July 20, 2022 Video Study Session

Transcript

Describer:

Study Session Agenda
Wednesday, July 20, 2022, at 5:30 p.m.
7404 Yorkshire Drive, Castle Pines, CO 80108

NOTE: CPNMD study sessions are educational opportunities for directors, the staff/consultant
team, and special guests with subject-matter expertise to transparently take a deeper dive into,
discuss, and debate topics of interest. During study sessions, directors may ask questions and
exchange views but are strictly prohibited from voting. Though public comment is not allowed,
residents may watch the proceedings in person via live video stream or video recording at
https://cpnmd.org/board-meetings.

I. Call study session to order.
II. Roll call. Determination of quorum. Disclosure of potential conflicts.
III. Director orientation and legal refresher, Kim Seter, Chief Legal Counsel.
IV. Discuss eliminating one of two public comment periods from CPNMD board meetings.
V. CPNMD/City of Brighton/City of Aurora settlement bid closing and sale of water rights.
VI. Discuss interim district manager and associated employment contract.
VII. Discuss front office staffing needs.
VIII. Clarifying decades-old language used to describe CPNMD's annual wastewater billing
calculation, which is based on average winter monthly water consumption (AWC) for
December, January, and February.
IX. Status of Douglas County's $68,207,548 funding allocation to CPNMD and other local
jurisdictions from the congressionally approved American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021.
X. Adjourn.

Describer:

The video starts on graphic with a white background and forest green letters which says “Castle Pines North Metro District Board Meeting July 20, 2022”. The meeting opens on a shot of all board members present.

Board President Chuck Lowen:

Work session for the Castle Pines North Metro District on July 20th, 2022. I'd like to call the meeting to order, and I'd like to determine a quorum. When I call your name, will you let me know you're here. Don't say anything if you're not. Any potential conflicts.

Board Member Director Jason Blankaert:

Jason. Present. No conflicts.

Board Member Director Denise Crew:

Denise. Present. No conflicts.

Board Member Director Chris Lewis:

Mr. Lewis. Present. No conflicts.

Board Member Director Tera Radloff:

Tera. Present. No conflicts.

Chuck:

We have a quorum. Chuck Lowen, president and I have no conflicts. We're going to change the agenda order for the presentation of our ARPA funding by Dan Avery. Dan, thank you for coming tonight. Appreciate it. I don't see you can go over there and sit next to Mr. Seter, and the floor is yours.

Describer:

The camera pans to Special Projects Manager, Dan Avery as he tests out the microphone. He turns it on soon after.

Douglas County Special Projects Manger, Dan Avery:

All right. How's that sound? I appreciate the opportunity to provide an update to you. The commissioners have been moving diligently through their draft allocation development process. I'll give you a little bit of insight into that and field questions. More than anything, I think. These first several slides of my presentation are probably redundant from my last discussion with you. So I can move through those. I think what I'd like to do is jump ahead to the slide entitled process to date, and focus on the first and second quarter of 2022.

The commissioners have spent considerable time conducting due diligence on water and wastewater projects, specifically regional water projects. The project took a considerable amount of staff time as we explored the opportunity inherent to that project, and the commissioners ultimately decided not to pursue that that opportunity at this time, and have instead directed staff to focus their efforts on the opportunities inherent in the Platte Valley Water Project with Parker Water and Sanitation and other partners, and the highway 85 wastewater project.

The commissioners developed a draft allocation that I'll go into detail on the next slide, and the next steps emphasize refinement of the allocation and then subsequent implementation. So the overall allocation is shown here, $9.7 million to mental health expenditures over three years, $8.8 million for investments to serve the intellectual and developmental disability community, 3.1 million for a variety of community and economic recovery oriented projects.

1.4 million to address homelessness, 34.3 million to address water and wastewater opportunities, 8 million for broadband and 3.6 million for wildfire suppression and mitigation. The next slide is detail the types of projects that the commissioners intend to fund with our ARPA allocation and starting with mental health. What you'll see here is that the box is shown in red are expenditures that have already occurred.

The box is shown in blue are those that we have received initial direction to proceed from the commissioners. And then green remains open for consideration. The 988 implementation was a contribution by the commissioners to help fund 988 stand up costs in the state of Colorado. 988 is a is a suicide prevention hotline, and they are ramping up aggressively to accommodate the surge in demand that is anticipated as they switch from a 1-800 hotline number to the three digit code.

We have an opportunity in the county to invest with all health in a crisis stabilization unit and walk in clinic. This is a facility that would primarily serve juveniles, so the commissioners have reserved $1.8 million for that purpose. These other two boxes in blue are expansions of the commissioners Mental Health initiative, including community response teams and conjunction with law enforcement.

These teams have shown the ability to reduce costs for the Sheriff's office by directing appropriate staff to mental health related calls, and reserving deputies for for other purposes. That is a three year initiative, and this is an area where we anticipate that additional the entire mental health bucket is an area where we anticipate additional state and federal resources may come to bear.

So we anticipate that the total allocation to this purpose may change over time as additional state and federal funds are obtained. And we're working aggressively to identify those opportunities, particularly through the state.

The intellectual and developmental disability opportunity on the next page is one that is very much still in the exploratory phases. We there is a need for housing for this population, and there is an opportunity, in conjunction with Medicare and Medicaid to provide for eligible housing for for this population and to be reimbursed by and to receive reimbursements for the providers of that housing.

So this is an opportunity that is heavily dependent on what kinds of housing Medicare and Medicaid will fund. So that's an area that is still being explored. And this therefore is in flux. The community and economic investment category is a broad range and category. It could include investments in workforce and investments with Arapahoe Community College. We anticipate that in addition to the ACC Workforce Bootcamp that you see listed here, that Arapahoe Community College may propose additional expenditures, potentially investments in the Douglas County School District's new campus.

Some opportunities for shared partnerships. So this category may change somewhat. None of the expenditures identified here have received final final blessing from the commissioners to move forward.

The homelessness expenditures on the next page include an investment for two years in the Homeless Engagement and Response Team. This is a a team of individuals who address calls related to homelessness and assist those individuals in finding services or helping them find other opportunities for places to live. The initial allocation is is a two year pilot program. This is a, an area where the commissioners anticipate, if it's successful, the need to find general fund dollars going forward, and then similarly, the reintegration deputy is a position that assists individuals who are leaving the county jail in accessing resources and connecting them with places where they have or they have connections which may or may not be within the county.

The commissioners are no longer considering an expenditure for temporary pallet shelters and possibilities for further facility acquisition are not actively being explored at this time.

To the extent that they were previously. The water and wastewater category is probably the one you're most interested in, and I apologize for the delay in getting to this slide. We are exploring the regional water project with Parker Water and Sanitation. This is potentially up to $20 million investment, although as you can see here, the total allocation of this bucket to this expenditure category is $34.3 million.

So when you start to add up the numbers in these categories, you can see that there are clearly trade offs involved here. The commissioners continue to explore with Parker Water and Sand sanitation, what portions of the Platte Valley project can be completed on the American Rescue Plan Act timeline? We anticipate that that could include design costs associated with the pipeline route and pump stations.

It may include treatment associated with rest reservoir, but we do not anticipate at this time an investment that would total $20,000,020 million. In all likelihood from the county. Probably something less than that. The highway 85 project is a wastewater project that could provide service extending down, extending from Castle Rock to Sedalia, louvers and potentially Stirling Ranch. The final, the final extent of partnership involved in that project remains a subject of investigation, and therefore the extent of county involvement remains in flux.

And then finally the local district projects, including yours, we currently have approximately $188 million in expenditures or potential projects there. When the commissioners discussed this portfolio of potential investments, there was an indication that for local district projects, there was a desire to emphasize projects that had regional connectivity or projects that demonstrated significant need. The. This is also an area where we anticipate additional state and federal resources could come to bear.

We know that Sedalia Water and Sanitation has an application into our congressional delegation for one time funding, and we know that Louvers does as well. We believe that both of those funding requests have moved through to the Appropriations Committee and stand a reasonable opportunity to be funded in the federal budget, but we won't know for some months yet the extent to which those requests are successful.

Any funds that are received from that congressional allocation could offset some of these costs, and enable the county to to invest in additional local water and wastewater projects. When discussing local water and sanitation projects. Commissioner Thomas expressed a preference for regional scale projects. Commissioner Thiele expressed a willingness to find those local projects that may have regional connections and demonstrated need, and specifically mentioned Castle Pines needs in the area of water wastewater, as an example of the kind of projects that that he could be willing to support. Yes.

Denise:

So if I understand that right, your local district projects 188 million in proposal that has not been decided yet. What you may or may not do with those funds?

Dan:

Correct. The board has yet to develop a process for determining how we will make allocations in that category. It will be largely driven by decisions in the first two categories. I suspect once we have a better understanding of the county's commitment to the highway 85 corridor, in particular, the commissioners will be better position to decide how much to allocate to other opportunities.

Denise:

Okay. Thank you.

Chuck:

A quick question. I don't think you have your crystal ball to tell us when they might consider our district, but that's that's my question. And do you have a timeline or a deadline that you have to meet in order to accomplish meeting all of your goals and including considering somebody like Castle Pines North Metro District?

Dan:

The commissioners do recognize that particular, particularly within the water and wastewater category. Time is of the essence. These projects take significant time to design and build, and the funds need to be expended by 2026. The plan at this point, the process will be a deeper dive into this category in particular, and one that emphasizes for the commissioners the trade offs that are inherent in this category and the the trade offs that may exist with some of these other allocations that they've developed.

For example, I mentioned that some of these are pilot programs, pilot programs in the area of homelessness. And then the next category is a pilot program in wildfire suppression and wildfire mitigation. The commissioners are keenly aware that spending one time money on what are likely to be ongoing costs is probably inconsistent with how they intend to budget generally, so they intend to plan for the long term for those pilot programs, and it's possible that those could move into the general fund more quickly and free up resources for one time expenditures.

So the budget process will be an important component in making some of those determinations. The budget process for for next year, and then the emphasis on how to make decisions in the water and wastewater category is something that staff intends to discuss with the commissioners in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Emphasizing, as I noted, the trade offs.

If the county is successful in finding other funds for mental health, for example, that would provide additional funding into this category in all likelihood. Same goes for state funding that could offset homeless investments and state funding that could support some of our broadband initiatives. The there are significant broadband. The next slide is about broadband. There are significant opportunities for the county and local jurisdictions to invest in broadband through the infrastructure bill, through the American Rescue Plan Act, and the county has conducted a needs assessment to ensure that we are positioned to take advantage of those opportunities.

However, we also recognize that there are areas of the state that are more able to demonstrate need than our county is in some cases, so it's not yet clear how competitive we will be for some of those state and federal grants. But this is another area where there may be opportunities to redirect funds from the broadband allocation into water and wastewater, for example.

Conversely, it's also possible that there are projects that have substantial benefit for large portions of the county and broadband that they may choose to invest more money in. So there will be an ongoing challenge in addressing some of the trade offs involved in making final allocations with with this funding. And the last slide is investments in the county's wildfire suppression program.

Emergency management has utilized the county's helicopter a number of times this year already. This program would involve additional staffing for the helicopter program, six additional FTE for wildfire suppression, and then two additional FTE for wildfire mitigation support. As I noted, these are these could become ongoing costs that shift to the general fund over time. And then there has been discussion about a broader regional air support program related to wildfire suppression that would involve partnerships with other other counties, other municipalities.

So that remains a potential outlier in our ultimate ARPA expenditures. So that's a very high level overview of the kinds of considerations that are going into the commissioners decision making process as it relates to the American Rescue Plan Act. I can I can take questions at this time.

Chuck:

Thank you very much. I appreciate your presentation. It appears to me through your discussion that the local district projects are fairly low on the totem pole and require other things to happen in order to have the funds available for certain or any district that you may consider and has a need. Is that correct?

Dan:

I think that the commissioners very much want to determine what state and federal resources will be available to Sedalia, and what state and federal resources would be available to some of the other water districts in the county going forward before they make commitments in the local category in particular. As I noted, there is.

There is a split in the in the board's framework around water and wastewater investments. Commissioner Thomas prefers large scale projects that have regional benefit. Commissioner Thiele is willing to, to a greater degree, perhaps explore some of these smaller local projects where significant need can be demonstrated, or where there's opportunities for regional connectivity. So one suggestion for this body may be to help the commissioners understand what portions of your request are most critical, what portions of your request could have broader benefit beyond potentially Castle Pines North.

And to help them understand the timing needs associated with your request? I think that's a conversation that we will be having with a number of districts going forward, as we gain greater understanding of how much funding could be available for local districts.

Tera:

And as a follow up to that question, so I think we were rather late, I think, in making our request and we submitted, it looks like a letter. Is there a different process? Did we submit enough detail on the our request, or did other local districts submit more detail on their requests? Can you help me give a little context?

Dan:

The level of detail that that was submitted by Castle Pines North was, was sufficient for our needs. Certainly for the larger scale projects that were under consideration, like RWR and the Platte Valley proposal, there was significantly more documentation that went along with those. But for the local projects, your submittal was consistent with what we expected. As I noted, going forward, the next step will probably be some refinement and some coordination with each district that that may be competitive to determine what portions of your requests would be best emphasized.

Chuck:

I appreciate the work you're doing, and I couldn't imagine how hard it is to make these decisions. And I appreciate the fact that you've the commissioners responded rather quickly to the fire mitigation after what we went through in Boulder and Superior. And I understand that. But as as we live out this summer with increased drought and lower services of water, I see some of our neighboring districts are already starting stage one drought consequences.

And so water to us, obviously is as important as fire is to the commissioners. And I hope that eventually they'll appreciate our need for water and how important it is for us in this district, as well as other districts that are requesting it to move that urgency up, if at all possible. And I'd appreciate them considering that. Thank you.

Dan:

I appreciate that insight. And as I noted, we should have additional direction from the commissioners in the next 2 to 3 weeks on how to refine these these proposals, how to the local districts, which local districts to reproach to focusing on on those those three attributes that I mentioned, potential for regional cooperation, need and timing. So you can expect that I'll be back in touch along those lines.

Chuck:

Thank you very much. Dan, do we have any other questions?

Chris:

I just want to reiterate your comment that our submission was at the level of detail that we were supposed to submit it, and then also on the timing, as soon as we found out we did work diligently with your team and commissioners to submit that document. Right? That's correct. Thank you.

Denise:

Dan, thanks for being here, going over this. That is a monumental task, and we appreciate what you guys are sorting through to get to where you need to be, because I can just it's like Christmas with the commissioners, right? So thank you. And of course will expand a bit if needed, if and when we get to that point. And we know that there is a possibility of extra funds available. We appreciate you.

Chris:

Thank you. Yeah. And I also want to say thanks for for coming here tonight and for the feedback that you've provided. And if there's anything we can do to get ready for that conversation on, you know, making sure that our projects are somehow related to the regional development and, and.

And so forth, then you know, how to prioritize our submission and so forth, then, yeah, let us know so we can get working on that. So we don't want to delay your process, and we want to make it as easy as possible for you.

Dan:

And we do expect to have that direction shortly.

Chuck:

Thank you. Dan appreciate it.

Jason:

Excuse me. Thanks. I just wanted to appreciate give my appreciation to you as well. And if we can offer any more specifics, please let us know. We'd be happy to do so. Sounds good.

Chuck:

As you know, water is important to us. Absolutely. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you. All right. Let's. We have any other questions? Let's move on to Kim Seter orientation and legal refresher.

Legal Counsel Kim Seter, Esq.:

Good evening. You guys asked me to put together some kind of a high level refresher and discussion of districts. I pounded out a quick memo that I put in each of your places that I'll run over fairly quickly. Again, it's very high level, but it will touch on things that affect how you do your job. And as we go on in time, I'll try to kind of pinpoint and point out to you at different meetings when these things are coming into play and why, so that you get a feel for for how the district operates.

So first of all, the Castle Pines North Metropolitan District is a metropolitan district that is just a special district that provides more than two more than one service. So you have the power in your statutes, as well as your service plan to provide water, sewer, roads and streets, traffic safety controls, parks and recreation, mosquito control. Which, believe it or not, everybody wants that one.

And stormwater. As you know, we are about to spin out the stormwater back to the city we executed in IGA and will begin implementing that change here shortly. So a district is a government entity in and of itself. It's a political subdivision of the state of Colorado. The significance of that is that you are not a subdivision of the city of Castle Pines.

You are not a subdivision of the county. You're a subdivision of the state legislature, the state government. What that means is that all of your power comes from the state government, and it's delegated to you through the Colorado Revised Statutes. So everything you do and cannot do comes through those statutes from the state. The state does allow the city and the county to form or approve the formation of a district through what's called a service plan, and you have an approved service plan that will come into play here shortly, because in the IGA with the city, we agreed to go back and amend our service plan to remove our stormwater service authority.

So you'll see that happening certainly by the end of September. But again, it's important to know you are an independent government. You are the board that controls and operates this independent government.

Your board can be made up of 5 or 7 members, and it's very important to understand that it is the board that is the determining entity for control of the government. We get a lot of districts where individual directors take off and start saying things, and not without tempering their statements with, it's up to the board. You can always say, here's what I think.

You have the First Amendment right to do that. But it's the board decision that is the ultimate conclusion. So you want to be very careful when you're out talking to people, particularly as we approach campaigning and things like that, that you don't you make sure you're never talking for the board unless the board authorizes you to. Which can happen also.

Moving on to meetings, because you're a government entity, all of your meetings have to be in public, with a very few exceptions. So anytime three or more board members are at a meeting or at a conversation in which district business will be discussed, they must be open to the public. And that means there has to be notice that the meeting is going to take place, so a telephone call can be a public meeting.

You remember we've had conversations a lot where we'll say, I'm going to send an email out and each of you respond to me, don't respond to all or to one another, because the minute you do that, it's a public meeting. And then if there's a controversial issue, anybody has access to your emails because you were in a public meeting.

You don't want that to happen, mainly because it's so much work to try to pick through your emails to find those. So the conduct of these meetings and any meetings is determined by the board of directors. One of the items you're going to talk about tonight is how many public comment periods you should have. That's all within your control.

You don't have to have any public comment periods, but if you do have a public comment period, you've now opened your meeting as a forum for the First Amendment, and you have to allow those comments to take place. You can only control the time, place and manner at that point. Again, you don't have to have them, but if you do, it's now subject to the First Amendment.

Executive sessions are the exception to the open meetings, so those can be done as exceptions to the open meetings law, but only for specific purposes, which you see when we enter into executive session on the agenda. The motion says move into executive session to discuss whatever it is. Contract negotiations and directing contract negotiators. So there are only specific items you can do that with.

And there aren't very many. You also, before going into executive session, must give notice in the public meeting of the purpose for going into the executive session. And then while in executive session, there can be no official decisions, votes or actions taken outside the view of the public. So you must come out. And then if you've got an action, you do it in open in the open session.

So the open the the study session that we're having right now is no different from your regular meeting. There's more than three of you here. We're discussing government business. Therefore it is an open public meeting. That's why it was subject to notice on the website. And the only real difference between a work session and a regular meeting is you let people know we're just going to talk about stuff.

We're not going to do anything. Makes it a work session.

Chris:

Kim, question. So if it's just like our normal meeting and I know we don't have to make decisions, but we can make decisions. No. Okay.

Kim:

No, because you've already told people you're not going to do that so.

Chris:

Okay. But if we didn't say we're not going to make decisions, can we? It says it's open because of three or more, which is just like our normal board meeting. I'm just trying to understand.

Kim:

Right. So in your remember, before you have a public meeting, three or more of you, you have to post notice if you've posted, notice that you're not going to make any decisions. Then that controls your meeting. You've controlled the meeting.

Chris:

And if we say we will make decisions, then we can. Yes. Okay. So either just have to say what's going to do.

Kim:

Yep. Yeah. And again it's part of that. Keep in mind that transparency that that this board talks about more than any of my other boards. It's part of that. So when you give notice we're not going to decide anything tonight. Then you don't decide anything. You've you've tied your own hands. If you say we're going to consider these things and we may make a decision, then you're free to make a decision.

00:32:53:27 - 00:33:04:14

Speaker 10

As long as the public knows they might make a decision, I want to I want to go see it.

Chuck:

In that regard.

Describer:
The microphone receives some feedback. Chuck pauses a couple times.

Chuck:

Where we make a decision or want to make a decision in a study session, whether we make a decision or not make a decision. It's still open to the public, but it is not required to allow the public to speak in or ask questions regarding that decision or that potential issue that we want to make a decision on.

Kim:

That's that's correct. Yeah. So again, you don't have to allow the public to speak at any of your meetings. That's not wise because you want to hear what they have to say, but you don't have to. And again, once you open that, the floor to them within the issue that you've opened the floor to them for, you have to let people speak and it's out of your hands at that time.

You can't control them. And there are cases, there's amazing cases of people coming into these meetings and kicking over trash cans and cussing. And, you know, the courts take very seriously that First Amendment right. And in some cases, you get to kick over the trash cans and you get to cuss. As long as you're not interrupting the flow of the meeting, which is hard to interrupt if the board has provided that time for the public comment.

So it's a very First Amendment is a fascinating issue with regard to these boards, because the the way it combines with everything is very interesting. And if we see some things happen again, I'll point them out to you. But just keep in mind now that when you allow the public to speak, you can, you can confine them to a specific topic, or if you don't, they can come in here and talk about anything, which is why you have a three minute limit.

And again, you control time, place and manner once you open the door to to public speech. So conflicts of interest.

Tera:

So Ken, before you move on, on the executive sessions, because the executive sessions are there's a specific reason. And it might have been helpful because I know for everyone to see what those reasons are. But when you're in the executive session that's been called for a specific purpose, there's no official decisions made, no votes can be made. It's usually to get advice from you or whatever.

But also within that executive session, all discussion needs to be kept on that topic, correct?

Kim:

Absolutely. I'm glad you pointed that out. The discussions have to remain on that topic and they remain in the executive session. It is your duty not to tell anybody what anybody said in that executive session. I had a situation for years. I guess I can tell you who it is because it's so long ago. But when gambling first came in, Central City and Black Hawk were just butting heads and they divided up the board of the sanitation district because it was going to be providing sanitation that hadn't been provided there before.

So casinos were interested, everyone was interested. So we had part of the city council of each city, and we had to go into executive session every night. But we're going in to keep the discussion away from half of the board. So I would have to give this statement that you all have the duty to keep this information in the executive session, knowing, you know, it wasn't going to stay there, but it is your duty to do that when we go into executive session and to stay on topic, if another topic comes up, the correct thing to do is to go back into open session, have another motion to go into executive session on the new topic, and then go back in for discussion of that. Make sense?

Tera:

And then typically when you're doing an executive session, do you invite in the people pertinent to that decision or is it or that discussion, or is it typically really just the board?

Kim:

It's typically just the board, usually the attorneys and usually the manager. Most of the cases in this area allow what's called the control group of the particular issue. So if the issue has something to do with concerns over the one of the treatment plans, you would want Nathan in there because it's not going to do any good for you and I to go in and talk about it, because we don't know what we're talking about, probably.

So you're allowed to have that control group in there with you. Another thing that is, is general practice for me is after we come out of an executive session, if there's going to be a continuation of the meeting, I or somebody will announce we did not talk about anything else in the executive session. We did not make any decisions. And then if there's a decision, you make a motion do it in the public session.

Chris:

So follow up on the who can be in the meeting. So it's also up to the discretion of the board members that the president, the other board members to determine who else can be in that meeting.

Kim:

Who you need.

Chris:

Who you need.

Kim:
Not who else can be in it, who you need. So really, I hate to say it this way, but who can be is probably me telling you, okay. You say who you need in order to have a useful discussion. Copy.

Conflicts of interest. You all recall at the beginning of each year, we pass around a letter and a bunch of forms that you fill out about conflicts of interest, just generally speaking, a conflict of interest is any time you have a financial interest that's different from everyone else in the district or the majority of people. That's a very broad statement.

But what it means is if if there are contract discussions and it happens to be one of your employers who is submitting a bid, you're out. You cannot enter. None of you can enter into a contract with the district, period. Again, I'm speaking very. Very broadly here, but those conflicts of interest have to be avoided. The reason we give you that packet at the beginning of the year, it contains definitions of conflicts.

And it also has you fill out information about your employment and your, you know, companies that you may work with that also work with the district. We take that back, study it. And then if during a meeting, something comes up, I should be able to recognize that one of you has a there's an issue here. Let's talk about it before you proceed, because it can be personal liability on your part.

We also take those forms and we we filed them with the Colorado Secretary of State. And what that does is the statute say that if you give 72 hours notice that you have a conflict, but then it turns out there aren't enough directors to act at a board meeting. You can act as long as you've given that notice.

So we do that for every meeting just in case something happens. It's easy to do and helps protect you. We aren't your attorneys. We represent the district board, not you individually. But the reason we do that for you individually is because we're protecting the actions of the board. If you go ahead and act, there's a conflict of interest.

You were disqualified. The board action can be overturned. So we keep a close eye on that and protect it wherever we can, which ends up protecting you individually. Any questions on conflicts? Move on to elections. As a government, you have elections that you must conduct. Those include elections for directors, elections for tax increases because of the Tabor amendment, elections for incurring debt.

And I want to point out something specifically about this because you're familiar with it. You remember that we have, as we've talked with Parker Water, we have the enterprises, the water enterprise and the sewer enterprise. That whole thing is just kind of a fiction. The TABOR amendment says that you have to have elections to increase taxes or increase expenditures, except for enterprises.

It then defines an enterprise as a government owned business. The Supreme Court and state courts have spent years trying to put some flesh on those bones. The bottom line is that means a business that supports itself by fees, rates, tolls or charges. So your sewer service is paid for by the users, kind of like a business. Therefore you can call it an enterprise.

And if it's an enterprise, you can you can issue debt for the enterprise, using the fees to pay back the debt without having to go to an election under TABOR. So that's that's the sole reason that you've heard that word enterprise and enterprise. Enterprise. Again and again and again. And it all comes from the TABOR amendment. Otherwise you'd have to have elections.

Other topics, of course, that you've seen are inclusions and exclusions require elections, financial matters. Chuck, do you want me to keep going or you want me to cut the short? Okay. Financial matters. Your revenue sources are ad valorem property taxes, which just means taxes against the value of your your property and everyone else's property in the district, whether it's commercial or residential.

Your other source of revenue is fees, rates, tolls or charges. And those are the items on the fee schedule that you approve. Those are defined in the statute, and they must be rationally related to the cost of providing the governmental service, which is why you engage the company out of California or wherever they come from, to do the the rate study before you change the rates so that you're sure you've got a rational relationship.

Finally, there are grants from the federal government and the state government. You heard some of that tonight. Interestingly, under Tabor, if your enterprise receives more than 10% of its revenue in a grant, it's no longer an enterprise. Now you have to go to an election. So even.

Chuck:

If say that again.

Kim:

If if an enterprise, let's let's say the county comes to us and says, you know, we're ready to give you $10 million to your enterprise to to do something. That 10 million is more than 10% of the revenue of your enterprise, which can only come from fees, rates, tolls and charges are wise. It's not a it's not an enterprise because that government is giving you tax dollars for your enterprise. Your enterprise is no longer an enterprise. Now you're back in subject to TABOR, and you need to go to an election to approve receipt of that revenue.

Chris:

So do we just have to decline the money?

Kim:

Well we just take you know, it's like that $0.99 instead of a dollar. And it happens frequently, especially in some of the smaller mountain towns where they don't have a lot of revenue. But the state wants to help them, you know, fix up their water treatment plant. Here's a pile of money. Well, now we have to go to an election in order to take to the pile of money. Yeah.

Budgeting requirements. So beginning is this July next month, the county assessor will provide you or your accountants with a document that is the assessable valuation of all of the property in the district. I don't know how they do it, but they actually value everything and they put a number on it. They give that to you. Then you take that number and determine how much money you need to operate.

Next year, you back your mill levy into the number that they've given you using all these. There's a bunch of calculations that we can talk about sometime if you want, but they're now changing every year because we got rid of the Gallagher amendment. Now the legislature's is cutting back on valuations. But you start that process in August. You're whoever your budget officer is going to be will bring you a draft budget probably around October.

And we'll start going through this process of applying the mill levy to the the valuations. And for you, again, it's less of an issue because you're mostly supported by the fees. But by December 10th you have to assess your melody. And you do that with a resolution that we will provide for you. And not only do you assess the mill levy, but you appropriate the funds into the correct categories and then go ahead and pass that on to the county commissioners who levy against the properties.

And you begin collecting those taxes in March, April, May, June and throughout the year.

Contracts. The board has the power, under Colorado law, to enter into all kinds of contracts to perform the services that you that you offer. You cannot enter into any multi fiscal year obligation with that an election. This goes back again to Tabor in order to avoid going into debt without an election. They use this definition of multi fiscal year obligation.

So you will see that any time we draft a contract it's in the IGA with the city. Even there will be a provision that says subject to annual appropriation. Whatever we're doing is subject to annual appropriation. What that means is when December comes around and you appropriate your funds, if you say we aren't appropriate, or if you say nothing about appropriating funds to a certain contract, that contract goes away.

That means you have an escape clause. If you have an escape clause, it's not debt. And under TABOR, you don't have to go to an election. So we have all of these circles that keep coming around.

Chuck:

I want you to repeat that.

Kim:

Okay. So let me let me say it in a different way. Under TABOR, you can't enter into a debt without going to an election. Debt? One of the definitions under TABOR of debt is a multiple fiscal year obligation. So an obligation that you're going to pay out over more than a year. So in this budgeting process, you annually appropriate funds to pay for your operations, your contracts, your chemicals, your treatment plan.

All of those things, in order to avoid having to go into to have an election, to approve a contract for landscape maintenance. We include a provision that says this contract is subject to annual appropriation, which means every December 10th when you appropriate through your budget, if you don't appropriate for that landscape contract, it ends. That means you're not going multiple years and you don't have to go to an election.

You will see that in almost every contract we draft. And someday you may look at it and say, well, what is that about? That's what it's about.

Other things that have to go into the contracts include different provisions with regard to to the fact that you are annually appropriating or not clauses with regard to the amount of money that you have on hand to pay the contract. And those have come about in order to protect the parties you're contracting with. When I first started practicing law, it was the government was the king.

If there was a case actually in Frisco, where the city contracted with a contractor to put in sewer lines, the contractor spent $2.8 million, I think, on the sewer lines. And somebody said, wait a minute. The city council didn't have a public hearing or something on this contract. And the court said, oh, well, the contract was no good.

And the contractor said, but I put the sewer line in and the court said, you shouldn't have done that. You should have made basically saying you should have made sure that the city council did what it was supposed to do so that you could get paid. The courts have softened that, but it frankly is still the law, you know?

And the reason is the courts are protecting the taxpayers from having to pay for something that was inappropriately done. So now we put provisions in the contract saying we have appropriately appropriated and we have the funds on hand.

Contracts can also be entered into with other governments. Those become can become what are called authorities, where you work together to provide services that each of you is allowed to provide. Any contract that's for more than $65,000 has to be bid, and none of your contract services contractors have the right to lean your projects. As a government entity, you're exempt from mechanics liens and material men's liens, and I try to always put into the contracts upfront and acknowledgment that we know we can't lean the project, so we have to be careful liability. So district directors have protections from liability for official actions under political action doctrines and the Governmental Immunity Act. Of course, if you're acting outside of the scope of your job as a director, these don't apply.

But otherwise you have very broad protection, and the district has substantial protections from taught for personal injury actions under the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act. And as long as you provide the amount of insurance that we check on every January to make sure you have these, these protections are there. They're solid.

There is no protection for a breach of contract suit. So that kind of litigation always goes forward. Just like Brighton's claim against us for the water was that we had breached our contract to sell them the water. Public finance.

Jason:

Excuse me one second staying on liability. So I understand that we are that there is insurance for the for the board as a whole. Yes. Each individual and director, each individual director. Should we be looking at building insurance also?

Kim:

No. So the covering Colorado Governmental Immunity Act provides immunity to you as individual directors as well as to the district as a whole. So it's very broad. You know, as long as you are acting within the scope of your duty, you're protected. And frankly, it'd be pretty hard to get out of the scope of your duty. Unless if you leave this meeting and go run somebody over with your car, that's not in the scope of your duty, but.

Where are we? Public finance. So you have the ability to issue bonds after an election. Again, that's debt. The income to the investors on those bonds is double tax exempt. So an investor doesn't pay taxes on to the state or to the federal government on those investments. And that's why you get such a low interest rate as a government.

You can also issue bonds that are not double tax exempt. So you can issue taxable bonds if you choose to do so. And there are various reasons in the finance world why that that does happen. You know it seems like you would never do that. But but sometimes you will. You can also issue bonds that are double tax exempt based upon enterprise activity that we talked about a few minutes ago payable from fees, rates, tolls and charges.

And of course, that's why you have those two enterprises, or I guess you have three of us stormwater enterprise as well.

Public records. There is a statute called the Colorado, the Colorado Open Records Act, or CORA. We filled CORA requests probably twice a month for you, where people are asking for documents. Documents they could ask for would be your emails. Remember what we talked about earlier? It was an open meeting. We want the emails. We want the letters among the directors because they were talking about district business.

Mostly what we get is, you know, requests for contracts, requests for for various documents under the Colorado Open Records Act. You have to produce those documents for inspection within 72 hours of the request, with a few exceptions. But what we run into more often than not is people they're not interested in a particular document. They want you to go out and compile a bunch of information for them.

And we don't do that, and we don't have to do that. Right? Right now, there are several companies in the United States that are sending out quota requests on a regular basis asking for information like, who are you getting your supplies from? How much are you paying for those supplies? What kind of contracts are you entering into, and then turning around to sell that information?

And we just tell them, sorry, that's not under we're not providing it. In the event you don't provide core information, there's a whole series of court actions that newspapers and others can go through to try to get that information. That usually happens when you enter into an executive session and somebody wants to know what you are doing in there.

And that's why we're very careful about the procedures for going in and in what we do when we come out of an executive session and who's included. And that's all I included here. But we'll talk more as things go on. And I notice something, I'll just toss it out so you get a feel for it.

Chuck:

That was I think, excellent.

Describer:
The microphone gives feedback and it causes Chuck to pause again so he can fix it.

Chuck:

I think that was excellent. And I appreciate you putting it together for us. I think it's very important. Are there other orientation legal orientation programs that we should be aware of moving on. We could we could we do this at another work session on another subject. How do you feel about what we're not hearing tonight?

Kim:

There's a lot more detail we could get into on the record keeping issues, the open meetings, which I know Tera is interested in and it's an interesting topic. If you want to, I can start putting things in the status report, just picking topics. And then if you want to talk about that topic in a meeting, we'll talk about it.

If not, you'll just have the the little written blurb in the status report, if that makes sense.

Chuck:

I think that's great. And let me know if there's something you want on another work session agenda, and we'll will take your advice. Thank you. Any other questions for.

Tera:

Just well thank you. First of all, and thank you for keeping us out of trouble. But I wanted to mention that isn't there on the Special District Association. They do a board orientation and I think we are members. And if people are interested in more detail, I believe they have something that's been recorded recently that can be reviewed as well.

Kim:

Yes, they have several things on their website. And I did order for all of you something called the Special District Board Member Manual. There are some items in there that I don't think are exactly right, but it's a good it's a good source of information. A good little reference guide is kind of like a magazine. And as soon as I get those all distribute them to you.

I'll point out the couple of things that I think are not quite right. And then of course, the Special District Association, I think you are all members of through the district. I'm not sure of that, but you certainly can be. And at the next budget discussion, you can you can do that. They have a convention every year that has a lot of interesting programs, and a lot of you can pick up so different sources.

Chuck:

Thank you. Kim.

District Manager Nathan Travis:

Chuck may I real quick? Along those lines to the state actually has historically offered a board orientation that they come out and provide for free. They shut that program down during COVID. During our last sanitary survey, the inspector that came out had mentioned that they were going to be bringing that back at some point. I haven't gotten an answer exactly on when that is. But so it's, you know, like Kim had mentioned, we're a division of the state.

So having the state come out and kind of talk through what their expectations are and all of that stuff could also be helpful.

Chuck:

Great. Thanks, Nathan. All right. Moving on to item number four, Roman numeral, four, discussing eliminating one of the two periods from the board meeting. I hope this doesn't take a lot of time. I think it's important, though, to bring it up because it was requested to be brought up. And so I'd like to ask the board how they feel about one, two or no comment period.

Tera:

I'm happy to start. So because I think I may have mentioned that in a meeting, I absolutely think public comment is crucial to our role. But I also think having one comment period, a second comment period at the end of the meeting forces people kind of sit through the entire meeting, even if it's not pertinent. And I'm thinking that they could, you know, if there was something that that happened, you know, that they wanted to do at that last meeting, they could always bring it up at the next meeting at the public comment period.

And it seems consistent with how the other special districts do. They kind of have basically here, if you have something that you want to talk about that's on the agenda or just something you want to talk about to? To Kim's point, free speech, they just want to have three minutes of your time and talk about something. I think that's well done at the beginning of the meeting, kind of like we gave Dan, you know, a space at the beginning of the meeting and that I think it kind of just makes people sit through what can turn into a long meeting just because they want to say something.

And that would, would let them leave when they need to leave, and they could always come back to the next meeting, or I think they can submit. And, Kim, you can probably help me on this. Can they just write their comments in and then we would get them in our board packets or how would that work?

Kim:

I think, Ken, there's a is there a comment sheet on the website where people can leave comments there?

Ken:

Is there multiple opportunities for constituents to engage with directors? One of the one of the vehicles that seems to be most readily used is the web based forum. We get dozens of requests and inquiries and questions through the web based forum. In some cases, those only go to staff, but in many cases those inquiries go to the entire board.

And in cases where the inquiry goes to the entire board. I typically will respond in writing and copy the board on the response, so that you're always aware of the status of an inquiry and what the response has been.

Kim:

You'll note that that procedure is taking into account the fact that you're each individuals and not the board. So through Ken the board is responding or Ken will bring something to the board, rather than having you as individuals get involved in a dialog with a constituent, you can do that. But again, you have to be very clear that it's just me talking.

Ken:

Well, those with all due respect, those one on one engagements happen frequently. On many occasions, directors will receive constituent inquiry or a question or a someone sounding the alarm about an issue, and the director will forward that to me to craft a response. I'll send that back and then the director will forward that on to the constituents. But I think under that, under that circumstance, it's abundantly clear that the the communication is coming from one individual director and not the board as a whole. We're very careful about that.

Chuck:

Any other comments on the comment period?

Jason:

I have one comment, so I am more inclined to having just one comment period. However, if there was a special if we knew that there was going to be a hot topic, could we have a second one? Or how or if we go with one, are we committed to just having one until we come up and make another motion to have two?

Kim:

No. Again, you control the board meeting, so you could even decide in the middle of a meeting. Gee, I think we should have a second comment period. So we'll put it in the agenda after something.

Jason:

Okay, that said, I'm more inclined to just setting for one, but being open to two if there's a need.

Chuck:

Okay, so Chris, you don't care.

Chris:

I'm open. I'm okay with one. I like the two, but I'm open. And one.

Denise:

I like having one. I think that makes sense.

01:06:39:14 - 01:06:52:06

Speaker 1

Okay, my last question is do we prefer at the beginning of the meeting or do we prefer at the end of the meeting when the subjects are discussed throughout the meeting and people then generate questions. Beginning. Beginning?

Chris:

I prefer the end because it actually gives us feedback on what we would discuss. Our my, my my position is we're here for the community and I want to hear what they want to say. I'm not really interested in what I want to tell them. I want to make sure I'm responding to what they want to know.

Tera:

And I think the whole thought was to be kind to them and not make them sit through an entire meeting if they don't need to. You know, they certainly that would give them the option to sit through the meaning if they wanted. And I think certainly if we saw that there were a lot of it's an interaction, we could see that they were itching to speak about something.

I think we could make a motion on the fly. But again, like the other districts that I've attended, they kind of have that at the beginning. Most entities, I think, only have one, and at the beginning, and it is at our discretion. I mean, I absolutely want to I mean, the people that come definitely are, are, are here to speak. And we want to we want to hear them, but sometimes they're just here to listen. But that's just my my thoughts.

Jason:

I'm in favor of the beginning. Like we discussed, we can always add a second. One of the things seem to be coming up that people need to talk about.

Chuck:

Then I, I think that we should have one at the beginning, not at the end. And then if there is something that comes up during the course of the meeting that a constituent stays for, they can always bring it up later in the meeting if we allow it, or they can bring it up at the next month's board meeting. So we'll just eliminate one of the comment periods on the next agenda.

Chuck:

We're not supposed to make decisions. We're not.

Ken:

Mr. President, let me just speak to that. Understanding the sentiment of the board. You've not taken a vote. I will take what I think I've heard is the sentiment of the board and apply it to our next board meeting agenda.

Chuck:

Correct. And notice I did not make a motion. I made a decision. I'd like to flip. Moving on. Now let's let's do item number five the first. I think that's important. Kim, on settling with Aurora.

Ken:

Yes. Just the last couple of days, we have, I believe, completed all of the documents for the transaction. The last email I sent out was to go ahead and schedule the closing. There's unfortunately, Aurora and Brighton chose two separate title companies. So we're either going to end up with two closings or the title companies are going to have to agree on something.

I don't care, but it's just taking some time. One of the other attorneys is to be sending around a packet of documents for one last review, and then I'll be contacting Denise and Chuck for signatures. We'll provide those to the title company, and then they'll close when they have all the documents together, and we'll get funds wired. Should happen. The last I heard from them is they think it'll be done before the end of next week.

Chuck:

Okay. Because we had a September 1st date, I think, for the transition to officially take place.

Ken:

Actually, the settlement agreement says December 31st. Are we talking about the water? Yes. Yeah, it says by December 31st, but we'll be well ahead of that.

Chuck:

Well, I appreciate what you're doing. I was on your email chain and I've never been more confused in my life. I'm glad I'm not an attorney. There were a lot of documents and a lot of people weighing in on what to provide, and that's when I realized I didn't need to read it. It's up to you. You just tell me what's happening. But thanks, Kim. Appreciate it. You bet. Item number seven staffing needs. I'd like to put in front of item number six. And so, Nathan, would you like to take that charge?

Nathan:

Yeah, absolutely. Let me switch gears here. So one of the things that I've been looking at over the past few weeks, really talking with Susan very specifically about a lot of her frustrations, a lot of shortcomings that we've had from the inside this building office staff are really starting to weigh down the district. There's been a lot of transition in that area, a lot of contracts moving in. CRS has been moving in employees and moving out employees on a regular basis.

And so coming all of that, all of that excess stuff is really falling onto Susan. There's been a bunch of associated problems that have come with that, a lot of it related to meter billing, meter reading, setting up new accounts of all tasks that CRS had been charged to do, but no one really knew how to do it. We're using. Yeah, better. There we go. Just a lot of those processes.

Tera:

You're saying we contracted CRS to do this and they don't know how to do it? They're they're providing us employees who aren't qualified?

Nathan:

It's not that the employees aren't qualified, it's that there was no way to train these. So this is a problem that really goes back to, early on in the.

I don't even the existence of the last board, we had had a staff member, Janet, who had largely taken over all of that stuff. It was it was well within her purview for a number of reasons. She ended up leaving rather abruptly. And with her leaving, there was no transition period. We had originally planned with Jim Nikkel to work with, basically, have Susan and Janet work side by side for up to a year to really get all of that stuff down on paper. All of these small nuances in these relatively complicated processes that I don't even understand all that well, at least the details. And so when that didn't happen, Janet was immediately replaced by Don, who did her level best to try and figure all of this stuff out.

But there's no universal like every system builds the exact same way. So we're using census metering systems that talk to a continental billing software. Not everyone is as familiar with continental as they are, say ADG, another utility billing platform.

And so there's always a lag when you try to get these things up. About the time that Don had the majority of that stuff really, really locked down, she accepted a job with Parker. And then very, very shortly after that, Parker Water pulled all of their staff support and then ended the inclusion. So we also lost access to Don.

And at that point they brought in, you know, another replacement for Don. We had another employee suddenly leave. There's just been so many, like, little stop gaps that had prevented us from really getting a solid handle on the system I have reached out to as part of this discussion, I have reached out to Sue. I haven't heard back from her specifically on this.

It's only been a day or two, but really one more clearly defining what CRS roles are. Responsibilities are providing whatever training avenues that we need to get them fully brought up to the speed on the system, so that we're generating all of the reports that we need to generate from these reads. We are setting up new accounts in a timely fashion, all of that stuff, and those are just really resources that have not been offered to CRS at any point before that they've been left kind of hanging in the wind.

Tera:

What does our contract with CRS look like?

Nathan:

That's another question that I have asked Sue to fire that over. I haven't been able to get access to. Jim's emails yet. They're getting forwarded to me. I'm waiting on Greystone to finish a ticket to allow me to actually get in there and look for that. I haven't seen it. I looked for it briefly on the drive, but I don't know that we've got a really clearly defined contract. We also have been getting bills for them from them for several months now.

Tera:

Why are we? Why are we keeping them as a contractor who are not performing?

Nathan:

Absolutely a fair question. I yeah. And so this was I knew that just working with Susan for as long as I did, I knew that she had been definitely facing some frustrations along a lot of these lines, and I didn't really know specifically what they were. And so I went out of my way trying to get more of a handle on like what was really going on on that end.

And that's when I really got brought up to speed on a lot of this. So we have gotten a few of those issues resolved. They're moving forward. CRS does have a couple of staff members that have been here much more consistently. Allison especially, is picking this stuff up really, really fast. You sharp. She's moving through it. So I do think there's an avenue to get there. But at the same time, it's something that's been just kind of ignored, for lack of a better word, for a while now.

Chuck:

I think that any time we, any business has as much fallout as this district has had over the years, for whatever reason, nobody's to blame. People change jobs, especially in this current climate. I can't fault CRS for not teaching exactly our platform. I think that would be difficult for them to do unless they were provided exactly what we asked them in a job description, which I believe the time is right, Nathan, to get that done, I think CRS needs to step up or step out.

They talk a good argument. They provide some good people. We have Susan, who's I think top of the line. I don't know who else we have as staff, but it seems to be working at this time. But there's a lot of probably crossover between Susan and whoever else we're using in staff that makes this difficult. And so if we decide we need another front line individual, I'd like to think that we give CRS a better job description of what's required for that position before they send us anybody, or if they send us somebody, what they know about that person in a resume should match our job description, correct?

Nathan:

Yeah. And so one of the things that we're the overall plan is really what I would like to do anyway is really kind of following the model that we've started to do on the already done the utility operations side, where we have a staff district employee that's really focused on managing these contractors. One of the bigger issues that we have right now is Susan is more than willing to do all kinds of work. Susan is one person and she is getting pulled 40 different directions all day, every day.

Critical to all of this is really having either supplied through CRS or an internal hire somebody that is customer service representative. They are at the front desk eight hours a day, Monday through Friday. CRS has been filling in those gaps a little bit. So they've been providing, you know, one person, 2 or 3, 2 or 3 days a week.

Susan fills in that other gap, and then Susan's also responsible for accounts payables, accounts receivable. She's got a lot of other specific tasks that she's responsible for. And as she currently said, she's also a part time employee. So really following the model that we've used for a long time in parks and open space, what we've started to do in utilities, where you have an in-house person that's more focused on a relatively narrow set of daily responsibilities.

In this case, Susan would take over all the accounts payable. She does about 80% of it, the majority of accounts receivable. And then just make sure that we've got somebody that has the time to pay attention to how the front desk is operating, to make sure that CRS is following through on their responsibilities with their staffing. And clearly defining those job responsibilities is a huge part of it.

And so we've had some pretty long discussions to that end in terms of like, these are the specific responsibilities that Susan would be expected to do, and then she's really just making sure that everybody else is following through on their and whether or not that front desk person comes through CRS or not. We have a pretty clearly defined job description for that already that we used when we had hired Carol and Patty and Susan even before that.

And then when it comes to CRS, really defining the billing responsibility and making sure that we have a guaranteed amount of time that they are going to be spending in here every week, we really do need somebody in that billing office at least a couple of days a week, and probably the entire week that we're actually doing the utility building, setting up new accounts, processing meter changes, doing all of that account stuff. I've spoken with Susan at length about this.

We have a framework for a job description with, which would basically involve bringing her into a position that's more online with where David and I currently sit. Parks and open space manager. Operations manager. The working job title that we have is basically accounts manager. She would be able to am willing to begin working for the district full time.

Paying for that position is relatively easy. I'm working through trying to find the most current budget. That was. We had the provisional budget and then a second one was put in place. That's the one that I can't find. Only have the provisional budget in my emails. Depending on directions that are gone with district manager. I've also spoken with Simon Core about potentially taking over and expanding their role into that operations manager.

So their principal owners, Will Parker. That's usually what he does. The majority of their of their district contracts will acts as the operations manager for those districts. I've spoken with him about stepping into that role, kind of what that would look like. The increased their contract would be nominal. The way that he would feel best about approaching that is not increasing the fee initially at all in terms of what we pay CMA Corps for all of their district operations and really just get letting him get a couple month feel for what that time commitment actually looks like for him and then doing a slight adjustment there.

So if he's moving into that role, it would be significantly less than the full time staff salary that was already there. And just that alone will cover the majority of Susan's costs to go into a higher position at full time. The other offsetting factor that we have is the core contract itself, saved us an immense amount of money on district staffing costs.

Chuck

I misspoke earlier and letting you know that it was Kennedy Jenks. It's not Kennedy. CMA Corps, you could see that is assisting as a contractor for the operations of the water district. Okay. So make sure you weren't confused.

Tera:

When we talk about staffing, I found it helpful to talk about, because what we're really trying to determine in staffing is what are the districts need to get out what we're responsible for done. And I want to talk about individual people. I want to talk about how many I think it's helpful to talk in full time equivalents. And I appreciate all of the work that that you have done and taken the responsibility to do.

But really, this is a seems like there's been a lot happening without board direction. So can we take this back up? And and as you've been talking, I've been trying to write down and capture, you know, what, we really need to get our core responsibilities done and get everything done. So, you know, I, I think that typically would be a, you know, a district manager should come up with that staffing plan.

But as you're talking through, could you help me narrow that down to understand how many full time people we need? And then if, you know, I would think that all those contracts would go through. Kim, I don't know if Kim has any copies of those contracts, but that's a separate thing. So as we're talking about staffing and what what we need to keep this district operating, what how many full time people do we need?

Nathan:

We need somebody at a higher level management position. That would be a full time. We need a full time front desk service provider. We I don't know what the FTE. I'm sorry. Would you prefer that I.

Tera:

You know, for full time people, maybe we need .75 or 2.75 or 2.5 or whatever, which is, is what I'm trying to figure out what we need to get the job to, to keep operating.

Nathan:

Right now we have three internal district employees doing basically the jobs of what we used to have, nine. We are incredibly thin in a lot of areas. So I mean the FTE requirement just for those, if we just look at those three core job responsibilities accounts payable, account receivable, front desk, customer service and utility billing, we are probably in the neighborhood of 2.75 just to cover those those areas.

Chris:

So you know, I kind of I'm listening here and going into the details, we had this conversation when Parker canceled the inclusion back, I want to say November or October when we had the initial conversation, because a lot of this work was being done by the folks that were pretty much either on the Parker side or we were sharing resources.

And then, you know, the inclusion got canceled. And we decided, I think it was way back in November, October that we would go back and replace the staff that was essentially we had not had at the time because of the inclusion. So I'm kind of wondering why we are having such a big discussion around this when from a district perspective, the district manager or the district has the they they bring up to the board, the board shouldn't be in the details of 1 or 2 trying to hire you guys.

Know exactly what you need to do and we provide strategic direction and improve it. So just give us the plan. Again, I'm pretty sure back in November we had that and we said go higher to people we needed. So if we haven't done that and we need to revisit this again, I guess just give us the plan of what you need, you need, and then let us have that opine on whether that plan is good enough, keeping in mind that our overall intention is sometime in the near future to do an inclusion. But at the same time, we have to operate a district. And back in last year we pretty much said, go recover those people.

Nathan:

Yeah. And so one.

Tera:

Yes and no. So we have one employee, which is a district manager, and the district manager is the one that does that. I don't think this is fair to be putting this on Nate's plate. So, you know, what we really should have in place is a district manager that can do this type of administrative stuff. That's the role.

That's the job. That's the employee that reports to us. And I agree with you. The rest of the staff report to that employee, but we direct as a board. As Kim was saying, one unit, we direct the district manager. And so I think we need a district manager because clearly the wheels are coming off the cart. And I had no idea that that we were grossly understaffed and that we did not have enough staff.

And in the absence of a district manager than it is, unfortunately, the board's responsibility to make sure that we keep that's that's her fiduciary responsibility. Chris, we got to keep the assets that we were given in this district going not only today, but for the foreseeable future. We've been entrusted with this entire system. So, yeah, that is our responsibility.

Chris:

Copy. And I totally agree. And maybe this is the discussion. Should we be having the discussion on the district manager because that that discussion. Well, I'll leave it to Mr. President. We should maybe have that discussion at this time too.

Chuck:

Yeah, I agree Chris. I just want to make sure that none of us throw Nathan under the bus. He has taken this on with the direction of me to help out during this interim period with the loss of Jim Worley. Jim, with all due respect, should have acted on our direction when we gave him the direction to fill refill the staff.

That didn't happen. That is probably a little bit on this board that we didn't follow up with that. Nevertheless, kudos to to Nathan for pointing out some of the staff concerns. I know that Susan is a terribly important and integral part of our operations, and we should not think any less of her or what Nathan is trying to provide for that position, because it's critical for the office, and we should probably address that immediately, even in the absence of what we call a final decision on a district manager, if we're going to go to the outside and look for a district manager, we may not have one for a month or two or 3 or 4. We got nothing from CRS. And so I don't have a hold in a lot of confidence that we can find them immediately, unless Tera you have one in your pocket.

Tera:

I have full confidence that there are I would not have gone to CRS for this role, and I think there are other contractors that we can find. So I, I believe that we can get a very qualified one and quickly have another question about the billing system. Are you telling me that our billing system is not a standard commercial, off the shelf billing system, that it's so special that there isn't a like. What's with our billing?

Jason:

Tera, billing systems are notoriously complicated, and you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in customizing them. Very rarely is there one off the shelf that just can be put in and implemented. That being said, however, there was somebody who did implement the system for us, another company, and we should be relying on them to come in and retrain our employees on how to use it and the ins and outs of it.

And I don't know if they've been contacted or if they're not responsive to us or anything like that, but they should be the ones that gave us the manual to do this.

Tera:

That makes perfect sense.

Chris:

And I think CRS. Can we stay on the topic at hand, which is this whole district manager interim staff?

Chuck:

Before we do, let's let's make a decision on front office staffing. I think that it's appropriate to ask Nathan to take a hard look at this. In the interim, I'd like to have a plan in place that we could share with a you if you're the district manager or a new district manager, so that we can hit the ground running with understanding job descriptions and numbers of employees that we think we need for the next year.

Tera:

And that makes me extremely uncomfortable, because what is the main thing that this district does? It provides water. Who is the one resource that we have that knows the most about water that's keeping us out of trouble with water? Who makes sure that we're not getting any violations with CDPHE? And why would we take that resource away from a core responsibility and put this additional administrative burden on them, when our core responsibility is water?

Chuck:

Well, I don't think we're taking our core responsibility away from anything. There's still a great oversight with our contractor core that we all seem to have some good confidence in. But I think that to me, time is of the essence to to put it your way, the wheels are falling off. I don't agree with that comment. I think it's inappropriate to make, and I think it lacks understanding of who we are and what we've done.

And I think it's a slight to the existing employees that have worked their butts off to make this more than a wheels falling.

Tera:

Then I think you misunderstood. What I'm saying is we are. I’m talking. We're grossly understaffed.

Chuck:

I think you owe our staff an apology, I think.

Tera:

I am not disparaging. Well, there's just too much work, and I will retract that statement. There's too much work for the staff that we have, is what I'm hearing. And that is what I was trying to say, is that we are clearly understaffed.

Chuck:

All of this, you know, Kim just left. I mean, Jim just left. We have a turnover of the board. We're all in a sort of an embryonic stage of learning the ins and outs and the positives and the negatives. And Nathan has been the one consistent employee that has turned this system around with the help of CMA Corps to be a quite a viable entity.

And we should be damn proud of it. I agree. And of the staff. So moving forward, I would still like Nathan to put together a plan in his spare time as operations manager.

Tera:

I'm going to object because I want to hear from the other members as well. Chuck, we do this as a board. This is why we're having this discussion.

Chuck:

That's fine. We can hear from the other folks.

Chris:

And this is kind of why I don't like these study sessions, because right now we could be having a more professional decorum type discussion where we actually will make resolutions and we will actually agree we can make a decision in this session here. That's supposed to be, you know, we're just going to have arguments amongst ourselves. So that's just my opinion on these executive sessions where we can't make decisions.

But just in general, I would say, you know, we do have employees that are core to what we do. And I would say that should not take away from them being evaluated or being considered for positions that they are fully capable of doing. And, you know, we'll have to decide as a group whether they meet the qualifications, but that should not negate it.

And at the same time, I'm looking at the agenda. That's kind of what I thought we were going to have a proposal by the only people we have here from the staff, which happens to be David and Nathan, and Nathan is being considered for the district manager or interim. We had that conversation amongst all ourselves, so that's the only reason why we're asking.

Tera:

We have not had that conversation all amongst ourselves. That sounds like an illegal meeting.

Chris:

Well, we haven't had a meeting on it, but let me go back to that's kind of why we're asking Nathan to essentially provide us with the proposal from the staff on what the plan is, but we can talk about the meeting or meetings. We haven't had any meetings. More than three people. We can look at the the rules, right.

Three people. That means it's a meeting. Two people. It's not a meeting. We have a conversation. I'm pretty sure that I have had a conversation with one person, and I'm pretty sure that that one person has made additional efforts to have conversations with you. Now, what do you guys have the conversation? I don't know, but I do know that this was raised with me.

Tera:

So perhaps, Kim, we also might want to have a conversation about the daisy chaining of information and how that, you know, is not probably the letter of the law or the intent of the law.

Kim:

That's correct. It's no different than everybody meeting together doesn't it doesn't help if you just circumvent everything by having a round robin. Thank you.

Jason:

So, yeah, I wasn't privy to any conversations about Michael leaving until he had already been gone. Did he quit or was he asked to leave. The interim?

Chuck:

He was asked by Jim Worley through Sue at CRS to leave. He was a contract employee and he was here to learn exactly what Jim is doing and what is doing. And Jim just didn't feel that he had the.

I don't know if it was called desire or energy, but he showed no compassion for what he was learning. And Jim asked me if it was appropriate that we go back to CRS and try to find somebody else. In the meantime, terminate Michael Kelly. And I said that that's your call. He's a contract employee. And do what you think is right. And that was done.

Chris:

Yeah, I only found I found out he left to I found that he left two. I'm hitting the mic. Oh I'm sorry by having conversations too, but my feedback on someone I don't remember who who I spoke to was, you know, in our brief executive session and the meeting that we had, I was not impressed.

Jason:

I'm not saying that he should have. We should have given him the keys to the kingdom by any stretch of the imagination. I just wanted to see what the flow was that on his terms of leaving, was it him or was it us initiating the lead? And if it was us, was it any of the board or was it the man, the former manager? So and I just got my answer. So thank you for that.

Tera:

So I think it's clear that we do need a district manager and that looking you know, I registered my concerns the first time the job description came up in May that we were only asking for three years of experience because I think our right pears, who are our customers, actually expect more. And we're also coming up to Kim's point, very critical.

We need to start our budgeting process in August, which is a huge responsibility that in and of itself is, you know, he alluded to having a budget officer there. There is a huge responsibility that we have, and a budget is a really big thing as well as the other things that are going on. So I think we do as a a board, I think we should look at if we can find three.

I know that there are firms out there that have like sea level people that we could hire. Let's say, let's figure out how long we need. What do we need? I think we need one from August through the end of December to get the budgeting process done, because we have to certify that and turn that in. That's a very important piece of what we're responsible for and what we do.

You know, do we need maybe maybe we don't need a full time district manager. Maybe we need a half time district manager. And if we get to a point where we're going to do inclusion, maybe we need a full time project manager just for that. That's why I'm trying to figure out what it is that we need to make the district to do our duties and make the district run.

Chris:

We're tracking.

Denise:

First of all, I want to thank Nate. You've been here forever. Your knowledge content is amazing, and I have every confidence that you could handle the district manager position. I also think you have earned it. And that's why we all work. We want to climb the ladder, so to speak, and get that inner belt. I'm going to throw it out there.

I'm 100% in support of you moving into that position. Also, knowing that you would never ignore what you used to do, nor put it in someone's hands that was not competent. As far as the rest of the office staffing needs go. Yeah, sure we can. We can talk about that. We can talk individually. We can talk whatever your direction is.

But if you were to move into the district manager position, correct me if I'm wrong, but there would be a probationary period. If we felt like in 90 days that you just weren't cut out for the job, we could change it. But I just want to make sure it's well heard. Nathan deserves this opportunity, in my opinion. Thank you.

Chris:

So I totally agree with Denise, and I'm of the opinion that he he should that Nathan not he sorry that Nathan does deserve the opportunity to fleet up as we like to say, but I do I do understand Tera's concern and I especially the budgeting one and just some feedback on that. You know, we don't have Amanda or a budget in person here, but normally our budget and that finance company leads that process for us, along with us and the district manager.

And of course, Kim is involved with it. So hiring somebody specifically to do the budget is not something we have done in the time we've been here. It's always been because we had that finance director. But but the other point you made on the timing, I think it's critical, the timing of how long we need a person. So we have, you know, when we started this, we're back.

We said we can either hire a full time person, we can hire a contractor, or those were the two things. And we were writing up the job descriptions and keeping in the back of our minds that our primary concern is to do the inclusion right. Our intention was never to have somebody here for a long period of time.

It's always been it's a transitional position, right? So having to go through and posting and hiring someone, let's just say on the outset of nine months, maybe a year, it's it just seems a lot of work where we could have an interim person or someone. That's why we went to CRS. I know you, I know we're all here on the same position.

After the last meeting, we went, okay, you know who else is going to pick this up, right? So that's why we did that CRS. And I think we should still if that's something we as a board decide to do, we should we can still do that. But we definitely if if Nathan would fleet up or has the opportunity to really take on additional responsibility, we backfill.

And that's why. What is the plan? What is the resource plan? We are still trying to catch up from November October when the inclusion got canceled. So we have those to backfill. We have to backfill. If Nathan was to fleet up, we'll fleet up him. But I, I appreciate all the comments and I think they are valid.

Tera:

So and I want to be clear again, I'm not looking at when I look at staff and when I look at what it takes to run the district and what our responsibility as a board, I'm not disparaging any individual. You know, I think you've done a fantastic job with the water plant. The reason that it's in the state that it's in today, it is phenomenal.

Did you have part of the budget process? Sure. But you're just a piece. Water is just a piece of the budget. We have all the underlying infrastructure. We have a lot of other responsibilities. I think you are very accomplished. I think you're very intelligent. I think you're very capable. And I also think to go from operations manager to district manager is kind of a big leap, especially when it's not in our job description that says you need at least three years of experience in that role.

So we're not even doing that. We we haven't posted it as Kim has told us, that we have to post. There has been no job posting. There has been no interview. So that I feel as a process, we have put the we have put things out of process and and that's not to disparage you. You're you're in the wake of us not doing a good process.

Now again, my responsibility. I'm all about people wanting to grow themselves and take on additional responsibility. And I think that'd be great. I think again, that's a that's a big leap. It certainly is. There something maybe in between where I strongly recommend that we get a district manager, maybe you could be a assistant district manager or something, but I do that's I think that's very rare to to take the path anyway.

Again, not individuals we need. We have a huge responsibility to this for this district, to the people that elected us. So I am happy to work with Chuck or whoever. I will find three names for the board to see their resumes, then review and figure out the staff and figure out how we are going to get our budget done this year, because that is huge.

And and in any situation, it's seems very clear that we are grossly understaffed. So we we do need staff. And I think we need, you know, professional professional experience. And I think it's out there. And if it's not out there, I will tell you as quickly as I find out that it's not out there. But I think, you know, I think I could get the board three names by I don't know about our meeting, but I could certainly try. I think there is. I think there is.

There is, there are resources out there that can help us and that I think we we should definitely we we are responsible to run this district and responsible manner. And I think I'm strongly recommending that we do that.

Jason:

Can I just say, you know, I think I'm completely torn by this because Nate is done an awesome job and there's no doubt about that in my mind. I do think, though, we do it to ourselves to put this out there in the public and see if there's any interest, first of all, and not taking exorbitant amount of time in doing so.

But I think that's the only fair way of doing this. And it may lead back that we decide we're going to want Nate. And that would be great with me. But we have to do our due diligence, and we have to at least put this out there and post it and see if there's any interest.

Denise:

Kim, what do we have to do by law? Post a position, even if it might be a temporary contract? I mean, we were able to reach out to Chris and get. Sorry, Mr. Kelly. Mark. Mark. Kelly. Can we do that again and get an interim while we're doing this process, or is that kind of a waste time? What's what's within our legal window?

Kim:

You certainly can get an interim. And you need you need to do that because time is running. Then in terms of a permanent manager position under the current law, you have to post it internally and allow Nate and whoever else wants to apply for it. And then you can go ahead and post externally. You don't have to accept the internal.

Denise:

But if you do, if you choose to accept the internal, you do not have to post it external. Correct. So other than CRS, who do we have for options to look at for a temporary district manager?

Kim:

There are, I think, four companies that do this. But last week I was at a meeting in Fort Collins of another one, another sanitation district, and they're going through the exact same thing you are. And they're not coming. They're not coming up with anybody. So they're actually going through a similar situation as us in that they're they are splitting with a water district.

They've always been stuck together. They're two districts, but they have the same office as the same employees, and now they're dividing and they can't find a manager. They actually went to Amanda's company and were told, we can't do it. We don't have the people.

Tera:

With all due respect, I met someone last week who I think could fill it.

Kim:

So they may be.

Tera:

I think there are there are fractional C-suite and fractional metro district resources out there because not everyone needs a full time one.

Kim:

Yeah, yeah, there should be. And.

Chuck:

Kim, I feel like I was misled a while ago because I was of the impression that we posted this job opening internally and on the web. Is that not the case?

Kim:

I don't know, Chuck. I know that that was the plan, and I thought it was posted on the website. But Ken Kim I.

Ken:

Know Mr. Mr. president, can I address that? Yes. At Beth Dowers’ direction and working through the timeline that she established for us, we did publish she took ownership over publishing in some of the publications, and I took ownership over publishing on the homepage of our website. That happened months ago.

Tera:

For the district manager? Yes. I never saw it on there and it couldn't have happened months ago.

Ken:

It was months ago and it's on the home page of our website. It's there right now if you'd like to look.

Denise:

Was there any response, any response? Did we have any applicants?

Ken:

Those the responses didn't come back to me. I believe that they were slated to go to Jim Worley and I. I'm not aware that he did or did not receive responses. I know that Nathan was interested, and if I could be so bold, just as a as a side note to all the discussion that's happened here, I have to say, as somebody who's been with the district for eight of the last 13 years, I've worked closely with Nate over all these years.

I can tell you there is nobody who is going to hit the ground running with his depth and diversity of experience, with his knowledge of every facet of this district, with his relationships with the staff consultant team, there is nobody you could spend six months looking and you're not going to find anybody, in my humble opinion, better than Nathan.

Tera:

And that was really out of line. Thank you for that. But it's really a board discussion.

Ken:

You're absolutely right. It is a board discussion.

Chuck:

Let's. We'll put on the agenda for our meeting next Monday. A a another discussion regarding a district manager and in the process of hiring. And we will based on what the five of us at this board decide will make a motion and voted accordingly. Is that appropriate?

Kim:

Yes, that is appropriate. One thing I need to point out, if the publication was done, which I think it was, and I think I did see it on the website as well, and you did not receive any satisfactory responses, then you're free to go about this however you wish. It sounds like somebody needs to get to Jim's emails and see if there were any responses as part of.

Chuck:

Good point, I. I heard nothing from Jim through this whole process. So whether he got something or not, I do not know. But we should check.

Ken:

Mr. President, with all due respect, Jim Worley is a phone call away. I'm sure he would be happy to shed light on whether or not he's received any inquiries.

Chuck:

If the board would so agree, I will make that call. Sure. That appropriate? Yes. Okay.

Chris:

Like this study session, I can't make any decisions.

Describer:
The board chuckles.

Chuck:

Nate, I appreciate your efforts, as usual, in trying to resolve some staff issues. I know that I'm mostly concerned about Susan and her workload, but if you would share with her that we're trying to diligently work through this and hopefully we'll have an answer to her satisfaction after the next official board meeting, which is this coming Monday.

Denise:

Can I ask one question? On top of that? You said there's somebody from CRS that's here two days a week, but is that not consistent and or can you immediately call and say, I need a five day a week person and they'd fill it?

Nathan:

So I reached out to Sue to ask what her staffing capabilities were and get a better feel for what they are currently providing. I have not heard back from her yet.

Denise:

Okay. I think that's definitely an avenue to pursue ASAP, and I can't imagine that any of us would disagree with getting somebody immediately, especially on a contract basis. Hopefully they're a good work. Can you? You mentioned a gal, Allison. Is she a contract with CRS person?

Nathan:

Correct. She's an employee with CRS.

Denise:

So how often is she here? It's not full time.

Nathan:

No, we don't have anybody, any one representative person. That's full time. There's 3 or 4 staff members, primarily three of them that have been cycling in and out. The two most common ones we've seen are Allison and Nicole.

Denise:

Or either of them, if you like Allison and you've seen her work already, would you recommend is that an option to get her on full time?

Nathan:

I don't know until I hear back from here, back from Sue, and I think I think a lot of the the failing is really just like training them. I did want to bring up one other issue. I appreciate Jason's insight on utility billing systems being notoriously hard to work with. The other issue that we have is our current utility billing system is done through continental.

Fantastic program, very widely used. We are desperately behind on our updates for that platform. So the version of that system that we are currently using, we are running into the danger of losing support from the company that actually provides it. So we're on an old enough version that continental is getting ready to drop it off the back end of their program list entirely.

Denise:

How did we land there? No idea. I mean, what's it take to get up to date? Just tell.

Nathan:

It's not incredibly difficult. So I've also I had a meeting with Greystone about GIS servers and a bunch of other stuff, but kind of looking at the district needs from a technology perspective. We have a bunch of computers that are getting ready to fall off that just need to be replaced. It's pretty standard protocol to go through this with Greystone once a year.

It helps with our budget forecasting projections. So they're also going to be looking at what their involvement level would be if that's an IT issue, if that's something that happens between Greystone and I'm sorry, between continental and CRS, how difficult that migration process is, since we're moving from an older version of one platform to a new, newer version of the same platform, that shouldn't be an issue.

We're also looking at system IT, internal. IT upgrades that we can do. We've got some servers that are outdated. All of those things will help speed up that process and really cut down the manpower that needs to be involved in that. And so they're going to throw together a bunch of proposals and they'll have those shortly. We've got a couple computers we need to replace like immediately.

So we're going to move on that.

Denise:

But I know we don't have Amanda here to ask which will miss her, but I'm assuming there's money in the budget for things like this. We've we've allocated. We're not. Correct. Yeah. Then my humble opinion. Move on it. Just do what you got to do to make your people stay. What?

Ken:

Director Crew, if it's in any way helpful, Phyllis Brown, our new finance director, is on Zoom. Oh, perfect. Any of you have questions about budget or finance? She's standing by.

Denise:

Sorry. Well, maybe that's a question for her, then. I mean, I just want to be assured that we have money in the budget to do what we need to do to operate efficiently. As I, I feel like we have, but there have been a lot of emails lately with, you know, website billing and making payments. And of course, technology requires upgrades. So let's get moving on it. In my opinion. Hello. Hi, Susan.

Phyllis Brown, Director of Finance and Accounting Community Resource Services of Colorado (CRS):

This is Phyllis. So I just. Nancy Weiss has been assigned as your accountant. I am the finance manager, and we are brand baby new to Castle Pines. Just hand it off from Amanda. Was it last week? Had a meeting with her. So we're we're brand new. So I'm going to say we're going to have to ramp up and figure out what's going on.

So I'd have to get back to you on that as well as trying to we're trying to get integrated to the to the general ledger and get everything together. So you're going to have to bear with us a little bit on that end. So listening to you guys has been good because I am listening to your concerns. So I don't know what other questions you have for me at this time.

Denise:

Phil, is the biggest question is just to be sure we have money in the budget to hire extra personality, get us, get us going efficiently. Okay. That would that would be priority one for me to just be able to say, yeah, let's let's hire people, whether it be contractors, permanent, whatever you need, you know.

Phyllis:

And when did you have nine, when did you have nine employees? Was that last year. I don't know. When you were contemplating the budget. So that's what I have to look at where you contemplated for that many employees.

Nathan:

And so it's been three years since we've been staff to that level. I'm not sure how the financing has been done in terms of replacing those staff with contractors and other firms, like if that's coming out of those same line items, that's just a portion of the budget that I haven't really been that closely involved with to this point.

Phyllis:

And I can look at that. I'm real familiar with looking at budgets so I can see where we're at. And I do have, I think, Amanda, I have the last word packet from March so I can look and see where we are and what the budget amounts are on that. So I can get back to you on that. Thank you.

Chuck:

Phyllis, this is Chuck Lowen. And quick question. Do you have the capability of providing us a six month, year to date budget actual and discrepancy or overage variances?

Phyllis:

Not by Monday.

Chuck:

No, I understand that.

Phyllis:

I don't even have access to the general to get into the general ledger system yet, so I'm going to meet with Nancy tomorrow, and I do have instructions from Greystone on how to do that. So I have to get our IT involved, I think, cause I wasn't able to get a good VPN connection, so it's probably blocking me. So that's on our priority list to get access. And then once we do that, we'll be able to touch base again and and keep going.

Chuck:

Thank you. I think that would be. I think that would be critical in our budget process. Also last month we were unable to approve the payables and receivables for May to be approved in June. And then we're going to have June's to approve in July. Can can you or Nancy handle both of those at the board meeting Monday?

Phyllis:

Well, we can get we could certainly get a hold of Amanda. If we can't get that information out of the system, we can ask her to help us get that because she's told us she'll help us. So at least if we can't get a financial or that budget, we should be able to get you. Your claims to be ratified.

Chuck:

Thank you. I'd like to get that done so we don't get behind the eight ball too many months. Yep. Okay.

Phyllis:

Oh I agree. Okay. Will do.

Chuck:

Nathan going back to. And by the way, Phil, it's nice to meet you.

Phyllis:

Nice to meet you.

Chris:

Yeah. Phyllis, Chris Lewis, too. So in addition to what Chuck asked. Can we also, you know, because we had some good conversation about the budget. Can you get ready to, like, present the schedule and that whole process for the budget that we are going to go through? If you can do that, if not this coming Monday or meeting the following meeting.

Denise:

Just the deadlines.

Chris:

Yeah. The process, the deadlines, everything. Because I don't think Jason and Tera has gone through that already. So it'll be good for them to for all of us to review that whole process.

Phyllis:

We do have a checklist. I don't know if it's from or from the state auditor that talked about all the deadline for the district compliance, and I'm sure Kim also has that. So we can give that to you. And it does have the budget deadlines as well as the mill levy certifications and all the other deadlines you have. So I can get that to you.

Kim:

Chris, if you want. I can just include that in the legal status report, and then Phyllis will have, you know, interim things like when they will present you with the first budget and that kind of thing. But.

I can include that in the legal status report. And then Phyllis will probably have additional information about when they would anticipate having the first draft of a budget done and that kind of thing. Does that make sense, Phyllis? And I'll just I'll stick the chart in there in my report.

Phyllis:

Well, right. And a lot of times we take that at the direction of the board. We have some boards that have multiple study sessions to work on the budget, or they parcel each piece out to to someone at the district. And then we incorporate all that so we can work that. However, you would like us to work that. So we have to just work together to sort out how that process works for you guys.

Chuck:

Thank you Phyllis. The continental program you say is outdated. How can we get it brought up to snuff, And if it requires somebody like Jason to jump in? I think that we should. We should do that immediately.

Nathan:

Yeah, that's one of the proposals that Greystone is looking at. So they're going to be looking at server requirements, system and capacities, and then reaching out to continental to see what that integration process looks like. It can be really varied with any software updates. It's kind of very specific to that software often. So Greystone is going to look at what that integration cost and process would look like. So we don't have a really firm idea yet, but it's not going to take them long to find out.

Chuck:

Continental is the software and Greystone is the the provider.

Nathan:

So Greystone is our contracted IT firm. Continental is the name of the software that our utility billing system uses to pull reads from census metering and then on out.

Chuck:

Okay. Jason, would it be fair to throw you into that mix?

Jason:

Yeah, I mean, I'd be happy to talk about it, but I know very little about continental. But I know from a grand scope of things, the biggest expense that we're probably going to see on this is going to be the licensing fees. Typically software like this is very expensive, and that's probably why hasn't been updated for a few years. But once we get over that, the next largest expenses just going to be man hours trying to get.

Chuck:

In the essence of time. Is there any idea how long it will take to get a proposal to get it licensing fees identified?

Nathan:

I should have that in the next couple of weeks at the light at the latest.

Chuck:

So probably at the September board meeting or August work session.

Nathan:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, a lot of these things we as we move into budget and part of why I'm jumping into some of the stuff already, as I've been really heavily involved in the budgeting process here for a long time. So, I mean, our a hundred year capital forecasting plan through our AMP management program is what I did.

So I mean, our utility infrastructure costs projected out for the next hundred years, was created by work that I did with our GIS consultant and asset management programs. And we also have a lot of other things pressing under the gun. We've got lift station rehab programs, Kennedy Jenks is working on proposals for those pipeline improvement programs, pipeline studies. All of these things need to get incorporated into the budget so that they're there to fund.

So even if we have some high level dollars to make sure that we've got the next 12 months of funding in place, we'll be able to incorporate that and then get really more tightly dialed proposals as we move closer into like the meat of those projects. When we start to move out of the design into the bid phases, you know, those numbers keep getting ratcheted down to a more and more accurate number.

But we're we're already behind the gun. I mean, historically, by usually the second week of July, we have our budget stuff ready to go. So I've projected out all everything on the utility side, David's and Craig would take care of parks and open space.

We'd already be working with Amanda, filling out budget worksheets, projecting all of those costs. We'd have our six months updates like we're we're already three weeks behind where we typically are at this point. And so I'm just not even from an operations manager position. I'm not willing to deal with the consequences of not staying on top of that stuff forward, even if it means that I'm doing a little bit extra work right now.

Jason:

From what you described, it sounds like our infrastructure is really outdated as well, and that they're probably going to come back to us and say, you're going to have to update these servers before we can update the software. And then we got Desktop Center, one of the parts.

Nathan:

Yeah, one of the we've got one of the things that came out of the meeting with Greystone is they gave us basically an asset identification list. We currently have two servers. We have one physical server, one virtual server. The virtual server feeds just our GIS system. So that's where all of our mapping system sits. It's outdated. I'm not worried about upgrading that one because we're migrating away from a virtual server into a cloud cloud based server anyway for a bunch of operational reasons.

The other one that we have is already outdated. So regardless of moving platforms on anything else, the server itself is running on 2008 technology basically. And so we've got a we've got a lot of internal things that we need to work on in terms of an IT perspective. And I know when.

Nathan:

Security issues to correct. Yeah. Keeping that around.

Nathan:

Yeah. And so. Getting those numbers and comparing what the existing budget is, we usually have a pretty decent buffer for upgrades like that. I think one of the struggles that has bitten us as a whole for the district the past few years is even with the full understanding that the district is moving toward an inclusion, and that's the ultimate goal from an operations perspective, you can't stop operating like you're going to be there forever, until the day that those keys changed hand.

And so a lot of the stuff was being looked at. You know, we stopped doing GIS program updates. We stopped doing a lot of software updates because we were operating under the assumption that was going to all go away, and then it didn't.

And so we're going to have to pay the piper now. So really getting this back up to an operating utility that is ready to move the next 40 years into the future, 40 years into the future is vital not only for the sanity of our staff and for the product that our customer customers ultimately receive. But like those are the details that are going to get you over the hump on and inclusion, making sure that you have all of that operation stuff.

Dial all of your billing systems dialed all of this information that you're going to need to be providing as part of that process is a direct result of a long standing and ready to run operating plan that's well into effect. So I know I digress from whatever that original question was there a little bit, but. All right. Okay, I got I. I'll step off my soapbox.

Chuck:

All right. And Jason you'll involve yourself. I would appreciate I'm here since you have that knowledge.

Jason:

Yes. I'm happy to. Happy to help.

Chuck:

Thank you. Going back, I know you're all excited to the district manager discussion as well as staffing needs. If I understand this board. Right. Tera, you have potentially three individuals that you would like to present.

Tera:

I would like to. I don't I have one, but I can I can explore other ones. But I do think that we should you know, I think we should see what's out there.

Chuck:

Okay. And is this something that you can provide us? Is Monday obviously too soon?

Tera:

Yeah. I'm going out with this weekend. Okay. I will get it to you as soon as possible. That's why I didn't commit to getting it by next week.

Chuck:

All right, so it's probably nothing we can discuss or even vote on until we have another study session.

Tera:

We could do it at a meeting.

Chuck:

At which meeting?

Tera:

I will get it as soon as I can get it. I need a little bit of time to do the research and find out what's available. I will do it as I understand the urgency and I will get it done at the most lightning speed. And if we need to call a special meeting, then maybe, you know, to discuss it. I understand the critical nature of this role in this, our our resources. And that's that's all I can offer up. I can start making phone calls tomorrow.

Chuck:

I think that I think that's great. I think we owe it to the community that we do our due diligence as, as Jason mentioned. So when it is practical for you to provide us with one or more opportunities, if we have to call a special meeting, I suspect that's okay. Kim.

Kim:

It certainly is.

Chuck:

Okay. And on the moving on to the staffing needs. I hate to put that on hold. There's some urgency there as well. I would like to suspect I suspect that Nathan is not shucking his responsibilities as operations manager. Knowing Nathan, I also feel comfortable that the individuals I met at CMA Corps that were down at the plant last week certainly have the knowledge and ability to continue to run the plant in your absence, albeit not much.

But if we take you away for a while to help devise a an appropriate staffing plan, it's something we can discuss. And maybe we hold off on making any decisions till we go through the process of vetting potential candidates. Is that appropriate for Susan and and the rest of them? Can they can they hold on knowing that we're working diligently to get it done?

Nathan:

I can't speak for them, but Susan, Susan especially has shown a pretty long standing desire to be here and want to see this district succeed. She is also a slowly fraying rope at this point. Like she's she's trying to hold it together, but she's going to need some relief sooner than later. Or, to be completely frank, we're likely risking losing her.

Jason:

If the budgets there. Can't we let Nate proceed with hiring?

Chris:

Yes. I mean, the only position here that we should be holding off on, which I don't even think we should be holding off on, is the district manager. We have an immediate need right now for the people. Right. So I don't know why we want to put that off. And we were at a not a study session where we can't make decisions.

Jason:

I agree that we should not be holding off on staffing district managers. Another thing that's a little bit more important, but we need to get fully staffed.

Denise:

Can we just give a green light on this? I mean, we're not making a decision. We're saying it's okay to do what you got to do to do your job, right? Well, not your job, but you know what.

Tera:

I don't think we're making a decision if there's capacity in that contract

Denise:

Exactly. Let's move. Move forward. Whoever do what you got to do.

Tera:

Do, advise us, Kim. I mean, if there's capacity in that contract, if it's been staffed to those positions and it's not there now, that's not making any decision, is it?

Kim:

And frankly, you know, Nathan is acting in the position of an interim director, which you need, and it's in the director's power to hire people that he needs. So you don't have to approve those people or interview them or anything else. It's that management capacity that does that.

Nathan:

And then in the interest of it being a study session, also, there's been a couple of comments. I just want to provide some clarification for the board. I appreciate all of the compliments that you gave me around my operating and getting the water treatment plan up and running. I do want to make sure that everybody knows that part of CMA Corps contract, it’s a district contract

So inside of that, they do hold the ORC for the three systems that we manage. So ORC is operator and responsible charge. All three of those rest within CMA Corps. This is done the way this way for a bunch of specific reasons. A lot of state guidance pushes this, but so that operator and responsible charge really is the person that has the legal responsibility and ultimate liability for making sure that we are hitting a lot of these standards.

And so it gets a little bit different with contract operator operations, but not much. One of the biggest issues with that is if I am sitting as operations manager and I hold all three ORC licenses, I go on vacation for a week and there's a main break. They can't get ahold of me. For whatever reason. They don't have the authority to make emergency decisions in the field without my go ahead.

And so that ORC responsibility sits within CMA Corps, rightfully so. So that they have a constant establishing of command for emergencies rather than just one person. It gets us nine separate employees that are moving in and out of the district and helping us with all of those emergency situations. So they currently do hold legal responsibility for that side of it. And there I mean, they're fantastic group of guys. They know what they got going on.

Tera:

I appreciate that clarification. That is helpful to know. And yeah, I think that I encourage everyone who's listening or and I'll repeat it on Monday to go through the water plant. I have a lot more confidence in our drinking water. And and I, after seeing the plant and seeing how it's functioning and how it's been upgraded, its you have. I know that that was your design and you have done a phenomenal job.

Chuck:

Thank you. Then just to get it straight in my little brain on the next board meeting of Monday, July 25th, we currently in the draft agenda have a director's matters. Consider the interim district manager and associated employment contract. Is that something we want to keep on the list, or do we want to vet 1 to 3 new opportunities? Board's choice.

Jason:

I prefer writing more. I have a lot of confidence in Nate, but I think we need to do do diligence and and see if there's anything else out there that we're missing.

Denise:

I because we have already done this once and put it out there and not apparently not received anything, which we'll find out with your conversation with Jim, I think unless and until I know the answer to that, hard for me to say what we should or shouldn't do. I feel like if there were no applicants the last round or no qualified applicants, we've completed our legal end of things, posted it and not had a response. Therefore can remain in-house. Promote Nate. That's what I prefer to do.

Chris:

In addition to what Director Crew said, I would say that since we do have the ability to do interim, what did we say provisional period that that also that also gives the board the opportunity of, you know, we need to revisit it. But I do think that we we need to make a decision. So I'm okay with actually doing keeping that on the agenda.

And but I'm not opposed. I mean, I started this whole conversation when we heard Jim was leaving and I was very adamant, where's the job description and everything else? Right. So I was under the impression that we actually got the job description. You know, we had edits and you had feedback and so forth, and that we posted it.

So I thought we went through that process because I knew that was something that we needed to make sure we did.

Tera:

And so I'm not seeing it on the home page. So would you enlighten me as to where it's posted?

Describer:

Someone from the board guides Tera to the website.

Tera:

Well, it seems like if we were really expecting people to respond to that, like when we were hiring a couple of people for Nate's position, I think it was really, you know, prominent on on the home page. So perhaps we didn't get anything because it's buried under recent news cleanup day, free irrigation system, guided tours. Town of Castle Rock. Oh, there it is. Right. Well, if I were looking for a job posting, I don't know that I would look under recent news.

Chuck:

All right. Moving along, I will we will keep that item under directors matters. That's on the current board meeting agenda. However we may elect at that time. We may to vet some other people. And I and I think that's probably as appropriate as it is for us to vet other districts when we consider inclusion. So I think that that process is important and I support that. So we'll even on we'll have a discussion and we'll see what you can bring.

Moving along to item number eight Roman numeral eight clarifying decades old language used to describe CPMD’s annual wastewater billing calculation. Is that you, Nate? Unfortunately. Okay, well, the essence of time.

Nathan:

It's a really kind of a small issue that was brought forward a relatively easy to solve issue that was brought forward by one of our residents, Lloyd and Barb. I pay fastidious attention to their water bills. And so one of the things that he is likely one of the only people that would have noticed this, we calculate our wastewater billing over low three low usage months in the winter, the current finance, or the current rate and free schedule says that we take the average of these three months, and then that sets your yearly wastewater billing.

After speaking with Lloyd, his biggest concern, more than anything else is wanting us to just be consistent in the way that that's applied. And so I was able to actually reach back out to Janet to find out how she used to do this.

So for a long time, what we would do is we would take the average of those three months and then round up or down. So if you were at 1500 gallons, you got rounded up to two. If you were below that, you got rounded down to one. So that put Lloyd in a position where he was typically getting rounded down.

When Don took over through CRS, she was rounding all the way down. So if you were at 2900 gallons of average usage, she would drop you down to 2000. The work that CRS has been doing with continental to try and get up to speed on this, it was actually, as I understand it, continental that had pointed out to us that like, hey, you don't want to round these numbers down because you're going to hamstring your revenue source that you need to fund these projects and fund your operations.

So at the suggestion of continental, and as I understand it, to be a much more standard industry practice, we're just using the true average currently. So if we average out it comes to 3600 gallons. That's what you get built for. So you get the 3.6 multiplier, whatever it looks like, which Lloyd is fine with. He just wants there to be something that locks that consistency in place.

So we're not talking about changing the amount that we bill. We're talking about adding a little bit of clarifying language when it comes to we use an average. I think if you just add the word true average in there, that probably solves it makes it incredibly clear that we are going to move forward like is a pretty standard industry practice.

Tera

And when you say in there. What do you mean in there? In there.

Nathan:

In the rating for the rate and fee schedule. Thanks.

Chuck:

Describe your definition of true average.

Nathan:

It's where people like the gentleman to my left come in. Just really some sort of language that makes that clear. Claire. Clear. In my mind, the true average is not rounded. It's not estimated up or down. It's just whatever the number it spits out.

Denise:

Why don't we use a true average?

Nathan:

We currently do, but it's the first time that we've ever done it.

Denise:

But in the past we were rounding up around in down.

Nathan:

So for the last two years with Don, we were rounding everything all the way down. Prior to that, we would round up or down based on 500 gallons of usage.

Denise:

So not to discard. I think you said his name is Lloyd, who discussed this. But when one person makes one comment about how we do or don't do something I know we need, it's fair to talk about it. But does it necessarily mean we have to change something?

Nathan:

And it certainly doesn't. I do tend to on the side of any chance that just in my own personal professional experience, any chance I have the opportunity to use more precise language, especially with a relatively small amount of work, I don't see why you wouldn't. So I don't think the fact that one resident brought up a complaint or concern is enough to, in and of itself, force changing of any documents, but I think if it's valid, if there's some potential benefit to it, or just the opportunity to be more clear and concise than, okay, I bring it to you.

Denise:

Okay. No, I prefer the true versus a rounding. That doesn't make sense to me, but, Thank you. Got it.

Chuck:

Thanks, Nate. That is everything that we had on the agenda. I did have one other quick question, Nate. In 2021, we did a cost of service rates and charges. Is that something we're going to do in 2022? I know that we've been kind of behind the eight ball with staffing and but just curious.

Nathan:

I think it's something that we probably should do. I don't even know. I don't know what our legal requirements are around it. I haven't had a chance to to dig that deep into the in the files yet.

Chuck:

Kim, is this a legal question that we have a public hearing to discuss our rates and charges and then do a mailing?

Kim:

If you're going to consider increasing the rates, then we will need to publish that and have you have a public hearing, but you have to give notice that you will be discussing it whenever that's going to happen. If Nate thinks that we should be increasing our rates because of inflation and the cost of of chemicals and things, then you should look at that.

And I would reach out to the people who did the rate study before and see see what they think, whether it needs to be redone. But again, the issue is simply that the rates have to be rationally related to the costs. If we're now outside of that rational relationship because of what's happened in the world, then we should do another one.

Tera:

So I think we should have a rate study because it is things are vastly different. And the last time one was done was 2020. And in it it was recommended that they increased the rates in 2021 and 2022, none of the rates have been increased. They were increased in 2021, but they weren't increased in 2022. And and it really is a different world out there.

And and you know, again, we we got to make sure that we're collecting enough money to take care of the, the assets that we've been entrusted with. So something for our board to consider. I know we can't make a decision here, but, but the world has changed.

Nathan:

Something else to keep in mind along those lines as well, as I understand that the action that was taken to remove the renewable water fee that was officially put onto bills, sunsets at the end of this year, that's something we absolutely need to look at. Hamstring your renewable water supplies for any length of time can be can be dangerous and kind of goes against that philosophy that I was talking about earlier of like making sure that we're acting as if we're going to be here.

And so I don't know if even just bringing that back is going to be enough, that we would have to go through the action that Kim talked about. But something to keep in mind. Agree.

Kim:

Do you want Nathan to reach out to the people who did the study last time and just get a proposal?

Tera:

Bartel. Bartel. Wells. Bartels. Wells, I think.

Chuck:

Do you have that contact?

Kim:

I've never talked to them, but I certainly can.

Nathan:

I've got a contact list dump that I got from Jim Worley right at the end. I pretty positive.

Tera:

I Think I specifically asked for that one, so I might have that as well.

Chuck:

I think we should request them to a current cost of service and rate charges, and hopefully they they have enough information that they can do it sooner than later.

Denise:

Just one quick question on that. If we did a rate study a couple of years ago and they recommended increasing for two years, would that are we saying that's too outdated already? And I'm not saying that it's not or is, but if they recommend it to increase in 21 as well as 22, should we expense the money to get another rate study when we have one that maybe told us what to do already?

Chuck:

I don't think it was a two year race. It was a one year for 2020.

Nathan:

And one. One thing to bring to your attention around that, to the to Terry's point, the climate has changed drastically. So I'm already getting notified notifications at chemical suppliers, for example, where we typically see 3 to 5% increases over the cost of chemicals, we're looking at 40, 50, 60, 70% increases just in chemical costs. Lead times are deliverable. Everything is getting more expensive.

Tera:

So the rate study did go through 2022, and it did recommend raising in 2022. However, I think it is outdated because of what we're seeing in supply chain issues. And, you know, other unanticipated costs, you know, inflation, things that things that weren't accounted for in 2020 when the when the study was done. I mean, I don't know why the rates weren't I don't know why that wasn't discussed before my time.

I don't know if you all discussed it when that initial rate study come, and I don't know if that's enough public notice. Somebody could go back and look at the meeting or something. But we it's probably something that needs to be updated because of changed circumstances.

Board-Voting All Speak:

Can I hear a motion to adjourn this study session? Can we have a motion? Do we have to have a motion? Yes we do. You can just adjourn. Motion to adjourn.

Describer:
Meeting adjourned. Thank you for watching.