plant material leaves out how much of the plant material actually has expired. As a result of the road construction.

We suspect that it'll be a significant amount, but it will be the total dollar amount that I noted in the last month's board report. Because I suspect that some of those plant materials were pretty tough and they'll survive. But the problem was lack of irrigation. There was no water to the construction site. Particularly the medium islands. And David was not able to get in there to water those applied materials. Just because of the construction proximity.

So again, more to come, come springtime. You know April, May we’ll have a pretty good feel for what's going on. And what needs to be replaced.

David:

Very good. Just want to make sure we were on the same page. Sounds like it. Yeah. Larry is always been a pleasure to work with. From my, my experience can you.

Craig:

Larry, he's, he's a bulldog about it. You'll note my report the sign damage that we had particularly at Pikes Bridge.

But we have a few other areas. And median island damage caused by the construction contractors fully aware that they're responsible for it. My understanding is that Larry's not completed the punch list for repairs. And modifications needed to be made for that road construction. Once that's completed he'll be following through. So I'm very pleased with the policy that Larry's providing.

David:

Can you, can you go ahead and address the mitigation issues along Monarch please?

Craig:

Yes, so far as that was left. We ran out of time to do the soil removal and replacement. And overseeing that I had recommended. And that the city, they hired their own consultant. And they came up with virtually the same, same ideas as I did in their report.

What the city has decided to do is to provide a concrete apron on either side of the most damaged portion of that curve up on Monarch Boulevard in the Esperanza area. To deflect future road salt damage and reduce the amount of road salt damage. It will not be a perfect solution by any means.

Because there is going to be quite a bit of overspray involved on those curves. As the plows go around that corner in the winter time. They typically are applying road, road deicer and then plowing it, road deicer, plowing it. And the spray that they're throwing up on there goes much farther than the city's mitigation efforts.

Basically requiring in terms of the distance. You have to be seen what happens from that standpoint. Myself personally, I think that snow removal operations need to be reimbursed, basically reevaluated, so that their contractor is not using as much deicing salt because they're using way too much, in my opinion. But in addition to that, I still think that the snow removal and replacement, with over seating is the best solution. Because that will provide that native grass, buffer along the roads that residents up in that area are particularly concerned about.

Jim:

Let me add one thing to that. If I could, you talked about Larry. Larry’s a good man. He workes with us very well and really appreciate his professionalism. And, and Craig's right, he is a pit bull when it comes to addressing these things. He and I talked today and we talked about this apron that Craig mentioned.

So I've got a meeting with him this coming Thursday. And I had forgotten to tell Craig earlier today. So assume you're here Thursday. Craig, you're going to be in a meeting with Larry. Hear you. Okay. And we'll talk more in depth of what's going on. But that's really where it is at this point. And we'll let you know more after we have that meeting.

David:

Time is of essence. would be the message for me. We've got a lot of folks who we asked for patience during this last year and promised some, some results. So, I'm hoping that the report that comes from that meeting includes addressing at least that first phase in 2022, okay. Anyone else? Hearing no one else. Thank you. Craig, I'm going to close item seven and open it up.

Ken Smith CPNMD Communications Director:

Mr. Present. Mr. President, before you go any further, we do have a constituent who wasn't heard earlier, who I believe would like to make a comment. J.D. Lobue.

John David (J.D.) Lobue Castle Pines Resident:

Thanks Ken. Yeah I wasn't sure when you closed. If you asked for those on the Zoom call to provide some questions.

So, sorry for the procedural skip. J.D. Lobue I'm at 983 Bramblewood in the Bramble Ridge community. We recently had a pipe leak.

Ken:

Mr. Lobue. We're having some difficulty hearing you. Hang on just a moment.

J.D.:

Okay. Lower my mic a little bit for you, too.

Ken:

That would be helpful, yes.

J.D.:

Is that better? Yes. Where did you lose me? I can start over if you'd like.

Ken:

If you wouldn't mind starting over, that would be great.

J.D.:

Okay. I'll, I'll pass off the procedural part. Thanks for hearing me. When you guys closed it, I didn't get a chance to ask my question. I’m J.D. Lobue 983 Brambleree, sorry. Bramblewood in the Bramble Ridge community.

And recently we had a pipe burst up above and we were told it was the district that was taking care of that. I wasn't sure if any of the members had heard about that. We've been passed around with trying to remove some of the ice that has been built up because of that pipe. And we're trying to figure out who it is that we need to go to.

If this isn't the right forum I'd be happy to go somewhere else. But I'm trying to come here to try to cover our bases.

Jim:

Let me address that if I, if I could. Thank you, J.D., we did. We had a couple of breaks. One was a valve got broken and another one was a pipe. And so we have a crew that's pretty much 24 seven.

They'll come in, contractor and take care of that for us. The issue on this particular one is water ran down the street, got into the curb and over on some of the sidewalk and because of the temperatures some of that froze. So I got a call this morning from Diana, who is a lady I believe is in charge of the HOA over there.

And so she said Jim, is there anything you can do about the ice? And I said, first of all, we need to take care of the water leak. So that's what our contractor is there for. But then I got back with her later and I said, we don't have the ability in house to go chop up ice. Be honest with you.

We plow our trails, some sidewalks just in certain areas. And certainly our facility is here but we don't have any equipment to go beat up on ice and take care of that. Unfortunately, I did visit with Larry again, but Larry's coming up a lot tonight. Told him of those calls. I had two of them actually today. and it's one of those things that we.

Unless we have the, unless the desire of the board is to go out and start chopping ice. Which we just don't have the personnel to do that. It really falls on others that are in the area. I noticed when I went up there this morning late, some of the sidewalks on that side of the road. They're all covered pretty much by, by shade.

And so there's going to be ice over there, and there's even some sidewalks that were not plowed. And so we just don't have the ability to go out and break up ice, if that makes sense to you. And so that's what I told them. They all understood they said some of the people have contracts with, with people that plow the snow and do that. But it doesn't get plowed till it's three inches or what have you.

So that leaves ice there. So there I was really between a rock and a hard place, pun intended with ice on really what to do other than fix that leak, which we did. And so we don't have the personnel or the equipment to go beat up on ice to be honest with you.

Describer:

J.D. is saying “sorry can I respond to that” at the same time David is talking.

David:

Was this on private roadways?

Jim:

No, they're city streets. So Bramblewood I believe is a street and what have you.

David:

City, city street. Yeah. City sidewalk.

Jim:

City side. Yes.

David:

And, and, and the responsibility for those streets and the sidewalks fall where?

Jim:

I believe with the city certainly on the streets. I don't know what the city ordinance is related to the front of your house on the sidewalk. I don't know if there was a time frame or what that is but.

David:

How did the water? Thank you. How did the water get up on top the sidewalks?

Jim:

Just from the flow of water coming downhill.

David:

That, oh, it went over the sidewalks and into the street? Yeah. Opposed the street onto the walk.

Jim:

A little bit of both. A little bit of both. Because enough water got into a spot. Especially one area that I saw that the snow and ice from previous snows we've had not gone. So it was already there. So it had nowhere to go except on top of that. So it did sheet over into some of the areas of the sidewalks.

David:

Is a line fixed?

Jim:

Yes it is. Hang on just a minute. I'm getting a little text from Nathan. I'll just let you know. Nathan Travis, you've heard me mention his name. He's the one who really coordinated this. And so he just basically sent me a text, and he's on here. If we need to talk to him. He says he can reach out to Shannon. Shannon is with a company that does this work for us.

24/7 actually, and see if they might be able to come out and throw some ice slicer on there. We can sure reach out to them and see if we can do that. In one of my conversations with Larry today, he says, we call it this impending snowstorm coming in tonight or whatever it may be. His crews are going to be out starting at 4:30 tomorrow morning to take care of some of these areas.

So I physically told him where this location was. If he wants to go take a look at it. So we have no problem reaching out to Shannon and see if he can just throw some stuff on there. Ut as far as chopping it up and moving it, hauling it away that's.

David:

I remember where we had a situation like that.

A little bit different dynamic. But what was really important to the HOA and I can side with them for sure. Was some caution tape and or signage or, or pylons to make sure that it was brought to anyone's attention that there's an issue there. So I would encourage us to jump in there with them and provide that kind of a not necessarily a barricade, but information piece.

Jim:

And Nathan is listening to this, so he'll reach out to Shannon, the gentleman okay.

Robert:

I have a comment on that as well. I'd like to ask Nathan in his opinion, does that have any liability or danger in that area? And then we can maybe revisit our contract with the snow removal people seeing that they're going to be out in the next day. And if we could work with the city and get that rectified and have everybody on it since it is coming up. And we do have a snow impending, the trucks will be out there and just mitigate it with the rock salt or whatever they have.

Nathan Travis Water and Wastewater Operations Manager CPNMD:

So I can speak a little bit to what we've got going on if people can hear.

Denise:

It’s hard to hear.

Jim:

Mr. President, if you go. Speak up. Yeah, Nathan when you talk, speak up because we're, we're having trouble hearing everybody that's on Zoom.

Ken:

Please speak directly into the microphone.

Jim:

Yes, talk microphone. Can Nathan take a second to address this? Go ahead Nathan, try to talk loud.

Nathan:

All right, can everybody hear me okay, ish? Give me one second here.

J.D.:

We can hear you on the Zoom Nathan, I don't know about in the room.

Nathan:

Gotcha. I don't know how to rectify that issue.

Jim:

Just talk loud like you do when you're in my office.

Nathan:

Fair, yeah so in terms of waterline breaks, one of the things that we really evaluate is making sure that when we leave the jobsite that everything is safe. And that anything that was any damages that were caused is a direct result of the breaker taking care of.

I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage on this one just because I am at home doing my Covid protocol stuff. And so I wasn't physically able to visit the site. I have gotten some pictures, mostly of the excavation. That is definitely something that I can talk to emergency pipe repair about and just really have them look at, look at the site.

Once, you know, we get through this next storm, whatever's left from the city we can, we can evaluate what needs to be taken care of. What came from the break. Shannon does have the equipment to do that kind of removal and he can probably get through it pretty quickly. If not, we've got to. I've got a couple of other contractors I could reach out to.

I also am aware that his schedule gets really busy at the end of this week. But generally speaking cleaning up sites we're looking at ice, ice deposits in the summer. It's sand and mud removal. That's just part of our kind of normal operation clean up process when we have main breaks or in this case, it was actually a water service that failed.

Jim:

J.D, you wanted to address some of that, sir?

J.D.:

Yeah thanks, Jim. Thank you. Thank you very much, you guys. I, you know, I'm one of the younger people in the community. And I know that there are some people who can't get out to their mailboxes. And so it's really they're slipping and falling in and I'm out. I was out there actually working out. And I told them.

Ken:

I get it.

Describer:

Ken was talking to someone in the room with him where he was joining the meeting via Zoom.

J.D.:

I told them I said, I do this kind of in the winter anyway. I like to work out. I like chipping some ice, but not this much ice. There's a lot of ice up just in front of some areas. So it's really just I think it's, it's two quick areas coming down on the side. Remove the ice barriers and I think we'd be golden. So I appreciate you guys taking a listen to that. And thank you Nathan. Good luck with your recovery.

Jim:

Well Larry, Nathan and I yeah you betcha. Thank you J.D., appreciate your comments sir. Thank you.

David:

Very good, thank you. Was there anything else? Hearing none. I'm going to again, close item seven and open up item eight. Nathan, your item eight welcome. Again reminder to speak loud if you would please on the odor update for Forest Park and the backflow prevention update.

Nathan:

Yeah. So I will start with the Forest Park odor issue update. That project we've been working with, QP services. Scott Boyd is the owner of an operator of that company.

We've had a lot of stops and starts with that ozonation station. We, I think we began installation on a clear back in, you know, May or June sometime. And I am finally happy to report that the station is up and running at full capacity. That's been taken care of since about last week. We got the final part that we needed to get that going.

So we're in a process now where we need to give it about two weeks to take, to take hold and then we're going to start doing our dosing process measurements. So we're going to…

Describer:

Nathat’s voice has cut out briefly and it is inaudible.

Nathan:

Hydrogen sulfide. And I think also they look at methane gas releases in Forest Park which are the two highest odor causing gases.

And then over the period of the next two weeks we’ll measure those, we’ll adjust our dose accordingly and then we'll get, the get our effective dose and set that thing, set it on auto and let it do its thing. So we're really hopeful that that will help us resolve the last little bit. We've also over the course of the past few months, sealed an additional, I think 12, 12 or 13 manholes and had to replace one, just through that area to prevent the gas from physically being able to escape.

And then the ozone should help kill the bacteria that cause it. So we're looking pretty good in that area.

David:

And, and you have the backup pump that was provided by the contractor on site as well in the event we have an issue with the primary one now that it's up and running?

Nathan:

We have not gotten so the, the air compressor that drives the whole unit. That thing is on forever backorder. So we do have an order put in for it. We don't yet have a delivery date.

Describer:

The video skips forward a little bit with no sound and no audio.

David:

You want to go ahead with item B Nathan?

Nathan:

Absolutely, so item B is referring to, apologize let me get my note page pulled over here. The Backflow Prevention and Cross Connection program violation notice that we got from the state. As we sit today, our program is in full compliance. For the calendar year 2021 we were able to pull all of the requirements that we needed.

So the backflow prevention program applies specifically to commercial and irrigation accounts in the district. All of them are required to have a backflow protection device installed. And for the three years prior we were out of we just weren't meeting our compliance number. So it's a, it's a relatively new regulation. The first two years that it was put in place, our normal operations had us already in compliance with the new numbers.

And it's a graduated scale so the state is specifically looking for two things. They're looking for actual site surveys. So going physically to these locations and assessing any potential cross connection points and then identifying the value of the hazard there. If they’re a high hazard or a low hazard connection, which has an impact on the type of device that's installed.

And then following the inspections, they call them surveys. So following the surveys getting those devices tracked, tested and certified to be functional annually. For the year, for the last year the compliance requirement for that was 100% survey. And 90% on certified and tested devices. And we've met that metric. We hit 100% on the survey, and we're right around 96% for the compliance testing.

David:

The, the backbone preventers, at my house anyway, being having, having recently built it was at my expense was the backflow preventing devices that the state added to their acceptable criteria for having a service. Paid for by the state, paid for by the user who paid for these devices?

Nathan:

By and large, the vast majority of our accounts already had devices installed. One of the issues that we ran into is there was 13 of them that we found through this process that did not already have that protection installed. The vast majority of them were irrigation accounts and then also including the Buffalo enclosure or Denver parks and open space, Denver mountain parks. and that was one of the big challenges that we had kind of going into this.

And one of the decisions that we made at the beginning of this year was to go ahead and install those devices at cost to the district. Because it's a wide application for public health and safety. And this is also a really difficult number to hit. It's a, for a smaller system those percentages swing wildly with 1 or 2 devices.

And so getting those things installed so that we could get in, in compliance and protect the system the way that the state has asked us to in this regard was, was really important. So in those 13 instances, we installed the devices. We also did a lot of additional testing and surveying. So we, beyond that I don't have the number specifically handy of how many of them we tested. But if there wasn't a certified test on the device. We went ahead and did the test at the same time that we were doing the survey. Just to get all of that stuff brought up, brought up to snuff

David:

And, and given the configuration of the community irrigation systems that we have. We were just touching on that as it relates to the damages along Castle Pines Parkway and the new construction how fully integrated they are.

And I think that well of course we all inherited that. The idea was, it was the economy's inefficiencies associated with that in the, in the beginning, it's kind of hard to parcel out anyone, responsible that who, who's not receiving a dedicated bill. So I'm sure that anyone that is doing that, that should be a participant in. You're making sure that they are.

Are we? My understanding is that the state is looking for or maybe looking for to notify the residents of, of this compliance regardless of our compliance all last year. There were some issues, given the moving target of this new ordinance or this new rule, this new program beginning in 2018. That there was the vast majority of districts in the state. They were in noncompliance and they're wanting everybody to be brought up to speed on a public notice point of view.

Is that public notice, if they don't waive that, is that public notice appropriate in this next communication with our residents along with the fire mitigation programs that we talked about earlier would that be acceptable?

Nathan:

I will have to double check with the state to make sure what we can and can't include. I know that it, that it is absolutely acceptable, acceptable to be included as a standalone document inside of like a billing mailer.

So if you know it's included in that and it's another document in addition to the fire mitigation information that we're putting out. I don't think the state would have any problems with that. We do make sure as we approach those to give the state a very complete picture of the communication that we want to give to our residents. And so we get their approval and permission before we do that just to make sure it meets all of their standards.

They did give us an extension on this notice, largely citing that we were already in compliance and a host of other contributing factors. They were pretty slow to respond after they gave us the initial notice of the violation. We got it right through the holiday season. And then the Marshall fire hit, which caused a huge draw on state resources.

So we got back burned a little bit. So they gave us an extension to get this put out. And the part of our request to them was to make sure that we had enough time that putting it into our next billing mailer would be an option to do that.

David:

Yeah. And while I wasn't suggesting that we combine the documents it's not a bad idea. But leave it to you and Jim and, and our communications folks. Thank you Nathan, anybody else?

Appreciate you joining us Nathan. You look like you're feeling okay. A number of folks are out for this evening. because of the same diagnosis. Hope you feel better soon. Look forward to seeing you back.

Nathan:

Thank you guys.

David:

All right, with that I'm going to close item eight and jump right into our finance director's report. Amanda, are you with us? Haven't seen her. Yes. Oh, there she is. Hi. Welcome. You have the floor.

District Finance Director, Amanda Castle:

Wonderful, thank you so much. I know it's a big agenda, so I'll touch kind of high level on some things and then we can dive into details if we need. On the financials one item of, or a couple of items of note for the board. Property taxes for the year actually came in slightly above the total amount levied at one just over 100%.

That's pretty normal. Typically what you'll see is there are years where it will be slightly under 100%. So last year was 99.36%. We would have received some of those taxes relative to last year. This year, thereby pushing that number over the 100% amount. So good to see those monies come in. It's always nice to receive those balances that are also passed to or in debate, even if they're a little bit late.

Beyond that, billed usage for the month of December was down from prior year resulting in decreased water service revenues up $187,000. In total we ended the year just below the actual recognized at 12/31/2020. Having said that, 2020 was a pretty strong year for usage. So it doesn't surprise me that this year would be slightly less. I'm going to stop there.

If there were any questions on the financials themselves I would be happy to answer them. If not, I think we can touch on the other two items included in the agenda as those wrap into the finance report. Other than the fact that our water usage is, is down, overall water usage is down from last year. I thought it to be an interesting point to make. And, at the end of this year we sold, in gallons, 611 million gallons of water. For everyone's information, edification and, and, and, and.

Security, that is 57% of the water that this district has decreed to it. And we're only talking about the three aquifers from which those decrees come from 57%. Is all that we're using from, from that decreed water that does not include. As I just mentioned, any of the renewable sources on the South Platte or Plum Creek, of which is in the hundreds and hundreds of gallons. But, just thought they'd be a fun tidbit to know. Go ahead Amanda.

Amanda:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. I actually really appreciate it. I've been tracking water usage for ten years now for the district so it's always interesting to see. But like I said, 2020, we had 650 million gallons versus the 611 this year. so definitely a swing there.

But, but still to David's point well within that the amounts available I'll say. Director McEntire, are you okay if I move through the next couple of points. And then we can approve the financials after talking about the inclusion and stuff or do you want to go ahead and move to approve the financials and the payables and then go to that?

David:

Oh, I think we're of an appetite to have you run through the next two items and take them as one.

Amanda:

Perfect, so forgive me here while I toggle between things. The, when you say move to redeeming for approval.

David:

I'm sorry, say again.

Amanda:

Do you mean for approval of item A, or do you want me to move to item B.

David:

I, move to item B.

Amanda:

Okay, that's what I thought. I just wanted to make sure. Sorry, I feel I'm really in the camera here trying to talk loudly. So we have been working as you were all very aware on the inclusion agreement with Parker Water and Sanitation.

They have come back and requested additional funds from the district. We've done pretty extensive research, I'll say, to look at total cash balances available, what we're expecting and the true flow of funds based off of the use of COP funds and the revenue sources that have come into the district. We are currently working to obtain an auditor to help do what's called agreed upon procedures. To come in and truly audit the information we've provided to show the factual nature of the statements we've made and push through that.

So that is something we're working on to ensure that, you know, any, any assets that are truly assets of the water fund and wastewater fund are maintained in those funds. And any that are true assets of the general fund, the same is also true. Are there any questions on that piece or any comments from the board?

Denise:

Yeah, Amanda just one question. What's the timeframe on that audit?

Amanda:

I spoke to the auditors late last week, and they are working to try and fit that piece in. One of the issues we have is that it's regular audit season right now. So firms are extremely busy. I did let the firm know that this was a very large priority for the district. And they are working to get that scheduled as soon as possible so that they can provide a deliverable for those agreed upon procedures pretty rapidly.

The good part about that is most of that work has really been done already by us. So we can just ideally hand those documents over to the auditors and allow them to do their scope of services.

Denise:

Great, thank you. You're welcome. There's not a time frame yet. It's audit season. Super busy. So hard to get, but it is our priority. And she's conveying that.

David:

Correct me if, if this statement is, is not right. The purpose of the audit, or the, the folks that will oversee your work specifically as it relates to the asset of the water and wastewater side of the, of the district's business is, is to ensure that 100 cents on the dollar given to this district to steward. If the inclusion, if and when the inclusion takes place it is transferred to Parker. Is that true?

Amanda:

Correct, that those, that 100 cents on the dollar is transferred for all relative assets of the water and wastewater funds.

David:

There's been some. I asked that because there's been some question and discussion minor about, the flexibility of, of, of the inclusion of the voter improved inclusion. And I honestly, I don't see the flexibility.

We, we didn't enter into the inclusion agreement as a ploy to make money or, or, or anything of that in that realm. Rather to ensure that what the voters approved is delivered. And, I appreciate you taking the extra step to ensure that the financial transactions not only meet gap. But meet our forthcoming audit, which we do every single year, but for the benefit of this inclusion, given the fact we're we're more than likely down to months now and not years any, any, anything we can do to help, rectify any of those outstanding questions, comments or concerns is appreciated on, on both parties part, I'm sure. So thank you for that. Anybody else?

Chris:

So Amanda, just clarification from my perspective. So I'm trying to make sure I understand what's going on. So essentially from the inclusion perspective the analysis that was provided essentially said, as David mentioned, our water and sewer budget and funding is covered in the Enterprise Fund. And that enterprise fund has been provided to the analysis for all the inclusion here.

And, as part of some additional request from the Parker sewer and district area, we’re essentially validating that we have provided all that information. And we're also auditing to make sure that we do not include or contain what's within the general fund. Anything to do with sewer and water, is that correct?

Amanda:

Yes, that's correct that we're not making money on the transaction.

Chris:

Okay. And, and then also correct is that your organization has already done this audit, and you have essentially came to the conclusion that affirmed what we just said. That's correct. You're right.

Amanda:

Yes. That's correct.

Chris:

Okay. And now what we're doing, the board is essentially going one step further to make sure that we have an independent auditor so that this is beyond reproach. That the information we're providing is correct. That all the water and sewer funding and assets are in the enterprise Fund and not contained at all within the general fund. Correct. Okay thank you. I just wanted to clarify for myself, thanks. Yep.

David:

Anyone else? Thank you Director Lewis, if you'll continue Amanda, item C.

Amanda:

Absolutely. So with the delay in the inclusion, the district is obviously moving forward with operations per the norm. In order to create some reduction in fees on our bills. We looked at the billings and what will be presented to the board as an amendment to the budget.

We are proposing a temporary reduction in the fee on the water bills to remove the renewable water surcharge. Once we removed that, the water fund is still made whole. There's not a deficit that will be created. It doesn't put the district in a negative place at all. It provides the necessary reprieve on that specific item until we move forward with this inclusion.

David:

If I make another chance to rephrase that. I know that in the inclusion that we just negotiated that that fee was going away. But it was going away as a byproduct of a new structure. With that, Parker was going to use for their entire service area. But because of the delay, and in the spirit of the same type of, of, of trajectory of, of savings. Your recommendation to zero out the renewable water fee makes sense to me because the inclusion in large part. Is a byproduct of this board's and this staff's effort to secure renewable water.

And having done that by virtue of the inclusion agreement, there really wasn't any reason, could have, but no reason to continue to levy that $15. At least inside of this year. And, and, as expected, with the inclusion, it would be a permanent reduction and would, would go away. So I like the idea as, as we make up for the late notice on, on the delay. But, nonetheless I'm in favor of, of the reduction, the temporary reduction for 2022.

Chris:

Is that a motion? No. Okay.

Describer:

The audio has been cut out briefly.

David:

No Director Lewis, that was not in the form of a, of a, of a motion. I'd be happy to make one if you'd be so kind as to allow me. Amanda, are you ready? I'd like to make a motion this evening, related to the finance director's report. To approve the finance, excuse me, to approve the finance director's report.

Including the payables, claims and payments included in checks number 26576-26680 for the period of December 1st through January 14th. Approving specifically $104,181.21 from the General Fund and $94,878.80 to ratify from the General Fund, for a total of $199,060.05. From the Enterprise Fund $1,119,395.63 and to ratify another $1,117,297.21 for a total for this period of $2,236,692.84. And lastly, the electronic payments of all funds ratify $111,542.52 for total, this month or this period of $2,547,295.41. Additionally, to accept the recommendations of our finance director for the temporary reduction in the renewable water fee. From $15 per month to zero. Is my motion.

Robert:

I'll second that motion.

David:

We have a motion on the floor. I'm not going to restate it, but it is to approve our obligations. Albeit Mr. Worley is spending a lot of money over there.

Jim:

It's not mine, but I am spending it.

David:

Yeah, obviously. We have a motion on the floor to approve the payables and to approve the amendment to the 2022 budget with the fee reduction on the renew, specifically the renewable water fee.

We have a, a second as well. Is there any further discussion, comments, questions or concerns for Amanda or for anyone on this board? Hearing none, I'm going to call for the vote.

Board Voting All Speak:

Directrice Denise Crew. Approved. Director Merritt. Approved. Director Lowen. Approved. Director Lewis. Approve. Director McEntire is affirmative. We have a unanimous motion. Item nine is complete.

David:

Thank you Amanda very much. Job well done. And as soon as that report from the auditor specific related to the inclusion is available. I know this board and our partners at Parker will benefit from that. You go, girl. Thank you. Thank you. With that, I'm going to open item ten, which is legal counsel's report. Kim Seter, is Kim with us tonight?

Beth Dower, Seter, Vander Wall & Mielke, P.C.:

No, Kim is not. You have me, Beth Dower.

David:

Hi Beth. Hi. We got a message he was not up to making the meeting this evening and, yeah. Just another one hits the dust, right. But thank you for, for jumping in.

I'm going to give you the floor if we can help you in, in any of these matters, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, again, you have the floor.

Beth:

Thank you so much. It's great to see you all again. And can you hear me all okay?

Describer:

The board members are nodding their heads yes.

Beth:

Okay, perfect.

David:

We can, but you can yell if you want.

Beth:

Okay, you got it, so yep. As you mentioned, there are several items to, to discuss this evening. and they all relate, or at least that are listed on the agenda all relate to, the inclusion with Parker Water and San. I will confess that I am not as fully up to speed on all of these items as Kim would be. But, I think I can speak to a little bit on most of them.

And then also, of course, the legal status report does contain a full update on each matter. But as far as the Brighton lawsuit. That one I have been working on, and there is an update from the last meeting. I believe at the last meeting Kim had discussed how there was a preliminary injunction hearing that was set for January 14th.

However, that hearing did not take place. And that was something that was agreed upon by all parties. Because by not having a preliminary injunction hearing on the 14th. It was viewed by everyone that we could actually shorten up the whole procedure. Because what we've done instead is consolidate the preliminary and the permanent injunction hearing together.

So, both of those matters will be heard at the same time. Because it's just frankly really hard to get on the court's docket. So this was thought to just be a good way to get it all completed you know in one, in one fell swoop. So that's what we've done. And that trial is scheduled for June 27th and 28th.

And that's, you know, we're and we're just kind of working on the preliminary trial matters on that right now. And that's all I have for, for that item, unless there are any questions. The CDPHE consent decree, I do think that this one is pretty close to completion. Yeah, so I think you know, we're, we're moving along on that.

And frankly, I mean we are all of the outstanding items are moving. You know, nothing nothing is you know, at a full standstill right now. And some of them, we are very close. The ground water rights. I, I am not super familiar with this one. However, it appears that Kim, he may just need to get an additional agreement going on this just to maybe eliminate any confusion as to the groundwater joint decree.

Jim:

Beth, this is Jim. Let me. If I could jump in and, and I'm pretty familiar with all these things. So if you don't mind me, I'll, I'll tag team, so to speak. But in essence we, we have water rights deep well water rights, which we've used from inception. And a lot of those were, were approved through the water court in a joint application with Castle Pines North Metro District and Castle Pines Metro District.

And so what this is, is to basically divide how much of that water is ours, how much of that water is theirs, which is not real clear yet. So that's what we're working on that one. So unless I said something wrong there Beth. That's really what the bottom line is on that one. And so, Austin Hamre, who is our water attorney, is working on that for us.

And so we'll, we'll get that one taken care of. It's just a matter of someone figuring out who has what drops of water from us and for them. So keep moving on to the next one.

Beth:

Thanks, Jim. The next item is the Centennial and the Parker water emergency water interconnect agreement, which has already been discussed a little bit this evening.

It's obviously very important for our drought mitigation. But this item, it's definitely been something that Parker Water has taken the reins on for essentially the whole time we've been negotiating. So as far as that item is concerned I don't really have any update on that. I think there's some.

Jim:

I can tackle that one, too. Beth. Okay, great. That's okay. You bet. We currently have an agreement, which we've had for a number of years. That's where you get the water that you're drinking right now. It's the interconnect with Centennial Water and Sanitation District. We had that agreement when we first started this process of inclusion. Parker reached out to Centennial because Parker would be the one that would take over that agreement when that inclusion happens.

And so they really didn't come to terms necessarily. And so what they have agreed to, is my understanding, although I don't think both boards have acted on it yet. Is really an emergency water agreement. Ours deals with water from October 1st through April 30th every year. That's real clear. We write checks, we do all that. And so that's that particular piece of the puzzle, as Beth said, is totally in Parker's hands.

And their relationship with Centennial, we don't really have much to say or anything to say on that one. And so I think they've come to an agreement on an emergency water agreement. So that's the update on that one. Keep going Beth.

Beth:

Thanks, okay. The next one is then very active in the past few weeks since the last board meeting.

That's the participation fee and then the reimbursement to members of the Chatfield storage project. So, we prepared notices for a right of first refusal to Chatfield members that would allow them to purchase Castle Pines North storage rights before they could be transferred to Parker Water. But there is this other outstanding agreement that requires a payment of approximately $850,000, on transfer of storage rights.

And so, Kim and Jim both met with the Chatfield board members, and they have already obtained waivers of that participation fee. Because frankly the community has already paid that fee. You paid, you paid it initially, right. To become members of the Chatfield Storage Project. so, of course to ask this community to pay that again, isn't fair.

So that's why you know, they've gone ahead and made that request that you know, all the other existing members waive that requirement for the inclusion. And so there is a deadline of February 14th to hear back from all the other members that we have not already obtained waivers from. And things I believe are looking positive on that front. And Jim can correct me if I'm wrong on that. But I think we're, we're looking good and, and, and I'd love to you know, have any update that you have Jim.

Jim:

I do, we have a tag team on this one, too. I'll try to keep this brief as I can. During the years that the nine of us who are the nine participants in the storage worked do engineering reports, legal counsel. A whole bunch of things to get to the point to where we had the privilege of writing $172 million worth of check, or money to upgrade the facility so it could handle the additional water. Is basically what it is.

We pay those fees. Beth talked about that. And so, I had a Zoom meeting. Kim was with me on that with the other eight participants in this. I said, here's the deal. This community has already paid that money. We are not brand new to the table. We're not like other entities such as Denver Water and Dominion.

They bought some new shares. So they had to come in and pay for the shares which is $8,100 per, per acre foot. But they also had to pay all of us back on a pro-rata basis. The money we spent all those years before we got to dig anything up. So of the nine, we're of course one, we agree with ourselves.

We receive four that have signed the document that says we're okay, you've already paid it. We don't need another nickel from you. Thank you very much. The other four, one on this Centennial Water and Sanitation District, of which I have been requested to attend their board meeting, which is on January 31st. I'll make the same presentation to them that I did to everybody.

And that is, we've paid this fee. We don't think we need to pay it again. Please accept our waiver. There's also state parks and, and Department of Natural Resources. They haven't gotten back with me yet. The fourth one of those that have not responded back yet is Castle Pines Metro, our neighbors to the South of us.

They're having a board meeting tomorrow morning. And so they will decide then whether to waive it or not. Obviously, our hope is that all of that gets waived because we've paid that. And one of the questions that came to me, just so everybody understands that is, well wait a minute Parker's coming in this deal they need to pay this.

Well, no because the money, which she says roughly $850,000 if everybody said they want their piece of it. Has already been paid by this community and will not be physically paid by, by Parker. So we'd have to write a check for that. Bottom line, we don't think we need to pay twice. So I'm optimistic, but hope and hopeful that the other four entities agree with us and waive at all. So that's that one, next.

Robert:

So what we're saying is just conveyance, not an additional allocation.

Jim:

Absolutely. What they would do, the way I explained it to the group, was the only thing that's going to change is a letterhead, in essence. Because this community has already paid this fee. And if Parker comes in and takes over that, there's still going to be serving this same community the same way we are, at least for a number of years until they can build some infrastructure. There isn't a good reason in my mind, or in our legal counsel's mind even, that we are to pay this again, okay.

Denise:

One question, this doesn't mean we're giving up our storage in Chatfield?

Jim:

Not at all. In essence, what will happen is a 1006 acre feet. Once the inclusion happens again, the name on the letterhead will change. It'll be owned by Parker Water and Sanitation District, not Castle Pines North Metro District. Still a 1006 acre feet. And all the rights and privileges that go with that. Okay, thanks. You bet.

Beth:

Great. And then so, the last item I have here is the easements and infrastructure conveyance. And that is just something that frankly, takes time. We've been working on this diligently essentially the whole time we've been working and negotiating towards this inclusion.

So you know, we've you know, worked with the GIS folks and it's, it's just you know, an effort. But it'll, it can be done. It's just a matter of, you know, how long it takes. And so we're working hard on getting all that wrapped up and, that and, and. Yeah, it shall be done. So that is all I have on the inclusion. Unless anyone has any questions.

David:

Beth, I don't have any questions on, on these items A-F, or your report. I do want to just take a couple of minutes to add a little bit of color to those items as well. We can tag team this by three, right?

Again, the City of Brighton lawsuit. We have a court date and are looking to have a final decision pending any type of an appeal. By the end of June. We have a consent decree that anyone that familiar with all, let's call it mergers and acquisitions, would understand that that's just good business. That the, the recipient of, of an asset as we see Castle Pines North Metro or the water and wastewater business of Castle Pines North to be.

There needs to be a separation of liability. It's good business that the liability remains with those that ran the business, so to speak during its time of stewardship and thereafter for the recipient or the recipient of the, of the new service area, be responsible for the operation thereafter. That is the letter that has been forged.

That's the letter that is in draft form. That's a letter that both entities have copies of and are working through. There's no contest, it's just a matter of, of, of, putting the date. I believe is, is where we're at into the letter. And that's how close we are in that regard. This groundwater issue Go figure.

Here we are. I'm not even going to bring up the fact that this board inherited this. And every one of these items A through F and staff did as well. But these things go back to before our time for sure. We're talking the 1980s and, and in 1980s this groundwater right .

Documentation should have been in place. Nobody can find it. No one asked the question. No one needed to ask the question. So upon this effort by this board, we find an omission. And, and we're expeditiously pursuing the paperwork necessary to back up a good inclusion with our partner. The Centennial Parker water emergency water agreement.

With the deferral of the inclusion Castle Pines North is, is paid. keeping the agreement between Centennial and our, Centennial and ourselves whole for the period of, of 2022. So the elements of that emergency agreement which were before the board in December remain the same. But are not, we're not asking for a vote until which time there's a of approval into which time there is an inclusion date specific.

Again, no more work other than filling in the dates there. The participation and reimbursement fee. You heard we have the majority. We have, we have some momentum. Bring it home Jim. Good luck tomorrow morning and at the end of the month. The and, and item after the conveyance of the water and wastewater infrastructure easements. Again, we are finding holes from the 80s and the 90s, early 2000s of infrastructure that went in. Where there was not all of the easements.

I can testify to the fact that that continued through, golly 2016 that I'm personally familiar with. Having entered into an agreement with the district where they promised an easement, having installed the infrastructure, did not get the easement. And so it subsequently had, had to get obtained and was obtained. But it's just it's, it's been a continuous lack of follow up and follow through by the districts.

Folks in charge where these holes existed. No one knew them until which time the question was asked. And, and we are now not only billing the gaps, but we're automating the information so that it is available on everyone's systems in the event of an emergency. And as a part of regular operation and maintenance.

So that's some of the things that have been going on and adds a little bit of color. Any other comments or questions from the board?

Jim, you good? I'm good. Thank you. Much thank you for the report. Let, let Kim know that we hope that he feels better of course. And please stay after these items were too close to finishing them up to, to not stay focused on them. So again thanks for the report. Well, job well done.

And, and have a good evening. I'm going to close item ten and open up District Manager's Report, item number 11. Jim, you have the floor.

Jim:

Thank you. You have my report there, there's a list of one, two, three, four items that we’ll, we'll go into a little more detail on. But other than those four items, are there any questions related to my report?

Chuck:

Just real quickly, Jim on the first one with the forest water sewer odor your last pair utilizations in that paragraph says the additional equipment has been installed, and we along with the contractor are monitoring the system. Have you found out what, how it's going so far with this monitoring?

Jim:

Actually, Nathan can address that a lot better than I can. Every time I get a call over the last year and a half related to, the smell is still there. So I reached out to Nathan. So he talked about it a little while ago. And so if it's okay I'll ask him to answer and he'll be answering a fair amount of me. So if that's okay with you, Nathan can you belly up to the bar and let us know about that one please?

Nathan:

Yeah. So we know that the system is functioning. We won't actually start doing the hard testing until the end of this week, start of next week and then we're going to track it over a couple, like a period of two weeks. so we don't have the performance data to back it up. I can tell you far less scientifically than just driving through that area since this was repaired last week has been better.

The smell is not nearly as noticeable in the spots that it was more prevalent, specifically you know, down toward the bottom. And then, I can't remember the name of the other cul de sac that experiences a lot of the more heavy odor issues. But so it's passing, I guess, for lack of a better term, it's passing the smell test so far.

We just need to start to do this. get the scientific data in place to back it up and really dial in that dosing structure.

David:

And, Nathan, do we have, a handful of, of allies at Forest Park on this matter that you have given them this update and asked them to be vigilant in their smell testing to keep to provide you with that feedback over the course of, as you said, the next 30 to 60 days is is everyone on the same page at this, at this time?

Nathan:

So I haven't given any update yet to the board of the two different boards that are involved, the Forest Park HOA and then the Castle Point HOA. I do have contact information. They're pretty vigilant about letting me know when there is an issue. I haven't heard anything. But I think that it would certainly make a lot of sense to proactively reach out to them, let them know where we're at and have them just report back how their, how their experience has been especially over the last week or so.

Jim:

Just a reminder if I could to you know, this is, this is a new thing, to be honest with you I don't think, and Nathan can correct me. This particular injection of the ozone hasn't been done in this state. Is that fair Nathan?

Nathan:

So ozone as a treatment is well established and known for all kinds of different things in terms of adding it to a live station specifically for the primary purpose of odor mitigation that is relatively new in Colorado.

We weren't able to find anyone else that we could really call and talk to about this system that it had, you know, had the same issues regionally, which is what triggered us to do such an extensive pilot at the beginning of the summer before we committed to anything. But yeah, it's a generally pretty new practice. It is getting some interest.

I've had a couple phone calls now from Castle Rock. They're wastewater ORC or their wastewater collection system operator in responsible charge has reached out to me to ask me how those systems going. They're probably going to come out and look at it. So it's, it's starting to gain traction with a couple other districts that are around us. Largely because we made the move to, to implement it, right?

Jim:

Okay. Shall I keep moving now on our items, okay. We'll do that. Let's just start with, with the A. I don't know if any of you noticed the last 4 or 5 months with little construction job going on right out here. You know, if you try to drive through that. It's worked out very well to be honest with it.

It's a great, working relationship with the city. That's, that's where we've had a lot of. Larry and I have had a lot of conversations. And so I wanted to kind of report to you, give you some of the data on, on the particular project itself you might recall we've got pipelines that go basically from outside of our building here heading west.

Go. Nathan can correct me, but they go almost all the way to the to the roundabout past monarch and continuing west. And so we, we took advantage of the economies of scale with the city and did this portion here. It was really quite smart to be honest with you. That particular project, our portion was we paid 100% of the work done with the pipeline and all that implies.

And then we paid 25% of the roadway constructions, which makes a lot of sense because we only dealt with one lane. You'll see in your most recent financial packet today through 2021 we've written checks for a little over $615,000 for our portion of the project. Including our roadway, our portion of the roadway, and the pipe.

The contract that, that we agreed to is $1,322,000 rounded up for tip money. And so we, we've already paid $615,000. There's a current pay application being reviewed by our engineers, Kennedy Jenks, and they always look at this very closely. In addition to having a warm body out here making sure everything's done. That particular pay application is about $453,000.

I should get that in the next few days. So once that's approved by Kennedy Jenks, then we'll, we'll write that check and we write it directly to the city. Because the city pays that out and we write it to them. The water line that was replaced here was 2750 lineal feet. The remaining portion that wasn't part of this project continuing going west is about 4500 more feet.

So in essence from a calculation standpoint we've done 38% of that pipe that we knew needed work on it. Some of the information from engineers early on in our inclusion process included a significantly high amount of dollars for that roadway thanks to working with the city. I think that's going to be significantly reduced. And so we'll have a little more shake out on what that is.

I think the project went very well. There's still some more information. We talked about it earlier with Craig related to the irrigation and the plantings and what have you along there that we're going to be working on. But the contractor, contractor Smith Construction, is working very closely with us. As a matter of fact we have a meeting this coming Thursday to talk about some of those additional items.

So that project is going very well. And thank you to the city for working with us on that. That was great for this whole community and economy of scales. B, related to our water wells. Oh, go ahead Chris.

Chris:

So Jim, I do want to comment on that. Yeah, it's an outstanding job. And actually it's the, probably the best section of streets we have in this area.

So I do want to take the opportunity since our mayor and city council member have both here, thank you. You guys did an outstanding job. We did this as a great team effort. And maybe there should be other opportunities like this where we can, essentially work together so, thank you. It was good.

Jim:

Thank you Chris, Robert.

Robert:

And one other thing. Can we revisit the initial estimate that we were looking at? It was in the millions of dollars. Can you break that down a little bit for the synergies that the city and district have been able to enjoy?

Jim:

There's been a couple of figures that I'm remembering from almost three years ago now. And talking about that and the estimate that Jacobs came up with in the original Jacobs report of a couple of years ago was either $11 or $16 million.

I get those two confused on that. So, big chunk of money, and we've knocked that way down, especially with this little part right here. So the information that they said Parker, if you come in and you take over, you're going to have to replace all of this pipe. And we think it's going to be 11 million, which I couldn't remember which one of the two.

But because of this great relationship we have in this project and hopefully others, if there's a need for that, I think we're going to knock that down quite a bit. So does that help you, Robert, with that.

Robert:

Thank you, that works.

Jim:

If it's okay, we'll move to B. Operation and maintenance status of our ten water wells. And I'll preface this, and then Nathan will chime in as we've talked a couple of times today. Right now we're totally on our water, treated by Centennial and run through the interconnect pump station. Which is what we're all drinking and using right now.

That goes from October 1st to April 30th. Historically every year or during that time we've always looked at our wells and done what we can to, to upgrade and fix them, repair them, clean them up or whatever the case may be. We've had probably a little bit more this year and Nathan kind of address some of that.

And so I've asked him to kind of let us know a little bit about the Wells and some of the information that we've got as far as the repair work that's being done. We're also in the supply chain, of which everybody in the whole country is dealing with. And some of that delays some of this. But I think I can take a little bit of his thunder now, unless he's going to correct me since we talked this afternoon.

We think that all of this work will be done. These wells will be kicked back on and ready to go before April 30th when we turn our plant back on. So I'll turn it over to Nathan and correct me if I made some error on that one Nathan.

Nathan:

I do have a slight correction just in terms of the timeline, but it's a good one.

We're actually looking to have the wells functional about a month before that. So we're looking more toward that first part of April. Which, assuming everything continues to go well, the treatment plant will allow us to fire off those wells. We do have a, a few of them that have been rehabilitated. So I'll just run through these and kind of give you a status.

But of the ten wells we're currently doing, we have been doing work on six of them. One of those wells which is our LDA1 well down in Forest Park is, it's done, it's completed. We've been able to do the step testing on it. The level sensors have all been put back. That one's in great shape.

A2, which sits over near the treatment plant down off of Monarch. Everything has been pulled out of that one. So right now we are just waiting on pipe and equipment, equipment delivery. Lane doesn't have a hard date for that yet. But those, that equipment has been for the most part, relatively available.

And so we don't really see any, any we're not forecasting any large delays getting that equipment in. A4 has been one of the bigger well projects that we've been dealing with. That well, sits at the side of the golf course driving range over there off the ridge or over by the ridge. That's one that we'd had to do some repairs to.

There's a screen down at the bottom to prevent sand from getting pulled into the well that had a hole in it that needed to be repaired. It left us with a couple hundred feet of sand and that had to be pulled out. and so that's been our, our longest ongoing project. And we're in position with that one where hopefully by the end of the week we'll have completed the rehab and be looking to install all of the pumping, the pipe and pumping equipment inside of the next couple weeks. All of those materials have been delivered there on site.

It's just a matter of scheduling the rig, to come out and sit there for a few days and drop all of that stuff down. A6 and A6, A7 and D7 are three of our larger producing wells and they are all substantially complete. They are in the ground. They're functioning. What they're waiting on is an official start up.

So we fire these things up to make sure that they're working well. And then step test, which is a process that allows us to see what those wells are going to produce over a period of time. We run them at different speeds over the course of an eight hour period. So we get a good idea of what our productions are.

Those are, in order to do that work, we need to be able to bring that water into the treatment plant. Since we're doing a bunch of upgrades at the water treatment plant currently the plant isn't capable of bringing that water in treating it and putting it out to distribution. So as soon as the plant is to a point where we can do that it's just a matter of scheduling, scheduling those step tests. Installing the last tiny bit of, they're just level sensors that tell us how much water is left in the well above the pump.

And so all three of those are sitting and ready to go. So we're, of the six, three of them are done. Two of them are on the verge of being, being completed. And one of them is ready to go. It's been, it's been tested. It's been step tested. It's, it's fired up and ready to take off.

And whenever we're ready for it, the other four wells are all looking pretty good. We'll likely have some discussions around just what testing, if anything, needs to be done on those this year. There are some of our lower producing wells are not as critical of the system. We're really taking a hard, hard swing and hard focus on the, our larger producing wells right now.

Chuck:

Jim, quick question. Ten wells and Centennial Interconnect. What percentage of water does companies use from the wells versus the interconnect? Is there any, any information on that? Just out of curiosity.

Jim:

Nathan, can you address that at all?

Nathan:

I don't have an official number. In terms of like the entire year. That would probably be best answered by Gina. With Jehn Water. She handles all of our water and counting. It would be able to spit that number out a little bit more readily. but the number that I have heard in the past. So this is, again pretty unofficial is roughly about 25 to 30% ish. So we pulled and right at this year that number is going to swing more favorably toward the interconnect water that we're pulling on because of station project.

It allowed us to store water in Chatfield over the course of the summer. And so that gives us water that we can bank on throughout the year. So generally speaking, what we get from the Hawk Hocking water, right and our wastewater return flows isn't quite enough to cover our daily demand. So we are, on a daily basis, have a little bit of a net loss.

Prior to the reallocation we didn't have the ability to store that water inside of Chatfield Reservoir, so it all went down the ditch. So, now that water gets stored in Chatfield over the course of the summer. That gives us a chunk of water that we can bank and pull against. And so that's allowing us, this will be the first year that we've actually gone 100% onto the Centennial Interconnect. And so it'll be, you know, interesting to see exactly how those numbers turn out. But it'll be the end of the year before we really, we really know where we're at right now with it.

Chuck:

Thank you. That's, that's very interesting to me. Our water wells obviously are critical. And the maintenance and upkeep of them is critical. Is it my understanding that most of the maintenance and upkeep of our wells occurs in the winter when our demand is down?

Nathan:

Yeah, exactly we, we do our best to schedule that in the winter. One, because demand is lower too because we don't need the treatment plant to bring that water in at all. Especially now we can rely on Centennial to bring that water in through the water that we already own.

And then that gives us an ability to really take these things off line. Pull them out of the ground video, T.V., do inspections and then determine what, what if any, you know, rehabilitation need to be made if we need to. There's three basic parts to a well, there's the pump, the motor and the drive. The pump shoves the water up, the motor spins the pump. And the drive gives everything electricity.

So we really get in there and get those three things evaluated the condition of the well. And it gives us a chance to really put these things in fantastic shape going into the summer. And so we're looking really good right now in terms of our ability to produce the water that we need. Moving into the summer, if we've got all of these up and running, along with the, the upgrades that we're making at the treatment plant. We should be able to pretty confidently deliver, if we ever needed to the full five MGD that are, million gallons a day that our treatment plant is capable of delivering.

That's what we're rated out from the state. And our highest, our highest demand that we experienced last year was somewhere in, like the 4.3 million gallons range. So we'll even have a little bit of a buffer there in terms of water production going into this year.

Chuck:

Okay. Thank you. So if I understand it right, the maintenance of our wells during this time of year is our standard operating procedure. We're not jumping in these wells and critically trying to take care of problems after they've occurred or before they occur. We, we do this as a normal course of business, and we have been doing it for the last. How many years? Forever.

Nathan:

Yeah, yeah correct. We that's the, the time of year that we really dig into these things is, is in the winter.

So I don't have a lot of historical stuff in terms of what's been done with previous operators and, and stuff. But I do know that we've had set plans that have been in place for this stuff for a long time. And really systems, you know, at least through the Front Range any, anywhere that experiences lower demands in the winter. That's really when a lot of water systems take a hard swing at their wells. Unless there's an unexpected critical failure.

Chuck:

Okay. So this is basically our standard operating procedure. We're not jumping through hoops to get this done for, for Parker. This is something we do every winter.

Nathan:

Yeah, correct yeah. And in terms of. Yeah. And in terms of system operations as a whole, I don't have a choice but to operate the system as though the inclusion doesn't exist from an operations perspective.

Okay. And so that's how, that's how we're moving forward. So every, every, every upgrade, everything that we're repairing, these are things that would have needed to have been repaired that we would have taken care of as a district regardless of the inclusion or not the inclusion. It's just moving forward and producing the best quality water.

Chuck:

All right. I appreciate your update. The last question I have, Jim is for you. Parker gave us a light, a little water solutions report that had some things that required us to repair. Are you familiar with that? Yes. Have we completed it, addressed it and is Parker aware of it? And are they looking over our shoulder to make sure we're doing the job?

Jim:

They have certainly been involved for quite a while on all the different things. As a matter of fact, a lot of the items that Nathan has been talking about before we order him are we actually say we do them. We run it through Parker in anticipation of them taking care of these. And so, Nathan, unless there's something different on that. They're well aware of, of a lot of the information we're doing.

And actually Lytle, Bruce Lytle is a consultant to Parker Water and San. So he's been involved a lot of these. You heard Nathan talk to me. And that's to go about step testing to see how these wells perform. And so Bruce has been front and center on that. I would say when you say Nathan.

Nathan:

Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

The communication with Parker across all of this is pretty, pretty extensive. Or at least it has been, over the past few months. And so really that's just to make sure that we're installing equipment as we go through and make these, make these upgrades, do our necessary repairs. That we're repairing them with systems technologies that Parker already uses to just make that integration that much easier for them. So they're not learning a bunch of new equipment. It meets their internal specs and standards, and it really just helps all of that move along.

Chuck:

I'm sorry, I appreciate that. I just wanted to make sure that Parker's consultant is aware of what we're doing. They approve what we're doing. We're not doing this in the closet and hiding behind closed doors. They're aware that that's all good. Okay, thank you Nathan. Thank you for your update. And Jim, you too. I'm, I'm happy to hear that somewhere between May 1st and April 1st these things will be shining armor.

Jim:

It'll look real good, absolutely. If I can move on to the next item D.

David:

Can I, can I? Yes, sir. Another one of those fun facts. You remember that I, I mentioned that of all the water that we used in 2021. We were utilizing only 57% of the water that we have been decreed.

And while Nathan's numbers are pretty spot on. As it relates to where the water comes from and what percentage. You're definitely, you're, you’re definitely in the realm between 20 and, and 30% coming from the interconnect over the winter six months. But if you factor that into how much well water we're using then in those heavy irrigation months. In the six months that we rely on the water from the wells we're utilizing 43%.

That's all the water that we're utilizing or from our three aquifers that have been decreed. That's how, the way I would, would, would put that, that's, that's how awesome and how good a shape that this district and the residents in this district are as it relates to the ownership of water. And the way that it's being managed and the infrastructures being managed, here's a job. Well done. Again 43%’s all, Jim.

Jim:

The next item is and I'm going to have Nathan kind of address this too. But like we talked about it in the wintertime our wells are down. That's when you do your maintenance. Similar thing with the water treatment plant. This has been a little more intensive. Parker's been involved even more in this particular one because of the fact that they'll take that plant over once the inclusion takes place.

And so, I'll let Nathan kind of address some of these. If you got a few hours, he can talk for a long time. On what? On what's going on that I've heard enough. So I may go home if he starts rambling. But if I could ask him to kind of bring us up to date with some of the generalities of what's going on with the treatment plant. Nathan.

Nathan:

Yeah, absolutely. So the treatment plant we, like Jim mentioned, we have a lot going on there right now. The, the biggest items that we're, that we're looking at right now. There's three kinds of key items that we're, we're working through in order to make sure that the treatment plant is operational. The first one is a component called an MCC.

It's a motor control center. It's basically the room that's got all the switches to turn the power onto the plant. So we're replacing that entire panel, so that we can get our certified. And make sure that all of our equipment is up to snuff. We're also replacing the three pumps that take water directly out of the treatment plant and put them to our distribution system.

We're upsize two of those to give us some more operational redundancy. To make sure that even if we did lose one pump. We could still hit that five MGD number. and then we're also reevaluating a little bit of our chemical treatment system. We're moving a dosing point for our ammonia. Then on those last two especially we're I've reached out to both our engineering firms.

We're pretty early on in that process and the state for guidance just to make sure that we're staying within that within bounds, making sure that all the changes that we're doing are approved from a regulated regulatory standpoint. There's nothing that we foresee in any of that. Also, of course, our the, the current ORC, the operator and responsible charge is Semocor. Which is a private utility operations company that's helping us out with that. With just making sure we have our licenses and some extra oversight that we need for this.

And so Semocor is also obviously very heavily involved in that. They've got operators on site that are walking through the plant with us doing a lot of smaller, smaller jobs and helping us just manage all of the other projects that we've got going on. The delivery timeline on that stuff has been tricky. So we don't have the motor control center.

The MCC is in Denver. It's ready to go whenever. I don't have a hard delivery date on the pumps yet. All of the stuff we need to do the chemical feed system is pretty readily available. It's just getting everybody's approval before we move forward with, with that kind of dosing change. So once we get our engineering firm on board, and then approval from the state. We'll push all of that through.

I have had some very unofficial conversations with Centennial. Just operator to operator kind of letting them know where we're at in the process and the treatment plant. So that we've got just some, just some awareness with our partners that provide us that water. Should we have prolonged delays there's equipment delivery. They are able.

They're going to be able to likely help us out if we move past that deadline. But right now there's nothing to say that we're, we're going to miss it. So everything's looking pretty good and on track. The biggest linchpin in that right now is those high service pump delivery timelines. When those things can show up. And then there's a bunch of other stuff going on, but it's pretty controls based. And that's where, that's where everybody falls asleep when I start talking for the next three hours.

Denise:

Can I ask one question? What is, what is the timeline? I know you have someone for scenes but we have a target date, and what is that?

Nathan:

We would like to have the plant. The treatment plant, at least the project list that I have that we're working on. We'd like to have that done as close as we can to April 1st. And that gives us a month to troubleshoot, bring all these new systems online, bring wells into the plant, double check all of our dosing. So that we've got that, got as much of a buffer as possible to shut the plant off, turn the plant on, shut the plant off. Go through those processes and really test this thing. So that's what we're aiming for right now. Hopefully we make it.

Jim:

I think that's all of the Nathan show. Unless you have any other questions for him. He’s, by the way, he's home. His roommates have Covid I believe so he's, I told him to stay away from me. Especially, so now we've.

Nathan:

I told you, I told them to stay away from me too. They're both trapped upstairs right now.

Jim:

That's it. That's good. So anyway, thank you Nathan, I appreciate that. The last item on my report related to the new pickleball courts at Coyote Ridge. We're working with design concept. I got an email today from Carol where we're a little behind on our, on our timing of it. But, but something that was just a surprise to me. A week ago last Thursday, I had lunch with Michael Penny, city manager.

He says, oh, by the way, I was told before I came over here to tell you that you have to go through a master plan review of your park. And I said, what? He said yeah, you have to go through that. Sam told me that's what you got to do. So I reached out to Carol Henry with Design Concepts.

I said Carol, did you know we have to do that? And, and she said no. As a matter of fact, she's had contact with them four times dating months back. And each time she had contact, the question, the last question she asked is, do you have everything you need? Is there anything that we need to give you? Because they have to review our plans.

And up until a week and a half ago, we didn't know we had this thing to do. And so I've got a meeting Wednesday with Carol via Zoom meeting with the city. To talk about that particular process and what that's going to do to us and hopefully not delay it. And so other than that and being a little bit tardy on the deliverables for that. Because it does go to review processes. One is through the city, which is we're doing now.

But now we might have to do the master plan. So it be two things. We have to go through the city. The other is since we're going to disturb some of the area up there we're physically within the Cherry Creek Basin Water Quality Authority drainage. And so they have to review our plans and what we're doing. So both of those are there now. But I'll know more Wednesday after I had this meeting related to the update of the park master plan.

Robert:

Jim, I have a question. Is there any precedence of a master plan of any other type of facility or gym equipment or anything else we put on any of the other parks or just brand new out of the blue.

Jim:

The only way I can answer that, Robert, is that when I was told, oh Jim, you need to go through this. I went well okay well where's a copy of the master plan?

And I couldn't find, I can't find one in our files, electronic. And I haven't chosen to go until the dust bowl and try to find paperwork. So I reached out to Sam. I said, Sam, could you please send me what the city shows that we have? And on top of that, tell us what we need to update. And I haven't seen that yet. So that may be part of what we're going to talk about on, on Wednesday is what is this. I do know that the original master plan whenever that was done was before the city was here.

So the county is who we went through on that. But I can't find anything to be honest with you. To, to look at and see what we need. That's why we've set up this meeting for Wednesday. So hopefully that answers your question.

Chris:

So, so Jim, have we done any other additions to any of our other plans recently? And, and when we did those is the similar that we had to do. A whole new plan, master plan update.

Jim:

Since I've been here on my second tour of duty, I have not had to do anything related to the parks. I don't know if Craig is still on. Craig, are you still there? Yeah. Do you remember when we put the basketball courts in and any other improvements that were done when you, the time you've been here. Did we have to go through any of those reviews?

Craig:

When we put the basketball courts in Coyote Ridge park, there was no such requirement.

Chris:

Okay, and now I'm remembering. So we had the basketball we put in the skate park recently. That's new, that was, that's not ten years. That's since I've been here. Do we have to go through a review on the skate park?

Craig:

That was before my time. I've only been here eight years.

Jim:

And neither one of us have gone to other than the basketball courts. I think that's why I asked that question. I think that's the only new thing that's been done since he and I have been here. So.

Craig:

That is correct.

Chris:

So okay, brand new requirement, I guess since we're about to, to do the pickleball court. We’ve started this process months ago. We've gone through four reviews, did you say?

Jim:

We've had four communications? Carol has had four communications with the city, two of them reviews and then some other preliminary stuff. Each time those have been submitted are discuss the last question Carol told me she ask is, do you have everything you need? Is there anything else we need to do to get this thing moved through? And until a week and a half ago, the answer was no.

Chris:

Yeah, I think we'd be interesting. This board would be interested to hear the results of your meeting. And why is it. First I, you know, in the military, we say where's the regulations? Where's the documents that says that this has to be done? We're doing this for the community and all of a sudden we have to go through all kinds of approvals to do something that we've not had to done before.

Right, okay. I guess maybe we have to. We're, you know, new regulations but where's the regulation that says that we need to do this? And then, you know, I think bringing up the fire item that we had. How long, is there a timeline with this regulation that says we are due back a response by a certain time. Not just that there is a regulations to have this review. But that, in so much period of time, we will give you a response.

And, you know, what our position is? That's what I'd like to know.

Jim:

I don't know the answer to that, but I'll find that out for sure. I haven't looked through the regulations. I actually spent most of my time in the last week and a half trying to find the master plan to see what I'm, you know, what are we looking at? What are we talking about? So I'll look into that too. But I'll ask that question on Wednesday. Thank you.

David:

Jim, the, the agreement we have with Carol Henry Shop, articulated the scope, which was a byproduct of collaborating with the city to establish the scope. Is it in the scope?

Jim:

The scope for this review? This master plan. Yes. Review? No, it is not. It's gonna cost us more.

David:

So, so this goes back. Six months?

Jim:

Probably further, but at least six months.

Chuck:

Have your meeting ask the right questions. Let's review this sooner than later when you have some answers.

Jim:

Not only will I report to you on the meeting. But I'll also report to you through Carol a change in the timing of this project. As we're a little behind right now. This might cause a little bit more behind. And so I'll update both of those after my meeting.

Chuck:

It'll cost time and money I suspect.

Jim:

Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, Carol told me when I first told her this she said Jim, we don't have this in our scope. I says, I understand that if we have to go through it well, then we'll have to pay you. So we'll have to have a meeting on that to see what that time will be. But we'll know more after our meeting Wednesday.

David:

All right, anything else for Mr. Worley?

Denise:

Yeah one, one quick comment on that.

David:

Go ahead Denise.

Denise:

With the timing, I guess what I'm getting at if, if all of a sudden we're required to have a master plan review. Whoever is requiring that master plan review, wouldn't they be in charge of providing a master plan review. Does that make sense?

Jim:

I'm not sure I heard what you said, but I'll tell you what I think I heard.

Denise:

We're told to have this produced, but we don't even know if there is such a thing. So how do we prove there is one or isn't one? Or how do they prove there is or isn’t one?

Jim:

As I mentioned a few minutes ago, I reached out to them, to Sam basically. And I said Sam, I can't find anything in our system. So I'll know more Wednesday.

Denise:

Okay, looking forward to it.

Jim:

You bet, me too, thank you.

Robert:

And Jim, just to end on a positive note, just want to say it's humbling and, and wonderful to have you shepherd so many things, an onslaught of things that came in. When we initially started four years ago with Jim Nikkel saying that we're going to expect some brownouts for the community.

We're going to expect $113 million. But if you add it in the financing, it was $250 million for 50% of the renewable water. We needed astra amount of money for this community. And for you to deal with all the things that you come up with and the other things that are added on to your plate. To be part of that group that's put it together. To reiterate David's, we're only using 43% of our capacity of water instead of having the brownouts and everything else. And trying to get a fire mitigation.

It's just humbling to work with people like you that take these things that would, master plan issues and stuff. That would be a diversion for someone else or whatever. I Really appreciate you doing the work that you do and being able to pay attention to these little side items as well. Thank you very much.

Jim:

Thank you for the kind words, Robert. I appreciate it.

David:

Closing item 11. Opening it up to item 12 Director's Matters. I'm not sure that we've left anything unsaid as it relates to Mr. Kreider or any, any other matters. But I'm going to open it up to my colleagues, Director Lewis.

Chris:

The only comment I will make is based on the recommendations that we got at our HOA meeting. From a fire mitigation perspective the one recommendation was made is that we actually moe along the fence lines. So where the fence line touches the open space. Because I know we do all and some of the other stuff that were mentioned, but that's one of those outstanding things that we could probably do.

Jim:

If I could address that just for a second. Thank you, and we used to do that. We used to do that. Many communities do that. I live in Highlands Ranch. They do it every year. They, they mow basically a wide swath behind fences and along the sides of trails. My understanding, and Craig can certainly jump in here is when he first came back on board and they were doing that.

He started getting some complaints about, I don't like you doing this here, I don't want you to do that there. Whatever the case may be. And so in essence, he pulled away from doing that automatically and said if there's areas or houses, somebody says I'd love for you to mow this strip behind us. We go out there and mow that. Is that fair enough Craig?

Craig:

That is correct. We do all fence line mowing on by request only. And for the most part I mean, it was costing us over $20,000 a year for, for the fence line mowing that we were doing. And Jim's correct, a lot of the residents did not like that. They liked living in a native area.

As of last year we had six requests for fence line mowing, which we happily did. And we don't go to any distance that the residents want. It's the same thing with vegetation clearing. We'll clear Gambel oak away from properties. Most of the residents don't want to do that. They like the privacy that that Gambel, Gambel oak provides even though it is a fire danger.

Jim:

I think this, this discussion and, and diving into all of the issues related to this fire will really help a lot with some things we've been doing, not doing, could do, shouldn't do. And so that'll be part of this whole process. So Craig and I have talked about that and, and, and with the direction of the board will dive into a lot of this and with Ken's help on getting that wording out.

But a lot of it is, is not necessarily our property. A lot of it is right by the homes, the homes, the trees and all those that all residents plant. And those are just as dangerous. When you look at, at Einar’s report that I sent you this afternoon, you'll see a lot of that is related to on their property and what they should or shouldn't do. And so we're going to dive into that quite deeply. Thank you.

Craig:

Yeah, that's absolutely correct. When you look at some of the comments that I made to the questions that I was asked, it's absolutely true. Residents have large evergreen trees, large junipers planted right up against their houses. Those evergreens and junipers are the biggest fire danger, it's not the grasses.

As I noted before, the grass is burned fast and hot. But their flame height is only one and a half times the height of the native grasses. And they burn out extremely quickly. It's a major problem is embers and embers will spread to the large pines. And fur and spruce that people have planted right up against their houses, as well as the junipers.

And that causes ignition. I've got some interesting information I'll share with Ken Smith when he puts together communication regarding the real cause of the or the major problems with Marshall fire. And it was house facing as well as the fact that the radiant heat from each house that ignited from 100 mile an hour winds, blowing embers around from burning, other burning structures ignited the remainder of the structures. As Einar is noted, it's not the grasses that are dangerous that evergreen trees are close to structures.

Chuck:

You know, as we, as we think about this Marshall fire and the extraordinary weather events that have occurred around it. It may be appropriate for us to consider having a sort of a residential meeting and bring in Douglas County sheriff, bring in Einar from the South Metro District. And, and just present what they've found up in Superior and Lewisville for the community. Because we, we're not very far from catastrophic event happening here.

Whether you like it or not. Our changing weather patterns are really out of our control. So I think the more we learn we can become. The better stewards we could be of our, of our natural resources in our own community.

Craig:

And I totally agree with that. I, I believe that you need to engage Einar in South Metro. He's more than happy to come out and do presentations to the community at large. As well as individual HOA to help them understand what they need to do.

But as he noted with the Marshall Fire. There was nothing that could have replaced, or prevented it just simply because of the catastrophic collision of events, the hurricane, force winds, et cetera. He says you get into that situation, the only option you have is evacuation. It's not trying to mitigate wildfires. And we do everything that we can in terms of long, long trail edges and again, mowing borders.

I request along backyards on our open space. But, but even notifying the community of evacuation procedures is important. and what you should have prepared to, to grab when you run out the door. Children first and just, you know, don't sit on the phone and tell your, tell your cousin that, in California that you're going to pack up and leave to see a room.

Just in Superior in Lewisville. You didn't have that time. It went so fast. So, evacuation procedures and education to the community I think, is critical.

Craig:

And I strongly recommend that this board engage South Metro fire and bring them out here to educate the community. Because I think it would put a lot of people's minds at ease. And gives them a plan for an emergency.

Robert:

And just a last comment on putting everyone at ease. You mentioned a wildfire and I'm not sure that it was a wildfire. I think they have someone in custody for that. So that might be the root cause we might look at is first we heard it was a downed power line. And now I believe the sheriff's department has someone in custody for that fire. So we might go back to the root cause to set everyone at ease. And then work forward from there. All right. Thank you.

Craig:

Yeah I agree the downed power line as they said was actually a telephone wire. And telephone wires don't carry current. They do suspect it was arson.

Robert:

Thank you for the clarification.

Denise:

I hadn't, I hadn't heard that when you said it cost about $20,000 a year to mow all the fence line I'm just putting it out there. I think that's $20,000 well spent regardless of if homeowners are requested or not. I, as we go through this process and building a mitigation project, I think that goes without saying. It just makes sense.

Craig:

Well, it's up to the board. Okay. To make that decision. Thank you.

David:

The irrigation audit program that we conduct every single year is a overwhelming success. It is. And, and I'm not so sure that as you guys work on this communication piece we all know Einar. We all know how infatuated and, and sick the man is with regard to this lane that he hangs out in the, the goats that he calls friends.

He just, what an asset. And, and yet he makes himself available to anyone and everyone that asks, to this very moment. Mention the fact that he's available. I'm not saying put together a program because South Metro has their own program. The city is, is highlighted. That program is a part of what? What, they've been embraced as their fire mitigation plan.

And rightfully so. South Metro is, is definitely knowledgeable and capable of, of protecting us in that regard. Short of the hurricane event winds and, and other nuisances that we have to deal with. But at least mention Einar and South Metro's availability and willingness to meet with everyone. I think we're going to hear more about this in the future.

I think everyone's homeowners insurance companies are going to be in touch with you. I'm with Denise more. More is better. So we'll look forward to the draft write up. All right, anybody else? hearing none. I'm going to close Director's Matters. Open it up to the closing public comment period. Marv, you ready, sir? Yes, sir. Come on up. Thank you for putting up with us for an hour and a half here.

Jim:

You ready to go?

Marv:

Okay, well I got to tell you, those chairs are not even half hour chairs. I need somebody to massage my ass. But

Denise:

That is not appropriate.

Marv:

I know, I'm kidding.

Robert:

Not by design, sir.

Marv:

I, I know that with the eight items that you have to resolve for Parker Water & Sanitation, you have a huge job ahead of yourselves.

I was hoping tonight to have one thing closed. It's been a month since last meeting. It'll be another month since your next meeting. I just, I'd like to see some light at the end of the tunnel. That's not an oncoming freight train. Any guess as to when you get all eight done?

David:

Marv, you know, by virtue of your attendance to the Parker meetings as well as this one. From Ron Redd’s lips to yours and my ear, none of these items, zero of these items are inhibiting the inclusion. But rather as a composite. They are a concern.

There's more than eight items there, there, there are, there are a number of moving parts in the merger and acquisition of this, of this size, and of this type. That they're having to take into consideration. And whether it be, whether it be software that, that is still not ready for the inclusion on both parties' part. Staffing on both parties’ part. Number of things.

But as Ron said, these are worthy of, of spending some time on much like the water plan. Jacobs report is an example. Highlighted the fact that in negotiating the inclusion fee about $2.5 million was going to be set aside of the residents money to reinvest in that infrastructure. As opposed to waiting until that happens.

And you and I, both the rest of us didn't know until late December that it wasn't going to happen. January 3rd. But none of that, none of that has, has waited. We've just continued whether it be the, the pipeline in, in the Parkway. Which could have been one of the eight items it's not complete and won't be for potentially 2 or 3 years. Depending on, on the progress with the roads.

I join you in, in hoping that we can start knocking some off. But then something else is going to take its place, right? The fact that we're working diligently to pursue a point in time where everyone's comfortable. Centennial, the state, Parker, CPNMD, all of them.

Stable of consultants that are all we've oversimplified it here with, with, with eight. But nothing is insurmountable. And we're getting to that point. I don't have a date. I wish that, that Parker we're in a position to share with you that. But I do foresee over the course in the very near term that will have that date. As you know, in the negotiated First Amendment to the inclusion agreement. It gives us the opportunity to start that time clock.

And that time clock when we signal it, it's 45 days. So, we've got to get to that point where we can signal it, both entities and, and for all the progress that you heard tonight. I'm confident that, that Parker would, would share with you that they're making progress on their side as well. And I couldn't be happier that, that we not only have momentum. But that we're building momentum and, and we see light at the end of the tunnel.

Both of us or Ron wouldn't have quoted in the newspaper. I don't think that there's nothing that's going to get in our way. It's just a timing issue at this point, so.

Marv:

I, I'm also convinced that it's going to happen. Just the question is when.

David:

Yes, sir. We're with you wholeheartedly. Could not appreciate more, the fact that you're here again. And look forward to keeping, keeping us honest and, and our partner honest in this regard. Thank you so much for your comment.

Marv:

You, you're welcome. Won't be the last time. Thanks, everybody.

Robert:

Marv, just to. Yes. What helps me sleep at night is that, what helps me sleep at night about this. And the extension is that everything that comes forward would have to be worked out post contract. And it'll be a much more seamless joint.

Going forward, with all this worked out and being smooth rather than jumping, hey we want to be done by this date and it's got to be done. And then we have all this stuff after post work like, oh, we didn't address this. We didn't address that. The mindset that it's going to happen and everything has to come to fruition at the same time and everything's got to be checked off. Let's me sleep at night knowing that it's going to go forward just has to be done, right. Thank you.

Marv:

I agree. It has to be done right because it has to work.

David:

Think of it 1 in 1 additional way. That inclusion fee of $34.8 million in the inclusion agreement, it specifically denotes that that is to be spent on and reinvested in our water and wastewater systems.

Correct. We're not waiting. We're spending it now with every opportunity, whether it be the wells are down, or we get a signal from the state that something's changed, or we find out that ozone doesn't just work on stem cell therapy in my knees. But rather in this form of Forest Park issue. We've got an incredible effort underway. And thanks to everybody. And again, including yourself for keeping us on top of our game.

Marv:

As far as Forest Park Odor I, I, I'm not a scientist, but I know it freezes in the winter. So I would caution you not. Yeah, right. Except it's not winter all year long, so I would caution you not to jump to conclusions during the winter.

David:

We're not going to take it off of the agenda until which time we have affirmation from the folks that Jim and Nathan are going to engage. Which are the two HOAs and of course, you and your wife always welcome. Thank you. You bet. Thank you.

Robert:

Thanks for being here.

David:

I'm gonna close the open comment period. Item number 13. And move hastily to item 14. Is there anyone, would like to weigh in on item 14?

Denise:

I'll make a motion to adjourn this meeting.

Robert:

If I might add to that, can we take a picture with Smokey. And anybody else that would want to have a picture with us with Smokey at the end of the meeting? Camera sure. Would be wonderful. Anyone from the city specifically, thank you.

David:

Got a motion on the floor to.

Chris:

I second it.

David:

Adjourn. Got a second.

Board Voting All Speak:

All those in favor in unison say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Hearing none. Meeting adjourned.