October 19, 2022 Study Session
Transcript
Describer:
Study Session Agenda
Wednesday, October 19, 2022, at 5:30 p.m.
7404 Yorkshire Drive, Castle Pines, CO 80108
NOTE: CPNMD study sessions are educational opportunities for directors, the staff/consultant
team, and special guests with subject-matter expertise to transparently take a deeper dive into,
discuss, and debate topics of interest. During study sessions, directors may ask questions and
exchange views but are strictly prohibited from voting. Though public comment is not allowed,
residents may watch the proceedings in person and via live video stream and video recording
at https://cpnmd.org/board-meetings.
I. Call study session to order.
II. Public Hearing: CPNMD’s proposed opt-out of the Colorado Family Leave &
Medical Insurance (FAMLI) Program.
III. Candid exchange of views regarding CPNMD’s discussions and practical
prospects with potential Inclusion partners.
IV. Staff/consultant team’s proposed skate park facility location, design, cost, and
construction timeframe.
V. Adjourn
Describer:
The video starts on graphic with a white background and forest green letters which says “Castle Pines North Metro District Study Session October 19, 2022”. The meeting opens on a shot of all board members present.
Board President Chuck Lowen:
Welcome, everybody, to our study session for the North Metropolitan District. Wednesday, October 19th. And it is now 5:35. I'd like to call the study session to order. The first item that I would like to discuss is the family. Family Leave and Medical insurance program. I'd like to open the meeting to public hearing. If anybody has any questions or can zoom in.
Please do so now and we'll take your calls as they occur. So we'll open the public hearing at 5:36. So the public hearing is open for comments.
Board Member Director Tera Radloff:
Mr. President, I don't know if our district manager I know our attorney wasn't able to meet with us tonight, but is there any kind of setup or frame that discussion so that anyone who's listening in to this session knows what this public hearing is in regard to?
Chuck:
As I indicated when I opened it up, it's for the Colorado Family Leave and Medical Insurance program. And I think at this time, correct me if I'm wrong, Nathan, that is for employees only.
District Manager Nathan Travis:
Correct. Yes. So Kim instructed me to get notice to the employees a week ago, detailing that the board was looking at taking the action of voting out of it. Along those lines, they were all given a copy of basically what the act says, what the opt in opt out means. They all had a chance to review it. They also had an opportunity to, if they weren't available to come tonight, they had the ability to submit to me in writing any statements they'd like.
Nobody wrote a statement. They all verbally indicated that they didn't have any comments to make. Thank you.
Board Member Director Chris Lewis:
So that's good because I was kind of wondering about this a little bit. So you've actually pulled each one of the employees and made sure that you've gotten specific feedback on any of their concerns or issues that anyone asked for additional information.
Nathan:
Nobody asked for any information beyond the print out that Kim had given me to pass on to them. It seemed much more geared toward as I understood it, and the employees reading through it, that it's kind of designed a lot around parental leave following pregnancy. We just don't really have anybody that is in that mode. Or really has a desire to.
And the other side is that as we also have the opportunity or the ability to opt back in at some point in the future if we decide to. Kim's not sure how long that ability is going to stick around, but the way that it's written now, we can opt out. And if there's ever a need to or desire to in the future, it's something we can rejoin.
Chris:
Okay, and I think so I don't think it's just pregnancy. So it's more than us just that. So it could be for any any family leave item that comes up adoption, pregnancy anything that has to do with that if it's similar to what we have in in our company. And I did read the part that we can opt back in.
And I just want to make sure from a employee perspective, I am more concerned that we're taking care of them appropriately and that any for any reason that they think this should be something that we should do. I want to make sure we know about it and hear about it. And even in from your estimation in the future for other employees, that this could be beneficial, because like you said, we can I think they can opt in.
I think it says 23 to 25 or something, if I remember correctly, at a half to charge or something, but that's just their portion. But that means the portion that we pay as a district that's not covered or something like that.
Chuck:
That's what the the notice says. It says an employee whose local government employer declines participation in the program may elect to individually participate in the program for a minimum of three years by registering with the FM family and paying 50% of the premium.
So I would assume that if an employee wanted to opt in on their own for a three year period, they would pay 50% of the premium. And I would assume that I would assume, I don't know, but I would assume the district would cover that cost. I just don't I don't know on that. And that's that's something that human resource should discuss.
But Nathan, you did state that you requested all district employees to submit written comments on whether to participate in the program. Is that correct?
Nathan:
They were given the option to submit comments if they wanted to.
Chuck:
And they were given a notice to provide a comment at a public hearing scheduled for October 19th at 5:30, which is what this program is at the district office. And so it again, I assume that since we haven't heard from anybody that at this particular time, unless there's further discussion.
We can since we can't vote or make a motion, we'll carry this resolution over to the board of directors meeting on Monday and state, if this board is in agreement with this process, to not facilitate the premium collection.
Tera:
Sounds good. Are you closing the public hearing as well?
Chuck:
In lest we have any calls? And if we don't, Director Radloff, I'd like to close it unless you have something you'd like to. Okay, so we'll take this item up on Monday at our regular board meeting. With that being said, 54321. No calls. I am closing the public hearing based on the agenda. The third item is a discussion of the Metro District's prospects with potential inclusion partners. We're going to move that down to item for and bring number four up to item three.
And hear from Carol Henry on as a staff consultant for the this group's proposed skate park facility location, design, cost and construction time frame. And I think I hope all of you received from Nathan the financial update. And then obviously an overhead photo of the proposed skate park location. Does everybody have that? And do we have Carol Henry on the line?
Consultant Carol Henry:
Yes we do. Welcome, Carol. Good evening. So would you like started on the skate park or the summary of the where we're at with the pickleball?
Chuck:
Let's talk about since it's on the agenda, let's talk about the skate park and the proposed location, the photo we have. How is that decided? Is it appropriate being so close to homes to the south? Give me an overall view of your decision making process.
Carol:
Sure thing. And and the decision making is too strong a word right now. We want to investigate this site and potentially another site that's closer to the soccer fields, but somewhere that is adjacent to existing parking. And we're we're honestly just getting started on talking about the spaces. And we would like to go through a small stakeholder meeting with the skate park or with the kids that would use a skate park and potentially the the residents nearby, just to make sure that we have that we know what the people that use want and that we hear what the residents around us say. But we're okay.
Chuck:
I think that's appropriate. Yeah. So we know those that don't want it here loud and clear from them, I'm sure.
Carol:
Yeah. But and we want to get it right. Is it, is it a is it a ball. Is it a street course. Is it a combination of the two. And then we budget wise we need to understand what we can what we can afford. The current skate park is was only 6900ft², which is pretty small. And, you know, it was enough for a small street course, but ideally they're closer to 10,000ft².
But does that does that meet your budget? Does it do the the users want to hold. You know, so there's some steps we need to do to make sure that the plans are putting together at a conceptual level, are some that are appealing to the users and also have some understanding of the neighbors as well.
Chuck:
Carol, what would be the construction of this skate park facility? The old one, as you know, we we tore down it was looked like cardboard and metal. Is this is this.
Carol:
It lasted pretty well for the length of time. Yeah. It did.
Chuck:
You're right. Is this more concrete or.
Carol:
My my expectation. And it's my expectation. Not necessarily. The users would be that it was primarily concrete with pipe rails. So I would expect to have some some bowls and some rolling elements and potentially some street course elements that are built on a flat or concrete pad. But you have all the elements built up in concrete, so it's a much longer lived.
Event that, you know, we have some that we did 25, 30 years ago. They're still very usable.
Chuck:
I don't have any idea how large it could be. Maybe somebody on this board who's a skateboarder might have a better estimate than I do, but 6900ft² seems large, but 10,000 square foot may be appropriate, I don't know, board. Any comments? Any thoughts? Oh, Nathan. The the border.
Nathan:
Yeah. It's it's it's been a while, but yeah, the the skate park that was up there is was relatively small. There's a few reasons that you want to try and expand the size one. Obviously you can get more features in it. There's also a safety aspect to it. So especially if you are if we're looking at something that incorporates both bowls and ramps and more port stuff, as well as some street features, which is what, you know, more rails and kind of we just call them fun boxes.
But those kinds of elements, if you get them really close together, there's a lot of speed and momentum coming off the top of a ramp in a bowl, and it's really easy to have some pretty heavy duty impacts out in the middle. Most of the really vicious skate park injuries I've seen were from collisions more than anything else, and that's a really common design, is to kind of put those things now, especially as their skate park design has gotten just more and more, I don't know, awesome for lack of a better term, separating those elements can be really, really helpful for that reason. And the park that we had is it was it was great. It served its purpose, but it was very compact area. And so I think expanding that is definitely reasonable.
Chuck:
I understand that. And you raised another topic. I wasn't going to bring it up. But since you mentioned collision. I don't know if you can answer this, Nathan, but with a skateboard park, whether it's 6900ft² or 10,000ft², what's the liability this district will be exposed to?
Nathan:
That would probably be a better question for Kim. It's not going to be any more a liability than we already have. Having already had a skate park, I would imagine, but I don't have the Esq. after my name.
Carol:
So with us, usually you'll post your rules and expectations, and if you don't have anybody pay to get inside it, there's no expectation of observed use.
Chuck:
That makes sense. Thank you.
Board Member Director Denise Crew:
Did we in the past ever have any issues with liability to your knowledge?
Nathan:
Nothing that I'm aware of.
Chuck:
Chris, you've been an advocate of this. Comments. Before we close this item.
Chris:
Yeah, I just want to hear the rest of the proposal on the scare part. So I got the location. What are the rest of the plans next? Next steps.
Carol:
So the next step plans are to to take it through a conceptual design. So that again we have we've looked at a couple of areas. We've laid out some general areas of use. Come back with some image boards of of types of skate elements. And then, you know, really I would say reach out to the skateboarders as well as the residents because we we have to hear from both of them to see, you know, how is it, how is it going to be, is it just skateboarders?
Do you allow BMX or scooters? What what are the expectations of the users? Because that will affect the design. And so and once we get kind of the program laid out in a good feel for the.
What all we need to do because it's there are a lot of elements to it that are in addition to the skate park that you want to have it inclusive in the rest of the feel like it's a part of the park. So potentially a shelter and walks and places you can observe it as well anyway, so take it through a conceptual level and then once we've decided this is where it's going to go, then we'll move on and get a survey and and and start with some construction drawings.
And we often will partner with an actual kind of a design build skate skateboard expert. But for this, this first piece is just where should it go? What should be in it and what what do we hear from the from the users?
Chuck:
Just a quick hopefully a quick answer. What were your parameters? What parameters were used to locate it in in this particular highlighted area? Are there other areas within the park that might be more beneficial or did something drive this location?
Nathan:
So the location, I can speak to that if you don't mind. The location that's highlighted was really David and I just walking the park and then kind of bringing like brainstorming what we thought would be helpful. So one thing that was good about that, that section is that parking lot that sits there is largely unused. So there's not a lot of utilization of that spot.
So it'd be good to start using a parking lot that we already have. The area that's right there that's highlighted is actually a good portion of it is actually on a pretty good downhill slope, which for many types of parks isn't necessarily favorable. But when you start talking about skate features, you can really take advantage of natural landscapes to build ramps, bowls, stuff like that.
And and then on the other side of the sidewalk, kind of outside of the highlighted area, we also have a pretty decent flat area that we could separate if we wanted to do kind of the bowls and rolling features, and then put the more street features over there. Once we I started talking with Carol about it. There were a couple other issues that she brought up, so it's much more visible than the current site is.
It's still not the most visible. You get pretty good exposure from Hidden Point driving past it. You'll be able to see it pretty well, but not as well as you could see some other areas in the park, and then also really making sure that it feels integrated with the rest of the facility. And so we wanted to obviously keep this area in mind, but also move back kind of across to the other side and see if there's any room around the soccer fields where we could get both visibility and that same level of utility out of it.
There, it is also, Chuck, as you mentioned, it is much closer to homes than it once was. So that's something to be aware of at least.
Chris:
So I think that was one of the things feedback we got the last time we talked about the park. The skate park was the fact that it was so not isolated, but away from from prying eyes and the normal residence and so forth, because as a result of that, they had a lot of privacy, and they also left a lot of graffiti and all kinds of weird stuff like that.
So I think the fact that it's closer to the road and the ball field, it looks like the almost sheer same parking lot there that that's beneficial because now it's not hidden. And, and folks can actually be able to.
And they'll, they'll actually be able to see what's going on and interact with the, the kids or whoever uses the park kids, adults, whoever. So that's a good thing. At least I think that's a good thing. So that's good that you guys actually walked it and actually came up with the proposal. The proposal is on the other side of the ball field, yeah, I'd be interested. But then it takes away the whole fact that now they're back again where they're away from people's prying eyes. So that's my thought on that.
Chuck:
What's your timing for your next step? Getting a public meeting or setting out an announcement to meet to with kids to talk. Well, how is this going to work, Carol?
Carol:
We'll take the next couple of weeks to to talk more about the details and how how it's going to go forward. But I would hope and then, you know, in three weeks we can have a community meeting and a user meeting. And then I would expect within six weeks we would have a nice concept with a better cost estimate and and layout to, to present to you. And then after that we would go into construct, you know, begin the construction document.
Board Member Director Jason Blankaert:
As we're, as we're designing the conceptual it, I would like to interject and maybe say we add some security cameras if this place is not as visible from the street, maybe to deter a little bit of nefarious activity or those types of behaviors. I don't know if we can include that in the next proposal or the next cost approximate and and see where we can go with that.
Carol:
Yeah, that's probably a good suggestion as well. Just the more ice that you have on it, easier everyone will feel around.
Chris:
I think overall, if you can come up with a schedule, you know, I see you have some thoughts about what you want to do. It's in the next couple of weeks, but if you can at least I think we're meeting on Monday. If you can at least have a schedule for us for that, for the board meeting on Monday, so we can see what your plans are.
And I would not take away from the cameras from just a skate park if we're going to think of cameras, and I don't think we have cameras out there for anything, then we probably should look at that. Overall.
Jason:
Yeah, we probably don't have cameras in most of our parks, but judging from the destruction that happened at the previous park and the types of activity, I don't think putting cameras in there would hurt anything at all.
Chris:
No, I'm an agreement. I just think that if once you put a camera up with a wireless connection or whatever, we're going to do, well, if you're going to run cable, then you're going to run more cable than just one set of cable. Let's just make it safety something for the whole park. And it's I think would be beneficial.
But we can do it in stages. You know, we can have we can have it as you lay out the cameras just for the park, the skate park, for the pickleball court, the tennis court, the basketball courts, you know, the whole park, whatever. It's not a bad idea. And security is it's always good.
Chuck:
All right. Any other discussion? Did I hear somebody say, Carol, that you wanted to talk about the pickleball?
Carol:
Sure thing we are right now, we're just waiting for the well to be capped. That's been before we can make more progress. That will have, capping has to be done because it does take up a significant footprint. So they've they've got the general grading in place. They're ready to go as soon as the well is capped. And I think I think it's November around November 4th that the the pickleball courts contractor will be getting ready to put the tension in.
And about at the same time, there's been a delay on the transformer, but it should be at about the same time. So we're poised to make big progress as soon as we can get the the well kept.
Chuck:
And I understand that hopefully, Nathan mentioned to you that we wanted to add that acoustic fence.
Carol:
Yes. So we've gotten sorry. Go ahead.
Chuck:
No. Go ahead.
Carol:
We've gotten the preliminary change order pricing. We should be getting a formal change order in the next day or two.
Chuck:
And that based on what we have from Nathan on the approximate amount, it still falls under the original bid. If I understand your numbers correctly.
Carol:
Yes. Okay. Yes. We we took a deduction for the, the light poles that did not go in. Putting in the rest of the infrastructure. Should should it be decided that you want to go forward and light it to make it easy. But right now the poles and the controls are not going in. Okay. That has given us a deduct. Good.
Chris:
So can you remind me one on the schedule and then spend a little bit again on, on the light poles. And what's happening there.
Chuck:
We decided not to put in the lights but we wanted the infrastructure in, in case we decided later on that people wanted to use them in the evening. And so that was taken out several meetings ago.
Chris:
Why did we take out the lights? Is that so that, so today, well, five, 6:00, 7:00. So that we don't want the park use after a certain time. What's the deal I guess I missed that.
Nathan:
Yeah I don't yeah. There was, there was an issue with the hidden point. There were agreements in place between the metro district and Hidden Point when we took that area over around not allowing basically like lighting that goes up. And so they had brought I can't remember Carol now, it's been probably April or May I think is when we went through that process.
Carol:
Yes, yes. So there was a, I said an original agreement that required public meeting, public notification and additional public process and some concern from some of the people who attended the meetings for the for the hearing about lights. And we did some photo simulations.
Was decided that we would put it on hold, that Jim had gotten some feedback, that at that time that most pickleball players played during the day. So it was it was dropped for now.
Chuck:
Okay. At the. At the ground at the groundbreaking ceremony, I think I forget how many people we had is a great turnout. I don't think I spoke to any pickleball player that was there that played after dark.
Chris:
Okay. And so can you remind me again on the schedule we have for being ready with the court?
Carol:
It will it will take about two months from the time that, well, gets capped and that's been pushed back and pushed back. Anyway, we finally have a date of about November 4th, when it's supposed to be finished, so that we can then begin progress on on actually installing the pickleball courts. And that will be that will be about two months from the time they get to start with the, one thing that won't be finished this year will be plantings come spring. Just because it's a safer.
Chris:
And they can do the construction through through the winter, the cold months like that. No issues. Okay. Good to go.
Carol:
So yeah everything. So I think the surfacing is going to be the one unknown. We need to have a period that is relatively warm before it actually gets the surfacing. But it's the schedule has been moving enough. But we've had to play it a little bit by year.
Chris:
Okay. Thank you.
Chuck:
Nathan on the well abandonment. The state has approved it. Do you foresee any future delays the state could cause, either through a work permit or inspection of the end result. Anything that could slow you down?
Nathan:
No. Once. Once you get that permit, that's kind of your final, like, away you go. So once we get the once we get that. Well, cap, there'll be some work to do on the, on the back end. Just filing the appropriate paperwork with the state. But we don't need to wait for all of that to go through before we can move forward on construction.
Chuck:
It sounds like a major process, but is it? Does it really take a long time, or do you just backfill a bunch of concrete and put a lid on it?
Nathan:
Yeah, I mean it's both I guess. Yeah. So it's not it's not incredibly complicated, but it's a huge amount of material. So you've got a, you know, a well casing that's in this case almost a mile long underground. And so you have to get that thing completely full. Yeah. So by the time it goes down as far as it does and then gets clear on the other side of Hidden Point Boulevard over by, and while we're where A5 it sits, we have to fill that entire column.
And so a lot of it was a lot of what took so long with the state is that these horizontal, well, applications are not common in water at all. And so they had to put together a plan that the state was comfortable with that would effectively cap that entire thing. So the the timeline that I got was speaking in speaking with Mike, who is our main point of contact with Lane, the contractor that's doing the work for us.
He's the he's the one that gave us that November 4th date. All of the equipment scheduled to go, they're going to have their crews on site ready to roll, and then they'll be out there for about two weeks or so.
Chuck:
Very good board. Any other questions? Comments. All right. Thank you very much, Carol. Appreciate the effort and look forward to seeing your redefined schedule.
Carol:
I'm excited as well. Thank you.
Chuck:
Thank you. All right. Closing number four which now moved up to number three. Now we're going to talk about number three which moved down to number four. This is something that I have been looking forward to in being able to present my findings from the meetings that I went to with three of the districts, along with Nathan, who joined me.
And I know that Denise was with Centennial and Tera, you were with me at Parker and Chris, you were with us in Aurora. So the first one we had was Aurora. And I first have to preface it by thanking each one of these water administrators that we met with. They were pleasant, they were knowledgeable, they answered our questions and just seemed like really good people across the board.
So if anybody, if any of them are listening tonight or hear these comments, I just want to thank them in person and publicly. What a great group of district managers and employees we have around us. So that was that was fun to for me to meet them and understand their life, which is not much easier than our life.
Water is a critical component to life and everybody is, from my estimation, trying to grab whatever they can grab when, where and how not. There's not one big user on the block that can share with everybody, and several of the districts had different ideas. Aurora was was our simplest. Chris, I want you to chime in what I learned from them to really put an X on this idea with Aurora is that geographically, they are not in an area where we could financially put in an interconnect and make it work just too far away.
They do have some water issues there. They're looking at a lot of other options. They like, well, water. But the capital cost of of joining us in Castle Pines North is just not feasible.
Chris, did you I think that one of the things I wrote down, they'd like 95% surface water, 5% groundwater. So that doesn't seem plausible for us as a district to provide that to a large community. Chris.
Chris:
Thanks, Chuck. So the only thing I would add is, I guess I would say we did meet with their general manager, who's Marshall. Dawn, who's their water resource supervisor. So that's Marshall Brown, Dawn Jewell.
Chuck:
That's a D-a-w-n.
Chris:
D-a-w-n. Alexandra Davis who is their deputy director of water resources. And and then their legal counsel who Steve and I concur that the major item was the Geographic's separation between us and and their district. But at the same time, I mean, they were very open in that they were not looking to do an inclusion in. They had a bunch of other requests that they were evaluating, and I think they had like three or so requests that they were evaluating.
Their fee structure was a little bit higher than ours. So it's, you know, 1.5 times most of what their fee structure is going to be, 1.5 times whatever. And. And then geographic distance is just was not something none of us were going to be ready to overcome. So that was the major gist of it. They definitely had a lot of good ideas that we were able to take from the meeting. One was there water conservation efforts that they had going on? They actually had a whole plan that they went through and did some analysis on that.
They shared with us. They were willing to share with with us and make sure that we can incorporate that into our plans, because I think that is something that we definitely need to look at as a district, not just, you know, we do have enough water, but we don't need to wait until we are in a situation where we need to start conserving before we start implementing all the water conservation efforts that we need.
So that's one of the main things I took from that meeting was to get that suggestion from them. And and then hopefully Nathan can incorporate that into some of the other information. We got back from maybe Centennial too. And we just heard Castle Rock, right. Castle Rock is just implemented there, similar where you can't even build a home in front of a home anymore with without the front yard being a xeriscaped. And you know, so that's what I got out of.
Chuck:
One of the things I did notice at the meeting is that it seemed like those that individuals that Christie's mentioned, including the general manager Marshall, were just all giddy because they had just recently closed on our northern water rights with the Brighton, I think it was. And so they were starting to solve part of their problem. And I think that that process, apparently not being involved in it went very, very well.
Chuck:
So they were quite pleased with that. Chris, anything else?
Chris:
Nope, not missing anything major.
Denise:
I have a question.
Nathan:
Yeah. I don't have anything else. Go ahead.
Chuck:
Did you have anything to add on the Aurora? No. Not at all. Okay, Denise.
Denise:
You mentioned one and a half times. Are you saying that's what their their cost would be?
Chris:
The rates that they thought. You know, I think I have a note saying that at 1.5 times.
Nathan:
Yeah. So for there for anybody that asks to include into their district, they charge them a 150% of their current rate fee and structure.
Denise:
Which would probably put our monthly rates and fees considerably higher than where we're at now.
Nathan:
It wouldn't be considerably higher where we're at now. We'd have to go back and do a much deeper analysis on it. But the which and there just wasn't a lot of reason to spend a lot of time figuring out what that would look like, since it'd be basically impossible to physically connect to them anyway, which is another requirement that they have, is that you physically connect to their system, so they wouldn't want to or have any interest in operating us as a remote remote system.
Denise:
Okay, so one other question about integrating. I know and correct me if I'm wrong with they supply Stirling Ranch with water.
Nathan:
Aurora. Yeah. I don't believe that they're the provider for sterling.
Denise:
I think they are.
Nathan:
I'd have to go back and look in it. I don't I haven't spent a lot of time looking at that development.
Denise:
Jason, but I really do think they are. And my only my only maybe I'm wrong, but I could swear it is.
CFhuck
But I think geographically how how would they do that?
Denise:
Well, that was my question. How do they do that? And how did they get water back and forth? And if they actually are servicing them, isn't there a pipe somewhere that we could tap into? But I could be completely.
Denise:
There is the there is the wise. There is a wise pipeline that follows E-470 all the way around. We exited the Wise project, so we don't have any space inside of that pipe. So there is there is a capability to move water a long way through that direction. But we're not members are a part of it.
Chris:
So Denise is there. So there are like 71.5 times. Get them up to 190. We're at one something so you can.
Tera:
it sounds like it's kind of a. Thank you. They're geographically undesirable. We would have to connect to them, which makes it nearly impossible. And then the other thing.
Chuck:
It's just expensive. It's not it's very I think the quote was over $90 million.
Denise:
Okay, they do supply Sterling Ranch. Aurora water does.
Jason:
Aurora water does.
Denise:
So how do they get it there?
Jason:
They it says that from Castle Rock. Says let's see has contract for permanent water delivery from Aurora, from the Wise project and from Castle Rock to meet water demands. Okay. So the Wise project is the major. Conduit.
Chuck:
Which were not a party to.
Denise:
Yeah, but we could be.
Chris:
But we could be.
Tera:
I don't think we can at this point. And I don't know that that's a good option. Anyway, from what I understand, it's still expensive. But yeah, I think we do not. I think we no longer have the opportunity to participate in wise.
Denise:
I don't know if we do or we don't. I don't know if we even want to pursue it from a cost perspective, but it's just a point I thought of if there's Supply and Stirling Ranch, we're kind of not that far away.
Chris:
So just data, it's a data point and I think we should just capture that, that if that geographically that is being solved through the Wise program. So if we consider that as a data point.
Chuck:
We can always go back to them and get more clarification if we wanted to. And I'm curious, as I'm sure now, Denise is too are we totally out of wise and can we can we reenter it or is there not enough room? I not sure how wise works.
Nathan:
Yeah. So I just had I can't remember the gentleman's name conversation. I wish I had my notes on that one, that it does seem like there is a way to get back into it. I don't know exactly what that looks like. Part of the issue in the conversation I was having, and the main reason that we exited that agreement is that a lot of the water was going to be available only during winter months, which for us isn't very helpful since we already have our winter demands met through the Centennial interconnect they are now looking at as as I understand it, as part of that project, they're starting to look at things like ASR, which is pumping treated water back into wells and then storing them.
And those kinds of programs may change the availability of that water a little bit. So it is possible that wise water could become available in the summer. But this was like a very, very 500,000ft view conversation that was really not directed to inform our meeting today. So take that with a massive grain of salt.
Denise:
And one other quick comment. I just work for a builder we build in Sterling Ranch. Their water bills are expensive.
Nathan:
Sterling's very expensive. Yeah.
Denise:
I don't know that they're double ours, but getting very close to it. So I'm not even saying it's a good option. Just again.
Chuck:
It's good information, Denise. So if it's something we need to question, we'll know the question and who to ask. And thank you for your Google work.
Tera:
So here's another question about Aurora. Are they as far as being built out? Aren't they like way on the beginning side of building out Aurora and figuring out what their water needs are for the future?
Nathan:
I'd have to speak more directly with Aurora about their total build out. One of the things that they did talk about in our meeting, though, is they do have a substantial amount of undeveloped land that has been pulled inside of their water boundaries. So basically everything that hasn't been developed almost all the way out to DIA. And that was a really heavy driving component in their water conservation plan, in the way that they're moving forward with their lack of turf completely everywhere.
And then also something that was driving their desire to purchase the water rights from us that they did. So they they definitely have their their own challenges that they're working on and they're, they're getting through, which is part of why it's like Chris mentioned, the requirement that they would have with us joining them, or maybe Chuck mentioned it, that we would have to come with our own water, so we'd have to meet that need through there.
Tera:
So again, when I look at what's best for us and our ratepayers, I think getting included into a big place like Aurora that still has a lot of undeveloped land and they're growing, means that our 3500 people will be paying for all of those projects. So it doesn't look good for the future.
Chris:
So let's go to the next one. And I'd like to stay away from any type of strategy type discussion. We can ask questions, we can talk about what we found, but I don't want to have any conversation around what our plans are going to be next. Strategy sessions should be done in an executive session.
Chuck:
Okay. Our next one was Centennial and Denise was with me. We met with Sam Calkins, Stephanie Stanley and Peter Bong again, very nice people, very knowledgeable. And Sam was relatively new to the position and had some some great ideas. But what I took away at the end of the day from Centennial, in the form of of an inclusion, that wasn't on their plate, they they did not see that as a possibility.
Sam said to us that the developer put together Centennial to be a specific size that fits their metro district, or vice versa. Their metro district fits the size of their development, and so anybody coming in again would not need to bring their own water. And they were very interested in any surface water that we may have to offer to sweeten the pot.
And we did talk about a master metering system. There was some discussion on that, both pro and con. Right now they're in a water wise situation with with watering lawns a lot fewer times a week than normal. So they're they're being very cautious of the water they have for the development that they need to meet. And so I didn't come away again from Centennial with any strong information, information that they would be included or wanted to be included in an inclusion. There may be some other options. Nathan.
Nathan:
Yeah. So with Centennial specifically, they did say that they weren't really interested in pursuing an inclusion, but they were also not necessarily talking about a master meter. So Denver Water has a very long standing format that they have used, especially when they serve other districts around them, or people that wish to be served by Denver Water. One of the most common ways that they do that is is basically a service contract.
That's a full system service. So like the metro district would exist basically in Castle Pines North Metro District under that kind of agreement would exist. But really for the most part, only in name only. We'd probably have to hold a board meeting maybe once or twice a year to approve budgets and that contract. But so if they did a full service agreement, they would come in and take over everything. They would take over operations, they'd take over billing, they take over meter reading, repairs, maintenance, capital.
Centennial. Yeah. So and yeah. So Centennial. Yeah. Centennial uses a Denver model which a lot of utilities do. And so that's the basically just how how that work. They just take everything over. There's not like a monthly bill that gets paid or anything like that. Centennials requirements around that. Again, they want us to bring our own surface water.
So that would be something that we would have to look at. It does give us a little bit of a leeway if for whatever reason, we were able to attain that surface water and we can do that through, and this is where all the accountants and stuff would take over to see the cost benefit. But because the metro district still exists, we don't have that requirement to own nothing and owe nothing.
So it kind of gives us a little bit of space in there. And again, that would be accountants and water water resource engineers that would have to make all of those calculations. Centennial also does not does not have an increased service fee or or increased rate structure for out of out of district service. So if we were able to go that route with them, their requirements are that we fully adopt their rates and that we also adopt all of their rules and regulations.
So their conservation program would go with it. All of their construction programs, all of those things would come along with it as well.
Jason:
What's their rates compared to what we're paying now?
Nathan:
Significantly lower. I can I've got the chart in my office. I can run and grab it really quick. Chris there you go.
Describer:
Chris passes a sheet of paper to Jason.
Nathan:
Yeah. So they're they're significantly lower than we are. They also don't carry any mill levies.
Tera:
So did you say we would. Oh, nothing. And own nothing. So we would turn all that over.
Nathan:
So the oh nothing owned nothing refers to a requirement for inclusion into another water district. So we wouldn't have to meet that metric with Centennial. And so as long as that service contract was in in place, I don't know how the like legal back end of all of that stuff works. But the metro district, Castle Pines North Metro District would continue to exist, and then Centennial would be 100% responsible for basically everything else that happens.
One advantage that Centennial has in terms of their renewable water, they just mentioned they're really aggressive with their conservation. They're very protective of it. As they sit today, they are already about 80% renewable water. So they just want to make sure that they can keep and maintain that metric, which is in terms of the other people or other utilities in this region, is far above and beyond what where anybody else sits right now, that's above slightly above Parker's 20 year goal.
Tera:
Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because my understanding is that they actually get their water from somewhere else in the McLellan water in the reservoir, and that water is not great water. And they also base that on an average, they actually have junior water rates.
Nathan:
So yeah, that's their that's their that's what they have historically been able to produce is that they have continually used 80% renewable water. Their source water is not going to be drastically different from any other water that comes open ditch out of the mountains. And that's part of what they're working through with their with their current treatment plan process that they're taking offline.
Specifically, the biggest complaint that they generally get is algae taste. And we know all the complaints that Centennial gets because we end up getting the same ones when we turn on the interconnect pipeline. But they're doing a massive treatment plan overhaul over the next two years to help address that, that algae bloom issue.
Denise:
I was there.
Chuck:
Yes. You were.
Tera:
Don’t they get their water from Englewood?
Denise:
No, I don't think.
Nathan:
Don't they purchase their water from Englewood?
Denise:
I don't think so. Reservoir and I think they have Platte River.
Nathan:
Yeah. There's, there's all kinds of joint ownership over there. I have I don't have a detailed look into their water portfolio. We you know, the conversations were really driven much at a much higher level around feasibility. So we didn't take a deep dive into into their source, their water source portfolios.
Denise:
I don't want to appear to be a know it all, but I was on the Metro district board with the Highlands Ranch District when the community was maybe ten, 12, 13 years old. So fairly new at that time, obviously not even close to being built out, but their whole platform program for Highlands Ranch was Shea's master planned community, and it was never built with the idea of inclusion or expansion.
They put together what they felt they needed for their community, which they I think they've done a great job of. So an illusion I totally can understand. They wouldn't necessarily want to take us on. I think best case, some type of partnership might work the very few places that they've included, I don't know if you remember, but they there's a little housing development on the north side of Castle, the high school, Rock Canyon. Thank you. I knew I knew that my kids went there.
Yeah. They're building just a small, for example. That's something that they have allowed to include because it's within their boundaries. But overall, they're not in the business of expanding at all. That's not their agenda.
Nathan:
Correct. Yeah. And I don't want to I don't want to give the impression that they were like excited to take us over. They were definitely open to the conversation. They were open to future conversations. One of the things that I made sure to put down in my notes is that one, they very specifically said that it's a pretty tough hill to climb into in terms of getting their board on board, and that we would really have to demonstrate not only that we can meet the metrics that they've outlined, but we also have to show them like a pretty significant benefit to them as well.
So we really need to we really need to prove that mutual benefit and make a really strong argument as to why taking us over is something that would be advantageous and really like a boom for them. And so they were definitely they didn't turn us away outright. They didn't say say no, but they definitely put forward some, some significant hurdles that we would have to figure out to get that process to move forward.
Chuck:
I also got the impression, Nathan Clark, correct me if I'm wrong. I think Sam mentioned that. I don't know if it's him personally or the board or the community, but he does not like Wells and he doesn't want to take over that capital improvement. He's more interested in surface water rather than, well water. Correct. And so I did get the impression or he did say that they are capping a couple of their wells. They're not using them. Is that.
Nathan:
I don't remember that specific part of the conversation.
Chuck:
That's a major source of our water. Somehow that didn't that piece of puzzle didn't fit the overall plan.
Nathan:
Yeah. And that's the I mean, the general, the general move for any district in Colorado on a long enough timeline is going to be we have to move away from well water. We're in confined aquifers that are a very defined, limited resource. And so, you know, and realistically, it's going to be if we talk about the whole Front Range, it's going to be a combination of like broad sweeping policies and changes in agriculture and changes in landscaping.
Like it's going to be pretty drastic changes to get there. But ultimately we're all going to have to move away from, well water, you know, 100 years down the road or so. We're not going to have really anybody left that's that's able to subsist that way. Agreed.
Chuck:
Any other questions on Centennial? Moving on? The next one I had, but I did not have a meeting with him, and I don't know. And Jason set up for a meeting with Mark Marlow at Castle Rock.
Nathan:
Friday at 11.
Chuck:
Friday 11. Good luck with that. The letter I got is.
Nathan:
I think you're on the email. I'll double. Yeah, I might be informing Jason of it right now. If that's the case then, I apologize, I'll double check. But that's when I thought I had it. But we do have a we do have a meeting in process of being scheduled. At least I might have looked at it wrong to.
Chuck:
The. The letter I received on June 14th from Mark Marlow was pretty straightforward, that he thought the cost for inclusion of the Caspian North metro district into the Castle Rock water believes it would be to explore other inclusion partners. He's. I think they have a plate full of development yet to do and water needs. And even though he's happy to have a discussion, as all of them have been from the tone of the letter and correct me if I'm wrong. Jason, I don't know what you all will discuss at that meeting, but I'm not convinced it's going to be inclusion.
Jason:
Yeah, I don't think our takeaway is going to be inclusion on this meeting. I think this is going to be more of a fact finding mission for Nathan to kind of see their facilities. And now.
Chuck:
They do have a new facility.
Nathan:
Yeah. Relatively new. So I mark, when Mark and I spoke about the meeting, he was very candid over the phone. Castle Rock's got their their own challenges with their surface water and their renewable rights. They've got a lot of projects going down, working on meeting their own needs in that regard. We're not in a similar situation from Aurora, where there are definitely some geographical challenges.
Castle Rock currently doesn't even have an interconnect with our neighbors over on the other side of the fence in the village, and so there's definitely some geographic constraints. Castle Rock is working on their own long term renewable plans. Mark wasn't really interested in talking about inclusion as an option, and it was really upfront about that. He was still very open and excited to meet us.
So like Jason said, it's going to be much more of a fact finding meeting. The overall view that I want to get out of that is like really just finding out where they're at with their renewable program, what avenues are they pursuing, what partnerships are they developed? Are they in beyond the Arpa, Arpa funded Gap project and really just kind of seeing where they're going?
And then, yeah, I mean, it's an amazingly cool treatment plan. So I figured I'd take the opportunity to walk Jason through a super cool building.
Chuck:
And you'll report. Back both of you. Right.
Nathan:
Yeah, yeah. Jason is. Yeah. Jason actually agreed to take the operator certification exam.
Jason:
So I don't have anything else to do. I might as well.
Chuck:
All right. Any other discussions on Castle Rock? The the last one that we held that Tera was on with me and Kim Seter was Castle, was Parker. We met with Ron Red and Jeff Parker, their attorney. Very pleasant. Yes.
Chris:
Didn’t we do this on Monday? The last board meeting you guys reported? Did somebody report on Parker? Are we just doing it twice?
Chuck:
We're doing it twice as part of the agenda, so we're going to finish. It was a it was a great meeting. They were both very cordial. I thought it gave Kim and Jeff Parker an opportunity to discuss some of the legal issues. It's everything we've already known about Parker, and now they know more about us. And I think are somewhat impressed. I would like to say about the giant steps we have taken to improve our water district.
Thanks to Nathan and his efforts with his contractors. It just it seemed like a good meeting. My only concern was, and I think Ron mentioned it, and Tera, correct me if I'm wrong, but his comment was that the the first inclusion and I think the rates and fees that we saw on the landscape, that picture is not going to be the same in any other any secondary inclusion that we do.
Things have changed. I'm not sure what that means. I'm a little concerned about the debt Parker carries on their books with their new water plant, and as well as the dollars they're going to have to spend to tap into their wells at their farm properties. So I think that I don't know this, I don't know the amount, but it just seems like this debt would be some sort of proportionately distributed in cast upon this north if we did an inclusion. Tera, is that kind of right?
Tera:
Well, I think probably yes and no depends on how far out those projects are. As per the inclusion agreement, when we get included, our money would be paying for our own stuff. If they have major capital projects down the road. When we're part of that, definitely we would be part of their system. We would pay for that. But that wasn't particularly my take. But Nate was there as well, so.
Chuck:
I think one of the things that I caught, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that this is if an inclusion were to go forward, this is not an inclusion that would take place in 2022 or even 2023. If we had to go to a vote for the community, that might be in November of 23 or May of 24, is that. It's. Somewhere in the ballpark. And we had.
Nathan:
Yeah. And so I. I think that's right. And I think that's part of what's difficult about not only for Ron, but for us as well, in terms of like nailing those timelines down is there's like a little bit of a question mark. And so one thing that I didn't get out of the meeting with Parker was like a really defined set of like, like waypoints that we can hit.
There's not like a really hard metric. Ron mentioned during the meeting that one of the things that makes him that he feels makes him a little bit different than other managers is that a lot of these decisions are made based when he just feels like the timing is right and when he feels comfortable moving forward. And so that makes hitting that target.
It's a little bit hard to know what we need to do to get to that point. It's good that we know what the things are. I mean, we've got a pretty defined list. It's just there's no really solid metric to hit at what point we're going to move forward on that. So throughout that conversation, I mean, we had it we talked about it taking as long as five years to get the entire lift station program completed and then run it back that back, back that off to probably more like the late 2024 for a vote, just getting through the consent decree.
And then even after saying that we needed to have that consent decree in hand, he kind of changed that his statement or his wording around that again and said that we could that he just needs to know that it's coming. And so we've got this like really wide range and I don't know at any point which one of those things is going to be the thing that makes it feel good, you know?
And I think that it's worth noting that, like you said, we you know, we'll have to start that inclusion process basically over again. And it won't be. It wouldn't be. And that would be true for anybody in that inclusion process. And it wouldn't be nearly as intensive as the first time. But yeah, we need to look at another rates rates and fees study.
We need to look at another inclusion agreement. We'd have to do another round of asset evaluations and condition evaluations. Yeah. And so all of those things would be would play into that timing as well. Yeah.
Tera:
So Ron's an engineer I don't remember him talking all about his feelings like that. So I think my takeaway was as I gave my reading. So they are very interested. They're just waiting for us to come and say we're interested. And with the consent decree, I definitely I mean, the two gating items for him were the easements and the consent decree. And I think. I think.
The reason why we said that timeline was I think it was more our estimate of when we think we're going to get done with the 70% plan that we how we address those items. And then we were estimating that it could take 12 to 18 months once it goes to CDPHE, just because everyone is short staffed and it's taking a long time.
So that that timeline really was more, I think, articulated by us, not him. And I think that what Nate brought up in that he expressed interest, you know, in the discussions with CPDHE, I think if he were part of those discussions and he knew what the plan was, because we are coming up with a plan. Kennedy Jenks is coming up a plan. You can stop me when I go off track that we will say what is going to be done and how much is going to cost. CDPHE will review that. They're going to come back to us with specific projects. But that's really it's a concrete plan. It sounds like it's kind of an you know, it's it's a process.
And he, I think would be comfortable representing that to his board and his, his subscribers if he's part of that. One of the things that I took a note on is that he really would love to have a more collaborative process. He thinks the best solutions come from a collaborative process. But some of the stuff that Nate was saying was sort of the questions that I wrote down for this evening that I would like to learn, and it was and it also kind of ties in with what Chuck had said before about sort of, you know, how do we how do we get into a position that we know what our negotiating leverage is?
And so, for me, I mean, the things that I'd like to understand is, so if we want renewable water, we're going to have to include a partner with someone. Yes?
Nathan:
Is that the only avenue to get renewable water? No. Okay. I mean, anything, anything if you have enough money. But I mean, if you wanted to go acquire a bunch of water rights over a period of time.
Tera:
For a district our size, does that make sense?
Nathan:
And so this is kind of and we can kind of get into what my conclusions are from all of this at the end of that.
Tera:
So can I ask these. And maybe you'll answer them and then.
Nathan:
I'll do my best. Yeah.
Tera:
Ultimately overall how do we get the best deal for our ratepayers. Right. How can we say we evaluated all of our options? So I know I like to make data based decisions, and I would like to have sort of the unbiased information, the state of our system. And I don't know if these are the right things, but you'll do the interpretive dance and know what it is.
So you know, these tools to make decisions and provide transparency into the process that we're following. So the capital improvement plan, which I think you're working on, does that include a water master plan? A sewer master plan? Do we have a water loss study to kind of see pipe assessments, conditions, to know where our leaks or breaks or anything is?
So the water loss analysis, the condition assessment really for us to understand what we have and what we need to fix. I mean, for me, it's kind of premature to be thinking about, you know, who who should we choose or whatever, because we need to know what we have, what we need to fix while we're figuring out what we need to do.
Are we sustainable on groundwater? What does it look like with renewable water? Oh, and I don't know, I think the Castle Pines District is doing groundwater modeling, and I'm wondering if maybe we can, if we could financially partner with them or something to participate in that, and we could find out really how how soon we need to pivot to renewable water. What is the aquifer doing and what does that look like? Because we are a small district, we do need to look, I think, whole at a more regional solution and be be conscious about that.
Like you said, we can't depend on the aquifer. You know, and I think those data, all of those reports and data would get us to what we know. How much is it going to cost us to fix stuff? Because I think even when you were talking about, you know, Centennial or whomever, you know, they're basically want us to fix our stuff.
I know that's kind of free frame thinking, but let's understand what we have fixed, the issues we need to fix, understand the costs so we can go about determining that and figure out what the best option is. But I feel like right now, at least from as one of five directors, I don't feel like I have all my questions answered or all the data that I need to do that.
Nathan:
Yeah. And I completely agree with you on that conclusion. And so that's where I kind of what I kind of took away with. And it was really like very reinforced even in the conversation tonight, is we're just not at a point necessarily where we're really ready to make a fully informed decision. I don't remember specifically all of your questions.
Some of those things we do have water loss studies is something that we do continuously, so we know what we produce with our wells. We know what we build with our meters. Those are things that we take care of. You know, we do system leak checks, a full system leak check once a year. So we're looking at those things.
I think a ground water modeling program would be great. Those are something we can talk to Kennedy Jenks about talking about pipe condition assessment. So it's a PCAP pipe condition assessment profile. So we have a great handle on our wastewater collection side. We have a very accurate and dialed condition assessments on all of those, largely because we've been routinely videoing them on a three year rotating basis.
We do a third of the system every year, so we know what those are. We know where we're at with the lift stations. We definitely have some pipe in the ground. That is still a big question mark. And so when we did our own capital expenditure forecast and we did our own asset condition study, one of the things that we came up with was the inside of the first two filings.
We're in a position where we were forced to assume that all of the pipe that was installed in those areas is in basically needs to be replaced right now, condition that turned up in the inclusion as the biggest single ticket line item in there. I think it was like $19 million. Was the was the projected cost for all of that?
In reality, those pipes are more than likely not consistently in that bad of shape. It's just where we have our brakes. It's where we've seen the lines. You only see it in its worst places because that's where it broke, but because it was all installed in the same time. The like, very consistent installation, poor installation. In many cases, we had to assume that that was the same condition in that entire area.
So like a huge data point that I think we need is doing an actual pipe condition assessment study through that area, really finding out what actually needs to be replaced today, what actually needs to be replaced in ten, 20, 30 years. We're not going to hit that 100 year, 150 year design life of ductile iron pipe. But, you know, maybe there are sections that we can wait another 30 or 40 years to get into, and all of those things can have a really significant impact on that dollar exchange and rates and fees and all of those things.
I've had two meetings in the last week, one with Austin Hammer or Hamre and Gina Burke there. Gina does all of our water accounting and Austin is our water rights attorney. I wanted to get kind of a feel for what we have in our water rights portfolio. And then I also had a discussion with Kim. And really, what came out of both of those meetings was that we really would be it would really be beneficial to us to do more of an exploratory study.
And I think that, you know, even highlighted tonight with like, who who feeds Sterling Ranch and who feeds this or who's whose source water is Chatfield. And like, what do all these individual water right portfolios looks like? There are definitely companies that and firms that do that for a living. Kim is going to do a little bit of research and get me one.
Austin gave me a name. His name was Jason Lum with FCS group. I haven't reached out to anybody yet. I wanted to talk to the board about it before I did any leeway, but there are definitely contractors and firms that specialize in this stuff that do have that subject matter expertise in terms of like, what does it look like to buy into the Wise project, as I understand wise, you can get back into it, but your base, as I understand it, you're going through Douglas County.
So like Douglas County has reserve shares that can be purchased. But I don't know what that looks like, you know, do we have any shot at getting renewable water into Chatfield and spinning that through some sort of inclusion with Centennial? I also don't know the answer to that question. I think that having somebody that specializes in that field do a comprehensive study to tell us what our viable options are puts us in a position where we can make a truly informed decision.
I think that it's really difficult to just walk around and go, you know, director to director and manager to manager and try and figure out a specific way to go. I think that we're lacking that impartial third party look like somebody that can really come in and take a look at this and just tell us how it is.
Chuck:
Nathan, Will said. As we as we come to a conclusion and you now have heard from most of the well, the all three of the districts that we spoke to and a fourth one to come, although we are pretty certain we know how that's going to go in any kind of partnership. I take away a couple of things.
Number one, first and foremost, and I agree with you, Tera. We are not. And Jason, Nathan, we are not at a position to make any sort of decision on an inclusion or other at this point in time. With that being said, there's several people out there that are probably saying, oh, woe was me. Our water district is going to fall apart and our pipes are going to break and our plants are going to explode.
And I think that today we are at the best position we have ever been in since this district's water district was, was constructed. So I feel very comfortable that we will continue to provide good, safe, clean water to our constituents. And we're already taking care of our stormwater with the city and hopefully our parks and trails, so we can really focus.
And I think in a be in a better position to talk about a partnership with another district when we have just the water and and sewer to deal with. I think it's important to note that this was not an activity in vain personally, and I hope each one of you that attended the meetings learned a lot about water, I certainly did.
It's it's a tough, tough nut to crack. But what's important is that we stay the course and we continue to follow our original goal, which was to provide renewable water for our constituents and maintain good, clean water on a daily basis. So remote and renewable water seems to be a thing of the future. I will admit this is way outside my scope of knowledge, and I think then going back to what you just mentioned, Nathan, about bringing in a specialist to take a look at our district and say, okay, here's what you got.
Here's what you need to do, and here are the people you should talk to based on whatever parameter they want to set. A expert in this field. I don't know if any one of us are capable of providing that kind of information. I know I'm not, but I do recognize that I think some help from the outside. A third party would be extremely important, not only for this board moving forward, but also, I think, as a safety net for the homeowners when they ask us questions, when are we running out of water?
Why does my water brown? Why does it taste funny? Why don't I have water pressure today? So on and so forth. Why are we going to Parker or Centennial or one of the other districts and giving them everything we have? They want our water. We want to keep our water. You hear a lot of that. So getting away from the politics and getting a professional to help guide us, I'm all in if this board is on the same plane.
And hopefully you'll take a. Couple potential people and review them and vet them and make a suggestion to us.
Nathan:
Yeah. So I'll get I'll reach out to the contact I got from Austin. Kim's also going to send me a couple. I do want to call the village and talk to them about the groundwater modeling and see if they're doing that now. That's something we'll need to jump on. So I'll reach out to them this week to see if we can get in there.
And yeah, I'll just basically reach out to reach out to industry contacts, see who's used to see what their experiences were, and we'll pull together a pull together, a pool to look from.
Tera:
Yeah. I was just thinking, if they're doing that modeling anyway, you know, we can get the information and, I don't know, share the cost or something. That might make sense because why we're so close. Why.
Chuck:
Why reinvent the wheel.
Nathan:
Yeah. And that's and we are that is something that we have worked on with some smaller things in, in the past with the village for years and years and years. We each paid half of an aerial flyover so that, you know, we pay the get the plane up once. We can both get background layers for HEIS. And so we've looked for those opportunities before.
And yeah. And if nothing else, I'll see their district manager at the meeting Monday. So if I can't touch base with them this week I'll talk to them about it when I see them then.
Chuck:
Okay. That sounds great. Any other questions?
Jason:
I just sent you an email with the name of some of a contact I have in my business. I tell them that I sent you and talk to him. He's very deep into this field and they've got a big, big footprint, mostly in Seattle, but they do are headquartered out of here.
Nathan:
So cool. Yeah. As many, as many contact as I can get.
Tera:
So yeah, I mean, I haven't heard anything that makes me, you know, I don't know what all has changed that we wouldn't, you know consider Parker. I still think they're they make the most sense. But there's other data that, you know, there's just not enough data. When when would the pipe be built? How big would the pipe be? How much would that pipe cost? You know, when we connect with them. So again, just I hear I think in order to instill confidence, we have to be able to prove we can, you know, spout our, our thoughts or our opinions or whatever all day long.
But being able to have documentation, being able to have data, being able to have whatever we have one so that we know what we have and we know what we're worth and we know what what the best deal for our customers is ultimately at the end of the day. But two, we have to be able to demonstrate that.
Chuck:
And I think that was always planned. I don't think that these meetings that we had with these districts was to find anything out other than, are you interested as as Nathan said, clearly, to dig deeper is going to take a lot more effort, and we certainly need to do that once we think we know where we want to go, which hopefully you're one of your guys can come to the table with a plan and help us.
Before we close, I remind you that we have an open house at our interconnect pump station down by Rocky Heights at the end of Monarch on Friday, October 28th, starting at 7:30 to 10. So it'd be great if we could. I'll show up and support Nathan as he gives the tour. And then let's reaffirm what we're doing in November.
I have on my calendar a public meeting to go over the budget on Monday the 14th. Great. Everybody had that? Do we have a time? Would be like a regular board. Meeting, like 6:00? Yep. Okay. And then do we have did we decide we were not going to have a study session in November? Correct/ And then is there another board meeting on the 28th or are we just doing it on the 14th?
Nathan:
We are doing the board meeting on the 14th. And then the other thing outside of the budget presentation, the other decision that will need to be made that night is what to do about December board meetings if we find them to still be necessary.
Chuck:
And I got it down right. Everybody got that in their calendars? Yep. Okay, good. Any other items you want to discuss before we close? Jason I'm good, I'm good. Good, good. Thank you very much. With that, let's adjourn the board meeting. Any. We don't need a motion. We can't make it anyway. The meeting is adjourned.
Denise:
There you go. Yeah.
Chuck:
End of study session.
Describer:
Meeting adjourned. Thank you for watching.