July 24, 2023 Board Meeting

Transcript

Describer:

Board Meeting Agenda

Monday, July 24, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. 7404 Yorkshire Drive, Castle Pines, CO 80108

I. Welcome. Call meeting to order. Pledge of Allegiance.

II. Roll call. Determination of quorum. Disclosure of potential conflicts.

III. Consider approving the July 24, 2023, board meeting agenda.

IV. Consider approving June 21, 2023, board study session minutes.

V. Consider approving June 26, 2023, board meeting minutes.

VI. Public comment period. (Three-minute maximum per person).

VII. Finance Director's report.

A. Consider approving claims for payment including check numbers 27981 - 28034 and electronic payments issued from June 23, 2023 through July 20, 2023.

General Fund/Open Space July $57,552.64 Total $57,552.64

Enterprise Funds July $1,279,118.99 Total 1,279,118.99

Electronic Payments (all funds) June 20,489.00, July $1,080,177.06 Total $1,100,666.06 $

Total Expenditures $20,489.00, July $2,416,848.69 Totals $2,437,337.69

B. Presentation of 2021 Audit.

C. Update and timeline regarding 2022 Audit.

VIII. Legal Counsel's report.

A. Potential Action: Decision regarding promoting a CPNMD board member to serve on the URA board IX. District Manager’s report

A. Ander’s Farm Lease

B. Chamber of Commerce Partnership Proposal C. Consideration of vehicle stipend

X. Director’s Matters

XI. Adjourn

Board President Jason Blankaert:

Good evening, Castle Pines, and welcome to the Castle Pines North Metropolitan District board meeting for Monday, July. Come July 24th, 2023 at 7 p.m., we'd like to call this meeting to order and begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

All:

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.

Jason:

Okay. Thank you. And let's go ahead and proceed with roll call. We'll start down here,

Board Member Director James Mulvey:

Jim. Here. With no conflicts? No conflicts.

Board Member Director Tera Radloff:

All right. Tera, present. No conflicts.

Board Member Director Leah Enquist:

All right. Leah, I'm here. No conflicts.

Jason:

And I think we have Jana on the zoom call.

Maybe she was there. Jana, are you muted?

James:

She is there.

Going once. You can see her name. Yeah.

Jason:

All right.

Jana, can you text us or something? If you can't, There she is. ... Jana, can we get you to, state that you're here and you have no conflicts? Or if you do.

Jana, can you hear us?

Board Member Director Jana Krell:

Oh, I can now. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Jason:

Can we get you to state that you're here and whether or not you have conflicts?

Jana:

Yes. Sorry about that. yes. Jana Krell here. No conflict.

Jason:

All right. Very good. Kim, is this where I need to make a, a motion for the. ........

Just approve the. Okay, so it looks like we do have an amended, amended board meeting agenda tonight, and, which we approve. And so we'll move on to number three ...

Tera:

I make a motion to approve the amended agenda. I second.

Board Voting All Speak:

Thank you. Hearing it seconded, do we have a vote? Jim? I. Tera. Approve. Leah. Approve. Jana. Approve. Great.

With and I approve as well. So.

District Manager Nathan Travis:

And then Jason, just for posterity and people online, we will post the amended agenda to replace the one that's currently up there. But it comes under district manager's report. We have added another item that is now A and that is considering a capital project approval for the Yorkshire Water Line replacement.

Jason:

All right. Thank you Nathan. So moving on now to item number three. Let's consider approving the, July 24th, 2023 Boardman board meeting agenda.

Board Voting All Speak:

Move to approve second. Having a second to I hear vote from let's start with Jim again approve and Tera approve. And Leah approve and Jana approve. All right. Great. And I approve as well.

Jason:

So that, motion has passed, and we'll move on to the next item. Consider approving. Why don't we just take the next two together? If nobody has an objection to that and approve both the June 21st, 2023 board study session minutes and the June 26th, 2023 board meeting minutes.

Tera:

So I'll make a motion to approve the study session, minutes as presented, and a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes with the following changes.

Mike Del, Dellaforno, DelaFono. Sorry. Can't pronounce it anyway. It is spelled D E L L ’ O R F A N O that appears a couple places. Also it's called South Metro Fire Rescue, not Department. That would be on page one. On page two, the paragraph under discussion regarding the City of Castle Pines Urban Renewal Authority.

The last sentence says one seat is dedicated to Castle Pines North Metropolitan District that needs to be stricken because the seat is, for all of the special districts. So it's not dedicated to our metro district. And then a couple paragraphs down from that, it's Mike Dell’orfano again, D E L L ‘ O R F A N O. And then on page three on the operation manager's report, Mr..

Will Parker is from Semocor S E M A C O R and. Those are all the changes that I have.

Nathan:

And real quickly Semocor is S E M O C O R.

Jason:

All right. Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes with..

Tera:

That was my motion.

Board Voting All Speak:

Oh, sorry. Do I hear a second to Tera's motion? Second. Okay. Very good. Let's move for a vote. And for Jim. Great to approve. We have approve. And Jana approve. I approve two, so that, takes care of items number, four and five.

Jason:

That brings us to item number six, the public comment period. This period is limited to three minutes per person maximum. Looks like we've got one person wanting to speak. Chris, the floor is yours. Thank you for showing up.

Nathan:

And, Chris, if you could just state your full name and the neighborhood you're from sure would be great.

Chris Eubanks, Castle Pines Resident:

Chris Eubanks from, address is 6662 Catarata place.

and Castle Pines, of course. So I'm in the Serena Daniels gate, North links, however you want to describe it. I'm making public comments. As a resident tonight, I just wanted to thank the board and Nathan and David, for the pickle ball courts. You guys did a tremendous amount of work, and it was really exciting to be there tonight and watch the ribbon cutting.

I think it's going to be very well utilized and a lot of people are going to be really happy. I have to admit to you all that today was the first day I've actually ever seen a pickle ball paddle, much less the pickle ball courts. So again, I just want to thank you. It came out great. Looks beautiful. It's a great addition to the community.

And just just want to say thank you.

Jason:

Thank you, Chris, and thanks for your comments. And, do we have anybody online?

Nathan:

Andy's here for the audit presentation, so I think we're good to go.

Jason:

Okay. So then that takes care of the public comment period. And we'll move on to the finance director's report.

Phyllis Brown, Community Resource Services of Colorado (CRS):

Hi Phyllis Brown here. First we'll go over the claims for the period, from the period June 203rd to July 20th, 2023, general fund open space.

There were no additional payments in June subsequent to the last board meeting. So the payments for July $57,552.64, enterprise funds, same, no extra payments in June after the meeting and payments of $1,279,118.99 electronic payments June. $20,489 July. $1,080,177.06 Total expenditures for June $20,049. July $2,416,848.69, for a total of $2,437,337.69.

And you have those disbursements in your packet. And I'm starting on pages, 11 all the way through to page 28.

Jason:

Thank you. We see that. Do we have a motion to, approve these claims.

Tera:

I make a motion to approve for payment the numbers as stated by Phyllis.

Phyllis Brown, Community Resource Services of Colorado (CRS):

Very good. Do I hear a second? Second? Having to, have an aunt. Seconded. Let's move to a vote. Jim. Approve. Tera. Approve. Leah. Approve. Jana Approve. And I approve as well. So that motion passes.

Jason:

So now we are at the presentation of the 2021 audit.

Leah:

Quick question. If I have a finance related question, is now the right time to ask it? Yeah. So my understanding is that the majority of the money that we bring in is based on rates and with, usage presumably going down, over the summer months just due to the heavy rain. Does that mean we can expect, the money that we bring in to go down?

And if so, like operational impacts to that?

Nathan:

Yeah. Fantastic question. So yes, the money that we bring in goes down with the usage. We've got a pretty stark difference between last year and this year. Last year we had a historically high usage. We were seeing, usage in like the first, second week of May that we typically don't see until the last week of June.

This year has been the exact opposite. So it's been a much slower start to the summer. In terms of the operational impacts, it's something that we'll just kind of have to pay attention to and see, for the most part, presumably if we're producing less water, we're also using less chemicals. We have lower wear and tear on the pumps.

We're not using wells as long. So our electricity costs go down, our chemical costs go down. A lot of the operating expenses kind of drop down with that. So it's just something we have to pay attention to as we get toward the end of the year and like looking at next year's budget as well. But it there is a balancing factor just because we're not producing as much water.

Jason:

Good question. Thank you.

James:

Yeah I can I compared those that are previous several years and this year is more in line with those years versus last year. So kind of got the same thing.

Jason:

All right. Very good. Who do we have here to do the presentation? Sorry. The, Nathan, I'll help you with the microphone there.

Russell White, Rubin Brown:

Oh. Good evening, everyone. I'm Russell White, I'm the engagement partner for the Castle Plaza North Metropolitan District.

We have wrapped up the 2021 audit, and we have a 54 page document, which I think you've had for a little while. And I know it's the 2021 audit, and it's probably a little bit old. So I'm going to take it at the 50,000ft level. And if you have some questions, please chime in and let me know.

Starting off, we have our opinion on pages one through four. Bottom line on that is that's a clean opinion unmodified. So everything is presented in accordance with governmental, accounting standards. So clean opinion unmodified. As you know, 2021 was the year of the Parker Inclusion and Inclusion project. So basically there was, capital assets that were put on the books and a lot of debt that was paid off approximately $7 million.

That debt pay off in details on page 30 and 31.

And on page five is the statement of net position. And as you can see, total assets, total net position for the end of 2021 was $157 million, compared to $147 million in 2020. And then the increase related to about $3 million of capital assets that were put on the books in approximately $7 million of of debt payoff.

So when you look at net investment in capital assets, that's up about $10 million wishes and corresponds with the $3 million additions in the $7 million that was paid down based on some, sale of property. Moving on to page six, statement of activities. We like to call that in the for profit world the income statement. If you look down in the bottom right hand corner of page six, it's almost $10 million in change in net position compared to $11 million in 2020.

Going back to page 30 and 31 real quick for you. Just to let you know, see the detail on the, the debt payoff. If you look at page 30 about the middle of the page, footnote four, you can see about a $501,000 paid off in retirements. That's on the government activity, debt transactions. And then on page 31, the business type or enterprise fund, you can see $7 million paid off there.

And you can see the Colorado Water Conservation Board bloom payable, paid in full.

Moving on to page 45, footnote number ten. This is kind of getting you caught up to 2022 and 2023. So our reporting period includes, all of 2021 and up to the date we issued the report. So we call footnote ten subsequent events. And as you can see, the termination of the inclusion agreement with Parker is, noted in there, the sale, the water rights of $18 million in March of 2022, debt pay off of the the certificates of participation in the April 2022 of $18 million dollars and then here in June of 2022, transferring the, the storm water system and property rights over the system, over the city of,

Castle Pines, north and then also of March of 2023, the transfer of the district's recreational, properties to the to the city. That'll kind of get you up to speed of what 2021 did and what we had to report on from a, state auditor standpoint. If you look back here at the required supplemental information, which is if you turn the page on page 46, statement of revenues, expenditures and change in fund balance, budget action for the general fund.

There was no, budget overruns there for no budget violations, according to the state, which is a good thing. That means your your budget to actual was right in line to where it should have been. And then when you look to page 50 on the enterprise funds, the budget actual on the expenditure side was right in alignment where you went over over budget.

Any questions on this, 50,000ft level of, presenting the 2021 audited financial statements? I know there's 54 pages of information there, lots of stuff in there, but I know for the 2023 already. But, if you have any, please let me know.

Tera:

So, page, 30. The note about the, Projects that were abandoned. What are what are the projects that were abandoned?

It says of the 2 million transfer out of construction and progress, a million relates to projects that were abandoned.

Russell:

Yeah. So those those were projects that were in construction and process related to improvements on a couple of the water projects. And so basically, when the Parker inclusion terminated, those projects were basically written off those, where they weren't usable assets.

Tera:

Okay. Thank you. And then, on page 14, There's a couple line items I had questions on. So renewable water investment, I thought the, the, renewable water fee was not being collected, but I don't know when it stopped. So what what would be the investment if we're not?

Russell:

I shouldn't have that in here in the footnotes, I believe.

that's. Yeah. let me see if I can find that real quick.

And I'm not finding it. Andy do you want to chime in on that renewable water investment? I know it's, it's a special, line item in your general ledger.

Andy, Rubin Brown:

And also that it's pretty under the budget. So I forget exactly when that stopped being collected. That was during 2021 and 2022 item. I believe that was cooperate within the Parker Inclusion project.

I believe that was kind of a change throughout that process if I am right?

Nathan:

Yeah. So that was and I can double check them. About 80% sure that that was February, the February board meeting of 2021, that they voted to stop collecting that fee. The justification for it is, somewhere on our website. But basically they were looking the stated reason for doing that was that, the rates were supposed to go down at that time frame.

Anyway, everybody was looking toward the, Parker inclusions still going through it. It would fall apart a couple of months after that. And then they also felt that it was an undue burden on, members of our community that were struggling coming out of all of the Covid pandemic stuff as well. So I believe those were the reasons that they stated.

I'm almost positive it was that February meeting that they decided to renew, remove that fee.

Tera:

And then Russell and and I don't know what these numbers, they just looked, Interesting on the bottom of page 14 where you have your reconciliation of, operating income, net cash, there seem to be a lot of difference there in some of those line items. Can you talk to me a little bit about any significance there?

Russell:

Yeah. So actually page 14 is like my favorite statement.

And really what it is, it's basically a you can pay me later know, it's really a recap of the cash that goes through your bank account. So when you look up here the top says net flows, net cash flows provided by operating activities where you've got $4.8 million of cash that went through the water fund 1.5 wastewater $209,000 of for storm water.

So total of $6.5 million. The reconciliation on the bottom is to reconcile the accrual numbers with the cash. So if you look at that line, net cash provided by operating activities, $6.56 million And look at the very bottom. Those numbers line up. So on the on the income statement operating income, it reconciles this back down on the accrual numbers that go through the balance sheet or the statement of net position.

So that's why there's a reconciliation there. We’re accountants, we like to confuse people. We got cash. We got accrual to cash and then we got budgetary. So we got three different types of financial statements that are in 54 pages here. Sorry about that. Next. Thank you.

Jason:

Great. Any other questions for, Marshall.

Hearing none. Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation.

Russell:

I just want to say one last thing. I want to thank Phyllis from Chris and, Sadie and Nathan for bringing this home. I know it's a difficult time in last year with, the handoff and and, making sure that, what we knew and trying to download that to, you know, Phyllis and her group and what the how pinnacle left it off at.

And, I give a lot of credit for Phyllis, basically getting in there, digging in the detail and and collaborating. Really good team with Nathan, helping fill in some of the holes there. So really appreciate that. And then everyone here I know there's been a lot of change in the last 2 or 3 years, but, things are looking really good and head in the right direction.

You got a good group of people here. Great.

Nathan:

Yes. Yep. I do have one quick question, and this may be more of a question for Phyllis, but I just is there any detail or anything you can tell us about like kind of, even just a high level timeline for moving on to the 2022 audit and how we can kind of expect,

Russell:

you know, Phyllis and I have talked with, Andy and I, we've got time schedule next month, and in September, and I know we'd like to get it done by September 30th, but I can't promise anything.

End of October, I would say it was pretty good. We've got a couple other clients that have, have extensions out there that are due September 30th. So it's just a matter of when the information comes in with, with all clients and then, you know, first and first out. So, it's, that's where we are with our firm, and I don't know where she's at currently, with the 2022 information.

But we've got people that can work in the next two weeks if, if it's ready.

Phyllis:

So we and this is Phyllis. So now that we have once the audits accepted, we'll be able to close out our 2021 numbers so that we can roll numbers forward for 22, we've been diligently working on everything we could get, ready for the 2022 audit.

And so we'll continue to do that. And we've committed to them to get as much as we can uploaded by that August 14th date. So even if we come up with adjustments after, we'll get them the trial balance, we'll get them their schedules, we'll get them all the support they want so they could start rocking and rolling and getting their audit work done, and then we'll, true up or make any adjustments that come up during that process.

So I feel pretty comfortable and pretty confident. Sadie's also been working very hard. Plus we're also working on 23, so it's a little confusing to work on 21, 22 and 23 all at the same time. But I think I think we're getting a good handle on it. And I hoping that going forward, we're going to be able to give you, more information.

But, you know, better idea of where you are budget to actual as we go through the year because we'll have all the numbers caught up. So that's, that's our goal. And we're going to get there. One last time, I'd like to say that, we get through 2022 and I'll just talk about 2023, kind of the normal cycle that's been here since the last 4 or 5 years.

We've been doing the audit, Rubin Brown, is that we typically get, the information in April and we issue by, you know, June 30th and you vote on it in July. So, if that's acceptable to you, we can in in Phyllis. That'd be kind of back on the normal cycle after three years.

Jason:

That would be wonderful.

Great. And Phyllis thank you and see for all your hard work. We know that, this is a Herculean task that you've been, saddled with. So thank you very much.

Phyllis:

You're welcome, our pleasure.

Tera:

Our last question before you go. So I noticed that there were some, kind of consistent references to the, omission of the management's discussion and analysis.

Is that something that we should seek to have in future audits or. I don't know if, you know, most of the districts are our size. Do that.

Russell:

It's a, it's really a management group of what they want to do. Management discussion and, and our sampling kind of basically is like a narrative that gives you kind of the history of what happened during the year.

It's really you think it's important for the outside users or your customers if that's going to be important for them. It's there's a lot of financial highlights in there that are, that go for, you know, 2 or 3 years, but kind of some of the important decisions that were made, why things, rates go up or rates go down or costs go up, costs go down.

It gives you an opportunity to write a narrative to kind of justify or explain what went on there. So that's that's all that is. Thank you. You're welcome.

Nathan:

Yeah. And that is something that I, Even with the 2022 audit, especially since I was the first year that I was much more heavily involved with the stuff. That's one thing that I do want to add to that upcoming audit is to kind of help put that narrative in, not only just because of the audit specifically, but one of the things that the board has been very consistent on is like, we need to get this message out there.

We need to get our communication out and so adding like even just that page to email or whatever, email blast our website and directing people back to the audit, I think would be really helpful to that. So that is something we'll move into for the, 2022 audit and then, do an even more advanced and better one for 2023, and then we can skip audits for another three years and do them all at the same time.

Jason:

Let's not dot that.

Phyllis:

Another another thought to that in my mind is the MDNA is good, but it's once a year and in my mind a lot of it's a regurgitation of what's already in the audit. And, and secondly, it takes extra time to prepare an extra cost to prepare. So another thought is, as you know, as we're fine tuning the financials, we're for board packets quarterly.

If you're going to do a quarterly report or a financial report, you could also do a narrative that goes with that quarterly financial statement. And that would be more timely for the board and for your customers, to get that information as you go. So it doesn't have to be a formal MDNA. It could be something that we include as part of our board packet.

Just a thought.

Tera:

Good idea Thanks, Phyllis.

Leah:

I had a quick question about one of the line items in the report, although this one might be for Nathan for the 2022 2022 sale of the water rights, was that related to the anticipated inclusion?

Nathan:

So the the water rights were sold after the inclusion had already fallen, fallen apart. And so one of the things that we were looking at and that pinnacle had worked through, was the pay off of the COP debt, and so once the decision was made to go ahead and move forward with the debt, we also made the decision to move forward with the sale of those water rights.

Originally the water rights were sold, I guess, to answer your question, yes, originally those water rights were, put up for sale and then the money that we received for them would have been part of the check that we cut to Parker for the additional work that need to be done for CPNMD, or for our district.

And so we went ahead and paid off the COP debt. And then we also sold the water rights that were, two farms up north, contracts, one of the contracts we'll look at tonight. But basically the farm leases, they were the water rights that were associated with that. So we we move forward with continuing the sale of those water rights.

And then that money is now money that we're using to help fund a lot of the capital stuff we're doing, especially on the water side.

Jason:

Thank you. Very good. Anybody else have any other questions? All right. Hearing none. We can go ahead and close this out. Thank you again for, giving us your report.

Nathan:

And then I would ask that, the board consider a motion to approve the 2021 audit so that we can move on to the next one.

Tera:

I'll make a motion to approve the 2021 audit.

Board Voting All Speak:

Second.

And let's move to a vote. Jim, approve to approve. Leah and Jana approve. And I approve as well. So, hearing five approvals, we will move forward on that.

Jason:

Okay, this brings us to the legal counsel reports.

Legal Counsel Kim Seter, Esq.:

You have a copy of the written report. I've got nothing to add to that. And then you have one potential action item, whether to consider nominating somebody for the URA board. And again, there's one seat on the board. So whoever you nominate would just have to go meet with the other districts, maybe do some politicking and see if you can become that person.

Knowing that the fire district is also interested in that.

Jason:

Okay. Does anybody have any questions on Kim's, memo that he gave us?

Okay, then do we have anybody interested in becoming a member of the, URA board.

James:

I have interest Jim Mulvey.

Jason:

Okay, so hearing interest, we'd need to move to a vote. Is that correct, Kim?

Kim:

Yes to propose James as that delegate to the URA board. And then again, there will be a whole process. And whether he actually makes it.

Jason:

Okay. So I'll put a motion out there to, put Jim up as a member, as a, candidate for the Ura board.

Do I hear a second?

Second.

Board Voting All Speak:

I have a second. Do I hear, let's go to a vote, then. Jim.

Approve. Tera. Approve. Leah. Approve. Jana. Approve. And I approve as well. So the motion passes. ....? Yes.

Jason:

... A husband-wife? I don't know.

Kim:

No, that that wouldn't be a conflict, a legal conflict.

Tera:

I think it's, the process. Tera mic. I believe the process is that the mayor appoints for the approval of council. So there are there would be more than one candidate for that one position for the special district. So, I think that would be something for discussion with your council for.

Jason:

No. No problem. Thank you for, thank you for opposing that. Yes. glad we got that straightened out. All right. So moving along then we go to the district managers report. Nathan,

Nathan:

All kinds of good stuff for you. First you guys have, aside from the addendum that I sent out this afternoon and set in front of you, do you have any questions about the, initial report that I sent out?

Leah:

To, the, Well, the only question that I had about the capital project approval was there a monetary amount attached to that?

Nathan:

Yeah. So I'll. Yeah, I'll I'll get to that in a second. I'll kind of present it more directly. But it sounds like that's where you can go in. Yeah. And so the I didn't have it earlier in the email I have, I was able to, get a cost estimate.

This is based on the 90% complete set of the drawings. So that doesn't mean that this is a 90% cost estimate. It just means that that's where we're at. And the drawings, the drawing process, design process. So that number that we came across with, for this project is $869,984. That also includes a contingency of about $80,000.

And that's around what we would expect when we send this out to bid. We're relatively close to that, to be able to do that, because this is a project we were working on to originally do in conjunction with the city of Castle Pines. They're, milling in and repaving, Yorkshire, the street that's right out here in front of the office in 2024.

So we had hoped to kind of just work directly with them, do it as part of the same process, and try and capture some of that financial savings. Unfortunately, the water line is just not holding up well enough. We can there's we have no faith that it's going to make it through 22 to the, to the city project without having at least one break, probably multiple breaks.

The general cost on those, on those line breaks, on the low end is probably around like 25, $30,000 each. They can jump up to 60 or 70 pretty quickly. One of the biggest issues that we'll see, and there's, a little diagram that I put on there, you'll notice the, the red arrows are all of the places in the last eight years that we've had a rupture on this line.

You'll notice that there tend to be in pairs. The reason that those tend to be in pairs is the condition of this water line is so poor that when it breaks, when we go to turn it back on after fixing the break, we almost always immediately get another one that same day and that same day. Like before, we can even get the trench closed up.

It's already leaking in another spot. We have charged this line, sometimes painfully slowly. Just brought it back online. Fire hydrants open, blow off, open to make sure that there's absolutely no extra shock to that system. And it's still just it still breaks. Most recently we had one, out front that was about, I think two weeks ago was the last time we had a break on this one.

The same thing happened on, on that it's, challenging to find a spot on the pipe where we feel even comfortable to attach. Like the couplings, like the repair couplings on. So we end up taking 10 - 15ft of pipe, get to a spot we hope is in good enough to condition to survive the repair. Turn it on, and then it breaks anyway.

And so this has become, a pretty big project or a pretty big problem for us. So speaking with Kennedy Jenks this morning about it, which is why all of this came out so late, Larry and I, at the city had had a meeting on it last week to try to just really talk through how we were going to coordinate that with the city.

I called our engineering firm this morning to talk through that. And so they had run it through basically like what they do for a pipeline condition assessment rating, like the number of breaks per per lineal for foot per lineal foot per year. And then it's a desktop analysis that'll kind of do a pretty decent job of projecting when you're going to have your next break.

And so we were looking at like an 80% probability that this line pops in the next six months again anyway. And we'll probably have more breaks than that. So any any cost savings that we would have by waiting for the city, will would more than likely be more than eaten up by just the repairs we would have to do on it before then.

In terms of paying forward the capital cost, we do have, an existing approved capital line item for a well, re drill for, well A5, that is a $1.75 million approval that's already on the books. We're just not going to have time this year to get to that anyway. And so this would be in replacement of that project.

So we don't need to do any, additional adjustments. We're just going to replace one capital project. Or we would like to replace one capital project with this one. We should be able to with board approval tonight. We should be able to get all the bid documents together and get the bid process moving and hopefully, try and get this thing replaced this year.

Or if not, be in position to do it as soon as we can with the weather, there's a few challenges we'll have to look at. One of the biggest one of those is that the, homes, especially on this end of Yorkshire, including the office, to do the tie in and to put the new waterline in, we're going to have to do some temporary water main bypassing generally speaking, all that's done above ground.

And so we'll have to deal with freezing issues and try and manage some of that. But basically the faster we can get this thing moving, the better off we're going to be.

Jason:

How much line are we talking about? Are we taking it all the way down to the cul de sac? Correct. And this tributary that goes off of Berkshire Lane as well.

Nathan:

So the Berkshire Lane, we will go. We'll probably only go about 50ft up Berkshire Lane if that much. Really. We just want to get enough to get outside of the city's paving project for this year. That's a line that we really should probably look at replacing relatively soon. We haven't had it doesn't have the brake history that the other ones do.

Jason:

But the same age though, right?

Nathan:

Right. Same age and same installation. We have already had to replace. So Berkshire Lane kind of loops around and it ties into Tangle Oak Drive. We have already had to replace the line and Tangle Oak Drive. We did that about 12, 13 years ago. We already did a full replacement on that one.

All of it went in at the same time. So through this project will definitely stub out far enough that we can we can grab that one. But, in the last ten years, I don't think we've had, at least since I've been here. I don't think we've had a break on that section of line yet. So it's not quite at the same critical level that we're at now.

But that would be a logical replacement. It's something that we would probably wait to try and do in conjunction with the city in their paving project again, on that one.

Tera:

So this to me is a priority. I mean, this is what we do. This is what we're responsible for. And, you know, we but looking at your drawing, which thank you for that, but it should be a priority more sooner than later. I know we had a chance to talk a little bit before, but I am comfortable because I think the project that we aren't going to get to that's in our budget was 1.75 million.

This estimate is well under that, 869. So, there's seems to be room in the budget without making a judgment. But from my perspective, this is this is a priority. And yeah, as soon as that we can get it done. And I do appreciate you, being thoughtful about reaching out to the homeowners that will be affected, because I know that will that will impact them.

But it's it's not going to get any better.

Nathan:

Right. Exactly. and then one other comment I wanted to make about that budgetary number. It's we have a pretty high you know, we're never we're never guaranteed once the bids come in, you could be off a little bit. We experience that with our HVAC project where we missed by about 20%.

Luckily for this one, though, it's almost exactly the same size and scope of a project that Kennedy Jenks just completed in Greenwood Village. And so they were able to take very, very recent pricing and apply that to this. So this is like money that's been spent within the past few months for the same pipe materials, same kind of overlay conditions, a lot of the same project size.

And just directly pull that over. So we have a pretty good, a high degree of confidence in that number going out to bid. And we'll see what comes back with them.

Jana:

Nathan, I have a question. Yeah, absolutely. So I was going to ask what the costs were based on. So thank you for that information. And then also with the 10% contingency when this moves to a 100% design, does that contingency stay at ten or do you lower it.

Nathan:

Yeah. We generally keep about a 10% contingency, on the Kennedy Jenks has at least on their proposals. Kind of kept that.

Jana:

So so we'll leave about 80,000 from minor contract construction stuff that comes up.

Nathan:

Correct. Yeah. And that helps for, you know, fluctuating prices of asphalt especially is a big one. Underground conditions when we get in we may, you know, have to do additional bedding.

We may have to do a slight realignment. One of the things and none of that, there's nothing that we anticipate. But one thing that we have consistently come across in projects across Castle Pines and Chris, and one of the city projects ran directly into this is there is also a lot of stuff buried out here that no one knows exists.

And so we'll do all of our due diligence to all of our potholes, and we'll put a bucket in the ground and then find a line that no one even knows who had owned. So, usually keeping a little bit of a higher contingency is is pretty wise. Just because we consistently run into issues like that.

Jana:

And then I have one more question, because as you mentioned, construction costs are crazy.

Now, you know, they'll fluctuate and a drop back down. So was this based on the average unit price of the all the contractors that bid on that projects, or was this the low bid. Because my concern is that if they used the numbers of a low bid and that contractor doesn't bid on our project, then our budget is too low compared to where the industry averages.

Nathan:

Yeah. So they I that is a great question. I'm honestly not sure. When I talked to Lisa, the district engineer, about it, she just said that they had used that project as a pricing comparison. So I don't specifically know, okay, what they used. And so even if you even if we approve, you know, we could approve, just the replacement of this contract, to replace the line item that gives us all the wiggle room that we need, and then, you know, once we actually put this thing out to bid, will basically, on this year's budget will be scuttling a math amount of, additional capital that we had planned, since

we won't be doing that, but will be will be more than covered on the budget and the line item. And then, Lisa and Greg have historically been incredibly good at getting this stuff dialed in.

Jana:

So. Excellent. I appreciate that background. I just know stuff is coming into so high, so surprisingly. Yeah.

Jana:

Thanks, Jana. If there's no other questions, do we hear a motion for this?

Jana:

I'll make a motion to approve the capital. The swap of the budget for this capital project. I'll second that.

Board Voting All Speak:

Having a second? Let's move to vote. Jim. Approve. Tera. Approve. Leah. Approve. Jana. Approve. And I approve as well. So that motion passes and we can get started on that. Nathan.

Nathan:

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you guys. All right, up next on my list,

James:

I just I just had one question, and we kind of talked for a few minutes before the meeting started and, just about the status of the the well re drill down the road here.

And, and I was just wondering if you could spend a minute and kind of talk about what you might do with that project, since we're going to put it on hold for a little bit.

Nathan:

Gotcha. So the, this is unrelated. So the conversation that we briefly had beforehand was, regarding, well A-2, which sits over off of Oxford Drive, kind of by the treatment plant, we've got a lot of pipe out of the ground.

That's a separate scheduled project. The Well, A5 is, out on the field behind lift station 2 it's south east of the intersection of, Hidden Point Boulevard and monarch and so. Well, A5 sits out in the middle, kind of in the middle of that field. The reason that we want to look at re drilling A5 ultimately, is the same,

The same well, that was a we needed to abandoned because of the pickle ball courts. So they had far north of there where the pickle ball courts that they had tried to do a horizontal well application, which isn't very common in water. And so what they were hoping to do is drill an auxiliary Well, bring that foot. Excuse me? Bring that all the way across to where

Well A5 sits and tie that in. It could not have gone worse. They originally misaligned or missed it completely and went past it. They backed up, went to go try and tie in the well casing. And so this is all happening like, you know, 2,000ft below the ground. And so they tried to tie into the existing well casing.

And the idea is that you turn on A5 and A5 now not only has its draw column that's there, but it can also pull that entire horizontal. Well, and you had all kinds of water, right. But instead they hit it. And when they hit it, they end up like shattering the lower part of that well casing. The only mechanism that we had to contend to using that well, without fully drilling it was to cement the bottom of it up to the point that it broke.

And so they cemented it off to cap it to the lower part of the well still functions, but it's running at about 40% of the production that it used to run at. And I think all of that happened, like I want to say like back in 2006, seven, eight somewhere in there. So it's been quite a while.

So that horizontal well that they drilled, was never put in service. they had tried to abandoned it at one point and given it up. And then the pickle ball courts forced us to finish that abandonment, which put that whole project behind. And so the ultimate pro capital project to re drill it well, A5 is to get that well back up to its production number.

The well permit we have for their inlets allows us to take far more water, like three times more water than we actually are. And so we wanted to replace that Well, to capture that. Additionally, already approved capital project and I do want to mention that we did put all of the capital projects up on our website, so you can kind of see them there and update them and track those changes.

inside of this year, another capital project that we have already approved that we're getting closer to going bid on is it's the well vault rehab program. And so what we're going to do is go through and look at all of the well vaults that basically just have the piping. They come out of the well, there's some pressure blow off stuff in there.

That's where the flow meters for our production numbers sit. A lot of the vaults are in pretty rough shape. The electronics need to be, repaired. We've got some meters that need to be swapped out, some hatch alarms and other information we need to put in place. And so that project is coming. We'll still get to it this year, but we also need to get that really complete before we go and re drill that well so that we're coming in to new equipment and not doing any work twice.

And so we just honestly just bit off more than we could chew with trying to get both projects in this year. So it was going to end up getting pushed to next year anyway.

James:

Thanks. One final thing. Is there any issues or problems or, how long is the permit good for that kind of thing? If we delay this, no.

Nathan:

So it will be. It'll be you drill under the existing well permit. And so those are, those are put in place for a hundred years or so from the time we put it in place. So we're we'll have to, you know, drill the new well and then cap and abandon the old one. but it's all done under the existing well permit for the water.

And then we do have to file a permit to, like, do all of the drilling stuff. We haven't even done that process yet, so we're not in the danger of running the permit out because we haven't filed for the construction yet. Okay. Thank you.

Jason:

All right. Very good. Let's move on to the next matter. Anderson Farm lease for Anders farm.

Nathan:

Yep. the Anders farm lease. this is, if you guys remember, from the meeting last month, we had the Petrenko farm lease. I, Austin had briefly mentioned that there was another farm up there that had kind of gone quiet on us, and we weren't really sure what they wanted to do with the lease property. We finally heard back from them.

They were able to get all their water rights up. It's basically identical in terms of like the function in every way to the farm lease. It's just the other farm. And so we just need approval to, let them grow crops on our land and give us money for it. Basically.

Jason:

Okay. do we hear a motion for what would be to create the lease at this point? Do we have to create the lease? and up.

Nathan:

So the lease is completed. It is ready for signature upon board approval.

Board Voting All Speak:

Okay, so do I hear a motion to approve the Anders Farm lease? I'll make a motion to approve the Anders Farm lease.

Second. All right, having a second? Let's go to vote. Jim. Approve. Tera. Approve. Leah. Approve. Jana. Approve. And I approve also, so we can get that lease signed.

Nathan:

All right, more stuff. I'm hoping we can get signed. so I did have an opportunity to meet with the Chamber of Commerce a couple weeks ago. meeting went absolutely fantastic.

They would love to have us back in. We had some pretty at length discussions around, what we want that partnership to look like, a kind of a big theme around that was that, like, I don't I honestly don't know why that relationship soured. and the the new membership admissions lady, I wish Shannon, I think, I wish I could remember her and Shannon, is relatively new, so she didn't either.

And so that's a great starting point because neither of us carry any baggage or ill will toward it, and we just want to get back involved and get get out in the community. So we, you guys have a copy of the proposal that they put in? That's really kind of details what our level of involvement would be, in different events.

And this does tie back to something in my report, too. One thing, that I thought would be a really great way for us to one engage with the public is show up to things like setting up a booth and things like party in the Pines. I think that's August 12th. and then providing sponsorship at other events.

And it kind of all ties back in together with even the next part. But we've, as we've moved our operations over, to Semocor, we ended up with like, trucks just sitting in the parking lot and Semocor needed trucks. So we pulled up Kelley Blue Book values and were able to just like, kind of sell those vehicles and reduce our fleet so that we haven't done anything with the money from those vehicle sales.

One thing that would be really cool to do with that is they make, they're called water wagons. And I apologize for not, putting this in the board packet. I thought about it far too late, but for roughly $20,000, we could buy one of these things. And we could, you know, either own it or even consider donating it to the chamber or something like that.

But pulling this up, it would be like a like a concert style water station. They would have our logo and stuff and stuff on it and, you know, it provides people the opportunity to bring their own water bottles, do reusable cups. They're ADA certified. They're back flow prevention certified, and they're really just designed for those types of events.

So we've got like, Vino at the village coming up where we're sponsoring the water there and just kind of showing up at those events in our community. One, it's nice to kind of help with the environmental impact of like trying to get rid of the, you know, bottled water that they typically bring out, but also it's just a good conversation starter when we've got, especially somebody from our district present there with this water table, you know, everybody or this water wagon thing, everybody's drinking the water that we produce, the water that we make at the events.

It's great for the chamber. It's less work for them. They're not schlepping bottle water over, and it's a really good conversation piece. So that's one of the things that we want to start doing is becoming, if not through that, then some other mechanism, like being a water sponsor at these kind of events, and then also participating and giving, you know, as part of our contribution there will add us to, their newsletter.

They'll put us in place for, I mean, you guys can run through, but, yeah, there's there's a lot of stuff that comes with it. We get on the email blast they want to host. One of the things that we put in the contract is hosting a, they do lunch and learn, so we want to host a lunch and learn here, where I present on the district or any board members that would like to present, we can I kind of just get to our community.

I think it's a really good avenue to kind of get ourselves back out there. Having participated in several of the things like party at the Pines and Food Truck Frenzy before we exited the chamber, those conversations were invaluable. It's really, really difficult to get a lot of the stuff we do across in even emails or bullet point memos.

There's a lot of like, nuance to it. People have questions they can't get answered when they read stuff, and I'm actually really enjoyed those a lot, where you just stand out there, people come up and start a conversation with them, and all of a sudden you're talking about capital projects and long term renewable water solutions and people that are like, really engaged and can ask questions in real time.

So I think, you know, for, for $10,000 a year, it's it's money, money well spent.

Jason:

I like it. I, I think it, I think this is important for us to renew our relationship with them and, to get a friendly face in front of, in front of everybody. I don't know what's everybody else's thoughts.

Jana:

May I weigh in? Because I never know if I'm cutting somebody off otherwise. Aurora water has a water wagon like you're talking about, Nathan, and it is fantastic. And it's cute. And they pull up at events and it's branded and wrapped, and it's like water on tap. Don't even have some plastic cups, like, you know, branded with the logo.

I think I would love it if you would look into that and kind of see, what that would take. But I think between this relationship and then this opportunity to reduce plastic water bottles, all great. I love it.

Tera:

So we won't have plastic cups, I hope.

Jana:

Right. You No but they're like take home cups. They're reusable. Tera I understand the concern but they're like take home cups that you.

Yeah. You know order on your plastic.

Tera:

Yeah. I'm just I'm teasing you little bit Jana. like I. Oh yeah. Is like. Yeah. Let's not have plastic water bottles and we'll have plastic cups.

Nathan:

Reusability is is the key.

Tera:

Teasing you Jana.

Nathan:

We'll get some mason jars or something.

Tera:

So we have room in our budget I guess.

Nathan:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean we've sold both last year and this year we've sold off, I think, three different vehicles just because it was ridiculous to have them sitting in the parking lot and not doing use, and we haven't done anything with that money.

I think the total amount there is roughly. Oh, it's in the neighborhood of like 60 or $75,000 from those vehicle sales that we just haven't done anything with and so there's, there's two versions of this cart. The, the process to purchase it is probably that probably something I bring to the next board meeting to actually try and buy one.

The difference between the two of them is like 20 or $50,000. One of them is like, 300 gallon tank. So you really can take that one absolutely anywhere. It's all so much pure. I think it has, like, I think that one had 8 or 10, like water stations and then the water cart, which needs an active water supply, which really for the things we'd be using it for, wouldn't be a big deal.

Just running a hose off of a fire hydrant to it. It was, like $20,000. I did get some, baseline numbers, and that's with how doing things like branding them or wrapping them. So there would be some additional cost for that. But, in the interim, what we're trying to do for these events that are like in August is we're just trying to find something that we can rent, the quench buggy, which is the one that we were looking at, didn't have anything available.

They referred me to a company, that's actually just like a water filtration, like a home water filtration station, which isn't exactly what we needed. So we may not have this ready to go for, Vino in the Village and Party at the Pines. But we'll have something in place for those, just to provide water and then get these things rolling into, into next year, and then it'll be a hard decision if that's something that we want to own, if we want to give to the chamber, whatever, whatever.

Oh that's fine.

Tera:

Yeah. And I am I'm in favor of this. I'm asking so I don't know if it's coming out of the communications budget for the actual sponsorship or without having the budget

Nathan:

Oh, the 10,000, the other $10,000 contract.

Jason:

And how many patron members do they have? And who do you know who they are?

Nathan:

The rest of the chamber members?

Jason:

No, the rest of the patron members of the chamber. Where are we at?

Tera:

There's maybe three. There used to be three. Used to be the city, the Metro District, Castle Pines connection or something.

Nathan:

I think the. Yeah, I think there's 3 or 4 of them that are that are at that level. yeah. One of the things that I need to look at and, I've had an email exchange with Sadie and Phyllis and, the ball is in my court, but we need to, like, look at that communications budget as a whole and kind of, like, really redefine a lot of stuff.

And that's driven from, you know, the, like, not only this kind of stuff, but the Parker, the IGA we've brought on like, the parks, trails and open space IGA. We've brought on a new graphic designer, like this, this type of project. There's a couple other things on the website, like those are things that weren't specifically accounted for, individually for the budget moving into 2023, which was largely a function of one, the way that we were already doing communications.

But we also had to get that budget put together really, really quickly. And so we didn't get quite to that level of detail. so we need to look at our budget as a whole. Anyway, to make sure that we don't need to do a mini budget amendments, make sure that everything is appropriately reflected. And that's something that we can do in the next month or so to kind of get that dialed in.

In terms of finding $10,000, I'm relatively confident we could do that without needing to do a budget amendment anyway. There was a lot of, you know, there's there's line items that made it into the budget, into the budget for things that we just don't even have or own or use anymore. So I'm confident the money's in there.

We just need to make the line items actually accurately reflect reflect how we're spending.

Tera:

Thank you. And I, appreciate the way that you're, really wanting to connect with the community. And I think that's important because I know a lot of us, what was on our mind for even running for this board is to re instill confidence in our drinking water.

And, I don't know that there's any better way to do that than to meet people where they are and really, let them know. So, you know, I think this is definitely it's what we do. And I think it's in service of our community. By providing water, we were all at a fairly hot event. Today would have been great to have water there.

So, I like it. And again, as long as we're not, you know, making any budget impacts are in that, that would be a one concern. But philosophically I like it.

Nathan:

Sounds good. and the other option we have, if you know, the 10,000 is something that we ultimately can't absolve. And I like I said, I'd be shocked as we don't have to do an annual membership either.

We could also do like a $5,000 contract through the end of the year. and then do an annual moving forward from that point too. So, I mean, the difference between 5 and 10,000, especially with the kind of like budget stuff we already have going on, isn't really functionally that much. And then it also helps the chamber if we can do a full year, because then they have like a firm commitment to get us into all of these events, and that's for their planning.

But I think I think we'll be able to to get it in there.

Jason:

Any other questions?

Nathan:

We can have a yard sale.

Jaso:

So should we. So we should probably make a motion then to, approve going forward with the, with the membership. And then they can get us some more information on, this truck and all the fun things that they can do.

Nathan:

Yeah. Also, I'll send out an email.

Just for the link after, too. If not tonight, tomorrow too, so you guys can look at it and I'll, I can also throw that up on the website and the other documentation for this meeting too, so that people can go go check it out. That is, slightly unrelated to this, but one thing I did want to point out is, based off of last month, the comments at the end of last month's meeting, I did just start uploading the entire board packet to the website.

So all of that stuff's available. I was able to get it updated with even, you know, my addendum, and the extra information is already all posted on there as well. So we'll just we'll do that, do that moving forward. I've already had, two separate community members reach out to me today that jumped online to see the board meeting, and they were both really happy to see that that information was posted and available.

So kudos to you guys for telling me to do something that is wildly easy and makes me look really good at my job.

Jason:

I'm glad you did. It looks good. So, do I hear a motion to, I guess approve?

Tera:

Do we need to prove that through a motion or since it's in the budget or.

Nathan:

Yeah, because it'll be a contract. Yeah, a membership contract for you to sign.

Board Voting All Speak:

So I'll make a motion to, make a contract with the Chamber of Commerce, and, I'd like to second it. all right, having a second. Let's go to vote. Jim. Approve. Tera. Approve. Oh, yeah. Approve. And Jana approve, I approve also. So let's get moving on that and we'll have a face

Now at Vino in the village in a couple of weeks. It'll be me. I'll be hanging out there. All right. I'll stop by and say hi.

All right. Okay. What's the consideration for vehicle stipend?

Nathan:

So this is something. An idea that I've been kind of floating around anyway. And it kind of got brought back to mind when I started looking at, like, how to pay for this water wagon thing. From a district wide perspective, you know, we carry insurance policies, we have vehicle ownership, we have a lot of, like, designated maintenance dollars, those kinds of things set aside for vehicles every year.

So this specifically relates to it'd be an adjustment to my contract, with the parks, trails and open space idea. We currently own three vehicles and a couple trailers. All of those things, with the exception of the truck that I'm sorry 4 vehicles, all of those things with the exception of the truck that I drive, all go away.

So all those are things that are going to be transferred, theoretically to the city of Castle Pines. So it leaves us with one vehicle sitting in the parking lot, as it sits now, the one that I'm driving, I had a drunk kid on a scooter slam into the side of me at a stoplight, so the door needs repaired.

That was an interesting night. There's some other mechanical stuff that it needs done. It's coming up around, like, the 50,000 mile mark anyway. And so, the Parker water, the city, a lot of other utilities, especially smaller districts, rather than have a vehicle to own fleet or manage, they just put their, district managers on a vehicle stipend.

So this would be like an adjustment to mine that adds a vehicle stipend, no longer provide me a district contract, and then CPMND would be able to get out of the like, owning things that drive business entirely.

Tera:

So, that makes sense. I mean, I know the city does have some vehicles and it seems like they're repairing them quite a bit. but, it seems like part of the stipend and maybe, Council member Eubanks knows, but it seems like as part of that stipend, there is like, the the car makes sense, but it was like the car and the cell phone.

It seemed like there was a multi component to the stipend. So if we're going to make a change to your contract, we may want to consider making more than just the vehicle allowance. Yeah. We we do think this is a standard way that it's done. And it makes a lot of sense.

Nathan:

Yeah. The cell phone is actually an interesting point.

I hadn't thought about that either, because I am now officially the only one that's left on our cell phone plan as well. So we have one cell phone. my laptop is 5G enabled. So that's that's an excellent point. They're like, yeah, exactly the same thing. These are and it's it's just less paperwork that we have to deal with, less accounts.

We have to keep open less things that we have to track. And then, you know, I recognize that, you know, the it even at the $700 a month like that doesn't cover my cost of vehicle ownership. So it's not necessarily, like, really a boon for me either. I'm taking on some liability, but it's definitely like in the best interest of the district.

And then, you know, I also live in Denver, so it simplifies parking at my house for sure.

Tera:

So I'm in favor. And I just want to make sure that it's fair. And I want to see if maybe there's other things that

Nathan:

We could look at. I mean, look at the cell phone costs

James:

I had a question for Kim, as far as doing a stipend and him driving his own personal vehicle for work business, is there any potential liabilities or issues with that?

Kim:

Not any different than having your own vehicle. And again, remember, you're covered by the Governmental Immunity Act. So if if it's found that Nate gets in a wreck and it's well on district business, there's immunity. If it's not on district business, it's it's his own problem.

Nathan:

I only do district business when I get in a car accident.

Kim:

There's there's nothing else to do. Right?

Jason:

Nathan, where are you proposing $700 a month as the stipend?

Nathan:

Correct? Yeah. Okay. yeah. And that's pulled from the only direct comparable comp I could find was actually Ron Redd's contract in Parker, that one was pretty easy to find and publicly available. He got a $500 a month vehicle stipend that was put in place when he signed his initial contract in 2010.

I didn't find any updated information on that. And then the rest of it was looking at like, resources, like employers council straight up Google and just seeing what those national averages were. For executives in the private sector, it just seemed like it was insanely high and doesn't really apply here. And so when I looked up, I was like, man, I could get a $3,000 vehicle stipend.

That's insane. and so the national average across the board for all stipends, I came in, like, right around, like I had it and there was either five, 75 or 6, I think it was 575. and then getting a vehicle, they can also that's a I actually another point is the current vehicle I have is also a two door, basically a coop truck.

So I also can't like take many people with me on tours and stuff.

Jason:

So so you thinking you're getting a Tesla now?

Nathan:

I mean, not not with the margin calls that Elon Musk is about to face for his Twitter stock. Yeah, I don't want to I don't want to jump in a Tesla and watch that company fold out from underneath me.

But,

Leah:

That was going to be my question, just to Tera's point. Like, is do we want to I mean, does it make sense for you to think through it more with the cell phone piece? And then,

Nathan:

I mean, the cell phone and the the cell phone cost? I could go look at those plans, but really just to carry like, transfer my phone number over to an existing plan as well as the additional, laptop that I have.

This 5G enabled would be right in the neighborhood of like 200, and I'm sorry, 175 ish a month. The only reason that I kind of have that number already in mind is when we were moving through the inclusion process, and I was going to be looking for another job, when we had when I had started here, we were on, it wasn't a cell phone stipend, but basically they would let you pay your personal cell phone with a company credit card rather than starting up a company card.

It was with all of the the number of people that we had on that plan at the time. They ultimately asked us and gave us the option to put our phone numbers into the district plan, with the understanding the like if when we leave, we can port them back out. And so I'd already looked at that kind of that Verizon cost for that plan about a year and a half ago when I thought I was going to need to put my mom number back out and go to a different job.

So. Yeah.

Jason:

All right, why don't you get us a little bit of information, some information, and, then we can address this probably at the next meeting in perfect talking budget stuff. Next meeting yet or,

Nathan:

Are we talking budget stuff?

Jason:

Yeah. You guys are in the process now of starting budgets, aren't you?

Nathan:

Yeah. So we're getting ready.

We need to get, those initial meeting set up. Yeah. So I've already been collecting information. That's part of the conversation around, like, all of the communication stuff. I don't know that we'll have a budget work session for the board in August, but I would certainly expect to start seeing that in September. Our initial, proposal to you guys is due by October 15th, so we'll be aiming to do that at the September board meeting, to get that taken care of.

So that'll be a wider conversation around the budget perspective for 2024. Man, how does that come up so quick? But.

But yeah, I can get you so I can get you some better number. Basically I'll just look up what that cell phone plan will cost to just add those two things and I'll let you guys know.

Jason:

Very good. Does anybody have any other questions for Nate?

James:

I had a quick one. The way the vehicle that we currently have that has a damaged door and things like that, what's the disposition of that or what would it be in your mind?

Nathan:

not agree with the financial terms disposition? I'm sorry. The disposition of it?

James:

Yeah. Would we be looking to sell that?

Nathan:

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we'd sell it as is. Yeah.

Tera:

So the, The rebate requests, do we have 25,000 available so that it? $25,000 for the conservation rebate request budget? There's just. I think there's a zero missing I'm trying to check for.

Nathan:

No, it should be for the rebate request. I was 25, 25,000. There's a it breaks out a little bit differently. There's which are we in the packet somewhere?

Tera:

Yeah. yeah, I was just double checking.

Nathan:

Oh, yeah. Well, the com is in the right place.

Tera:

All right. It looks like a period. So I'm wondering, with the, you know, as we pursue our relationship with the chamber and we are getting out more than maybe that's another opportunity to advertise that since the adoption rate has been, lower than we

Nathan:

Had hoped for,

Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that one of the. We're actually, I'm working with our graphic designer to make a specific CPNMD conservation logo, with a QR code. And that is exactly what I was planning on putting the reusable cups that we put out as, like our conservation logo with the QR code that'll direct people to the website.

And then that's something that we can, heavily include in the branding of that water trailer, all of that fun stuff too.

Jason:

All right. Anybody else have any other questions for Nathan? All right. Hearing none. We'll close out that section and we'll move on to director's matters. Does anybody have a matter that I'd like to speak about?

Tera:

I just want to say thank you to all of our staff. You guys have been really amazing. Thank you. You know, Phyllis and Sadie, I know that there's been a really heavy lift getting things done, but, Russell could not have been more complimentary for all of your efforts.

And our front office staff. I know you're working hard. Jackie and Susan and, we don't get to see you in the evenings, but we appreciate you and Nathan. Thank you for all that you're doing. I mean, we really are, it's nice to see our, metro district really get organized and sort of cleaned up and freshened up and reacting to the right things at the right time.

And, you know, proactively looking at things and replacing our water line that we know really needs to be done. And, and the collaboration that you do with the city on all the matters. It was really nice, to see sort of a warm handoff with the pickle ball courts today. And, just you guys are doing amazing. And, I just want to say thank you.

Nathan:

Much appreciated. And I will make sure to pass that along to Jackie and Susan as well.

James:

And I guess I'll say thank you for the, orientation tour. Learned a lot. Very informative. I think it's something that I think a lot more residents would probably get, you know, a lot out of just seeing the facilities and being able to walk through.

And I think if we do it again, whenever or maybe next year that, you know, we try to open that up and maybe get a few more people to come. I think that that's the kind of outreach thing that I think, you know, pays a lot of dividends.

Nathan:

Yeah. And the previous ones we had done were fantastic, man.

That's some of the most fun I've ever had at work. You know, pulling a bus load of residents out to the treatment plan, walking everybody around and, realistically, as soon as, as soon as we're in a position, even if we're in between, like the backwash replacement track projects. And, before we move heavily into the filter project, if we can get that plant to a place where it's not an active construction site for a couple months, I'll definitely start sneaking those tours in and, and keep that stuff going.

Those are want a ton of fun. But yeah, they're great questions. And the reactions from people coming out or have been universally favorable favorable that they're they're super fun events. And I super appreciate the support around stuff like that a lot. It's very helpful.

Jason:

Any other matters?

Leah:

I had something and it was more just something to think about. I'd be curious to see what the other board members think. I spent a lot of my day in business meetings and we typically use PowerPoint to facilitate those meetings. Really consumable. I am wondering if, that could be something to consider for these meetings.

And so it's, you know, taking some of this information, just up leveling it to a more consumable format and then making that available, online. And then, you know, also on these, these calls. so I just thought I'd throw that out there.

Jason:

Thanks, Leah. We did talk to you. We did talk to, our guys over here and Terrence and Corby.

Thank you. And they have a couple concerns about that. Mostly, I think

Terrence Off-mic:

It was with rendering the images would be it was going to be difficult or, It was sometimes difficult to detect. Right. And render the information.

Leah:

Yep. So what I was thinking is it would be a different medium, right. So it would be like, like a, like a PowerPoint presentation, for example.

And and then so, so typically when I do it, it like work, you know, everything's virtual. We have the PowerPoint presentation up and then you can see the speakers as well. And so it's basically like you're using a PowerPoint presentation to facilitate a meeting. And then typically stuff like this would be linked. So it's like if you want to get more information you can link out to it.

Or I mean, you could still print these out for us. And they could be linked in the presentation.

Terrence Off-mic:

You were going to a multi-location meeting, and you guys actually go back and forth a lot. Yep. Look on this page. Oh! That's on the next page. That's over here. No that's over there. It depends on how far into the details you intend to get in the presentation. And then you will have to have someone going back and forth to find where you were.

It can, it can get be a lot. You’ll have to have a whole extra person just to track where you are in the presentation and communicate it properly.

You are adding another person to keep track of where you are in the presentation and communicate it to others who are not fully versed in the subject matter.

Nathan:

If we did something like so we've got I think the agenda kind of helps address that. And I think it's one of the reasons that it gets posted separately online also, that's a separate required, but we could also do like following each meeting. It wouldn't be that much of a heavy lift for me to go through and even just take the agenda.

And even outside of like the meeting, like the meeting minutes, just to kind of like a like a board meeting. Summary I know the city frequently puts out like, hey, here's what the chamber did. Like, this is this is what we discussed. These are kind of like the highlights. This is, you know, where the districts going. We could start doing something like that.

I did I overheard the conversation last week, and so I did even play with it a little bit with this and try and, like, dump that into, it wasn't super difficult to just convert this packet from a PDF into a PowerPoint presentation, but quickly running a day. She's like, you know, Terrence, just mentioned around like just that we jump around so much trying to keep that.

It's not one person presenting to a room. It's a much more conversational question based and just trying to try and keep that track to think might, have the opposite effect of what we're doing. But I am really, really do like the idea of trying to make these things much more consumable. And so I'm very open to ways to do that.

And I've been I'd be happy to even, you know, to have a sit down with you. Maybe you can bring in kind of some of those examples of what you've done in your office and I tend to be very you know, especially with an operations background. I tend to be very tactile and so being able to like, really see what you're talking about would be much more helpful than me trying to envision it.

Leah:

We just had a monthly MBR so I can show you that. I love the idea of kind of that recap though. And just something to share out. And again, just something quick, consumable because I was just thinking back to the last meeting that was three hours long. I wouldn't have come here or watched it online if I wasn't a board member.

That's just that's just a lot. And so just trying to think through, I mean, sometimes improving relationships, the first step is just having people understand what you do. Absolutely. Right. Like at a high level. And again, I don't know what the the answer is and it could be something that's iterative and maybe we try a few different things.

But I was just trying to think, you know, maybe how to improve the flow of the meeting and even just when we get into some of these financials, you know, being able to see charts like I'm super visual or some of the capital projects and being able to see that overlaid with like financial information and timing information.

Just something to think about.

James:

Yeah. I, I kind of again, I think we, we spoke about this a little bit and I, I kind of agree with you and, and again, you know, Nathan's kind of done some things already. But I think at a very simplistic level, if we just had the agenda and you can hyperlink the documents that he's already putting up online so that a person sitting at home could follow the agenda and literally just click it and that 50 page PDF would open up, and they could go to page 14 on their computer monitor at home or something like that without, you know, generating a whole new document.

I think I'd love to. And we talked about this previously of having what projects are getting currently worked in the district. You know, for that year. You know, that we have, you know, Abcdef and essentially, what those projects, the cost of those projects are and where we are, you know, basically so the residents can see what we're working on and what, what the current cost of that is and how much, you know, we spent on those projects.

And you can just do it as 3 or 4 horizontal lines, like in a calendar format. It's something we don't do it exactly that way, for our engineering projects at work. But I think I could kind of show you and I could definitely work with you. Leah. That kind of, I'm sure Jana, you you probably do something similar at your work, but, you know, for us, it's always, you know, our cost performance index and our schedule performance index.

So you know how much we're spending and when we're spending it and what the schedule is and, how we're doing against plan. So it's like three things and it's helpful and it's very graphical. You know, you can look at it in two seconds, understand the status of a project, whether it's ahead or behind or on track.

Jason:

Something to consider so we can look at it moving forward for sure. All right. Does anybody else have any matters they want to bring up?

Then I think we can go ahead and adjourn the meeting for tonight. Thank you everyone.