Study Session

January 17, 2024

Transcript

Describer:

Study Session Agenda

Wednesday, January 17th, 2024, at 5:30 p.m.

7404 Yorkshire Drive, Castle Pines, CO 80108

I. Call study session to order.

II. Introduction and Q&A- Bailey Budnik, Elara Creatives (New CPNMD

Communications firm)

III. CPNMD Contractor and Vendor Review

IV. Adjourn

Board President Jason Blankaert:

Good evening and welcome to Castle Pines North Metro District study Session for Wednesday, January 17th, 2024 at 5:33 p.m.. let's, call this study session to order.

I know you give me some time off and everything just goes out the window, so. All right, I guess, we'll start with, the introduction and Q&A from, Bailey Budnik, a leader of creatives. The new communications firm. Yes. Hi. Yeah.

Bailey Budnick Elara Creatives:

Perfect. thank you for having us today. yeah. So I am Bailey Budnik from a large creatives, digital marketing agency, founded it about two years ago, around the same time I moved to Colorado.

this is my partner, Eric, as well, who will be leading the media portion of everything. So, yeah, my background is in professional communication. I have a master's in technical writing and marketing with that, and just through everything found my passion with marketing. and then just recently started talking to Nathan at the, end of last year, knowing that, you know, all of you guys need, assistance in the communication and just engagement with the community.

So that's really our primary focus and just providing real and, you know, kind of candid information to the constituents so that they feel that they're heard and, you know, kept up to date with everything going on. so with that kind of the plan to move forward for the year is every month just to focus on, you know, the communication on the projects that are going on, education on, you know, the conservation projects, everything around that.

And then also just educating everyone on truly the process of, you know, bringing the water into everyone's homes. What does that look like? You know, making them feel a part of just that whole process. And through that, we can really track then their engagement. So whether that's updating things on the website, routinely doing the educational newsletters, also putting out bits and pieces of information through the billing mailers, and then Nextdoor app as well.

and with that as well, we can track engagement through website visits. You know, how many people are visiting the conservation tab when we send out that QR code? You know, putting out surveys through digital means that people can, you know, respond and we can see what they're saying. So and with that, Nathan and I are speaking that will provide a report every month that you guys can see, you know, website clicks, how many comments and what's kind of the general consensus on certain, you know, platforms and whatnot.

So yeah.

Jason:

Great. Do we have, questions?

Board Member Director Tera Radloff:

Well, no, I forgot to do that too. Thank you for coming tonight and presenting. I think this board has been very, passionate about engaging with our subscribers more and, helping them, you know, understand what's going on. And highlighting. I think some of our programs, we have some wonderful programs that our, our people can take advantage of that aren't.

So can you, and I'm sure that our district managers probably vetted you, but can you kind of give us an idea? Are you familiar with more of a, government type entity then? I mean, who are your who your clients?

Bailey:

Yeah, just throughout my past work, I've worked closely with either, you know, professional like engineering firms or, you know, community engagement, whether that's running campaigns for smaller, like local entities or community programs to get, you know, certain issues arise and everything.

For example, Aspen deserves better in Aspen, Colorado, and then a few back in Wisconsin as well.

Tera:

Thank you. And, so what is what is kind of your, I don't know, goal to what to bring to us or like and how will we know if we've been successful?

Bailey:

Yeah. Well, I think the goal is to just be more candid with the communication and really focus on it.

So that's, you know, interviewing the engineers that are putting in the water pipe down the street, letting people know what exactly is going on, bringing actual interest to it rather than and putting a face to, you know, Castle Pines or other it besides it just being kind of like this entity that, you know, you pay a bill to every month, you're not sure really what's going on.

You know, your water, those going up or down, but that's anything that you really ever hear about. So yeah, just putting a face to it, bringing that educational aspect and then through tracking it, you know, tracking conversions, we'll be doing paid ads through meta and front door. So you know, we can see who's clicking on everything, the exact demographic that it's going out to, you know, the age range, the the people that are interested in it, who's clicking on it, who's going then to the next step of everything.

So and all that will be in the report every month too. Question how do you actually get your data? I mean, obviously you're talking to Nathan, but are you going to be coming here and interacting or is it just going to be normally scheduled meetings, to obtain that information that you're going to actually put up about projects and timing and things like that and other community?

I forgot what I wrote here. you know, conservation type issues and things like that. I mean, what's the structure there? What have you guys discussed?

Bailey:

Yeah. So Nathan and I are planning monthly in-person meetings. We just spoke for three hours prior to this, going over everything and then also coming to the board meetings, like this.

And then also with the media team will be scheduling, you know, whether it's bimonthly or per month going out on site to certain projects, understanding, talking to the people that are actually working on them, getting really great information from there as well. And, you know, Nathan and I, closely communicating on a daily basis with everything too.

Board Member Director Leah Enquist:

They have a question. This is Leah Enquist. Can everyone hear me? Yes. You're good Leah. Apologies for not being in person. And welcome to you both. I suspect that click through conversions and engagement are going to be low. how how do you increase those?

Bailey:

Yeah. So through a number of ways for a few platforms, we're starting off with Instagram and Facebook specifically.

You know, we're starting from ground zero. But we do have a lot of targeted metrics. Like I said, targeted ads that will be running every month that we can, you know, send out to specific constituents in, you know, this 20 mile radius and see that and then through there that provides really great feedback and engagement always where, you know, then they follow us, then they like everything.

Then they sign up for the newsletter. Just kind of being in there corner a little bit more just provides that overall feeling that, you know, we're communicating. And then as far as just a physical means of tracking things, I know with our billing inserts, we'll be sending out surveys that people can access through QR code. And then all that data will be sent back to us and their responses.

So, you know, there's it's a multi faceted area where we can track things. Awesome thanks.

Jason:

Are you also going to be helping us with like the chamber that we have events with in producing materials for that as well.

Bailey:

Yes. So for all those events Nathan and I started to cover things. But yeah, creating educational posters, you know, different type of things to incentivize people to chat with and everything like that.

Board Member Director James Mulvey:

Okay, everyone, if it's okay, you indicated media and I kind of you said you're going to going on site and things like that. What is that end up looking like? Is that, essentially short clips or is that photographs only? What is it?

Bailey:

Yeah. So both of those really great photos of, you know, certain things of the project that we want to share or even of the community, you know, because that's going along that way.

That's another way to really increase engagement and just have people interested in what's going on is talking about things in the community. but then with that as well, so, you know, short minute to two minute videos, of an expert on the project talking about something, whether that's one of, you know yourselves or Nathan or someone, you know, like an engineer, the, the project operator.

and those videos, too, are curated in a way where it draws people, and it's interesting, but it's still kind of on that professional line of just communicating really great information.

James:

Okay. thank you. just to follow up on that and, I think for me, anything interactive, I'm talking specifically, like maps and locations and things like that, that people can actually, if it's in their neighborhood and they see it, they can click on something and get information.

Bailey:

Yeah, definitely. another point that we are just talking with is the GIS map and figuring out how to use that appropriately and the best way we can. So

Jason:

Nathan, are they going to be taking control of the website or are you going to continue with that?

Nathan:

Yes. so I'll be providing, through the board largely, like direction on topics that we want to cover and things like that.

And so we put in newsletters, I'll provide like just kind of like the baseline information that we need to include and then really let them just fill in the details. Substantially populated. they do, have access to the website so they can look at our engagement metrics. They can use our, our communications function through our email blast on there.

and so the, the bulk of like the heavy the heavy lifting will be them. but I'll be, feeding them whatever information that they need to get that in. and then to Director Mulvey's point, with the interaction, that was actually something that we, talked about quite a bit, and it just had some more, like, fun off the cuff ideas and or, like, ways that we can try and drive people to, like, go through the website.

So one of the, one of the ideas that Bailey had is we could do like a limited number of people, obviously, but like, maybe you get a $5 off on your water bill if you complete this website scavenger hunt, go through and like, you know, find the cost of a specific capital project. What is one of Nathan's favorite activities to do, like give them that kind of rundown and really, like try and drive people through that?

and then also like in those community, events, we are out with the chamber focusing on interactive, like interactive, things that are interactive with community, but gear those things more toward kids, because when you have kids coming to the table, then you get the parents. And so when you've got like a bunch of really fun stuff or a fun game, the kids can play or interactive, you can drive them there.

And so there's that interaction piece is going to be really important. But really, I think part of honestly, part of my challenge is going to be now that I've owned this thing for a year, letting it go, in a lot of respects. But I think that through the the conversations that we've had so far, some really exciting ideas and, just a really like a fresh look on a lot of platforms and engagement systems that I don't, I don't really understand.

Jason:

Very good. Well, I think with your workload, I think taking on the website last year was probably a little bit much. And that's probably a good thing to, turn it over to some professionals. Right? yeah. Absolutely. For sure. All right. Anybody else have any questions? All right. Thank you guys very much for the presentations. Very nice meeting you.

And welcome.

Moving on to item number three, the, Castle Pines North metro district contract contractor and vendor review. Nathan. yeah. So this is something that we, did last year, and I thought it was really helpful, especially as we've onboarded, you know, some new directors. I don't really have a lot to cover in this. It's pretty straightforward.

There's not a lot of changes, over the previous year. I guess I'm going to be more driven by your questions, than anything else. a couple a couple of changes, I guess, to highlights that the Semocor contract went up, roughly $35,000. and a lot of that is just one as we gain a further understanding of, you know, what we need?

we we we discussed, Will's role as the operations manager. We kind of sat back on that to see what that was going to lay in. And then, you know, things are just getting more expensive. so we just had, relatively minor cost increase. another thing worth highlighting. this is, would be on the second page, but our, SCADA and controls contractor has changed.

for a long time, we used INC Designs, for a number of reasons. We parted ways from that contractor last year, and we're now using Mountain Peaks Controls. That has been absolutely fantastic. they they're they're quick, they're responsive, they're local. they've been here, they've been around and in this area for decades. So that, that changes, been helpful.

Another big advantage is Mountain Peaks is a much larger company. Joe was just one guy. So there were times that he was or INC Designs was just one guy, Joe. And so there were times that he was, spread a little bit thin. in the engineering, the only change, obviously, we've had Kennedy Jenks for a long time.

I've included Level 3 engineering. They are the company that has been handling the SSO violation, through the state. additionally, we're also going to have them, take the lead. And one of the things we'll address at the, board meeting is the extension for the IGA, just for the property transfers. Level 3 is also going to take on that project.

So they're going to go through to find all the necessary easements that we need to do, break out all of the parcels. the, I need to get probably something official in writing, but we talked about but we have I've had, conversations with the city about just splitting the cost of that. So they'll pay for pay for half of the work that needs to be.

Well, not quite half. I'm going to have them do a few projects that aren't related to, a few parcels that aren't related to the transfer. So we'll, we'll take care of those. But the lion's share will be split Level 3s on board them. And, absolutely fantastic. And I think those were the only, the only changes over last year, that those are the ones that I highlighted anyway.

Oh, and then Susan actually pointed this out for me, earlier today when she was reviewing it for the, we're going back a little bit for the I, the IT services, with Greystone technology. it's not a huge difference, but, worth noting, I have them listed on here as hourly. we actually have a $1,500 a month base fee that we pay, and that handles the vast majority of our services.

And then add the hourly part is anything that's outside of that scope. so a lot of our bills last year were hourly, but that was because we were doing like all the server upgrades and replacements and stuff like that.

Jason:

Questions?

Tera:

Well, first of all, thank you very much for doing this proactively, because I do think this is an important role of the board to review our contracts every year. And, and I do appreciate you bringing that forward. just kind of a question. because we are, I would say the size that we are probably most likely always going to be a mix of, contract and employees, I think at times.

And maybe this is a good communications thing. people may have concerns about our I don't know, robust is the only word that comes to mind. And I hate that word. So I hope you come up with a better one. But kind of the, sort of the, I guess, depth, that that provides for us. I'll take Semocor, for example.

that is in ways would you kind of expand on whether that's more beneficial for us than a singular employee that's in there, because we have a corporation behind that. And and that provides us not just a single employee, but I mean, sometimes I think there might be questions about because we're so small, like, you know, do we seem, I don't know, just too small to have either, you know, good coverage or enough coverage or, that type of thing.

So could you talk a little bit to that?

Nathan:

Yes. But Semocor is a Semocor is a great example of that. I think that, you know, in terms of like major munic.. one thing to keep in mind is in terms of like major municipalities and municipal areas, like if you're comparing us to Denver, Aurora, Centennial, well, Centennial, even the Centennial Park in Castle Rocks of the world, we do feel relatively small.

in terms of water district scale. We're actually on the bigger end of that. So there are a thousands of water districts in the in, in even inside of Colorado. and so in terms of like overall water district, we're actually a pretty decent sized utility, with the, with the operations and Semocor specifically, moving to that operations contract over in-house employees provides us a lot of like overall value.

And a lot of that is to the depth that you spoke to. We've got nine certified operators that work with us. Will has a wealth of experience and knowledge, and Mark are our functional lead operator. Same way there guys that are just really understand what they're doing a lot. even inside of operations, it's fairly. It's there's a lot of specialization.

So we have three separate systems that we operate. We have our water treatment plant, our water distribution system and our water collection system. So each one of those needs to carry its own ORC, finding operators that are, ORC would be, operator and responsible charge, the person that is legally required to make sure that we are hitting all of our metrics and ultimately has authority, over those, over those systems.

So, by design and appropriately, Will has much more of a say in the day to day operations at like how the treatment plan is managed. And those individual functions are because that's the way that that ORC system is, is designed to run. so finding one person that has all of those qualifications, is difficult to begin with.

you need a for distribution for a maximum level distribution certificate collection certificate and wastewater treatment plant. So finding one person that's going to be able to cover that as an in-house employee, is exceedingly difficult. The other side of that is, I mean, finding a certified operator that you can hire in this environment for a long time is very, very difficult.

There just aren't a lot of people that do this work. when we had when we initially following the, Parker inclusion, we had initially started down the path of leaving Semocor in charge of the water treatment plant and then actually trying to hire in our own staff. And so when we were going through and looking at that, we were really looking at like, I think we had four individual hires that we were going to need to make to cover that hole, that breadth of that area.

And so Semocor, was not only able to instantly fill those spots with certified operators, they were doing it at a savings of like $900,000 a year. Cheaper to go that direction. the industry as a whole is moving much, much more toward that contract operation side. And there's a few things that are driving that, outside of like the large major utilities.

It's one it's just really difficult for governments to pay what the private sector does. and so a lot of operators are leaving the government side and moving into the private side anyway. And so that privatization, something that's kind of at least from the operations perspective, is, is growing, I don't know about rapidly, but certainly steadily. and so really just kind of getting on board with that and bringing Semocor in, we are also their largest contract to and so they're, they send us the resources that we need.

And so it's I don't think we've had, really any, any issues, that I can remember where we haven't had somebody here when we needed to or where, you know, Semocor responded to a emergent to an emergency and got there any slower than they would have otherwise. We've got, at least one employee in district all day Monday through Friday.

They also provide are on call services, which is another big driving factor for that need for multiple employees is if we only have one person that's on call and or that's here in in charge of all of our operations, that person also has to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, forever. And so they also give us the flexibility that we need to rotate through that.

Tera:

Thanks. And then would you talk a little bit about those certifications. So you talked about the ORC operator charge whatever. But these are all it sounded like there were quite a bit of levels of certifications, as if almost like a CPA or I mean, these are professional certifications. So they're vested in, in these things. It's not it's not like we're exposed because, it's just just somebody that we've hired.

Right? These are people that are licensed for a specific thing, and these are professional licenses that they have to keep up. And so there's basically skin in the game.

Nathan

Yeah, yeah. And there's, you know, there's there's a legal responsibility on that back in to as the ORC that even stands separate from the organization. So if there are things that are, you know, processes aren't being followed, nefarious actions, illegal actions, metrics that aren't being had, things that results in, God forbid, and like, public harm.

obviously we as an entity have some level of liability, but the operator specifically has a level of personal liability that's tied up in that that comes with that license. the licensing program is it's it's fairly old at this point and it's it's well established. there are I don't I think there's 8 or 9 different licenses that you can carry.

the ones, the three that we specifically need, all have the kind of like same metrics. So we have the collections distribution, water treatment licenses that we have to carry as an organization or have somebody on staff that or contracted that carries those, to get to those higher levels. There's four levels in each of them because there were two separate certification programs back in the day.

there similar but backwards. So the collections and distributions licenses are one, two, three and four, with four being the highest level. and then the water treatment and wastewater treatment side, the licenses are D,C,B, and A with A being the the highest level to get to that fourth. And so you have to take the test sequentially and there's experience requirements that come with each one of those.

You can even test for your A certification until you have at least four years of experience in the industry. And then there's continuing education credits that you have to maintain that license on a three year rotating basis to keep it going. So there's there's definitely a lot of investment, a lot of buy in, operators in general. we're kind of a different breed of human being anyway.

Like if you're in this industry long enough to get those licenses, it's because there's something broken inside you that makes you love it. and so the, the guys, the guys we have, like, we they really do have a lot of, you know, enjoying their game. So, or enjoy their jobs. and operators in general, in my experience, really enjoy their jobs as well.

So while there's certainly that level of like personal responsibility that comes with that and like you said, skin in the game, there are also people that are just really invested in this industry. I think that, you know, we we take a certain level of pride in like being a community foundation block. Like if you don't have water, nothing else works.

You don't have fire, you don't have streets, you don't have stores. Like everything falls behind that. And so, yeah, I think there's a certain level of pride that comes with being an operator. And then the personal investment is also something that that shines through, for sure. Thank you.

Jason:

Great questions. Any other questions?

Jana:

I have some questions. might have kind of simple, Nathan, specifically regarding, the communication section. So we've got streamline services for the website and then we have VIP Video Productions. But that says through February of 22nd of 22.

Nathan:

Oh, that's because I reused my document from last year and missed a date. Okay.

Jana:

And so it says as we evaluate options. And so to me, I wonder, does that mean we're continuing with the video services. yeah.

Nathan:

So that is 100% a hangover for from last year. Okay. And then then we've got Elara. Is that what it's called Elara, Elara, Elara okay. And then lastly we also on then we have AIMS.

We have AIMS That's doing like the GIS stuff for the website. So.

Nathan:

Well so the AIMS doesn't do anything with with the CPNMD.org website.

Jana:

Is the GIS stuff not on the website like it's not the interactive GIS mapping that's on the website.

Nathan:

Yeah. So we we yeah. So the the our the AIMS system is asset information management systems.

that is separately hosted. We can access it through the website. So we, I have access to it. A number of contractors have access access to IT engineering firms. and that's really more for one obviously just the geographical location mapping, but it's also what we are expanding, and building our like our capital improvement, our asset management programs are ultimately our maintenance programs will will all be pushed through there.

And we do track some maintenance. But so the GIS, the GIS is much more, much more of an internal function.

Jana:

And then also on top of that we've got the Greystone technology. So I know every one of these consultants does something different and I can see that. But is there any place for the future for us to consolidate some of this instead of, you know, not not that I'm trying to get rid of anybody, but I mean, a lot of times when you can consolidate, you can save cost.

And so anyway, thoughts on that? It doesn't even have to have an answer today, but just something to be thinking about. Because when I see this, I think a lot of like, is there anybody here that could, you know, do the website, like could a Elara and Streamline, you know, in the sense that like, could a Elara do that stuff?

And I don't know, but

Nathan:

yeah, I think looking for redundant, redundant works and or redundant redundant responsibilities is something that I can definitely start paying attention to and just look for those off the top of my head for these specific ones. they, they seem like they're a lot of overlap. So, like the streamline services, the that's really more like that $300 is really more of a hosting fee than it is anything else.

Like they keep the website up and active and it gives us access to the tools to keep us ADA compliant. they have some really like, minimal help that they can give us with like graphic design and some promotion stuff. It's a that's really just like a website hosting.

Jana:

I don't think I officially have an ask Nathan.

Jana & Nathan:

I'm just with Tera like, I like that a lot, man this is a lot, that's a that's a great thing to pay attention to a lot of people.

Jana:

Is there a future where there's less consultants or, you know, that these are all really specialized things, but even like 2 engineering firms, Level 3 is great. So is Kennedy Jenks. But would we ever consider getting one firm to reduce that? So yeah.

Jana & Nathan:

And with that, with no official action on this. Yeah. with this just bringing some thoughts, with the with the engineering, specifically,

Nathan:

I've been and this is really just more something that I've been thinking about and kind of like paying attention to my workloads and like where we're sending that money out. One thing that I want to really pay attention to at the engineering services over the next 12 months is seeing what that would cost us versus what actually an in-house engineer could really do a lot of good work for us.

So if we're if we've got a long time out in the future, like we have a long list of capital projects that we're going to continue to work through as we get caught up on. We're spending a lot of money just in like design and, you know, just those like baseline engineering services. And so I think there are opportunities to look for maybe even bringing some of those things in-house and really reducing that consultant load and giving us more control.

Jana:

also in this means you have to manage all these consultants to correct. And so that's more for you as well. And so again, when I see like the, the two engineering firms I think could help Level 3 be a sub to Kennedy Jenks. You know like or could Kennedy Jenks have hired could you have used their sub and you I'm just looking for ways for you to not have 15 people that you manage.

So but not necessarily discussing bringing people on staff because I know that's not always efficient, like you said, with the certifications and onboarding and I know, I know it can be challenging. So, I think it was just a topic to discuss.

Nathan:

Yeah, I like that a lot.

Tera:

That's a good point. I have kind of a couple of follow up questions to what Jana brought up.

So but these aren't these are all kind of on demand other than our, other than Semocor. Right. These are all basically on demand. It's not like you have 15 contracts all the time.

Nathan:

yeah. Correct. So the, I think we've got a contract in place. Generally we do one with, we do one with your office generally like an annual contract, I can't remember.

Legal Counsel Kim Seter, Esq.off-mic:

Yeah, we still have a single contract that rolls over a year to year.

Nathan, Tera & Kim:

Gotcha. A single contract for, It is on-demand. You can terminate me right now if you want You. I. I wasn't talking about you. Please don't. You're not going anywhere. Yeah. So outside of. Yeah, man. What need to Outsource. We need to find a different attorney. I'm not saying who,

Nathan:

But, Yeah. It's okay. Yeah, yeah. Community Resource Services is one that we, we have an annual contract that runs through them. TW Summit is another one that we've done, historically for just because they do so much for hydrant valve maintenance is a lot easier to get them on board. and I think that those are really, really it,

Tera:

just like Jehn Water Consultants.

That's not an all the time thing.

Nathan:

Jehn, Jehn does a lot of work. They do. They work with us constantly. So they, they actually have a role to play every day. They do a water accounting stuff. But again, there we're not into a contract that they give us our, our yearly rates and then we move forward with them or we don't, it's something we could.

Jana off-mic:

Is that the vendor company who sends the bills out?

Nathan:

No, so, yeah, once you get into the these are like our main contractors.

Once you get into, like, the billing, for example, that's done between Susan runs like the kind of show with the billing, but CRS provides support with all of that. once all of the billing is ready to go, that goes through CUSI, which is a vendor service, and then the ones that need to get mailed, they get printed at Letters Plus an Arapahoe or off Arapahoe Road.

And so those go out. We use letters Plus for a lot of different things. Anytime we have a mailer that goes through Letters Plus, so there are definitely, definitely more vendors that we use than are listed on here for sure.

Tera:

So my other question, though, as I kind of was hearing Jana and it looks like a lot of that, especially for the communications piece, really looks like it adds up.

So, and I'm not sure what our, you know, purchasing policy is or whatever, but, for sole source or competitive contracts or, really getting a competitive bid on that attorney. I'm totally kidding. but but but realistically, I mean, you know, if we get question about why are we just kind of continuing in the contracts that we have or, if we are feel comfortable that we're getting a competitive contract, how would how would you respond to that?

Nathan:

Yeah, I think that that's, something that is an area for growth that we can definitely improve on is running those. And so, Phyllis and I have actually had some conversations about like, now that we're getting ready to get finally caught up on the audits, we should have the audit to present board meeting on Monday. so now that we're, like, really caught up on the audits, that's kind of an area that we need to take another another or even, you know, with this board and certainly me like a first look at is that financial side.

And so, you know, the first step of that is Phyllis is going to like start getting us through like monthly and quarterly updates. So we really know where those expenditures are. We have like a much more tangible feel of where that money and how is going out. and then I really do want to take a hard look at those financial policies, because I don't think we have a lot of things that are really clearly designed and things exactly like that.

What what services do we want to send out to an annual bid system? Like where to like where can we capture those? Like, who do we want to hold, you know, as a sole source? And those justifications, I think that there's a lot of room for growth, as a district in those financial metrics, which is something that we're going to have to be looking at, pretty hard anyway, when we're start doing, you know, hopefully will be, you know, deep into a rate study this year before too terribly long.

And, as we capture those things, that's a that's definitely an area for growth for us. just having more clear direction of what we have, where it's going, and then making sure that we're utilizing those resources as effectively as we can. Thank you,

Jana:

Tera. To add to it, I did check the rates of the engineering firms against the industry, and so they match the going rates.

But other than that, that's kind of the only place that I have a metrics that I can go off of. But I feel good about those rates, at least that they were competitive and that we weren't blindly just picking those guys.

Tera:

That's a great data point. Thank you. Yeah.

Nathan:

And there's there's some that have been for us, some limited examples of there have been kind of like frustrating over the years.

So one of them, is, emergency pipe repair. They are a fantastic contractor. I've worked with them my entire time in the district. but one of the things that has been, at times a little bit uncomfortable there has not been a this has not happened yet where there's been like, we have a large line break or a line repair that needs to be done in an emergency basis.

And I call emergency pipe repair, and they show up like they have done it every single time. But, you know, they're a limited crew. They have like multiple, multiple clients. Some of them are bigger. Like they're there could be a day where they've already got all three of their crews out on emergencies, and they just can't spring anybody to go to us.

trying to find even a reliable backup in that position was proved to be almost impossible. I don't know how many people I called, and couldn't even get them to, like, show up to meetings or like they would come out and show up to the meeting, and then I'd never get a pricing list or like, any kind of like communication beyond that.

And so there's been a few times where that's been where we've looked for additional contractors and just haven't really found anybody local, and available. If we got, even a little bit lucky with Semocor but we were in a similar situation with them. We're finding an operations firm that's large enough to handle us and had the capacity was really, really difficult.

So we had Ramey Environmental. they left because their business interests were carrying them further up north. We looked at, distribution. Yes, DSR we looked at another another company. They didn't have the supplies get down. So there are a lot of at least in the operations side, which is where I've had most of my time, where I've looked for like backups or alternative contractors and vendors and just have found a remarkable lack of response or availability.

and I think that's, you know, not an excuse to continually do that and certainly expand that practice. But there, there are other challenges. And, you know, sometimes it's not about getting a contract, getting the cheapest contract. It's just about finding a contract that's available.

James:

all right. So I kind of, latching on to the need to backup thing. So I think, I still think we need to maybe prioritize that not direction here, but. Sounds like you see the need as well for the pipe repair. Yeah, know I get it. It's tough to find somebody. and then the second thing, I guess was, and again, not necessarily direction.

We have to do that as a group, I think. But, I kind of like the idea of, you know, as you kind of clear out and we have some things that are, I guess, you know, we're doing a little bit better here. What services should we look at for early bids? And I think that's a worthwhile endeavor to kind of, you know, again, we're I, I you were spending a lot of money in some of these contracts and I think it behooves us to kind of see, you know, if there's other options out there.

Absolutely. and whether or not we can save the people some money, that kind of thing. So I kind of I like where your head's at. And like I said, obviously you're aware of it, so I don't need to belabor it. But, you know, maybe it's something that we talk about as we go forward here this year. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Thanks.

Nathan:

The the most I'll use the word egregious example that I've ever seen of annual bidding. so it's I, I think there's definitely room for us to, improve there for sure. But, this is really just more of a fun story, but. So, Pueblo, back in the day does basically everything gets bid out on an annual basis.

And so the, the most difficult or the most kind of silly example of that is their water meter. So they, they annually bid their water meter provider, which means that every year the company that they use to supply water meters for their district changes. And so they have to keep a meter reading system put together that is capable of reading like nine different metering vendors.

And they have on the bright side, they have the coolest, most advanced meter shop in the state. Like, it is absolutely amazing because they have so much stuff to fix. But yeah, I just thought that was funny. So I shared it.

Jason:

Yeah, I can see the need for a couple of these contracts to have a matrix. And so we can tell what the ROI on some of these things are.

some things are going to be able to do that with Semocor being one of them. But, we, I think we definitely need to have a little bit of focus on that and make sure that we're, that we're being prudent. wait, any other questions?

Jason:

I'll just do one more. and this is something I kind of brought up last year, maybe didn't state, you know, in a, you know, maybe perfectly clearly.

But since we're getting caught up with audits and things like that, and we talked predominantly about media and communications and things like that. but it would be nice similar to kind of like, you know, last year we were talking about projects and timing and kind of seeing what that looks like, but maybe a Parado or a pie chart or something like that.

That kind of shows us, you know, again, not a ton of work, but it shows us where we're spending our money. You know, overhead projects, communications, that kind of thing. so it's easy to digest in a simple, you know, graphical form. I think it would be. Yeah. Like, that was super helpful for me because, you know, you just named, like, 8 or 9 companies that do communications.

Is that really the right category or are they doing other things like some of the people that are doing, you know, videography and things like that that you identified? you know, instead of just seeing line items in a budget in a name, sometimes it's difficult to digest that. So if you could maybe add one single thing to that just to kind of lump them into categories, I think it would be helpful.

Nathan:

Awesome. I like that idea a lot, actually.

Jason:

All right. Good input. any other questions? Leah?

Leah:

No questions for me. Thanks.

Jason:

All right. Very good. Well, that was our last item on the agenda for the evening. So at this point, we'll go ahead and adjourn until, Monday when we have our board meeting. Well, thanks, everyone.