June 20, 2022 Video Board Meeting
Transcript
AGENDA
Board of Directors Meeting
Monday, June 20, 2022, at 6:00 p.m.
7404 Yorkshire Drive, Castle Pines, CO 80108
CPNMD residents are welcome to Zoom in or participate in person.
To Zoom in, please sign up before 12:00 noon on the day of the board meeting and follow the step-by-step instructions at cpnmd.org/cpnmd-zoom-meeting-sign-up.
I. Welcome. Call meeting to order. Pledge of Allegiance.
II. Roll call. Determination of quorum. Disclosure of potential conflicts.
III. Consider approving June 20, 2022 board meeting agenda.
IV. Consider approving regular monthly board meeting minutes of May 16, 2022. V. First public comment period. (Three-minute maximum per person).
VI. Parks, Trails & Open Space Manager's report.
A. Status of CPNMD's pickleball court construction in Coyote Ridge Park.
B. Discuss drought-and-wildfire mitigation and best practices for reducing CPNMD and City water consumption.
1) Discuss existing mowing and maintenance policies and practices for open space, medians, and rights-of-way.
2) Discuss transitioning CPNMD owned and managed landscape and open space areas away from high-water-consuming vegetation —
like Kentucky Blue Grass — to native, water-wise/xeriscape
alternatives.
VII. Water & Wastewater Operations Manager's report.
A. Status of CPNMD's newly refurbished water treatment plant.
B. Guided-tour schedule of CPNMD's newly refurbished water treatment plant: ▪ 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., each Wednesday, August 3rd, 17th, and 31st. ▪ Space is limited to a maximum of twelve residents per Wednesday. ▪ Light refreshments provided.
▪ Register via CPNMD’s homepage at www.cpnmd.org or call
(303) 688-8550 by 12:00 noon of the immediately preceding Friday.
C. Status of Kennedy Jenks Engineering’s evaluation of CPNMD’s lift stations. VIII. Finance Director's report.
A. Consider approving financial report, payables, and claims for payment, including Check Nos. 26937 – 27043, from May 7, 2022 – June 10, 2022.
General Fund & Debt Service: Approve $35,660.56 | Ratify $188,410.49 | Totals $224,071.05
Enterprise Funds: Approve $463,595.33 | Ratify $839,670.78 | Totals $1,303,266.11Electronic
Payments (all funds): Approve $0.00 | Ratify $150,539.17 | Totals $150,539.17
Total Expenditures: Approve $0.00 | Ratify $0.00 | Totals $1,677,876.33
IX. Legal Counsel's report.
A. Discuss status of Lagae lift station resolution and next steps.
X. District Manager's report.
A. Stormwater Infrastructure
1) Cost and timeframe for repairing or replacing stormwater system infrastructure adjacent to the Esperanza neighborhood.
2) Status and consideration of draft IGA re: transferring CPNMD’s stormwater MS4 permit to the City of Castle Pines.
B. Status of new accounting/finance director and interim district manager. XI. Directors' matters.
A. Discuss letters to and initial responses from potential CPNMD water and wastewater Inclusion partners.
1. Centennial Water & Sanitation District (CWSD).
2. City of Aurora Water.
3. Parker Water & Sanitation District (PWSD).
4. Town of Castle Rock Water.
5. Discuss follow-up and engagement process.
B. Consider changing the date of the board’s regular monthly meeting to the fourth Monday of each month, and adding a monthly study session on the third Monday of each month.
XII. Second public comment period. (Three-minute maximum per person).
XIII. Board executive session as authorized by Section 24-6-402 (4) (e) (I), C.R.S. to determine positions relative to matters that may be subject to Inclusion Agreement negotiations.
XIV. Adjourn.
Describer: The video starts on graphic with a white background and forest green letters which says “Castle Pines North Metro District Board Meeting June 20, 2022”. The meeting opens on a shot of all board members present. There is also a T.V. screen showing the Zoom meeting for people joining the meeting via Zoom.
Board President Chuck Lowen:
Welcome everybody that you’re physically as well as on zoom. This is the June 20th, 2023 Castle Pines North Board meeting. We welcome you here, and I would appreciate if you would stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Describer:
The board members and the audience rise from their seats and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. When they are done, they sit down again.
All Speak:
I Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Chuck:
Thank you. Do a quick roll call. Let me know you're here. And with no conflicts, I hope.
Board Member Director Jason Blanckaert:
Jason Blanckaert. President. No conflicts.
Board Member Director Denise Crew:
Denise Crew. Present. Hockey conflict. All.
Board Member Director Chris Lewis:
Chris Lewis Present. No conflicts except the same one.
Board Member Director Tera Radloff:
Tera Radloff. Present. No conflicts.
Chuck:
Chuck Lowen. Present. No conflicts. As we always do, I'd like to consider a motion to approve the June 20th, 2022 agenda, as well as the monthly board meeting minutes of May 16th, 1922.
Describer:
Chuck said 1922, but he meant to say 2022.
Chuck:
You all received those before the meeting. Hopefully you've had a chance to review them. May I entertain a motion?
Tera:
So I make a motion to approve the June 2022 board meeting agenda as presented.
Chris:
You gotta do the meeting minutes. We do both at the same time.
Tera:
You do both at the same time? I am in my motion. I make a motion to consider approving the June 2022 board meeting agenda as presented and the regular monthly board meeting minutes of May 16th, 2022. Seconded it.
Chuck:
We have a motion and a second. Mic. We have a motion and a second.
Tera:
Mr. President. Yes, ma'am. I do have some changes. Yes ma'am. So, lets get my minutes. So, you know, minutes serve as the official record of the meeting of the board of directors. And they really should be unbiased and focused on decisions, not discussion. It's not supposed to be everything that was said verbatim. And we also need to avoid inflammatory remarks, personal observation and anything that places this board at a disadvantage and maybe could expose us to legal proceedings..
So, on page two, at the last sentence, I think it's the last sentence of the district manager's report in regard to naming a specific council permit person. I think that sentence should be removed. I think that could potentially expose us to a lawsuit for. You know, defamation of character or something. I just think this is the official record of the meeting, and I think that should be stricken from the record.
Chris:
Do you have anything else?
Chuck:
Kim, do you have a comment about that?
Legal Counsel Kim Seter, Esq.:
Have the minutes read and the extent to which they contain discussion is up to the board. So if you choose to approve the motion as it's made so far, I think there's probably more. That's fine. It's okay to take that out. If you wish to leave it in, you can do that as well.
Chuck:
Okay, thank you. Board do you have any other comments regarding that strike out?
Jason:
I'm in favor of that strike out. Okay, Denise? I'm neutral. Chris?
Chris:
I think the meeting minutes should reflect the discussions that transpired during the meeting. And the fact that we have this recorded because everything is recorded. So it's available for anyone else to essentially listen to it. I understand the comment, but I think we have both at the same time so that they should at least match or be close. So I'm actually okay with leaving it in because it's actually a statement that was made.
Jason:
How long do we keep the recordings?
Chuck:
How long do you keep the recording, Kim?
Kim:
I think it's the board's policy to keep them perpetually. Okay.
Ken Smith CPNMD Communications Director:
Mr. President, if I could interject there, we keep them in perpetuity. They're posted on, on the website permanently.
Chuck:
Okay, that's what counsel said, thank you. So we have two yeses and two no’s and one neutral. I think that in the effort of good faith, I will honor Director Radloff’s request. And we will strike that sentence.
Director Radloff, anything else? Nope, all right. Well, with that amendment to approve the board meeting minutes with that caveat that we struck one sentence, can I here approval of the nomination, a motion, I'm sorry.
Board Voting All Speak:
Jason, director. Approved. Director Crew. Approved. Director Lewis. Approved. And director Radloff. Approved.
Chuck:
First public comment period. For those of you that want to speak, please remember this is a comment period, not a question and answer session, not a debate. And we'd appreciate you keeping your comments. Whoever speaking to three minutes. This also holds true for anybody coming in on zoom. So thank you. The only name I have that's present is Mr. Tibbitts. Would you like to speak?
Describer:
Marv walks up to the podium and Jim helps him turn his mic on.
Marv Tibbitts Castle Pines Resident:
Welcome to the new board. And thank you to the staff. I just have a couple of comments. For now, I'll have a few more at the second public comment. I guess I and a lot of people are confused about the latest. April 29th problems from the state.
It's like we're ignoring what we're supposed to be doing. I came from an industrial background with history in QA, in sales and production, and I can tell you that in any business that I was in, you didn't make changes without certifying what you were going to is correct. And it seems that didn't happen. So I would like a little discussion tonight about where we stand on that.
Also, has the water leak been fixed at Tangleoaks? I guess that's a no. Maybe the board and staff should be looking at Nextdoor.Because the comment from the author on Nextdoor what, from Castle Pines North Metro was that it was a landscaping problem. And your landscaper doesn't work on the weekends. Well, I can tell you, having many vendors, to me that would be unacceptable. There should be an emergency number for somebody to contact them to stop wasting water. Because it's been running, I guess, now for four days at the author's estimated water loss of 100 gallons a day, which is probably low. So I would, I would like somebody to look into that. Thank you.
Chuck:
Thank you very much. Nathan, do you have a comment on either one of those? The April 29th? I'm not sure what that is. Was that the, the order that was sent out?
Nathan Travis water and wastewater operations manager CPNMD:
Yes, I was planning on discussing that during my report. I'm happy to cover that now, if you would prefer. Okay. And then with the Tangle Oak issue, that was a call that had come in over the weekend.
We do have emergency staff that responds to that. Similar is our current contractor. They responded, give the guy a call back. David hasn't heard about it yet, and that would be my feeling for not dropping it over to him. At the current understanding, it's not our irrigation system that's leaking. A lot of those systems are looped in complicated ways, so it's not as simple as having an on call landscape.
We certainly can't call somebody out over the weekend to go repair something that isn't ours. So definitely a little bit of a gap in my fault for not letting David know that there was an issue, but I not sure whose system system that is. And last I heard, it had been resolved, so I hadn't followed up with it again.
Chuck:
And you said it's been resolved, but who resolved it?
District Manager Nathan Travis:
So when, when I spoke with the operator that was on call this weekend, he said that it had been taken care of. I didn't. And running the irrigation system isn't something that I usually ask a lot of questions about, but I will after the meeting for sure. I'll drive over there and take a look at it myself and see if there's anything else we need to do with it. But that's.`
Chuck:
Thank you. If you find out who took care of it and when, I'd appreciate it. Get back to Mr. Tibbitts. Absolutely. Thank you. Ken, do we have anybody on zoom? No zoom?
Ken:
We have multiple people on zoom, but none that wish to speak.
Describer:
There are anonymous people briefly talking in the background off camera and off mic.
Chuck:
I don't like that. Someone wave a flag. We’ll close the first couple public comment period and turn it over. Now to David Anderson, parks, Trails and open space manager, David.
David Anderson, Parks, Trails, and Open Space Manager, CPNMD:
Good evening. Had a lot of conversations with the Esperanza HOA. They are requesting a fire mitigation basically around their whole property. And that would include removing large chunks of Gambel oaks and grass. And they are requesting us to put that forth in front of you people to decide if you would like to do that or not. Okay. I, I haven't.
Chuck:
Well, I think it's important for us to take fire mitigation seriously. And when we have a request, we should certainly make plans to give us a cost estimate.
David:
He wants $200 an hour.
Chuck:
And how many hours do you think that'll be?
David:
He couldn't give me a, he could not give me an estimate.
Chuck:
Okay, right. We need a little more information on the number of hours it might take. Do we know what the acreage is? No. Okay.
David:
The undulation of the ground and all that will been or healed. It'll come into his factors of his estimate for sure, how steep it is. And if it's flat, how much Gambel oak he will be removing and stuff like that.
Chuck:
And how much Gambel oak or do they want behind the fence line? Is that what we're talking about? Is it 20 yards, ten yards, six feet?
David:
Well, he has a seven foot span that he would make, make it.
Chuck:
Okay David, if we could get a proposal for that. Okay. And the square footage I think would be important. Okay. Thank you.
Describer:
Tera speaks at the same time as Denise tries to turn her mic on.
Tera:
Mr. President, yeah.
Denise:
Does this follow, I know we've talked about this before, but we talk about Einar with South Metro Fire. Is this something he recommends?
David:
He, in his report, he does not. Basically he does not.
Chuck:
He does not recommend?
David:
He does not.
Chuck:
Or he does not address it?
David:
He does really not address it. But he, what he's stating in his report is the homeowners are more responsible for their property. If big spruce trees, pine trees are in their yard, this seven foot isn't going to do much good with fire mitigation. Because it will, it will go up anyway with that.
Chuck:
Seven, seven feet isn't. It isn’t. A great distance when you have wind and fire. Correct. Tearing at your back door. Nevertheless, I think it's imperative upon us at least to get an estimate so we know what we're looking at. Jim, we probably ought to get the South Metro. Mr.
District Manager Jim Worley:
Einar Jensen. Einar Jensen.
David:
He is no longer there.
Chuck:
Oh, he's not? No.
Jim:
Oh, that's news to me too. So we'll find out who is taking Einar.
Chuck:
Okay, if there's a replacement, we might ask them just to get a qualification.
Jim:
Yeah, and just to remind the board, I don't know if you actually saw this, but a few months ago, Einar had put together a whole game plan of things to do. And the thing that really jumped out at me more the most, and that whole thing was if we have another event such as the Marshall Fire, the only thing you can do is get out of there. Right.
Because that, the winds and everything that happened. But he also emphasized a lot about all the trees we have around our houses, not necessarily just in the open space that we own, but our own houses. And so that was a big part for him, too. But we'll find out who took Einar’s place and get them back.
Chuck:
Okay, thank you. You bet.
David:
And another discussion would be the city and south, city of Castle Pines. And South Metro did a fire assessment of the district, and the district, or the city has come up with a couple areas that are probably most crucial in fire mitigation in those areas are Glen Oaks and Briarcliff and.
Chuck:
Glen, Glen Oaks, hat was the other one?
David:
And Briarcliff homeowners. And the city has got a bid from Goats On The Go, and they are requesting if we would like to go in half with the amount that they will charge to have that removed.
Chuck:
Again, I ask you, what is half?
David:
14 acres, 14 acres. The bid is $3600 or $36,140.
Chuck:
And the city is asking for half?
David:
If we would like to go in half with the cost of the goats to go.
Describer:
Tera is whispering to Chuck off mic that she would like to speak.
Chuck:
Go ahead, Tera.
Tera:
So is the, I know part of that probably is metro district land, but is Glen Oaks or those the pieces Glen Oaks and Briarcliff? Are those the ones that are metro district land? Correct. Okay, and is that half? Is that half of the space? Since they're asking us to do half of the cost is one question.
And the other question is if since we don't have it budgeted, if it wasn't in our budget, would they still do it if we just give them access to the land?
David:
Yes, they would still do that.
Jim:
Can I say something here? A number of years ago, we were asked by the city to, to be part of that. And I think it's a good thing to be honest with you. I can't watch them eat it because it hurts my gums to watch him eat the thistle especially. But for a while, Craig, you remember Craig? Craig was not a big fan.
Is that fair to say, David? Yes. Yeah, he was not a big fan of the goats. He's just like, take care of another way. And so I met probably three months ago with Michael Penny, and I think Larry was with me too. And we talked about that. And he said, Jim, with the district be interested in it and I says yeah. As far as I'm concerned, I think we're okay with that.
I visited with David to see, get his feeling on it. And so while we didn't do it for a number of years, I think we should. I think it's good for the community. And whether you figure out the math on half of acres or what have you, I'm sure we could figure that out. But my personal recommendation to you is to go with the program and work with the city on this, and maybe have David identify pretty much the acreage that we have so that we can work out a number if we need to on the dollars. But I think the process is important, to be honest with you, is my thought.
Tera:
Thank you Jim. And I know it's really popular with the residents, so thanks.
Chuck:
Let's have a further discussion. But I think it is important for us to be aware of and alert to fire mitigation in this community. Now, these areas that the city is talking about to put goats. Is this is this a higher danger area than the seven foot behind the homes?
David:
Yes this. You can see it right along Monarch where all the dead scrub oak is. It's, it's pretty high. It's a lot of dead oak in through there.
Chuck:
So we're looking at about $18,000 as our share. Correct. But I also ask what Tera asked, how much of that ground is ours?
David:
Basically, it's all ours.
Chuck:
Basically it's all ours? Correct. The city wants an okay to get on our property. If the board has a different opinion, I think we ought to go okay. And they ought to get on the property and put the goats. Agreed. Jason, you agree? Yeah. Okay, Chris?
Chris:
I do, but I kind of want to know why would the city want to spend the money? I don't disagree with it, so I just want to know why do they want to spend the money for stuff that we're supposed to fix?
David:
You'd have to ask them. Okay.
Tera:
I, I don't know, but I might assume, which we all know that's a bad thing, but because they care about fire mitigation and people are concerned about it and they want to get it done. So I think they, the way that I interpreted what David and Jim said is they're, they're going to do it. If, if we give them access to our land, they're going to do it on our land because they're going to do it.
They, they asked us if we would participate financially, but even if we don't participate financially and give them access, is what I understood you guys to say they would still do it. I think it's the responsible thing, probably to participate financially if we can. But either way, I think we give them. I'm in favor of giving them access to the land and having it completed.
David:
I could find it in the budget to cover it.
Chuck:
Let's make a motion to approve the request to, that the city has asked us to approve to do the fire mitigation. I guess this is for Glen Oaks and Briarcliff. Correct. Areas. Correct. Not to exceed $18,000. Okay.
Board Voting All Speak:
Jason, Director Blanckaert. I'll second that. Thank you. Director Crew. I'm in favor. Okay, Director Lewis. Approve. In favor, approve. And I approve. So that is passed.
Chuck:
Thank you, David.
David:
The second discussion is about transitioning over more of the bluegrass to friendly native buffalo or something that's non-water using type material. That's just a wish list on my behalf. And I would definitely start putting a budget together and what it would cost to transition it over to certain areas, basically north and south open space we own or big chunks of turf that, that need to be watered. So that will be forthcoming and then next year's budget.
Chuck:
Okay, and I think that's a good activity. I passed out in those large envelopes, the direct district's landscape map. And you can see what the volume is of ground that we have to look after, including the bluegrass areas. So this is something we can talk about at another meeting or over the next few weeks.
And I agree with David. We should have a specific line item for this in the 2023 operating budget. Okay. So we'll wait for your numbers okay. Thank you. Fair enough.
Nathan Travis water and wastewater operations manager CPNMD:
If I can comment on that really quickly, from a water operations perspective, that is something that would be hugely helpful outside of the Ridge Golf Course, our own parks and open space is by far our largest user to the extent that we've had well issues and stuff in past years.
One of the first phone calls that we've made from an operation standpoint is to shut down our own irrigation. It's a, it's a really large demand. It's a heavy draw on the system. So not only the right thing environmentally right, the right thing for the parks and open space budget, but certainly for helping us keep production numbers up and protecting our water resources. It could be a big deal.
Tera:
Mr. President. Yes. So, if I may, thank you. Yeah, I think we should direct the staff to come up with basically a long lasting xeriscape plan. And I don't know if you're also talking about. Because I noticed in your report you were also talking about the replacing the plant material that died during the road construction.
But I don't think, you know, anyone would object to coming up with a long term, sustainable, xeriscape plan for everything just because it's, you know, responsible. So if you, if we needed to direct them to work with the city on replacing the stuff out there, I just think we should direct staff to come up with a long term xeriscape plan.
I mean, Kentucky bluegrass, that's what everybody did back in the day, right? That was a long time. And you plant it and then you water the crap out of it. But we just, it's not responsible, so.
Chuck:
Thank you director. I agree, I think that the initial effort needs to be with Glen Oaks and Briarcliff. And secondarily, we should have a fire mediation plan. And I think it is worth, for this community to see that happen, because it's also water conservation as well. And I agree with Nathan's comment. So I think that that's going to be a longer project. You're not going to have that for us next week. So I'd like to ask if he's willing and we'll meet him later. But the district manager get involved in that opportunity with staff. Thank you David, anything else?
David:
Nope, that's it.
Chuck:
Thank you very much. Let's move on to Roman numeral seven. Water and wastewater operations manager Nathan Travis.
Nathan:
Good evening. Before I jump into some of the stuff, directors all have my report. I wondered if there were any other direct questions I could answer.
Chuck:
I did see an email from one of the homeowners who was complaining about too much iron in his water and your response. And I just want to thank you. You did an excellent job in responding and being attentive to that issue. That's good to see. Appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely.
Tera:
Mr. President, I do have questions. Can I just as a point of order also, were we going to talk about the status of the pickleball court construction under the open space or. 6A.
Denise:
Right here under parks, trails. Yeah. I just and the question was, I know that Director Lewis had had some questions the last time. About what? I just wasn't sure if all of the questions had been answered, like where the skate park was going to go and those kind of things. I mean, I think some of the, the as I understand it, some of the issues with the lighting were resolved, the concerns that, that were the comments last time. But I just didn't know if we were, if we were going to talk about that at all or.
Chuck:
Tera, thank you for keeping me on task. David, that's part of your report did you?
David:
Yeah, we're still waiting on the easement from Excel. They signed all the bonds and stuff today. We're ready to go there. The contractor is a little leery of getting started before the easement situations are under control.
Chuck:
And Kim, you have a report on that?
Kim:
Yes, it's still a bit in limbo. We did go ahead and start a condemnation action. I received a call from an attorney for Excel, and then I went out with Covid. And since I got back, we haven't gotten back together. But hopefully that will just as a reminder of the strip of land is a no man's land. The problem is they don't claim to own it, so they don't want to deal with it.
Chuck:
I understand from you, nobody claims it.
Kim:
Nobody claims it. So it's, I'm trying to find somebody to just say on paper, you can have it. If we own it, you can have it.
Chuck:
What are the odds of Excel as a larger company as they are to take on that risk.
Kim:
Take on which risk?
Chuck:
To just say it's theirs?
Kim:
Well, they're not going to do it. They've already said in writing it's not theirs. It's our problem.
Chuck:
Therefore the condemnation.
Kim:
Yeah, the problem is somebody has to say they don't own it, we do. And then I'll end. So. Hopefully the deadlines in the court will run. I think about another 20 days so that if, even if we don't hear anything from Excel, we can circle back to the court and get an order saying okay, nobody's interested, so it's yours.
Tera:
So that's the piece that needs to be resolved to figure out where the skate park is going.
Kim:
No. No, oh. Just to get the pickleball courts started construction. It's, Director Radloff, It's a long strip of land that all the construction traffic is going to have to cross, I believe. So we have to get control of that strip before anybody is going to go ahead and go across it.
Chuck:
And right now, nobody claims they own it.
Tera:
I got that piece. I just wasn't, I was asking if all the questions that you had had the last time about where the pickleball court was going and that kind of thing had been answered.
Chris:
Well I want to hear what Jim has to say.
Jim:
Yeah. Let me address some things if I could, please. As you recall, the first PC Planning Commission meeting, which was March April, I think we had asked for the lights to include the lights.
There were some issues with that. They continued that board meeting or that planning commission meeting until I think it was May 26th, I believe is a date. And right before going into that meeting, President Lowen and I talked about the lights. Not only was it the lights that were concerning to some people, but also the fact of staying open later because we had the likes of the people playing pickleball at 10:00 o’clock at night.
And that was some of the concerns that I received in the first Planning Commission meeting. So we decided to basically take those out. At this point, Chuck had visited with some a group of people that have a big pickleball group and correct me if I'm wrong, chocolate. Basically. They said, we don't play at 10:00 at night, we play in the morning.
So when are you going to get those pickleball courts done? It's how I remember what you told me. And so I went into the PC meeting that night. And you might remember there was two things. Number one was a letter, an agreement of some sort, that Hidden Pointe and a developer had done that, had our name in there. And they claimed that it was, that we should abide by that.
In essence, there won't be any lights and a whole bunch of stuff which we were not a party to. Kim gave me an opinion of that. Of which I submitted to the PC, basically saying, we don't got nothing to do with that, so say what you want, but it's not our document. My words. Not legally, but going in there.
I stated at the PC meeting. I said thank you for all your time and effort, but because of the concern, we're not going to install the lights or the poles at this point. Maybe somewhere down the road that might happen. There may be a desire to have those put in there, but as of right now, based on conversation Chuck and I had, I withdrew the lights and poles from that planning commission meeting. Everybody was absolutely fine. It was a, I think it was only five commissioners there, five to nothing. So we're moving forward on the PC. So that was the issue with the lights.
Chuck:
One of the things that should be noted though, Jim and thank you for the report, is that we did approve putting the infrastructure, the wiring and the bases in so that if sometime in the future, the community wants the lights on at night time clocks or whatever will use, we can install them at a lot lesser cost than rewiring, pulling wire, repairing stanchions, anything else?
Jim:
Absolutely, in essence, is going to be installed with conduits that can be used in the event. If they're never asked for it, it never happens. They'll just be conduits in the ground. But to go retrofit, that would be pretty expensive. And so we're leaving the conduits in, but we're not installing poles or any lights at this point. And they were very happy with that.
Chuck:
So the only thing that I heard then that's holding up the pickleball courts is the condemnation proceedings on that unknown ground.
Jim:
That's correct, and Kim's done what he can. So far as you know, Excel is a huge organization. So he can't just pick up the phone and call Bob over there and get it taken care of. So what he did is set this condemnation process and that should get someone's attention.
And it did. It got a phone call to Kim. It just has not been able to get back with them. But the contractor, understandably so, is concerned about getting on there and damaging that, especially if we don't have the ability to do that. That's really about the only thing holding us up. So as soon as Kim has a conversation with Excel, gut feels that they'll come back and say, where do we sign? I think we're okay with that because they don't want it. They don't need it. My words. But is that fair, Kim?
Kim:
Yeah, I think the only issue for them will be who is willing to sign? Jim. Which is not as simple as you for a big corporation. Oh yeah.
Jim:
I can sign it after June 30th. That's okay.
Chuck:
Thank you, thank you. Let's circle back to Nathan. Thank you. Nathan. Thank you, Tera. Did we did we cover. Oh, Chris has a question.
Chris:
Back to lighting. What lighting do we have over there right now for the, the skate park?
Jim:
We don't, we don't have any lighting in that park right now. So there was a desire what will happen though. And we talked about this at PC is we have some one of those David, the little picnic areas, shelters, shelters that will have some lighting in there. There will be a little bit of lighting in those picnic shelters, but there's nothing else out there that is lit. There's no part, no, basketball is not lit. Baseball, any of that. Nothing is lit up at this point.
Chris:
You never got any safety issues in that, okay?
Jim:
No, but we close the park, especially in the summer, I think around 8:00 now. That's good. Yeah. There you go. We got hours on that. So. So we do that, but we don't go out there and run them.
Chris:
All right. So my, my real question is back to the skirt part. So we've talked about this multiple times. And we have the pickleball moving. We have phase one. We have phase two. We have no phase three for where is that skate park going? What are we doing for that segment of our community that actually uses that?
Jim:
In discussion that we've had with Design Concepts has always been that is something that will be a project down the road, whether it's phase two or phase three. They originally identified the property located next to the basketball court to do that, but there's a drainage easement in there, so that's not the place to put it. They want to focus, and I think this is appropriate, to get this one taken care of. First, let's get the pickleball courts going and take care of that. And then as planning for phase two and then eventually phase three, then we can identify during that planning phase exactly where this is to go.
Nobody has ever said we don't want any skate park stuff there at all. We just need to physically figure out where we can put it. And until the pickleball courts are really rolling and starting to work, which will be in the next month or two, then we can focus on those future.
Jason:
Can I have a say sir? Yes, sir. As somebody who lived three houses down from that skate park, I can tell you there is a lot of people that do not want that skate park there. One of the issues with it right now is that set so far back from the street that it's not visible. So it's kind of a hideaway for kids, teenagers, to do whatever they want to do in the shadows. So shall we say. So if we do move it and just not get rid of it, if we do move it, I think we need to move it next to a highly, like more close to the street where it's much more visible and there's going to be less activity just because it'll be too visible for that to happen.
Jim:
And thank you, Jason. Definitely that discussion will be with the board. They may come,Design Concepts may come up and say, here's where we think it ought to be. What do you think. So there will be, it won't be. We won't walk in here and say, this is where it's going to be. This is where we recommended these.
And you guys certainly have a lot of good input into it. But there is no desire, at least from anybody that I've heard that says, don't ever put them back up because I think it is popular, needs to be looking better. And it was a problem two years ago. But thank you Jason.
Chuck:
Thank you Jim. Any other questions?
Tera:
Back to you Nate.
Chuck:
Back to Nathan.
Tera:
So, and I do appreciate you addressing the important information about your drinking water that was mailed out regarding the routine water inspection conducted on the 29th, which I know you're going to do. But I noticed in your report that you said the Centennial water supplementation is no longer needed. Does that mean we are off of Centennial?
Nathan:
Yeah, following our normal operation plan, when we move into the summer, typically May 1st we drop off Centennial. That's when that agreement ends and we move on to our treatment plant. That was extended a little bit this year. Because once we got our treatment plan online and fully operational, we only online and operational.
We only had one of our three pumps that actually takes water from the plant and sends it out into the system. We for a bunch of very odd reasons, including people that are responsible for coding these pumps, having heart attacks and not being able to go to work for weeks at a time. So it pushed us back a little bit.
We got all three high service pumps installed 2 or 3 weeks ago. Now, with all three of those pumps in, we're able to more than meet what that treatment plan is capable of filtering. So the treatment plant is fully operational at our five MGD capacity. With that treatment plant running, we no longer need to tap into Centennial for any kind of additional water. So they were just buffering us for a few weeks while we were able to get those additional two pumps installed.
Tera:
So we're completely off. Is what I understand. And then I think they also, I noticed that you said that we also are having high demand. So is, are they still available as an option if in the case that we aren't able to meet the 5 million, we need more than 5 million gallons a day or whatever?
Nathan:
Potentially. So one of the things that we need to continue fleshing out with them, now that we've got the treatment plant up and running, is really defining kind of an emergency response plan that we can deal with them. Right now, we have a really good working relationship with their operations staff. So if we do have an issue, I typically just call them and see if we can fire it up.
The problem with the demand side is that if we are having incredibly high demands that are and I mean five MGD would be 30% higher than we have ever seen in a single single day in the district so far. So I'd be surprised if we actually got to that point. But the, the issue there would be that if Centennial is also seeing those insanely high demands, which regionally seems to be the case, everybody's pumping out a lot more water than they usually are.
They may not have the extra capacity to supply us there. So the internal action plan would be much more focusing on water restrictions. We'd need to reach out to the community, ask them to reduce or eliminate watering lawns for a week. That's what we call David. Have them shut down parks and open space. We can curtail construction water.
There's a lot of things that we can do internally to drive down or suppress usage for a short period of time. It's both more cost effective to the district and can be quicker operating. One of the other big issues that we go to Centennial is we are in those emergency situations we are paying. They're out of district bulk water rate, which is extremely expensive compared to what we're building our customers for it.
So that's really a last resort. I'd much prefer to see an internal drive to lower usage if we did get to that case. The other thing that we're working on longer term with the water treatment plant would be next fall, August September 2023. We're going to be completely replacing all of our filters. One of the things that we're hoping that we can accomplish by replacing that filter media is actually increasing the amount of water that we're allowed to take through our treatment plant.
So right now, we can bring in more than 5 million gallons of water a day. I can pump it out, but our bottleneck with the state is the filter loading capacity. And there are definitely different filter materials available that would allow us to increase that run water through them more quickly.
Tera:
Okay. And then Mr. Worley was you. You had something to embellish or.
Jim:
No, I was just going to say it. And Nathan really hit it. Right. This agreement we've had with Centennial for a long time has worked out very well. They have always come to the table. When we were having issues last year with our water plant and other issues, they were right there and worked with us.
But typically if it's just demands, then they probably won't turn on the water for us in July if we're getting some heavy demands. I think Nathan's right. We have the capacity to run through that plant quite a bit of water, even just at 5 million. So they would respond if we had an emergency, like they have always responded, but just to say, oh, we're having a lot of irrigation going on.
It's real hot out there. I don't think they turn on the valves, to be honest with you, because they've got to supply their community too. So that's why it's from October 1st to April 30th, just during the winter time on a regular basis.
Chuck:
Jason, you tweaked my interest. What does it take to put in the better filters? Is it a cost issue, is it a budget issue, is it?
Nathan:
Right now it's a timing issue. You know, we need the entire treatment. We need the entire treatment plant capacity available obviously through the summer and once we get into this winter, we've got some more tank work to do. Talked about the backwash reclaim tank that needs to be rebuilt. Some of the other tanks need to be lined.
Chuck:
So the concern is shutting down the plant at any time, for any length of time to put in new filters during this high peak demand period.
Nathan:
Right yeah, we physically couldn't risk doing it right now. And then next winter, Centennial is also going to be doing a massive renovation on their treatment plant, which is actually really good news for our residents.
It should help out with some of those, like earthy taste complaints that we get sometimes when we switch over. Those are a result of algae bloom, so the water is completely safe to drink. It just can taste a little bit off sometimes. But because Centennial is doing that renovation of their treatment plant this winter, we need to make sure that our plant is available to run.
So they do think that they're going to be able to meet our demands, but they are 2 or 3 wells away, as I understand it, from not being able to send us all the water we may need in the winter. So we need to have our plant ready to operate in any given point. So we're working with them.
We can do all of the tank stuff that we need to do and maintain that tearing apart. All of our filters would obviously remove our treatment plant operability,. So they've asked us to delay that project until fall 2023, and then they'll be substantially done with their plant will replace the filters. As far as the rest of the work we've done at the plant, comparatively, it's not going to be insanely expensive.
I don't have any official numbers. We're also going to be replacing the under drain system, which is basically what holds the filter media in place, and the water passes through it into our and our clear well. But so those it's not incredibly expensive and it's relatively fast. It doesn't take a lot of time to go through and redo those underground systems and replace the filter.
Chuck:
And if I understand you right, then our fallback position, if we do have a stress in delivering water, is to start shutting water off. And that's where David comes into irrigation and watering.
Nathan:
Yeah it'd be large irrigators construction first for construction. We know where, we know which contractors in the district are using water because we track that water usage using hydrant meters that they have to check out.
So we have parks and open space curtail usage. Then we start going and contacting each one of the individual developers, builders, whoever has those meters let them know that they need to either curtail or stop if it possible. After that is HOAs. And if all of that failed to get the water usage down, which would very much surprise me, then we'd be sending out notices, emails, whatever for homeowners to do the same. Okay.
Tera:
So that plan that you just talked about, do we have that plan in writing?
Nathan:
No, and I will add it to our list of while I'm sitting here. List of SOPs. One of the things that we have been working on getting finalized is really augmenting and blowing out our SOP standing operator procedure, operating procedures. There's a lot of smaller details like that that we need to make sure that we're capturing.
So Kennedy Jenks, and Semocor both have a list of operating procedures that they're working through right now. The biggest focus is getting a comprehensive one built for all of the new equipment that's put into the water treatment plant. Semocor is working out a lot of more emergency distribution pipeline stuff. And I can certainly add that to their list to galvanize it.
Tera:
And so I think you're going to talk about the these other two things. You're going to talk about the status of the engineering evaluation of all the lift stations. But I also noticed that in your report, you said that we may need to redraw a well site and, and drill additional wells. What is the cost of those? Both sound really expensive.
Nathan:
They would be. So there's two, two specific wells that we have that we've had major repairs done. So we do have plenty of well capacity today to meet our five MGD demand. We're really not worried about it. That parts, that parts pretty solid. But specifically Wells a four which is up by the driving range.
Actually I take that back. I, we figured some stuff out since I wrote this report. So A4 actually just has a metering issue on that one. We're going to fall back on A5 is the well that is over actually related to the pickleball court. There's the directional wellhead that we needed to abandon to get that project going. When they had attempted that horizontal.
Well, what they were trying to do is basically drill, drill a well at where this current in the parking lot of the current skate park. And then we're trying to do a horizontal well, that kind of goes down to the ground and then intercepted A5, another well over there. When they attempted that, they hit the bottom of the column and basically made it useless.
So in order to keep A5 operational, and this is before my time, but in order to keep A5 operational, what they did was they just capped that well. So they didn't cap it, but they filled like the bottom two thirds or half of it with concrete to get it past that damage point. And so they really, really reduce that well capacity.
So that well produces somewhere between like 275 and 350 gallons a minute before it was hit. It was producing very typically in the low eight hundreds. So re-drilling that one just to capture the full capacity would probably be a really, really good idea. The other issue that we need to make sure that we're keeping track of is if we're looking at increasing the water treatment plant capacity, that doesn't do us any good if we don't have the ability to bring that water over there.
And so really, what I was noting in my report is we just need to make sure that we're staying ahead of the curve as much as we can. So capturing the water rights that we already have, and then make sure that if we increase our plant capacity, that we have that extra water to bring in there. And I don't know what those exact numbers are until we're able to get the engineered, stamped and approved sets.
Tera:
I bet that's not in the 2022 budget, though. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President.
Chuck:
Any comments? Go ahead. Nathan, are you close?
Nathan:
I got more, I got more to go. Go. Yeah, and so the, you're correct. It's not in the 2022 budget that those my intention with mentioning it in my report was really more just to get it on the board's radar so that as we look at the more long term capital projects and planning, that we can start to capture that stuff moving forward.
We do have a pretty, a pretty hefty standard annual, well, rehabilitation budget for rehab, 2 or 3 wells, and that's a pretty substantial cost. But A5 is one of the wells that will eventually come into its rehab circle. And so we could actually, that would be a good time to look at it rather than paying the couple hundred thousand dollars, a cost to rehabilitate it.
Well, that might be a good time to go ahead and drill that one specifically. With regards to the. Violation that we got at the end of April, that was.
Chuck:
Nathan. This is the April 29th report that was filed out to us that Mr. Tibbitts mentioned?
Nathan:
Correct yeah. And so, Mr. Tibbitts, as always, I appreciate you coming in and voicing your concerns. That's for me as a, as an operator and somebody running the system. Resident feedback is one of my strongest tools.
And so one of the things you had that had been mentioned when you were speaking earlier is that changes shouldn't be made without approval. Absolutely. And we completely agree. Our engineering firm is on board. They've been tracking with us everything that we've done to the water treatment plant, everything that we've upgraded. They're making sure that we hit all state specs I frequently and in contact with our, with our state regulators, just asking questions, firing stuff back and forth, checking procedures, making sure that we're not going to do things that mess with like chlorine contact time or water treatment plant capacity.
So we work with them really, really closely to make sure that we're staying. And all of those regulations. The 20th April 29th notice was. Generated by an actual very, very simple error on the part of one of our operators when they filled out the form. So it's a bacteriological sampling. We do this every month. One of the things that you fill out, you go through and you mark the location, you mark the time, and then you mark the chlorine residual in the water.
So the state requires that there is at least a .2 milligram per liter chemical or chlorine residual in our case model for mean residual persistent in the water. When the operator took that reading, he put the decimal point in the wrong place. And so the reading that we sent to the state actually didn't make any sense. And so the lab and everybody down, down train of that only has the ability they can't make any changes, even if it's an obvious error.
They only have the ability to pass the information on. We contacted the state. We were able to work with them just to, to make that correct, to make that adjustment so that our paperwork was correct. So we it was reported as like a 0.13 when the reality is that we had a 1.3 residual. The state allowed us to correct all of those forms and resubmit them so that they were representative of our system.
Unfortunately, by the time we were able to talk to the state about it, get direction from them on what to do, resubmit that paperwork, along with some other documentation to the lab so that the lab could refile that paperwork with the state. We were a couple of days past our deadline for having those samples turned in, and so we actually got a violation because we were just turning in the samples too late.
But that was only because of the length of time it took us to get through the process of correcting the original paperwork. So there wasn't, in any real way an actual water quality issue. There wasn't a low disinfection residual. All of those things were really caused by a pretty simple, pretty simple paperwork mistake. So internally, we've done some stuff just to make sure and try and hedge against that moving forward.
So now all of those back to you. Reports are going to be reviewed by both myself and the ORC to make sure that neither one of us see any of those errors. And then we'll send them off from that point. But it's a little simple review process that would have been helpful to begin with. But hindsight is 2020, so we'll work on catching that.
Tera:
You said you were, you were going to review in an ORC. What's an ORC?
Nathan:
ORC is the operator and responsible charge. That is the ultimate human being that has the legal authority and responsibility for the water treatment system. For our water district, we have three separate positions that require an ORC. The water treatment plant, our collection system, and our distribution system.
The ORC tag is going to be placed with the operating contractor that's been doing all of them. They've been our water treatment plant operator and responsible charge for a while. I've been distribution and collections for a while now. We're going to move all three of them over to that, over to the actual operators. And the reason for that is actually driven by the state and the way that they like to see departments structured.
So they really want the people that are physically working on the system handling, like the day in, day out operations of everything, to have the legal authority to make decisions in cases of emergency. And so we'll move that over to them, but. Thank you. Absolutely.
Chuck:
Any further questions? Continue.
Nathan:
We're going. For the lift stations. Kennedy Jenks and I have early last week completed our first round of site visits. So we physically went out, looked all the sites. They're taking a bunch of different pictures.
Or they took a bunch of different pictures. Semocor is going to be doing some or our operation staff is going to be doing some kind of timing tests, really just verifying pumping requirements for the lift stations. We're going to double check how much, how much flow is coming into them, how much flow is leaving. So we're going to be working on that over the next couple of weeks while they continue to compile all of the engineering drawings.
The current plan is ultimately to basically build an individual site plan for all of the lift stations. So we'll get eight individual plans. We'll rank those in terms of which ones need to be handled the most immediately, which ones can wait a little bit. And then then we'll move forward from there. I don't have a really hard timeline for the completed, fully engineered set of plans, so you know when we're ready to start taking stuff to bid.
Kennedy Jenks is incredibly confident that they'll be able to get that to us by the end of this calendar year, though, there is a, there's just a ton of a ton of engineering work in review, and that needs to go into it. It's a, it's a pretty heavy lift. But the right people have it.
Chuck:
Okay. Anything else?
Nathan:
No, I think the only other last comment I'd like to make is that I do personally monitor Nextdoor pretty closely. I've got my app set up to actually pretend, I guess, that I live in this building, so it allows me to keep set up on those communities. I actively and intentionally do not respond to Nextdoor comments.
Once you step into the social media field, like all bets are off, there aren't any faces to put to names. It's just not very reasonable. But what it does allow me to do is be prepared for questions that may be coming my way. So I would just like to really, really strongly encourage, encourage, encourage our residents to follow Mr. Tibbitts example and show up to a board meeting.
Pick up a phone, call us. There was one resident that actually kind of got this, this ball rolling on some iron ion issues. This last weekend, he posted pictures of his filters, catching a bunch of iron. I was able to have about a 20 or 30 minute phone conversation with him last week. and we went from the worst villain of a water department to somebody that he trusted and respected, even went back on Nextdoor and made a post like added a final addendum post.
And I think that, well, that's incredibly gratifying. You know, the initial post where you put it up and say, hey, look at these water filters and there's 100 responses, and then you write back and go, oh no, I was actually a little bit misled. There were good explanations for this. And you get like one little heart, like everybody ignores it, which is exactly why I don't, I don't engage in those arenas.
So if you've got a concern about your water, I'm here. Me and my staff are all incredibly passionate. We're all incredibly caring. We really want to do everything that we can to get this community the best drinking water possible. And if you've got an issue or concern, please bring it to us. That's, I don't view those as threats.
I don't view calls to the States as threats. I encourage to get your water tested. If you want to get it tested, call the state. If you're concerned about a violation, like do all of those things.
Chris:
So, Mr. President, can I say something? Yes. So I just want to reiterate what Nathan said. Our communication is through the communication director. So we appreciate the fact that you're just monitoring. And I think that's exactly what the rest of us would do. You know, we should use the means, the official means, to responding on behalf of the district, and that is through the communication. So that's good. Hopefully the residents may be listening and that they take the same track as mayor of here and come to the meeting or send it through zoom and send it online to our communication director. Email us directly and then we will get back to those residents.
Nathan:
And one final comment, the Tangleoak leak. I got to talking to David and thinking about a little bit more. I may have, of course, continue to dig into this a little bit. I may have got my wires crossed with two separate calls. There is an issue near the park on Tangleoak at The Retreat. There's a slow leak that's been surfacing there for a little while now.
It's slow enough that we don't have an area that we're really confident to just, like, put a bucket in the ground and start digging. So we have leak detection coming out to double check that one, but.
Chuck:
Say again where the location was?
Nathan:
Next to The Retreat park off of Tangleoak, right around the corner. Okay. Yeah. So we are, we are aware of that one. We just don't want to blow up an entire park trying to chase a leak if we don't know exactly where it is. So we've got a leak detection company coming out to dial that down. They usually get me within six inches to a foot.
Chuck:
Okay thanks, Nathan. Any final questions? Let's move on to Roman numeral eight. Finance director's report. Good luck.
Jim:
Let me take a stab at this one, if I can. I can, I used to know what two and two meant, but I'm not sure I do nowadays. But here's what I believe we have online and correct me if I'm wrong, should be Phyllis Brown and Nancy Weiss. So they both online? Neither one of them? Oh I'm sorry, there's Nancy back there.
Describer:
Ken is speaking off mic and is briefly inaudible.
Jim:
Oh she did let me get a little more explanation.
Chuck:
Did Kim give it to her? Oh.
Jim:
Kim, would you go sit way over there for me, please? I appreciate it, as we all know, Pinnacle chose not to continue with us many reasons. They've done a great job for us. And and so CRS and I'll introduce these people here in just a minute. But CRS Community Resource Services, I reached out to them and they said they'd be happy to work with us on that.
So Phyllis Brown is probably your lead accountant. Joel , if I'm not mistaken, she physically lives in Florida. Good for her. She plays golf a lot, I think. But anyway, she's physical there. The lady back in the back. Where are you, Nancy?
Describer:
The camera pans to the right to show Nancy Weiss in the audience.
Jim:
Nancy Weiss also works for CRS. She has been. She's probably the most valuable person here. She processes our payroll. That's why she's the most valuable. But anyway, Nancy, we've been working for Nancy, with Nancy almost four years. When I came back here almost four years ago, Janet left. And so. Nancy. So Nancy is also an accountant. Fair Nancy? Yeah. And so Nancy and Phyllis will really be the ones that will be reporting to you each month on the financials you saw in your packet that the finances were put together by Pinnacle.
Absolutely. Fine. And their last days, kind of an interesting date, but their last day is June 30th. I got an email late last week from Amanda that says, I'm sorry, I've got something else going Monday night. I can't be on this call. So I reached out to her boss. Who I know very well and said, Brendan, is somebody going to be there from I mean, from Pinnacle?
No, nobody will be there. So having said that, and Chuck of it's okay for you, I want to introduce a couple of people if you're all right with that. Okay. This gentleman here, my last stand up, if you would. Joel . Joel Meggers, is one of the principals. Is that fair to say, Joel with Community Resource Services? Did you want to say a word or two or do you want to be introduced for.
Describer:
An anonymous person is speaking off camera and off mic briefly.
Okay. You bet. And then you've all saw Nancy hiding in the back. There you are, Nancy, a good lady. She makes my accent sound like I'm from Minnesota. She's from the South. And then kind of in front of her is a gentleman by the name of Michael Kelly.
Describer:
Michael is walking to the podium.
Jim:
Michael is new with CRS, as you know. If you don't know, I'm going to tell you right now. I'm retiring a week from this. 30 is my last day. I don't know who's counting days, but I am. I'm actually counting. Mondays is what I'm counting. After tonight, I have one left. But anyway, Michael just recently went to work with Joel at CRS. And so Michael and I thank the board as that's been discussed, will be the gentleman that's going to follow me around the next week and a half.
Basically, we spent most of today together, and so I'm watching his mind explode as I throw things at it. But Michael's a good man. Just made him a few weeks ago. Don't know him well, but I'm very familiar with CRS. I used to work for them, so. So I say all of that because I'm not sure. And Nancy, maybe you can help me.
I'm not sure if CRS is going to give a presentation on Pinnacles report. Can you help me on that, Joel?
Describer:
Joel is walking up to the podium.
Joel Meggers, Principal of CRS:
You know, I didn't. I wouldn’t be prepared for.
Jim:
Yeah, yeah. Push that little button there that has it looks like a face with something sticking out of it.
Describer:
Ken walks up to the podium to help turn on the mic for Joel , he then walks away.
Jim:
Ken will show you.
Joel:
Thank you very much. Yeah. We didn't, we didn't. It's their report. So. That was basically like the cash Disbursements journal. Yeah it was.
Jim:
Nancy, would you come up here if, you know. Is that okay, Mr. President, to let them kind of address that?
Joel:
We’ll, we can do it to your next meeting. Certainly do that. We just didn't, we didn't know.
Jim:
Aboulutley and it kind of came as a surprise to me last week. So I didn't really expect you to know this intimately. But I know that and I believe, Nancy, is it fair to say that the transition between you guys and pentacle is working pretty good? Is that fair to say, or do you need some more help?
Nancy Weiss, CPA LLM. Accounting Professional:
It hasn't quite happened here. I'm sure we'll get it together, but I think.
Jim:
Okay, yeah Nancy, come up to this if you would. And based on that, what you just said surprises me a little bit, to be honest with you. So what I'm going to do tomorrow is I'm going to reach out and start talking to Pinnacle and see what's going on. I thought you guys had been communicating.
Nancy:
Well, we have been told that you have tried to set something up with Amanda and I. I know Phyllis hasn't heard back and I hadn't heard back either. All right. So she's probably just busy. I'm sure we'll connect.
Jim:
Well, yeah, but that this is pretty important for us and so. Of course. Until you just said that, I thought it was all working. Well, that's what I've been told. And so tomorrow morning, I'll have a conversation with Amanda, and then I'll visit with Nancy and Phyllis and maybe Joel and whoever else to real quick.
Joel :
The plan is they would complete the audit because they did last year's financials, and I think that's more cost effective as their financials. And then they'll complete the 2021 audit pinnacle. So right. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yes.
Jim:
So, my apologies to the board for not having a presentation on this tonight. Certainly if there's something you looked at and said I got a question on that, maybe someone can answer it. But that's the status right now.
Chuck:
Would it be appropriate to ask CRS to provide us with a financial report for the May, May financials at the next board meeting? Yes, yes. So we'll have two reports, May and June. So I'd like to suggest to the board that we hold off a motion to approve the financial director's report, payables, claims and payment until we get verification from CRS that it's accurate.
Nancy:
Right, sounds good.
Chris:
I second it.
Chuck:
Is that a second, Jason?
Board Voting All Speak
Yeah, I think it's been seconded, so I approve. Director Crew. Approved. Director Lewis. Approved. Director Radloff. Approved. Thank you, thank you. Okay, let's jump right into Covid. I mean, the counselors report, Kim.
Kim:
Yeah, you have my written report. The one thing that is on the agenda to report on is the Lagae lift station. And I'm going to ask you to authorize me to go ahead and draft a collection complaint and send that to them.
We've been working on this now for probably eight months and not getting anywhere. Typically, what I do is take the complaint. We've drafted a demand letter. We got pushback from an attorney and haven't gotten any further. So what I usually do draft a complaint, take about an hour and a half, send it with a second demand letter letting them know that I'll be asking you at the next board meeting to authorize me to file it and serve it for if you want to authorize it.
Now, that's fine too.
Chuck:
I'm the one that sort of stressed putting this on the agenda. It seems like it's been in front of us for over a year. That's a little longer than I like to see something like that on the list. How do we feel ourselves about our position? It's a he said she said, do we have backup reports that verify what we did, what we recommended, what our engineering staff did and what our construction crews did? Do we know you're comfortable with that?
Kim:
Nathan has, I believe, the reports on the pumps that were replaced by the district, typically, the inclusion agreement that this is based on was done before any of us were involved with the district. And instead of requiring a bond or a letter of credit of the developer, it just has a warranty stated in the inclusion agreement, so the warranty was not met.
We stepped in to replace the pumps and correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, did all of that work and then sought reimbursement from the developer and haven't gotten any satisfaction, so.
Jim:
If I could add a little bit to that, if that's all right, if you don't mind. We were hoping, and Nathan really has a history on this. But we were hoping that we wouldn't have any issues until the new pump came in. That pump was paid for by the developer, I believe.
Chuck:
The original pump.
Jim:
Well, the original pump and the replacement pump, because, I mean, I can go into detail as to why it turned out to not work. Nathan had to almost babysit that thing for 2 or 3 years.
Chuck:
Both pumps were bought and paid for by the developer.
Jim:
Did we by the other pump?
Nathan:
Yeah, so the new pumps were purchased by the district with the understanding that the developer was going to reimburse this forum.
Chuck:
And that's what we're asking reimbursement for plus plus labor?
Nathan:
They, they supplied some of the labor to put the pumps in that wasn't built directly to them. There were a lot of other ancillary costs involved, increased maintenance required by district staff.
Certainly we had to put that station on full blown bypass for a number of weeks. What it happened the, this this lift station hadn't worked correctly since the first day it started up. We fired him up and these pumps sounded like they were full of golf balls. And so we pushed for years, kept checking back in. Hey, when are you going to resolve this?
We never officially accepted the lift station, and it's when the district accepts the lift station that that two year warranty period begins. So we haven't even reached the two year, the beginning of that two year warranty, because we haven't yet accepted the station because it wasn't in proper condition. Ultimately, we discovered what had happened is some, there was an engineer on the developer side that due to a land use change, they weren't necessarily going to need the same pumping capacity at that lift station that they needed before.
So the developer had asked some internal engineer or one of their subcontractors if they could downsize the size of the main, the force main, that the pumps pull the sewage into and shove them up to the top of the hill, based on the capacity that that line, the reduced capacity of that line would mean they gave them the green light.
None of that was run past the district. It wasn't given run past the engineers. It was like an internal ROI or RFI request for information. And they made that change. So they installed the force main basically all the way to the top two inches smaller than the original design had been. None of us knew that had happened. And so the, even the drawings that they had given up, Kennedy Jenks field inspector, showed the smaller size pipeline.
So we don't know when that change happened. We know that it was never submitted to us for a review. All of our approved sets had that list, had that force main approved it, one that's two inches bigger than the one that was ultimately installed. And so that creates a lot of extra pressure. It's called a total dynamic TDH. Total dynamic head pressure on the discharge sides of the pump.
So the pumps have to work a lot harder with a smaller pipe to pump the same amount. And it was a significant enough change that it pushed our pumping capacities down where our pumps were. The original pumps that had been installed were way off of their efficiency curve. So rather than one pump being able to produce 900 gallons a minute, which was designed, we had two pumps running simultaneously that would get us about 400 gallons a minute.
They shook and they rattled. They dropped oil all over the place. After we finally got the developer to agree to put in the new pumps, we just to get them here faster. We ordered the pumps and then they drug for a while. I think they were out there 6 or 8 weeks, just sitting on pallets outside the building waiting to be installed.
That lift station finally got to the point where the existing pumps just gave up. They both broke drive shafts. They were not pumping any sewage at all. They weren't working because we had two new pumps on site. We set up, we got called. We have an emergency company we use for emergency bypass that allows us to not basically a lift station mounted on trailers.
So we got bypass up, called the developer and told them that, hey, the station's on bypass and it's on your clock that we're going to send you the bill for this. Like, we have an accepted this station. We've got a bypassing. And it wasn't until then that they physically showed up. There's a few other miscellaneous issues. There's a security fence that goes around the outside of the building that blew down two days after it was put up in 2016, or whatever year it was.
That still hasn't been addressed. There's been a number of things that have prevented even acceptance of this lift station from happening. And so we're still in that not, not in that phase yet. And so up until relatively recently, all indications were the developer understood and agreed to pay for these costs. When they actually started getting the bills, they said this wasn't our fault, threw up their hands. And then, yeah.
Kim:
The bottom line of all that is that the warranty says the pumps will operate for their intended purpose, which they did not.
Chuck:
But as I understand it, the warranty period never kicked in.
Kim:
So technically they still own that lift station. But of course we can't. We can't walk away from it because of the state.
Chuck:
And you're comfortable, counselor, with the information, you have to proceed with litigation. Yes. Okay. Thank you.
Tera:
So, so we paid for it because we can't walk away from the station. And where's our break even point, I guess? If we're going to litigate this, is this just are we talking about papers going back and forth or what are we talking about, and at what point will it cost us more to do that?
Kim:
Yeah and Director Radloff, that's why I like to go ahead and draft this complaint, because it's a fairly reasonable cost. And then send that with a second demand letter saying, you know, we've reached the point where we have to fight about this because we're not getting any progress. So hopefully at that point we can resolve it. If not, then we'll have to go ahead and start litigating. Courts nowadays require mediation fairly quickly once litigation starts. And I think the mediation, you know, you can't guarantee anything, but I think we're in pretty good stead.
Denise:
I think you need to call back, Jim for mediation and take him with you. He's your lucky charm.
Kim:
We'll have to. He's a witness.
Jim:
We did good on that one, didn't we? Yeah, that was kind of fun.
Chuck:
Counselor, do we have a. I don't want to negotiate a price tonight during zoom, but is there a number that we're looking at? You know, you don't have to answer me, but maybe you can email me and let us know where our breakpoint is.
Kim:
Certainly, yeah I can include that in next month's report as well. Or the next meeting report. Whenever I do that, there will be a read statement at the top of the report saying it's attorney client privilege so that information stays among us.
It won't be in your meeting packet. It will come to you separately, directly from me. Don't talk to each other about it. But when we get together.
Chuck:
Okay, and I'm assuming tagging on what Director Radloff said the cost of litigation. Is it less than the cost of winning the lawsuit, or do we know?
Kim:
We don't know, it should be. There's quite a bit of money involved here.
Chuck:
Okay, all right. I'll wait for your report. Okay. Thank you. Anything else?
Chris:
Yeah, I guess I'm still not clear. Do we need to make a motion or do you have to? You're just going to go ahead and do that?
Kim:
No if nobody objects, I will just go ahead and draft that up and send the letter. Okay.
Chuck:
Anything else, counselor?
Kim:
Nothing more except for some items later in the meeting that you've already have on the agenda.
Chuck:
Okay district manager's report, item number ten, Roman numeral ten.
Jim:
Let me address something first before I go into what we'll talk about on this MS4. I was called by a resident recently and he told me, he says, I'm not sure that I like the way that you come up with the calculations for your wastewater usage.
Just to remind you, we take your water usage for December, January and February should be no irrigation involved in that. We take those and we average those three. And whatever that number is, you pay that times $6.92 plus a set fee for wastewater until the following. We start that in March. So we take December, January, February. The March 1st has the new average of each president.
And then they pay based on those per thousand gallons. The person that called me the other day said, look, Jim, he says there are some snowbirds around here that may have a zero average or they may have a very low average. Which makes sense, he says. I'm not asking for someone that has a zero average because that could happen.
They could be on December, January or February and not a drop of water goes through their system. I'm not asking for that to be zero, but in our rates, this is a sheet from our website which identifies wastewater rate schedule for in district residential. It gives an idea of how we do it. It gives a cost of $6.92 per thousand gallons.
We have fixed fees of $14.25. You get that on your bill. The $6.92 counts out based on your three month average. That makes sense in this document here it says the following for accounts with zero water consumption during December, January, and February, the account will be assigned a minimum usage of 2000 gallons. So if you have zero usage, you're going to be charged 2000 gallons for the next year based on wastewater rates.
So this person told me, he says that's somewhat not fair because if we conserve water during that time, we're not using anything. Why are we penalized? He said I'm not looking to make it zero. We do need to pay our fair share. But why is it 2000? Why isn't it 1000? And I told him, I said, to be honest with you, I don't know the answer to that.
That's been here a long time. But I said, what I'll do is I'll mention it. Excuse me, I'll mention this tonight. So the board is aware of this issue. And I told him, I said, I'm going to reach out to Erik Helgeson. Erik Helgeson for at least three of you know, he's with Bartle and Wells and they're out of California.
They do our rate study for us every year, including wastewater rates. So I'll call it Erik Friday. I said, Erik, where the 2000 come from? He said, Jim, I don't know. He says I was not involved with the district when that was decided. But he said that could very well be what is considered the average usage in winter for maybe a household of two people.
But, he says, I don't know for sure, to be honest with you. So I told the resident, I said, I'm going to tell the board about this tonight. So what I would recommend you do is to have some conversations and maybe that's I'm not sure who will make that. Maybe Michael will have that conversation. But visit with Erik and see if you can come up with a game plan or a good reason to use 2000.
I think it's fine. The person that called me, to be honest with you, I have their history, I got all their history and they used about 2000 gallons a month. So the question again was why do you use to instead of one? Does that make sense to what I'm saying here? And so I'm bringing it to your attention as an FYI.
But I think it ought to be evaluated. And if it comes back and maybe Erik or somebody says 2000 is really what's used in the industry, because a lot of entities do charge wastewater based on this type of process. And so then the board will have to make a decision whether you keep it at 2000 or you bring it down to 1000 or something. So no action item needed it.
Chuck:
Okay, Jim, let's, let's revise our estimate if we can, the 2000. Only after some research, let's put a pencil to it. I don't like the answer or the excuses. All due respect, it's what we've always done. Sometimes that needs to be changed. So if we can work up some new numbers, maybe, Michael, that will be a task that you can attack. And if we are at 2000, that's what it is. If that's industry standard, that's good enough for me. But let's put a pencil to it and make sure we're in the ballpark.
Jim:
And that's it. Thank you Chuck. That's exactly what I told this resident last week. And he was absolutely fine with that. Okay. He says, I understand that. Nothing wrong with that attitude. I think it's great to get I'm not asking for zero because I know that's ridiculous, but I told him what I was going to do and what I'm doing tonight, and he says, absolutely fine with me, Jim. So he was happy with the game plan, if that makes sense.
Kim:
And Mr. Chairman, I've seen this several times in my career where that 2000 is probably not. It wasn't set up as 2000, it was set up as a number. And somebody then backed that into the 2000 figure based upon the rates per thousand gallons. But it should be looked at in the end. As long as your rates bear a rational relationship to the cost of providing the service. So even if somebody isn't using the water.
Chuck:
They're still using the service.
Kim:
And so, you know, as long as there's some rational basis for the number, it's fine. Okay, good.
Nathan:
Yeah. Real briefly around that. And of course this is also assuming, you know, irrigation and an average over an entire year. Generally speaking we're looking at about 100 gallons per person per, per gallon or 100 gallons per person per day. But that number also includes irrigation.
So that gives you about a 3000 gallon ish a month assumption for your average usage over an entire year. So 2000 winter time demand would probably more closely represent the expected average daily user. That's a fairly old number. It's been used in the industry for a really long time now. I don't know how that compares to, you know, reduced water rates or water conservation efforts and all of that stuff. But 2000 gallons is a minimum assumption is pretty low.
Chuck:
Okay. You know, sometimes when those questions are asked, the answer may be worse than what the initial concern was. So let's, let's do some research.
Jim:
All right. So that's, that's an 50. Thank you. Two other items. And that's actually I'll go to be first I've introduced the CRS crew that was going to be something I was going to do. So you know who they are. And maybe if it's okay with you Mr. Chairman, I’ll ask Michael to at least say hi so they can hear your voice. Thank you.
Michael Kelly Incoming District Manager:
Yeah. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate the opportunity to work with this group. And right off the bat, I want to thank Jim and Nathan for taking me on a nice tour of the district. That was really helpful to see the whole district and see the lift stations and all that kind of thing. So I really appreciate that. I could do a really quick elevator speech, tell you a little bit about myself. I have about 20 years of managerial experience. In 2015, I wanted to upskill a little bit, so I went back to Regis University, got my MBA and management, and that was a great experience.
I worked with as an executive editor at Colorado Community Media for a long time, coached a lot of different team sizes, was executive director at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts, where I implemented a strategic plan, and there I did the full array of responsibilities with and set up an enterprise district, fundraising, membership, taxes, all that sort of thing.
So, and I just mentioned in my media work, I covered a lot of water issues and recreation issues, local, county and state. So I feel like that helps me a little bit. And then also I think that in addition to working with and for boards, I've served on boards. I was on two terms on the family tree board and Wheat Ridge, served on the Adams County Economic Development Board.
And then I was co-chair of the Adams County Cultural Council for over six years. So I just wanted to share a few things to know about me. And I feel like I have the good skills and qualities to do a good job, and I'm really impressed with the team here in the board. So, so thank you.
Chuck:
Thank you Michael, and welcome to the team. You have a good one to work with. So good luck. Thank you. Thank you Michael.
Jim:
One of the items and that's really well Larry. And where's Joseph? There he is hiding back there. This pole gets in the way. As you know, a couple of months ago, Larry and Joseph came to you and visited with you when we had the original IGA draft for stormwater, the subject matter of stormwater. And so there were some questions that the board had a couple of days after that board meeting that Larry and Joel were here, we sent a red line copy, actually, Kim said a red line copy to their attorney, Linda Michelle.
She looked at it and made a few little tweaks, sent it back to Kim. There's one area and this is item number one. Near Esperanza. There is a drainage area behind Esperanza of which we own maintain a storm drainage area. There's also riprap in there rock that's molded in there with concrete. A number of years ago, that particular area underneath that water got underneath that.
And what would you undermine. So there's there's a gap a cave underneath this rock. Fair to say David. So when we that's something that we've been starting to look at to fix. When the city came and says, we'd like to take over your stormwater and, and Larry will correct me if I'm wrong. They said in that meeting two months ago, as is, but we had already started the process to see what that would cost to fix because we kind of wanted to know it too.
And if there was a if there was a desire on the city before they took over the stormwater services, that we'd fix, that we would be ready to do that. So we visited with Lillard and Clark, which is a construction company. And so they went out there and looked at some things, and they came up with a game plan of what to do instead of turning it all out.
There was ways they came up with to fix it, so to speak. And so I reached out to the president of Lillard and Clark. I said, Paul, will you give me a wag? A wild guess as to what that would cost? He initially said yes because we didn't know what it was, something we do or the city. Well, after a while I didn't hear from him.
So I reached out to him again and I said, Paul, where's that wag you were going to give me? And he says, here's the situation, Jim. He says, I was burned one time by giving a wag out, and it really came back to bite me. So he says, unless I am real familiar with a potential client in this case, could be us, he says.
I'm not comfortable giving a wag out, to be honest with you. So, Jim, if Castle Pines North Metro says this district will take care of the issue and we're going to pay for it, then he's going to give me a whack because he says, I trust you. I trust the organization. And this is no cut against the city at all.
He has never worked with the city. So because he got burned from something else years ago, that's his practice. So I am not able at this point to get that wag to that. So that's that first one.
Chuck:
We can, we can get over that.
Jim:
I thought so, but I want to everybody to understand that. So we had that. And then Chuck and I visited and we asked for Larry and Joel to be here to address some questions related to that. Still, the draft IGA, which Kim has looked at and the comments back from the city attorney. So, Chuck, I'll leave it up to you if you want to have them come up here and address questions. Or how would you like to orchestrate this, Mr. President?
Chuck:
I'd love to hear Larry tell me what he's going to do.
Jim:
Oh, he'll tell you, okay.
Chuck:
I know, but it's like a comment period. Can you keep it under three minutes? All right thanks, Larry.
Larry Nimmo, Public Works Director for the City of Castle Pines, Colorado:
I take it I got the mic on, no?
Chuck:
Yeah, you do.
Larry:
Oh, good thank you. So basically, I think Jim highlighted one of the most important terms that we're talking about with this. The city of Castle Pines is accepting the stormwater system as is. We know about this. He's talked to us about it. It will be one of the items on the capital projects list that will go get evaluated and find out what we need to do.
We view the storm sewer system as we view the city streets. When we took them over, they've got some challenges. We've got some things we need to work on. We need to get maintenance set up. We need a lot of things done to get, get to this point to figure out all of the strategies we're going to use.
But the fact is, we're accepting it as is and we're going to move forward that way. And no matter if you run it or we run it, we're still benefiting the citizens of Castle Pines or residents. And that's the real goal, is to make sure we give them the best possible product we can. And I think you'll notice I've got a little one going down there that's trying to give them the best possible product we can.
Chuck:
I appreciate that and I remember was it last month we had a pretty good presentation, but it fell short, I think when you didn't talk about the actual physical work you think you're going to do, the staff you might have, are you prepared to take over the stormwater system today or do we give you our money and wait?
Larry:
Well, I think if you check the agreement basically in there, one of the first things we need to do is we need to start reviewing your records. The Castle Pines, they had a 90 day time frame on that, but we're hoping to get the nod that we're going to move forward because the actual closing date, September 30th, then you build one more month and then that's it.
So we'd like to use these this time during the summer. Joe's here, we've talked about this is to start going through those records so we can start truly working on developing a plan. But from there we just start. We got to develop a plan, but we've got to have some. We got to have some documents and some records to really get started with that, to see what have you done, what are your hotspots, you know, what are the areas you already maybe are in this, you know, that everybody knows about?
So until we have some good documentation, I mean, Joel knows what he's doing and we. The fact is, is if we need this the same as you use Kennedy Jenks. We have WWWWright Water engineers. If we need some additional assistance, they've got some people that are specialized at all of this. So we're, we're very confident that we can put it together. But we got to have a starting point and that's what we're asking for.
Chuck:
I understand one of the things that's made this district nervous is when we turn over a project, we try to turn it over in as good a condition as you would want it to be, short of a few things like Esperanza. But we'd like to maintain for our constituents the cost that they've been accustomed to see every month on their bill.
I know you can't give me a number until you see the documents. You can't tell me what it's going to be per household. But what, what is your thinking relative to the cost of stormwater for the residents of Castle Pines?
Larry:
Again, that's right. In the IGA. That's one of the tasks that we're charged with is that we need to come through, do an evaluation so that we can develop those costs. I can't speak a cost until we've had a chance to do some work.
Chuck:
Okay go ahead.
Larry:
And if you will look, just so you're for your benefit, it is article three be analysis of stormwater. The city will and we will or may in its discretion, undertake one or more studies to the future, determine whether stormwater fees should be increased or decreased. And we've scratched the 2023 just because, you know, we don't know.
But based upon the city's documented cost of maintaining, we're going to document it. We're here to take care of the residents the same. We're dealing with every everything else we own. So that's our that's our goal is we want to make sure the residents are getting the best possible product for the money. Thank you.
Chris:
I'm sorry. Larry, what's your last name? Nimmo. Nimmo. No, Nimmo. Nimmo. Sorry. Can you spell that, please? Nimmo. I'm sorry, I apologize.
Larry:
That's okay, Finding Nimmo and Captain Nimmo, everybody does it. So you're not unusual. But I do.
Chuck:
All these years, you're letting me call you Captain Nemo?
Larry:
I, no it's okay. I don't get too excited about it, so. But if you want to know, it is Nimmo.
Chris:
So Larry, I think you guys presented back in April. Okay. And during that presentation, you came with a presentation, and I think we had a bunch of questions for you. And now today we have an IGA. I still haven't gotten the answers to the actual questions that was asked, right. So a couple of the questions I had were, overall, I think the scope of what supposedly the Castle Pines the city of Castle Pines had was about what did I we have the City of Castle Pines developments. Then you had Castle Pines North Metro district, and then you had about 24 HOAs. Is that correct?
Larry:
I won't quote on the HOAs because I get lost sometimes with those because they tend to move. But so yeah, we have the city of Castle, Castle Pines North Metro District. And in the area of the newer development, that one is already us, and in the eastern side is already the city of Castle Pines will become the city of Castle Pines.
Chris:
Okay and then at that time, I think you guys mentioned that you've been doing this. So since 2017, you started at least the person that presented said you got was hired in 2017. Right.
Larry:
Oh, Wright Water had started this, yeah. In 2017. I got Joe up here because he was he did the president. He developed all the presentation.
Chris:
I'm sorry, you may be at a disadvantage. But, so my question is really is around. I still haven't gotten what's the overall strategy for for the city on stormwater. Right so we had the 24 HOAs . We had us. And then you had, I guess, the district over on the east side of 25. Is that what you're calling that you own?
Larry:
That stormwater will be coming to us.
Chris:
That will be coming?
Larry:
Yeah, that's already we're we haven't we haven't accepted anything yet, right? We're getting very close to doing final acceptance on that right now. Okay, good. Some of those facilities.
Chris:
That's good, so what what do you have in terms to run this stormwater department, right? So you haven't, it hasn't come to you. So you guys don't have an operating department or anything on stormwater. What about theHOAs? Nobody's doing those, right? You're coming and, go ahead.
Larry:
Chris, no actually we have been for, since I started three years ago. We have been notifying the HOAs of things that need to get done, and they take care of those bonds. They own them. They're not under the city's maintenance contracts. I mean, there's nothing those are owned by the HOAs themselves. And I do know we've had, I've had meetings with them Wright Water and Joel has had meetings with them. So we're working with them to help them get their ponds and their facilities all brought up to, repaired or usually cleaned up. I worked with HOA #2 to help them get a contractor to help clean up some of their stuff. So no, we have them working diligently with anyone that seeks any help at all.
Chris:
Is that your overall strategy to bring the 24 HOAs under your preview and manage their stormwater also?
Larry:
Because yes, the permit is under our name. So everything that discharges is technically under the City of Castle Pines name. That's through the permit we’re the permits.
Joe Marencik Stormwater Program and Utility Manager:
But we're not looking ahead to taking over the HOA stormwater infrastructure.
Chris:
Start over, I didn't hear the first part.
Joe:
We're not actively looking to take over the HOA stormwater. What we as part of an ongoing stormwater program, development, operation, maintenance. I've already actually started inspecting all the ponds like Hidden Point and Forest Park, going through and looking at their ponds, doing assessment reports and working with them on what, what my findings are and suggestions on what that maintenance needs to be.
But since we do not own those ponds, we cannot force them to do those things. We would like to get maintenance agreements in place with them. A lot of MS4s have this in place where if an HOA is a private entity, an HOA is not performing the necessary maintenance. We would have the right to go in and do it and charge them for it.
Because like Larry mentioned, ultimately, if they had a spill into their pond and entered our MS4 system, it now becomes our issue as well. And so it's the city's best interest to make sure all those private ponds are properly maintained.
Chris:
Okay, so three.
Larry:
And that's one thing I wanted you to know. Part of the reason we brought Joe on is to take these next steps.
Wright Water was already doing this with not all of the HOAs, but I want to say 10 or 12? Correct. Yeah, it's like 10 or 12 per year with different ponds, different facilities. As a matter of fact, I'm not well anyway, so they were already doing some of that. We're just stepping it up because we're increasing that. That is part of the reason we brought Joe on, because he has the background for all of this.
Chris:
Okay, so we have three entities that you guys have under your strategic plan. The HOAs, East side and ours, right? I'm just trying to understand how you guys are going to operate all this. What we're asking here is for the district which by the way, we don't, we intend at some point to turn over the stormwater to you, but you're asking the district to turn over an operating efficient operations and to to group that hasn't don't even have an existing operations to run it. So, you know, I went down and I looked at some of the items that I had also, which was what is your budget right now for this area, the city budget.
Larry:
Did we have something? No. No.
Chris:
Okay this is the second time you guys have come to the meeting and we still don't have the engine.
Joe Marencik Stormwater Program and Utility Manager:
We wouldn't have a budget for system wide management to begin with until we're able to do a. And we already have a proposal to do a small scale pilot project to. Sorry. Go ahead. Small scale pilot project to us. We already have a proposal to do a small scale assessment that we can then use to scale up to a system wide assessment, and then that will drive budgets. But we can't develop any budget until we know what's out there. We can't say, oh yeah, it's you know, there's minimal annual maintenance that needs to be done.
But then we come in and have some of the pipes televised and find out that these 25, 30 year old pipes are crumbling and failing. And now, instead of maintenance, we're looking at capital improvement projects. It's a massive difference. But once we have that, then I can develop a framework for annual inspections. The whole system wide will not get inspected annually.
It's just not feasible. But doing them in a rotation, just like the pond. But then the ponds would be inspected every year, whether we own them or not. And that helps start to drive annual maintenance needs for capital needs. And that drives budgets.
Chuck:
Joseph, let me ask Chris's question in a different manner, a little more direct. You have a department set up for taking over stormwater of different communities. I'm sorry?
Joe:
We have a Castle Pines Public Works Department with a dedicated stormwater.
Chuck:
So you do have a public works department? Yeah. And okay, we have one employee, 50 employees? How is it set up to start doing the maintenance and the oversight?
Larry:
Right now, it's one employee with Joe. That's the first thing we want to do as we look through your records to see how you were doing things. Those are things we'll glean out of the information that we're looking to gain easements. There's a lot of other stuff. It's all pretty well highlighted in there. So that's our starting point. But Joe. And then we have a team of people that we work with that can step in and help us in a moment. I mean, they're already aware that we're trying to do this. Contract employees. Contract employees. Similar to what we use. Similar, right. It's kind of the wave of the things going on. So yeah, we have that ability to engage those people as needed.
Chris:
Okay, continuing in the same line of questioning from the president here, so you have a group, an organization, a department with three people or how many. And that's all good. And you're asking us to turn over one point something million dollars of our, that's our budget for stormwater.
So when I ask you what's your budget? I'm asking you, how much money does the city have to spend on the rest of what they own, which would be the 24 HOAs? None because you're saying they own them and they operate them. The east side? None because you don't have them, right? So no budget. But you're asking me to turn over an area that we are actually operating at.
I think we had multiple questions on what's the rates that you're going to charge our residents, right? And in your presentation, you throw out rates of $7 by I'll read it to you. You've got seven points, $7.30 by Castle Rock. Parker at $8 and Lone Tree at $7.
Joe:
We're just simply stating what other communities are doing. Those are the ones. That's one of the things we did is we looked at what other communities are doing. And no, we don't have anything across the street yet because we don't own anything. But that's being those are those are fees that we will be starting to charge. Right, you know, as we move forward, as we start taking over those facilities.
Chris:
Okay. And our rate Jim, correct me if I'm wrong. What do we charge our residents?
Jim:
$5 a month.
Chris:
Okay, we are charging all our residents $5 a month. I want to make sure that when we're going to, in good faith, turn over everything that we own from stormwater to the city that, you know, it's no more than that, that we're going to charge our residents.
So that's the point of me going through this whole all these questions is I want to make sure that you guys actually went through, have a plan that you can present to with three entities that you're going to cover within your preview, and that our costs to our residents that we provide today do not go up. It's two entities you keep on referring to three.
Joe:
It's two entities. You keep on referring to three. It's two entities. You keep on referring to three. We cannot do any maintenance to the HOAs. So. So really it's Castle Pines North Metro district and the city of Castle Pines. And whether and whether we were to take over the metro district stormwater system, the city is still going to form a stormwater utility, a stormwater enterprise, and start to collect funds per household from the east side to help pay for the extensive maintenance, the extensive stormwater network over there.
And it's extensive. We're looking at dozen over a dozen ponds that will be taking over in miles of stormwater pipe inlets and all the other infrastructure, stormwater infrastructure over there. So the city is already at a point where we're going to form a stormwater enterprise utility and start to collect funds from the other side of the road.
Chris:
And that's kind of what I'm asking about. So you're starting that when you progress and you're you're at you're mature, and then we can come together and say, okay, now we're at a point where we can have a pure peer conversation on us, on you being able to manage this collective two, let's just say two together and that our stormwater is not going to have more than five bucks. Right, so I.
Chuck:
A quick question. With the addition of the other entities you're going to add into your stormwater system, whether it's one, 2 or 3. Sounds like there's just two. Are we going to, are we Castle Pines North in a benefit from an economy scale? Or is there any way of knowing you talk about having a lot of ponds and a lot more work.
Are, is this community going to have to pay for some of that other work through our stormwater fees.
Joe:
In the near, near and medium term? No. All that infrastructure is brand new. So we're looking at pipes that's a couple of years old versus this side of the highway where we're looking at 25, 30 years old. But that maintenance burden is really spread over the entire geographic area, the maintenance of those ponds.
When Shea transfers them to us, they will be perfect. I'm having them go right now and clean out all sediment reestablishes everything. So theoretically when they, we've moved that into final acceptance, those ponds are in the best condition. They're going to be in. Where on the west side, we're dealing with aging infrastructure, but there's no answer. And roundabout way to answer your question.
No, there's no way to know whether adding all of those residents over on the east side is going to really kick in the economy of scale, and we're going to see a decrease in stormwater fee or if it's going to remain the same, we have no idea until we really start to know what's on. I can tell you the condition of the east side.
I can't tell you the condition of the west side. Okay. We may start televising pipe and find out there's a ton of capital improvement that needs to go on because we have aging pipe that's crumbling.
Larry:
So let me stay with that for just a minute. Yeah Larry. So I want to make sure. Have you ever looked at the breakdown of the stormwater maps?
I know you have, but Chris, have you ever looked at the stormwater maps where you own certain pieces? And I used Monarch and CPP as the perfect example. You own the channels, you own this ground, but we own the pipes. We're trying to put together a complete stormwater system so that it's all under one roof, all under one group of people that are taking maintaining the entire system.
So that's and there's places even on that map, there's inlets and there's channels and stuff that don't know who owns them. So those are some of the things that we're saying, yeah, we're going to take it and we're going to go with it. But those, these are the things we've got to work through. But the fact is we want to get it needs to get under one complete system.
The holy site is going to be under one complete system. It's not you're going to own a pond, and you're going to own this channel and the HOA is going to own that channel and things like that. This is so that we, the city, just the same way the roads and everything else. It's one complete system that we can look at, work on and use the best economy of scale to get everything done.
Chuck:
I appreciate that. I understand Larry, I think it's a monumental task that's for sure. After seeing the cobweb of pipes and storm drains through this community. Good luck.
Larry:
Thank you. But these are things. And I've seen some stuff too, that, you know, when I see channels with the pipes are half full of sediment and stuff. These are the things we know need to get addressed.
Like I said, we haven't gone through and identified them all. But do we understand the project? And between Joe and I, I spent ten years in the pipe industry installing storms who are in maintaining it. Jet trucks. I ran a truck. I run the TV cameras. I ran it all. So I've got a very strong background in the pipeline industry and so does Joe.
Chuck:
Let me ask a leading question. And counselor, you might help me with this. We're paying our residents or paying $5 a month for storm drains. After you come over to this shop and go through all the records and find out what you need to find out, how long is our $5 rate going to stay? Is it going to be for the end of the year? Is it going to start off in 2023? Can you give us any indication on that? No. That's that.
Larry:
We're coming back to that same paragraph. That's what this is our starting point. We know it. And please remember it's $5 for a three quarter inch. It's based on meter size, which is a little different because most areas, your commercial properties and stuff are based on area of square footage of impervious area for the stormwater, because that's what contributes.
But no, we've got to get started with it and take a look at it and see. But we're, not we're not we don't want to raise rates unless there's a justification, and we're not going to do it unless we got the documents to prove it.
Chick:
I understand. Kim, how do you feel about the rate issue? It's rather sensitive to our community and to us.
Kim:
Under the agreement, as its, as its stated right now, you'll continue to collect your $5 a month per household until October 31st.
Chuck:
Of this year?
Kim:
Of this year. After that time, the city will install it or put in place its own fee structure. The only thing I can tell you about that fee structure relates to something we talked about a little earlier, which is that district fees, rates, tolls and charges have to be uniform and they have to be rationally related to the cost, the actual cost of providing the service.
So they are bound by that same law and will have to charge a reasonable rate related to that actual cost. So if our rate is related to the cost on this side, and they have newer property on that side, in theory the rates should come down. But you can't guarantee that.
Chuck:
And you've reviewed the IGA? Yes. And you're comfortable with it for us.
Kim:
Yes as long as I think I highlighted in my report in the prior drafts of the IGA, you weren't turning over all of the funds that you have saved up for the system, but that's already been discussed, that they're taking it as is. So they would use those funds to upgrade.
One other thing I think that's important is the IGA does say that all of those funds go into their stormwater enterprise, which means they can only use it for the stormwater.
Chuck:
Okay, good. Thank you, Jason.
Jason:
It seems to me that our constituents and the city's constituents are the same. So if we give this over to them and they do raise the fee to $10, double it or whatever, the city's council is going to have to answer to that. That's not going to be anything that I think we need to. There's going to be accountability there.
Chuck:
Point. I guess. Point well taken. You're absolutely right. Directors?
Chris:
I would agree. But at the same time, the metro district has a fiduciary duty to do what is in our fiduciary duty to our constituents. So if we and I'm not, I'm just saying it this way. If we sit or if we anticipate and we, our due diligence are not fully done, and then it ends up that we raise the rate by $10.
Yeah, the city council, they they get voted, but we essentially didn't do our jobs because we didn't go into really investigating and doing our diligence to make sure that we did everything within our power to up, to not turning it over to the city to make sure that the rates don't raise on their side.
Tera:
Thank you, Mr. President. So as I read this agreement and I do appreciate this. Thank you, Kim, that was one of my questions, is that if you had read it. So I do appreciate that it clearly, clearly does say under the assumption of services. There is it's clearly, you know, lays out how you intend to go about the process.
And it does state that the city stormwater utility shall not be used for general governmental purposes or transferred into the city's general fund. So it has to be used for the purposes and as it out lays it in here, you're assuming these services. So it's really just the funds that are there. Just go to whoever's going to do it.
And whether we're using contractors to do it or whether they're using contractors to do it. To director Blanckaert’s point, we're serving the same people. They're all the same people, and it does stay in here that they would not. They're going to do an analysis of the stormwater fees. And they would do, they wouldn't raise anything based on documented costs.
It says how they would go about if they were going to raise fees. They talk about that in here and it and there's a termination clause in here that says that either one of us can terminate for any reason, as I read it, within 30 days. Is that correct? So to me, it makes sense to at least go through some of these steps to see.
And it does say it's $5 per meter, $8.35 per this, whatever. But I mean, if what I've heard you say is that you intend to turn it over at some point anyway, and that there's a process outlined in here about how they intend to do that. So, you know, if they could start this process of getting the, what it looks like the project plan together to make this happen, and we can cancel it on 30 days notice if we're if we think that it's not going in the right direction, we can cancel for any reason. I don't see a reason why they shouldn't proceed.
Chuck:
Thank you, Director Radloff and Director Lewis, thank you very much for your concerns. I think it's important now that since we have the document, is it to be signed tonight?
Kim:
That's up to you.
Chuck:
Okay, I'd like to hear a motion from a director as to authorizing us to, to sign this intergovernmental agreement regarding the transfer of our stormwater system and necessary property rights to the city of Castle Pines. Is that your motion?
Jason:
I'll give you that motion yes. I'll second.
Chuck:
When I call your name, please.
Denise:
Question on this. Yes. Does that make this a done deal? Does it mean that that means the agreement.
Chuck:
It's a done deal, correct.
Denise:
We're done, we're transferred. That's not giving them the opportunity to look at.
Kim:
The closing is until September 30th. And as Mrs. Radloff noticed, there is that 30 day termination period.
Denise:
Okay, and this will give them time to review what's how it's worked. They'll have access to all of the paperwork that they need and want to look at. Here's my concern. You get, you get the whatever it is you want to look at, study, etc. and it comes back considerably different than what we're expecting. What's our out or escape clause? That's, that comes in that 30 day window? Yes. Right? Yes. So we're somewhat protected. I'm not trying to be paranoid. I'm just asking.
Kim:
If you want, we could add, I think, a provision that says you'll report back to this board in maybe mid September or the end of August, and what you think the rates are going to be.
Larry:
I don't think the rates are really our first priority. Our first priority is to develop everything and then take. That's why this and it's clearly states that we will evaluate everything. And then that's when we're going to take a look at the rates. But the first.
Tera:
Our project manager and your project manager work jointly is how I read it. It's not like. Right. You are. We're, we're working together with them. It's not like they won't be.
Chuck:
We want to work and make this happen. But if there's any surprises, we have an opportunity to to cancel the agreement. Correct.
Jason:
Part of the event. Sorry. Go ahead. Part of the valuation process isn't just only looking over the metro district stormwater records. At some point, we need to do that pilot project to really on the ground assess, have we have a professional engineering firm that specializes in this lined up to actually do an assessment that assigns condition scores, those conditions scores, as part of that proposal, they would assess or assign maintenance needs.
And then that really drives costs in an on plan. Just reviewing the records doesn't give us an idea. It gives us an idea of what was being done. It doesn't give us an idea of what the actual condition of the system is.
Chuck:
Will, that engineering report be in the 30 day window? Yeah.
Denise:
What's the time frame on that?
Larry:
Yeah it wasn't. That's just one of the things we were looking at. It was a very specific area. But that's the process we're going to use to get it established.
Denise:
Isn't it the same as what we do for maintenance. So okay, so you're continuing what we already do.
Tera:
This is really just a collaboration. This, this doesn't say that we're turning this over. What it says is we're allowing us to collaborate on this project together. But we are, we don't we're not turning anything over to them with this. I mean, we still have 30 days if in the, in the part of the project that we if we don't feel like that projects going well or whatever, we still have 30 days. Okay.
Jason:
Or till September.
Tera:
Or till September yeah.
Kim:
We'll just have to make sure that by September 1st we're certain we're moving ahead. Correct. Or cancel. All right, so.
Larry:
And again, just to highlight what Tera said, the project manager, we will be working together. So there will be a good communications. We're going to have to have that to get this to go together. The same is when we put the water line in here. It took a good collaboration to get us to work together and get that done, and we got it done.
Chuck:
And just to reiterate, we're pulling on the same rope. We're working for the same people. Yes. So Kim, I'm confident that we should pass the motion. But let me let me have a vote.
Board Voting All Speak:
Jason. Yes that's fine, I approve. Denise. Approved. Chris. Approve. Tera. Approve. And I approve. Thank you.
Describer:
Chuck is speaking off mic and is briefly inaudible.
Joe:
He knows we've been talked for years.
Ken:
Mr. President, please turn on your mic.
Chuck:
Thank you, I appreciate your time.
Tera:
And thank you. Larry Nimmo and I'm sorry Joe, what is your last name? Marencik. Could you spell that for me, please? Marencik. Thank you.
Chuck:
Thank you, thank you guys very much. I think Jim, we've already, you've already spoken about number B in your report so we can move on to director's matters.
Jim:
I do have one more thing. If I could just make one more comment. And I've done this last two board meetings. So this would be the last time I get to do that. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity you gave me almost four years ago.
I appreciate all the support you've given me and certainly our staff. And after June 30th, you'll have to find me. But seriously, thank you. This has been very rewarding for me. I've enjoyed the relationship, good friends I've made, which is what I count on the most. To be honest with you is friends for life. And how we get to know each other is one thing.
But thank you again and thank you to my staff who worked very hard and great people to work with. And so after June 30th, I'll be with my grandson.
Chuck:
Jim, I just want to say I learned a lot from you in the five years that I've been in this, in this seat. Thank you. Thank you for your friendship, but also thank you for your leadership, for this community. You will be missed and I will be calling you.
Jim:
I'm getting a new phone next week, so thank you.
Chuck:
Leave it on. Discussing the letters and initial responses for potential CPNMD water and wastewater inclusion partners, we. I sent out letters to Centennial, Aurora, Parker in the town of Castle Rock, and every one of them responded positively that they would like to meet with us and find out a little bit more what we're looking for. We obviously want to find out more about what the rest of the districts have to offer us.
So we will start setting up the next meeting with Centennial, Aurora, Parker. We're already quite a ways along. So really, just those two. The city town of Castle Rock indicated that they'd be happy to meet with us, but they're pretty busy with all of their new housing developments and everything. So they said, we'll see how you do with the other districts.
And if that all falls apart, come and talk to us. So right now we're setting up Centennial and Aurora to find out what, what they can do for us and what we can do for them, and see what the definition of inclusion means to those two groups. Parker is well aware of our dating other water districts, if you will.
They're very open to that. They're encouraging that at the end of the day, they've said to me, you're going to choose us. So we're not worried. I said, okay, we're going to go through the process anyway. So it's all good news and we are going to continue moving forward.
One of the things I'd like to do is on number B. Currently, our monthly meetings are the third Monday of every month. I would like to suggest that we move that to the fourth Monday of every month. My reasoning for that is it just feels better to me that we have an extra week to get projects done, to get discussions made.
And it just toward the end of the month, I'd like to sort of end that month on a good note or whatever note it ends up being when we talk about certain projects. So I'd also like to change the manner in which we are meeting as a, as the president with each one of the individual directors. I'd like to do that as a group in a study section session.
I think it's important, as far as I'm concerned, that we all hear what each one of us is saying good, bad or indifferent. But when we leave the study session, we are one. We can argue, we can scream, we can yell, we can shake hands and come out of the room knowing what everybody wants and how they're going to deal with it.
But we got to do that as a group. I don't think that we can do that individually. So the study session timing is somewhat optional. Initially, I thought we could do it a week in advance, so it would be the Monday before. But I recognize that a couple of us have jobs. And I suspect that if we did it a couple hours before the board meeting, would that be appropriate, Kim? To if we came up with something in a study session a couple hours before the board meeting, could we add it to the directors matters without a lot of conflict?
Kim:
Yes you could. Everything you do should be on the agenda for the actual meeting, but we can add something that talks about whatever happens in the study session. Okay. The study session will be a public meeting, just like the board meeting. And I think it's probably wise to get closer to the board meeting. I don't know if that close is important, but a lot happens in a week around here so.
Chuck:
Yeah, okay. And I think then I think that the meeting before the board meeting would be appropriate. The study session, any discussion?
Denise:
When you talk a, what's a time frame for a study session? Hour allocated time? I know that's not set in stone, but generally speaking.
Tera:
I would think maybe an hour and maybe we could eat while we're studying. I know well, because you're running from work, maybe we eat and study and, and then maybe we, we don't have to. I don't know, maybe if we study something, I don't know if it immediately has to go to that meeting or if we study something. Could we do it in the next month or something. So it's not all tight but.
Kim:
Yeah, the two don't have to be tied together at all. So whatever you're doing, the study session is part of your studying in your education. If something happens at the board meeting immediately, that's okay. If it waits six months, that's okay too.
Tera:
Well, and I know personally I would prefer to have because I've set aside the third Monday. For me, it would work better if they were done on the same night, but that's whatever works for the group.
Chris:
Who is at the study session? Do we have access to the staff or it's just us?
Chuck:
The staff would be available Nathan, Jim or Michael and Kim. If there are issues we feel are important to talk during that study session, if one of the board members request that, then we should honor that.
But yes, anybody. If we did it at 4:00 and we work for an hour, an hour and a half, the board meetings at six, so we have some time to eat a donut and drink a glass of water. Does that work for you?
Tera:
Like I said, I think we could do it at five and we just get dinner for everybody and we because we can't make any decisions during that time. We can only talk about stuff. Exactly, exactly.
Chris:
So from someone that actually does work, I actually would prefer it on a different day where I can start, I don't we can do it the same time 6:00, 6:00 on the prior Monday, but coming even at 5:00 on the same day, I think some of us coming.
So what are you what are you saying? The prior. So two Mondays in a row, you said you want to do it.
Chuck:
The third session. Two Mondays in a row?.
Chris:
No, the study session on the third Monday and board meeting on the fourth Monday. Is that what you had proposed originally?
Denise:
What about, as you said, a lot happens in a week. What about a Wednesday or Thursday before the board meeting?
Chris:
That's fine I think we also need time to contact folks, like, for instance, the things that come up on the agenda that we want to talk about in the meeting. We might want to actually go back and reach out to the finance director, to the other folks that, and have that time to get answers to questions and so forth.
So having it right before I think doesn't give us that much time, but maybe yeah, it's not the Monday before, but it's something earlier closer.
Tera:
And I think the study session is like if we had questions for maybe the finance director is presenting, we had direction for the finance director, we would get the benefit of all hearing the same information from the finance director.
Chuck:
Of course, of course. So am I hearing study session on a Wednesday, meeting on a Monday again? And is the fourth Monday okay? I think it gives us a month to get things done before we start a new month and a new financial period.
Tera:
Okay, let's try that.
Chuck:
Let's, let's and you have to report to the State Counselor, on our change of dates?
Kim:
Yes and I can do that tomorrow so.
Chuck:
So since it's my idea, I'll make the motion that we change our general Castle Pines North Metro District meeting, board meeting to the fourth Monday of every month, and a study session on the Wednesday before.
Is that okay? And the board meeting will stay at 6:00. The study session can be.
Jason:
Five would be better. 5:00.
Chris:
To 5:30 is probably the earliest one.
Chuck:
Yeah okay 5:30 because we have two days in between, okay. 5:30 for the study session. 6:00 on a Wednesday, 6:00 for the board meeting on the fourth Monday. I hear a second?
Chris:
I second it. I have a second. Any further discussion?
Board Voting All Speak:
Jason. Approved. Denise. Approved. Chris. Aye. Tera. Aye. Good motion passes.
Chris:
I do have one thing I want to go back to A, if that's okay.
Chuck:
Back to what? A. A okay. Stormwater.
Chris:
No. No. The directors matters. Okay.
Nathan:
So so sorry. Can I ask a quick clarifying question just about the meeting change? Just so I'm running my schedule down, do the staff need to be available for both the study session, which was clearly stated, and the board meeting as well still? Occasionally. Okay, perfect.
Chuck:
If there are specific things like we talked about tonight. Yes.
Nathan:
Awesome, cool thank you.
Chuck:
Okay and we'll give you some heads up okay. Thank you. Good question.
Chris:
That's what I had asked. So we're having two board meetings. That's why I said.
Chuck:
Well remember the, the study session is not, it will be zoomed, it will be recorded, but there will be no comment period. Okay. Okay.
Denise:
And no voting.
Jason:
And no voting.
Chuck:
No voting, no decisions. Direction.
Chris:
Yeah, got it. Alrighty let's, I do have questions on the. Go ahead.
Chuck:
Did we vote? We did vote, didn't we? Everybody approved it. All right, Chris.
Chris:
Back to the invitations to the water districts. And I know we said we've gotten the positive feedback and now we're going to contact them. But I want to make I want to make, I want to, I guess, document the schedule. We're contacting them back and what we're going to, you know, who we're contacting.
So even if we need to make a motion. So when are we actually planning to contact back Centennial and Aurora? And then I see that we didn't say Parker. And you know, I read in the, in the legal notes that said Parker, you know, whatever Parker's information is in here, I don't know if this is public information or not. But I want I think we need to make sure that all three are on the same schedule so that we are being very transparent with all the different water districts, and that we're contacting them on a schedule that's in the district's interest.
So the reason I say that, say it that way, is we've got to go through this whole evaluation and share the information, make sure everybody is interested in inclusion, but then we have to get a vote to we got to have a vote and we have two. We got a couple of peers to have a vote. This was supposed to be a proven January, right.
We certainly missed the main time frame to get a vote, which means the next one is what November counsel?
Kim:
It is November. But Parker said they will not do a November election and recall from the last election that it's not our election, it's the party that we're including into. So they'll control that timeline to some extent during the discussions. We'll have to make that a point when you want that election to take place.
Chris:
Okay, so then we have to keep three schedules. So from a Parker perspective, the earliest they're going to they want to have a vote in this is not in November. That's correct. Okay and then the same would be as we make the discussions with the other water districts, find out what's the earliest they can have so that we have it memorialized essentially what our schedule would be to make this, any type of a decision on this, Jim.
Jim:
Can I add a little bit? When the letter that we sent to I got an email back from a lady named Dawn Jewell, and I forwarded that to, to Chuck. They gave us, I think it's four dates, kind of near the end of July that they would like to meet. So they have said, thank you for the letter. We'd like to meet with you.
Here are some dates and times we can meet. So that's one thing you'll need to decide. As Chuck stated few minutes ago, I talked to Mark Marlowe in Castle Rock. He said Jim, thank you so much. Appreciate that. You know, maybe we could help you at some point, but really think you want to really deal with maybe Centennial and Parker first to see that's really a better marriage, so to speak, potential.
But if all of those fall reach back out to us so there's no time frame. Centennial, I talked with their manager, Sam Calkins, and they're actually having a, they have a board meeting tomorrow. And so they're going to visit with their staff tomorrow as to what the staff might like to recommend. So there isn't any dates or anything set up other than they're going to visit with their board.
And then I really think they're going to come back to us and say, okay, here's where we want to talk. So I just want to be a little more specific of those timeframes, if that's okay. And then I haven't had any conversation with Parker, so Chuck or somebody else could address that.
Chuck:
Also note board that item 13, 13. We're going to go to a executive session and talk a little bit more detail about this issue. So some of your questions may be answered. Maybe not. So hold fast. We have some more information as we move along okay. Any other?
Chris:
And for the record, I just want to make sure for the record, I know we've got a special session set up, but. I want to make sure that whatever it is, we're very transparent. We've not ever had a special session in four years. I've been here. Now we have a special session just because we have one less right a month ago or two. Now we have another special session to talk about responses from Parker. So I just want to make sure we are really been working on a transparent type process here.
And I want to keep that transparency as much as we can, but I just want to make sure that's on the record.
Chuck:
I think you're absolutely right. I do think that because we're discussing other districts and planning some strategy for our constituents, we need to all be on the same page rather than on zoom. So that's why this one meeting is important to us.
But no, I'm with you, Chris. I'm not in favor of executive sessions, Tera. Okay. The last thing I have, it's not on the agenda. But just remember, there's a cleanup date on Saturday July 16th, 2022. Will be at Coyote Ridge Park at 7:30, if I remember right. Ken, is that correct? That is correct. Saturday, July 16th. So put that on your calendar. We're going to clean up Castle Pines. Anything else, directors matters? Tera.
Tera:
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Okay. Just a quick question. Do we have any, I think it's for Mr. Worley. An update on the ARP projects that we applied for?
Jim:
No, I've heard nothing at all from the county. When we first sent in that application, they told us it was going to be in the June and July timeframe, that they'll evaluate all of those. So the answer is no. We've had no communications since then.
Tera:
And then how about the Bristlecone storm drainage fee refund?
Jim:
I've got that figured out. And that's in my office. And I'll work on that.
Tera:
Is that forthcoming?
Jim:
Yes. Yeah. Before I leave, I'll give them a credit on it.
Tera:
Okay thank you. And I also wanted to say thank you for your service. And I will do my utmost to help them gracefully let you go to retirement, because I know you've earned it. But enjoy your time. And, and thank you for all that you've done for the district. And then the only. Oh, and I just want to compliment Nate in that. I know that we had a couple of jobs posted and I saw that they were taking them down.
And, and I think that's because you're able to get those filled and actually save us money in the process. So anything that saves money makes me happy. And if that's all working out, I want to say thank you. Thank you for solving that issue. And then just a request for the other board members. I know that as one of the board members, a board member, things that are important to me when I serve on a board is I would really enjoy it if we could go through a board orientation, just get all on the same page as far as open meeting laws and those kind of things, I think that's something I find helpful.
You know, and as I look at everything, as our landscape really review our goals and objectives as directors because our landscape has changed. When you guys started this process for inclusion, you didn't have renewable water, and now we have renewable water and our water plant has, has there's been a lot of plant upgrades and everything. So just kind of reviewing those and sort of what our goals and objectives are for the inclusion.
I think it might be timely to kind of revisit all that and then as part of that, maybe a staffing plan, because maybe we need a project manager to do some project management stuff with the, the thing that we just passed, or maybe there's different ways to accomplish what we're doing. And then for Mr. Worley, if you could help me find these documents before you leave, is do we have any kind of operations and maintenance plan?
I know I heard a lift station renewal and rehab program, and I don't know if we also have one for a plant or if there's an overall one. Maybe that's part of the capital projects and planning, I don't know. And then there was a consolidation study and then the intergovernmental agreement with Centennial. If you could just kind of point me in the right direction or send those to me, that would be greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Chuck:
Other questions? All right that ends item number Roman numeral 13 I'm sorry 12. We have a public comment. Period. Anybody wish to speak? No, no. No sir. No Zoom. Alright all good. Okay we'll move to the executive session. For those of you that are in the audience, it's probably a good opportunity to leave because when we come out of the executive session, there'll be nothing to report anyway except to adjourn.
Describer:
The video ends on graphic with a white background and forest green letters which says “Castle Pines North Metro District CPNMD Board Executive Session.