Board Meeting

March 25, 2024

Transcript

Describer:

Board Meeting Agenda

Monday, March 25th, 2024, at 6:00 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 March 25th, 2024, board meeting agenda.

IV. Consider approving February 26th, 2024, board meeting minutes.

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

VI. Communication Director’s report

A. Highlights from the past month.

B. Looking Ahead

VII. Finance Director's Report

A. Ratify claims for payment including check numbers 28424 - 28479 and electronic

payments issued from February 21, 2024, through March 20, 2024.

February Enterprise Funds $661,548.88 March Enterprise Funds $216,033.70 Total Enterprise Funds $877,582.58

February Electronic Payments (all funds) $25,129.90 March Electronic Payments $25,669.60 Total Electronic Payments $50,799.50

Total Expenditures for February $686,678.78, Total Expenditures for March $241,703.30 Total Expenditures for the period $928,382.08

VIII. Legal Counsel's report

IX. District Manager’s report

A. SSO Violation update, civil penalty amount & options.

B. Consider resident request for bill forgiveness.

C. Update on credit card fees and bank driven bill payments.

D. Parcel Transfer Update

E. Capital Project update.

1. Yorkshire Waterline replacement.

2. Monarch Waterline replacement.

3. Filter Rehab Project.

4. Well Vault Rehab Project.

X. Determine Necessity of April Study Session.

XI. Director’s Matters

XII. Adjourn

Board President Jason Blankaert:

All right. good evening and welcome to the Castle Pines North Metro District board meeting for Monday, March 25th, 2024 is approximately 6 p.m., and we'd like to call this meeting to order with, and start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

All:

Okay. 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:

What happened to us now?

No question. All right. having completed that, let's move on to roll call. Jim,

Board Member James Mulvey:

Present, no conflicts and no conflicts.

Board Member Tera Radloff:

Perfect Tera present, no conflicts.

Board Member Jana Krell:

Great. Jana present, no conflicts.

Board Member Leah Enquist:

And Leah present. No conflicts.

Jason:

And I'm Jason Blankaert and I'm present with no conflicts also. All right, so we just received the board or for the board meeting agenda.

Board Voting All Speak:

Do I hear a motion to approve tonight's agenda? Motion to approve as presented. second the motion. Great. We have a second. Let's, put this to a vote. Jim, I approve, Tera, I, Jana approve, and Leah approve. Perfect. And I approve as well. So we have approved tonight's board meeting agenda. We just now going on to item number four.

Jason:

We just now got our board meeting minutes from last month. So we can postpone that till next month. So you guys have had a chance to, to review those?

Board Voting All Speak:

Yeah. Motion to postpone today. Our second all second. Great move to a vote, Jim. Approve. Tera. Approve. Jana. Approve. Leah. Approve. And I'm Jason and I approve thanks. All right, so we will vote on those next month.

Jason:

All right. This opens up the public comment period. Do we have anybody wishing to speak tonight? Please.

Give us your name and address if you would please.

Roberta Allen, Castle Pines Resident:

Hello. before I start, could I make a suggestion that when you guys speak, could you move the microphones a little closer to your mouth? because, some of us can't hear everything that you say. it would just be helpful to some of us. Thank you. my name is Roberta Allen. I live at 5703 Jasper Point Circle.

In Daniels Gate neighborhood here in Castle Pines. I have, been elected and have sat on a number of boards. And I first want to say thank you for all of your efforts. And this board. it's a very complicated, as I'm finding out. organization with multiple tentacles in many different directions. And I know the amount of work that it takes besides coming to these meetings to make an organization like this work.

and I really want to say thank you to Jana and Leah, to your organizing all of this while, raising little kids and doing that is hard. So I just want to say thank you for all of your, incredibly hard work. and also, to Travis, who, he wrote me a thesis in response to, a letter that I sent that was extremely well researched and, I think clarified a lot of things for me.

And, I appreciate your getting back to me and doing that kind of research. I think, benefited me and maybe other people as well. But, you did a great job getting back to me, and I just wanted to say thank you. my intention of coming to these meetings, is not to be a thorn in anyone's side.

it is to give you a perspective of what people on the outside are thinking and what people on the outside are seeing. Most people that don't come to these meetings, that don't understand the complexities of what's going on, they see it differently than you see it. you see some of the issues that, most people don't understand.

and so that's really my intention of coming to these meetings is to give you a, the citizen's view of what's going on and to share any concerns that I have seen, with, this district, overall, I don't know how you guys do the complexity of it all because, I mean, I don't know what you'd do without Travis.

I think you should put an insurance policy on his life because I don't know where. I don't like the fact that there are such short, terms of office for you guys. Because in order to build a stable, well-structured organization, it needs time. and that's hard to do with such short, term offices. Although you might think it's a really long term, my perspective is that it's a relatively short term, in order to really get things done, I don't know, I don't know the experiences of previous boards, but it's it's a tough job that you guys have.

and I think that it would be more helpful if there was more consistency in that. and I know that board members come and go and on different years and, you know, all of that stuff. But, you know, what holds an organization together is the adhesiveness that holds an organization together, or somebody who has got the experience of being there for a long time.

That can give you a perspective rather than, somebody who's been there for a short time. although those people that have been here for a short time are the people that bring in the new ideas because they don't know the way it's been going, and they have fresh ideas of their own from their own experiences. So the older members are valuable.

But so, are the new members, who do have a new perspective and a new idea? my, my general concern, besides that being incredibly complex, what it looks like kind of from the citizens point of view is that, your organization is not, doesn't have a lot of consistent structure that if there's a policy or procedure, people are kind of fuzzy on that.

on into typical organizations. there are I think there's more structure of how to do business. timelines are more enforced. They're not so casual. like, well, we'll we'll get the surveys done by the end of the year, and if not when, you know, we'll just move the time around. and that looks bad from, from my point of view, even though I understand why you guys are doing it.

but the citizens are going. What? What the heck's wrong with the board? Why don't they know when it's going to get done? Like it was a timeline or consistency? so it it reflects, because people don't understand the complexity of it here. I think that, it looks like it doesn't have very much structure and, and a formal plan written ahead of time.

It's kind of like it feels like you're flying on the seat of your pants, which you have to do when you're, a got a complex organization like this, but it looks like there just isn't enough structure on timelines and consistency, given to, those of us that live here. I think that, issues that are pretty much on, most boards and probably most organizations and most businesses have like basic practices, like three bids on something expensive.

I think that's kind of pretty consistent. but, it's not here. I think what's pretty consistent, too, is timelines that have been researched well enough so that you know, when something's going to start, what's involved long before you give a deadline. I because the stuff that you guys get involved in is very complex. You just, you can't take a few minutes and figure out how long it's going to take because there's so many moving parts, or that's what it looks like to me anyway.

and I think most places, have reserve funds, I've not known of an organization that doesn't have reserve funds. and I know you can move money around from, from this level to this level and you can play around, but then it looks like you're kind of playing around.

Jason:

We have a three minute limit. Could we get you to wrap up, please?

Roberta:

I, I will finish and I'm it's unfortunate that you just have that short of period of time for citizens to give a reflection on that. I think that would be useful to this board. I really am glad that you guys have an asset replacement schedule. I was really concerned about that. so you have a lot of good things going as well, but, I'd like to also say three minutes.

for the few people that do come, is is pretty short. And I think you're shorting yourself. You're not shorting me. by any means. I think you're shorting yourself. Thank you.

Jason:

Thank you very much for your comment. Do we have anybody online that would like to comment?

Hearing none. We'll go ahead and close out the public comment period. And we'll move now to the Communication Communication Director's report. Who do we have tonight, Nathan?

Communications Director Bailey Budnik:

Bailey Budnik is on line tonight. Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Perfect. yeah. So did you, first off, have any questions with the report sent out?

Jana:

I did, yeah. On I think what's listed as page three of the report, it says, February. There was a 87% increase from the January website visits. And I was just curious why. So I just want a little bit more.

Bailey:

Yeah, definitely. So that is an awesome metric that we love to see. It's partnered with a lot of the work we've been doing running paid meta ads and also on, next door.

So we've been driving a lot of targeted traffic to the website, which is really cool, and seeing a lot of community member engagement with that.

Jana:

Great. And then, if you guys don't mind, I have a second question on page 11. there was the potential discolor water notification, and I appreciated that. But, for me, I said I wanted to know why.

Like as a water user, I wanted an explanation and not an in-depth one, but just, you know, I see that there might be discolored water for 4 to 6 weeks, but I, I was curious if there was some additional information that might be included in that.

Bailey:

there was not. let me pull up actually, the caption.

District Manager Nathan Travis:

I was I can I can jump in and address that one a little bit.

So the well, Bailey looks up, so the thing that she has in her packet, it was produced for a social media posting. So that went up. We have an active and ongoing banner live on the website that contains all of that much more detailed information. And so for like the social media blip, just kind of like getting out there and letting them know, but we do have a much larger explanation and follow up,

Jana:

that's all.

You know, when when people just read these tiny bits, I wanted them to have a reason why I know why the water becomes discolored, but I just want to make sure that we don't look like we don't care. Like when it might be discolored. Well, why is that

Jason:

right? I agree with you. And did we have a link in that that they could click on to take them back to our website so we can have some more detailed information?

Bailey:

Yep. And then also so right below this photo on social media, you have always text in the captions. And then then the caption. It read due to the disruption on the monarch water line and road construction project, and then with the link for you to learn more.

Jana:

Great. Thank you.

Tera:

Well. So thank you for the report. It looks better than last time. I'm encouraged with the increase in all of our, mediums. I guess a couple of requests. One would be that the banner that we do have be in a different color. It's very compatible with the. But I just looked at and I completely missed it because it's green like the rest of our site.

And then the other item that I was thinking that we should probably put on the banner is the change in the policy for the fees, the pass through of the fees, with the credit cards that are coming up, you know, or, and I don't know if that can be a scrolling banner or something.

Nathan:

Yeah. So yeah. So for for that one and Bailey doesn't have the kind of the familiarity with the website yet.

So the notification banner that's posted. Well you guys

Nathan & Tera speaking to each other with mics on:

have heard schools......

Bailey:

yeah. It is on there. Nathan. Correct. On the third banner.

Nathan:

yeah. So there's well, so there's the banner at the top and then there's the rotating carousel.

Tera:

it's a carousel, but it's not a banner because it's not rotating on its own. Yeah. Right. So you have to forward it. Yes.

Nathan:

You have to forward the carousel. No. It automatically rotates. I don't know what's

Leah:

It's probable on a delay.

Tera:

Yeah. well, so I think it should be more prominent than that has people have including me, very short attention spans these days.

Nathan:

Yeah. And so the we've got that's where we had some technological limitations with the structure of the website. So the website's inherently built to make sure that we're maintaining A.D.A. compliance.

And there are things that we are not able to change. One of those is color scheme for that emergency notification banner. So our only two options are red for an emergency or green for a public notification. There's nothing that we can do to go in and change, or bring more attention to it. I have the the same issue with it.

it's just the way the website's built. There's there's no control on it.

Jason:

Can you change the font color? No.

Leah:

Out of curiosity, is part of, like, what we engaged your firm for, like, will the will there be an edit of the website? I think it could be easier to navigate personally.

Bailey:

That's something that Nathan I haven't discussed, but if we wanted to kind of do a redesign and look at areas where we can optimize usability, definitely.

Nathan:

And again, just to kind of manage expectations there, we can certainly, sit down and go through it. I think maybe even if we set up like a workshop to kind of like go through and run through it, just because of the platform that we're using. The, those, those types of changes are a little bit different. So we've got kind of a defined menu structure that we have to follow.

I'm certainly not an expert in that. So I'm sure that, you know, between well, certainly with Bailey's expertise getting in there, there's ways we could we could improve that. yeah, I like that idea a lot just to manage expectations. The website's got some limitations.

Bailey:

Yeah. And, Lena, Leah, if you wanted to go through. And if there's anything that's just super glaring, that you, you know, think would be better designed, we can kind of use that as a starting point and we can do it on our end as well.

But yeah, definitely working within the limitations of of the structure of it. It's very it's very limiting. So Nathan, and this is something we can discuss more. I'm not sure I know we use a certain hosting service and you designed it through there. is that a we always tied to that hosting service and that website design, or is there a possibility to kind of transfer it to a different design?

Nathan:

That will be a question for streamline. So yeah, well, we'll just have to circle around and sit down with streamline. Bailey and I can go and figure out some options. I don't know. The answer to that question.

Leah:

Oh, it's okay. It's a nerdy question. And just for context, I, I built and managed the website for our elementary school, and so, so cool.

it's it's just an area I'm interested in. but I think I just from where the website was when we started and the types of information that's displayed and how we display it, I think it's been a step in the right direction for sure.

Jason:

Great. Okay. what do we have to look forward to in the coming months?

Bailey:

Yeah. So next month or I guess so, just for your reference as well. we do kind of our marketing plans based on a month. So obviously these metric reports are from the 15th of every month to the, you know, the 15th of the next month.

But usually we're kind of spelling things out. So, okay, what we're focusing on in March or April, so in April, we're looking for to highlight the timeline of just all the capital projects going on. Currently we're working on animations and graphics for that, and then also working on promoting our May open House, nailing down the details and different ways we can interact with the community, whether it's online or when they come in.

and then also, this is something Nathan and I are going to discuss more, but we'd love to focus on the board members and maybe get, you know, videos and photos of each of you kind of explaining your background and connection to Castle Pines and, you know, promoting that through, our online channels as well.

Jana:

another quick question. Did we get more survey results this past month because I know oh, okay. Would you be able to share those with the board?

Bailey:

Yes. So we are running a promotion or an ad on them for all of March. I was waiting until that ad ended so we could get the most, eyes on it and then perfect from that.

Thank you.

Jason:

All right. Great. Does anybody else have any questions?

Nathan:

I just do have one quick comment, Bailey, for your reports. And this is, super minor, and it's really just something to kind of help. my, the way my brain works, but, I'm looking at the, like, the engagement page, where it's got the increase from the past 30 days.

All of that is, fantastic. If you could, we don't need to do the current one. But going forward, if we could include date ranges specifically in there. so I know which past 30 days is kind of like where that stops and where that starts. That would be super helpful for me.

Bailey:

Definitely. It is just for reference.

So all the data always in the report is, the dates on this one, it would be February 15th through March 15th. So that's just kind of easy to keep in the back of your head when looking at all that data. And also the percentage changes. Perfect. Thank you.

James:

Nathan, question and comment. I guess it as far as things, going forward, some of the park events and stuff that we do with the city, I think we should try to include some of that as far as getting it in integrated into the website itself.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Great idea. Yeah, and I don't when does that start? I think it's mostly like end of May June timeframe.

Nathan:

yeah I it's so it's funny you ask I look that up today and I can't even remember what it was. But yeah, the next main event we have coming up is the, I can't remember which ones are participating in, but we've got an event late June, early July.

That's with they're done through the chamber and those partnerships. And so one of the, one of the things that Bailey and I have had some higher level discussions on is kind of, how do we feed into those with some sort of communications continuity? we're also looking at doing an open house in May, to invite people here.

And I think that that would be a good testing ground to see what people really want, what their, what they're looking for, and then that'll help us kind of fine tune that as we get into some of those bigger events. Okay. where do we stand with the water truck thing? It is in graphic design limbo. I think we've got, actually, I owe them a final approval email.

There was some issue with the graphics files that were generated and sent over. Had, some really bizarre resolutions. And so some of the images were coming out pixelated. And so that's, that's actually a carry over, with, Molly, she's the, graphic designer we've been using, and so she's the one that's working on that. So we, I think we've got all of those issues, worked out.

It's really just a matter of printing the wrap, putting it on the thing and getting it shipped. So it still looks like it'll be here. Well, in advance of any public events that we've, promised the chamber for. Thanks.

Jason:

All right. Any other questions for Bailey? Thank you. Bailey. we'll go ahead and close out the communication director's report section, and we'll move on to item number seven, the finance director's report.

Who do we have online for this?

Andrea Manion, Community Resource Services of Colorado (CRS):

Good evening. I'm Andrea Manion from CRS presenting for Phillis tonight. all right so we have ratify claims for payments including check numbers 28424 through 28479 and electronic payments issued from February 21st, 2024 through March 20th, 2024. total February expenditures were $686,678.78, and total March expenditures were $241,703.30, for a total of $928,382.08.

Board Voting All Speak:

All right. Great. Do we have a motion to ratify these payments? I'll make the motion to ratify the payments. As Andrea described.

Do I hear a second?

I second that motion. Great. Having a second? let's move to a vote. Jim. Approve to Tera. Approve. Jana. Approve. Leah. Approve. And I approve as well. So this motion passes and we'll move. Did we have anything else to discuss with Andrea?

Leah:

I just had one question.

Andrea:

Yeah, I have a little bit of work. Summary if you want, starting on page 21 of your packet, if you wanted to look.

But did you have a question?

Leah:

I can hold it till after because it's probably not related to what you're talking about.

Andrea:

Okay. Gotcha. so property taxes through February, has totaled $410,402.62. and those are being allocated 75% to the water fund and 25% to the wastewater fund. Billed water usage in the month of February was, 16,844,000 gallons, a 2.83% decrease from water usage in February of 2023.

also billed sewer usage was 19,142,015 for February of this year, versus 18,341,670 gallons for February 2023, and that was a 4.36% increase. both water and sewer revenues for the month of February was $488,526, versus $498,209 in February 2023, a 1.94% decrease.

And then following in the packet is all the schedules. So you'll see page 22 is a property tax schedule, 23 and 24. All the, payments you just ratified. And then there's cash disbursement journal and then, accounts receivable report.

Tera:

Thank you. Andrea. Nate, I actually have a question for you. Is that, unusual for the, sewage usage to increase, but the revenue to decrease?

Nathan:

I don't have an immediate explanation for why that would have happened. That's something we'll have to. We'll have to look in in our.

Andrea:

Yeah. The revenues also included water, too. So,

Leah:

so the and I think there was a decrease in water usage. Right.

Nathan:

Correct. Yeah. So. Okay. It's all right. Yeah. I was trying to find it in the packet. So I thought we were talking just about the, the sewer fee specifically. Yeah. So it is normal for some level of increase in the sewer fee this time of year.

So we calculate the annual sewer rates that everybody pays in, January, I can't remember off the top of my head. And I have to look up. but so we use winter months to calculate the sewage base rate. And so, there's not a lot of fluctuation in there, but especially as we add new accounts and things like that, you'll see an uptick in the amount of total sewage.

but then that's just a projected figure that goes across the rest of the year. So the primary driver is water usage. Thank you.

Nathan:

Thanks for the assist, Leah.

Leah:

My question, I was curious, when is our audit supposed to be finished again?

Andrea:

well, it starts April 22nd, so, I'm not sure when it will be completed, but hopefully within a few weeks after starting.

Leah:

So it was the one we were waiting on that's been completed,

Nathan:

correct? Yeah. So we are we are caught up on our audit. So we're back on our normal schedule. So the audit that's scheduled in April is for the 2023 calendar year. I would anticipate likely bringing that to the board in June.

Leah:

Okay. Is that when we'll have a budget meeting?

Nathan:

so the the audit will meet. We might be able to bring it in May. So that'll just be the audit is kind of a standalone issue. we will start our initial kind of budget process in early July. but the presentation of that budget won't come to the board until October 1st ish. but we'll have budget workshops and things leading up to, leading up to that point.

Leah:

Do we have a budget process for like every year we kind of do the same thing at the same time. Okay. And that's in line with our process. Yep. Exactly. Is that documented anywhere? Not yet. Okay. Sorry.

Tera:

Well, isn't it roughly based on the, the statutes that we follow, the deadlines.

Legal Counsel Kim Seter, Esq.:

Yeah. Yeah, more than more than roughly, I would say.

Tera:

Yeah, and I can is it in the special districts? That's not the Colorado statutes that we follow. I'm not.

Kim:

Yeah. The Colorado Revised Statutes, the Special district, 3211, 32-1-100 provides the deadlines for all of that for us.

Nathan:

Yeah. And I do have those summarized in the document that I can get to you, as well.

That just shows the it shows the, the statutory deadlines for when everything needs to be submitted. And then the rest is the process of how to get there is really more internal. But those, those deadlines really do set a pretty rigid framework for us.

Leah:

that'd be great. Just not having gone through it before. I'd love to get smart on it.

Jason:

All right. Great. Do we have any other questions for Andrea? Andrea, do you have any other comments for us?

Andrea:

That is it. Thank you guys.

Jason:

Thank you very much for your hard work. We'll go ahead and close out section seven and move on to section eight. The legal counsel report.

Kim:

you finally have a copy of the legal counsel's report.

I apologize, I went on vacation and it never left my desk. first item is the minutes. And again, I apologize that those are late, but we can take those up next week. The second matter, 791 Breyer Ridge, the insurance company, is carrying that forward and has accepted the claim. the third item on Hidden Point. I did talk to the attorney that was representing Hidden Point, and he is retired.

he passed it along and I haven't heard whether they've hired somebody else yet, but hopefully that'll happen quickly. And then if you want to jump down to the, item on the bottom of the second page, the correct district designation for those properties we have published for your public hearing for April. So, in your packet for April, you'll have some resolutions to adopt at that time.

turning to the next page, the item in the lower half, the CDPHE Notice. I'll leave that for Jana and Nathan to talk about whenever they're ready. We did have the settlement conference today. you can skip the next page and go to the last page. we have two new items. The lift station number five easement that is underway.

And then, Nathan and I talked earlier today. He had pulled up these finance policies that I think he mentioned earlier in complete. And we're pulling those together. And a lot of the questions and comments from, the public comments tonight will end up being addressed in that policy. And that's it for me.

Jason:

Very good to. And does anyone have, questions for Kim?

Tera:

No, but thank you for your report. It was nice to see, a lot of these items that you're just carrying have been completed.

Kim:

Yeah, we're moving along.

Jason:

Yes. Thank you very much. I hope you had a great vacation. I did. Okay, we'll close out, item number eight and move on to item number nine. The district manager's reports.

Nathan:

do you guys have any questions about the report overall, before I kind of dig into the items I've got on the agenda.

Jason:

I don't think so. Why don't you just go ahead and jump in and, Yeah.

All right. First thing we've got is the SSO violation update. so as Kim alluded to, we did have our meeting with the state to discuss the civil penalty, and Jana is ready to give you guys a detailed report. I'm just kidding.

You're.

no. So, the. To rip the Band-Aid off, the total civil penalty that is being levied is going to be. Or that is suggested at the settlement. So this nothing is finalized. well, I guess I'll give a little bit of background first. So the purpose of the settlement meeting was really to go through and discuss the settlement offer that the state has created for us.

We do have options moving forward from there. we can, you know, we can try and negotiate it. we can reject it in its entirety and move forward through a court process. there were a couple, a couple of other ones that we can do to move forward. But this is really just to kind of review the process the state went through to get to their settlement offer.

so the total settlement offer, from the state to resolve the, violation is $130,978. so that includes, two primary functions. one of them. Oh, man, I had that written down. Yeah. So the. Yeah, the penalty amount, was 39,376. And then there is a, how do they call it a financial benefit?

Jana:

Economic, the economic benefit, or an economic benefit and the initial penalty.

Nathan:

Yep. And then that one was $91,602. So the economic benefit is the, way that the state captures the money that we have theoretically saved by not maintaining the lift stations to the level that they needed to be maintained. and through that process and, the dollar amount was more that I the more it was more than I had it kind of emotionally anticipated, but I didn't really know exactly what we were going to get into when they walked through.

all of the all of the factors, you know, that our responsibility. How much did we know, like, were we aware of these issues? How much should we respond to them? all of these other factors, kind of go in the, the actual impact. So we didn't have, we weren't levied with any, like, real impact. So it was all.

I want to make sure I get this right. I'm sorry. Damages. So we weren't we weren't fined for any actual damages. We were fined based on a different metric, which is a much lower chart based on potential damages. So they didn't identify any actual negative impacts. But there's a presupposed potential damage range that everything falls into.

and it's made so much more sense when the state presented this to us. we do have, a little bit of time to kind of work through. I think we've got 45 days before we need to provide the official response of the district has to the overall fire to the overall penalty. realistically, when they were running through all of the metrics that they use,

We really don't have much of a leg to stand on to try and, you know, either reject the civil penalty, certainly, or even really try and negotiate it down from that point. They, they gave us, some decent leeway in some areas, and also some benefit, some reductions that are directly related to the work that we've already done.

So we got an additional 25% deduction for the for going above and beyond. So we're doing a lot of work on other stations that weren't directly involved inside of the violation. So they gave us a 25% reduction for that. and then they also gave us another 25% deduction for how quickly we responded, how prompt our communication has been, and for making sure that we're well ahead of any deadlines that the state has given us to resolve the violation.

I know I kind of muddled through that, so I'm sure you guys have tons of questions.

Tera:

So the figure is $130,978, correct? Well, first of all, thank you, Jana and Nate, for going through this. I mean, I think it is a little surprising just because excuse me, I know that I don't think they've assessed a penalty before. I think that's what I'm not sure our attorney has seen that done before.

it actually doesn't look that terrible to me the way that you've explained it. I just really want to go on record for saying, I want our citizens to be assured that this would not happen again. This is a completely different staff and administration, and I have every confidence that our current board and staff would not have this.

It would not have happened if if with what we have in place now. and and when you were telling me the economic benefit, I was laughing because I'm thinking so. Oh, so the state wants an economic benefit. That makes sense. But, you know, I appreciate that they recognize that we, have responded and taken action and been as proactive as we can be once, you know, we, we were able to and, I would love to hear, Director Krell's feedback.

And in from the meeting.

Jana:

so to summarize, the meeting is 30 minutes of them describing how they got to the fee. So literally one slide, they'll say, you know, kind of like Nate said, $78,000 for or fee for, for the what was that the potential damage. And then they'll say, okay, but we're going to give you a reduction here and a reduction here.

And then it gets down to 40,000. So you're like, phew. Then it goes to the next slide. And then they add on another layer of but now you have this fee. And so really they gave you the breakdown of the formula. Very and very detailed. Like it was eight days that they calculated it. And then they give you you know they mark through some of the things like this wasn't an aggravated situation.

They look at faults, they look at response. They look for ways to give us discounts. And so and then also they discuss what the money goes towards. And so hopefully we can kind of discuss that in the next steps with this. But no, it was a, it was a decent meeting. But I mean, your emotions go up and down with the next slide and then they give you another discount and then they give you another slap.

And so, it was interesting, but it was fair. And

Tera:

That's the word that I was looking for. Would you, would you say it's fair?

Jana:

It was fair. It was objective also. And they discussed even how they evaluated it from different angles. So it's not just one person a sticky note. Here's your fee. They said that they took different angles and looked at different costs, but this is the one they felt was appropriate.

And I think that the way they explained it, it was actually very clear. So, do we want to touch on the next steps? Okay.

Tera:

what the money goes for.

Nathan:

Right. Yeah. And so all of that said, it really, really leaves us with two primarily viable options. We can either cut the division a check for the full amount and be done with it.

or we have the opportunity to reinvest that money in what they call a supplemental environmental project. that's not as it's not necessarily a simple process, but I think the benefit of keeping those those dollars that our residents have paid to us for their water bills in the community with the direct benefit, to them is is probably appropriate.

There are other limitations. So it's going to take a little bit of legwork to really get into that program and see what we can do. the, our initial ideas were to, you know, city's got a bunch of ongoing stormwater projects. Can we partner with them and, you know, just add some of the money in there? Turns out we can't necessarily.

So it can't be used on any already identified or planned project of any kind. So it has to be something that is new or not as of not as of yet identified. That's a requirement. and we didn't really go into too much detail because until the board makes a decision which direction we're going to go, there really just wasn't a lot of, a lot of value there.

we're still working with Jay and Level Engineering. it's kind of running those programs so I can give him some direction to get in with, you know, the board's blessing. Give him some direction to kind of explore some of those other options and where we might be able to use those funds. it's one of those things where we're probably going to need to find something we can partner on is as much money as $131,000 in.

It's not a lot of money for us to find a standalone project that we can put it into. that project also can it can also be something that directly benefits the district, but there's financial implications to that. So if it's something that improves something that we own, it's one and a half times the expenditure. So we have to go 150% of the total fine.

So there's kind of a lot of nuances. It's a separate program that we have to follow and get some details. We did get contact information or get contact information for the person that runs that program. that's where we left it.

James:

could you I know it's all new and everything, but can we plan maybe for a study session or next official meeting that.

I'm really kind of. I'm not struggling isn't the right word, but I had some examples and, you know, stuff that's been done by other districts, maybe that, would be a good example or a good use of that money if we choose to go that direction would be helpful.

Nathan:

Yeah, I like that idea.

Tera:

I like that approach because based on what's been said tonight, I don't feel like I have enough information.

I mean, that was a lot of information. It was good. But as far as those two options, I feel like I'd like more information.

Jana:

And whenever they went over the fact that we could either just write a check or put it back in our community, it kind of is a weight off the shoulders of, oh, good, we can put it back.

We can mitigate something. We can improve with these dollars. We can learn from this and be transparent. And, I don't think we know what we can do with that yet. So I do think it's worth looking into. And I think it was a great alternative versus writing a check. So I think we're all on track with that.

Nathan:

I like I like the study session a lot.

I mean, even, you know, the three of us that were there, we've had both prior to this meeting, about five hours to digest it all. So I think giving us a little bit of time to pull more information, get level. in talk, we get more a deeper understanding of, the options. And then we can also, you know, we'll have more time to pull together a much more clean summary of kind of how we got there.

I think that's very appropriate for a study session.

Jana:

I do have one more question. Does CDPHE you have to approve the project? Do we have to present it to them? I know that's the deadline to follow back up for the eighth,

Nathan:

but it does have to get approval of some kind. Through that, I changed my notes green through the environmental plan.

So there is some sort of approval process that's done through the contact information that we got earlier.

Kim:

So there are a couple of things going on here. The reason we got the 45 days was so that we could report back to them after the next board meeting. So, as Jane's noticed, Will noted, we'll have a work study session and then we'll have a meeting.

I don't think you even need to decide for sure at that meeting, but I think we'll be ready to decide by that time. Joel, who's online, has, I believe, started trying to grab their formula, and we'll take a quick look at that. I don't think it's going to take much time. They were very thorough and very open.

but there were several times during the, the discussions that she very kindly said, that's a settlement point. And what she meant by that was here is a point where we don't have objective numbers or figures, and we put something in there. So it's an opportunity if we want to try to reduce it or, you know, come up with some reasons why it should be reduced, we can work on that.

and that can all be discussed at the next, next board meeting.

Jason:

Okay. Is there a chance that we can, the rest of the board members can see their presentation deck?

Kim:

No. Okay. It's it's a settlement discussion, just like a court discussion. So it's a it's just a private presentation. But we can give you we will put together our notes so that you can see it'll be pretty comprehensive.

Jason:

Great. Thank you.

Joel from Kim Seter's Office:

And, if I could just jump in really quick, I'm not sure that anybody mentioned it, but, the the entire penalty was, for seven different violations dating back to 2020. So it wasn't just the 2022 violation. I don't know if that was already clear. Just thought I'd mention that.

Jason:

Nathan, will we be able to get a copy of what these violations were?

Nathan:

Yeah, we've we've got all the violation forms that are included in the original documentation stuff, but we'll we'll, include that in our, study session for sure.

Jason:

All right. Any other questions? So we move on to his next point.

James:

I actually have one. Sorry. as far as the lift station up there, and I guess the the main issue that, you know, the re contouring of the property up there and by the, you know, that station, where are we with, you know, the completion of that and has that been reviewed at the end?

Nathan:

so the broader the, the kind of like the broader scope, there's definitely some, you know, redundancy, spill protection stuff that we need to add. And that'll be done as part of the capital project planning in terms of the more immediate site grading and all of the curbing, like the curb and gutter, the riprap channels that we put in, the soil stabilization, all of that is complete.

and so those will be included. That work will be captured as part of the drawing set for the total of station projects. So they'll go through and, you know, get all of the stormwater improvements, the, the building improvements that we did just to prevent that building from flooding. so that work is complete. There's still a lot that still needs to be done out there through the capital project.

James:

All right. Appreciate it. I, I see trucks going in and out of there all the time. So just wondering. Thanks.

Jason:

Okay, great. so. We can move on now to, letter B.

Nathan:

Okay. So, you guys, I have a physical handout that has a little bit more detailed information regarding this. it does include things like the customer's name and their address. So I didn't want to include that in my report that's going to be posted on our website.

but we do have a, married couple that are not currently residents. They live in, I think it's an "I" state. It's Idaho or Iowa. So they live out of state. They have for a while. They own a property inside of Castle Pines North Metro District that they purchased in 2001. they have been renting that property since 2011.

Since that time, they've had five different, five different tenants. The current tenant has been in there since August 2021. and he more recently stopped paying the water bill. And so it left. It left them with a total, a total balance do of $875.86. And so, important to note that water bills in Colorado do not get attached to the resident.

They get attached to the property. So the ultimate end result or the ultimate responsibility always falls on the homeowner. And that's something that bears itself out in a lot of leases. That's why so many leases here don't include water, because the property owner doesn't want to put themselves in exactly this situation. so they have called, not recently, but certainly when they when we originally gave them the shut off notice, they called their office multiple times for several days in a row.

Ultimately requesting that the board, look at this issue. I did ask a few things of them that, never came through. So originally I wanted them to come and present to the board, kind of their story. And the reason that they're asking for this is, you know, they've been married for a long time. He's a disabled veteran.

They say he's like the sole source income. And that they've got two properties in Colorado that this happened to at the same time. They've got another rental in Aurora where they were left with a huge water bill. and they can't afford to pay it. and so they have requested that the board basically forgive the the water bill owed on the property.

so I'd ask them to, physically or to either physically come to the meeting, which wasn't possible because they live out of state. I also offered for them to join us via zoom to present their case. the communication is difficult. I don't know if it was a lack of understanding on their part in terms of like how the zoom meetings work, but they ultimately declined that and asked that, I bring it to the board on their behalf.

I explained to them that I can't bring it on their behalf, but that I can present it to the board and that at the very least, I would need a written letter from them directed to the board that I could give you guys explaining their situation specifically what they're asking for, and why they couldn't attend the board meeting.

They had roughly three weeks to get me that email. I reached out to try and, remind them about, I don't know, sometime mid last week. And they said like, oh, yeah, we'll get it to you right away. And I never received any communication from them at all.

Leah:

I have a strong point of view here. So, ,so do I, sorry if I jump in.

thank you for bringing to the board. while I have empathy for their situation, husband is a veteran parents owned rental properties. I ultimately see this is an issue between the landlord and the tenant. And I think if we were to forgive water bills, that would be opening up a can of worms.

Nathan:

Yeah. And something, to that point, also, the the tenant did offer to pay for the bill in two installments because they are not the ultimate account holder.

We can't give them permission to do that. We need permission from the homeowner. when we told the homeowners that, again, I, I don't know if they didn't understand or whatever it was, but for whatever reason, they did not give us permission to allow the tenant to make the payment into installments. we went further. We even all we we do have some things that we do, pretty regularly with, with higher water bills and people in these situations, like, okay, if you guys can give us, you know, 50% of it, and I can't remember what Susan offered him.

But basically, you know, if you can give us X amount upfront, we can then prorate the rest over a number of months to get you guys back on line. They denied that. it's I can't stress enough how difficult communication is. It's very difficult under to understand because of his his disability. She's very emotionally reactive. And so there's not a lot of great avenues for effective communication.

either way. And so it's kind of left us with this. It's very kind of awkward really.

Tera::

So can I ask a couple of questions? Please do. so you said who was paying the bill? The tenant was paying the bill. Correct. Even though so the tenant was paying the bill, and then the tenant stopped paying the bill.

Okay. Which is when the water was going to get shut off. And then the homeowner. So I understand your verbal communications are not very productive. Do they have any kind of can we do any kind of written communications, like even old fashioned? I know U.S mail, if they don't use email or something, that can be kind of more documented and more concrete and clear than, you know, verbal communications.

Nathan:

yeah, we we certainly can try. And that was part of my push to get them to at least write me an email. I don't know what the level of responsiveness will be.

Tera:

Well, I mean, based on their age or whatever, they may not use email, but I know it's crazy, but we could do an old fashioned, maybe letter type of communication because, it does sound like something that can get resolved.

I mean, the tenant is willing to pay for the water and they can resolve it. And I think, Director Enquest has a good point about not putting us. I mean, I look, I'm looking at our attorney not putting us in a situation that gets between, the homeowner and the tenant because we don't want to put our organization at risk, I don't know.

Yeah. Mr. Seter, what you would advise,

Kim:

I think, Leah is right on point. I think we just let them work that out as, landlord and tenant. You know, if you get a check, maybe you can call them and have them. Okay. You're cashing it. But otherwise we need to stay out of the middle.

Nathan:

and this does bring up something that, is tangentially, tangentially related to a couple of things that we're talking about.

And especially as we look at shoring up our financial policies and procedures, us putting the account in the name of a tenant is nothing that we are required to do. It is, something that we have historically done. just kind of was like, hey, this will help out the landlords that live here. there's, several other area water districts do not allow that to happen in the first place.

that's something that I would like to, look at, including when we do our financial policy update or when we update our rules and regulations. It's kind of taking away that split tenant relationship. while this one is certainly more extreme, these relationships between tenant landlords caused us a ton of headaches. And so, you know, we're really just expending staff time and energy to help landlords manage their tenant relationships when that's something we could pull ourselves out of entirely.

Jason:

Kim, doesn't it makes sense to keep it on the property so that we can attach a lean? If the bill doesn't get paid,

Nathan:

we don't have an option. We're required.

Kim:

Yeah. your your charges go against the property no matter what. So, I have some districts where that allow the landlord to say, send the bill to me.

I've got some districts that, will send it to both the property and the owner of the property. but I don't think I have anywhere. It just goes to a tenant. So. I mean,

Tera:

and I'm okay with sending a courtesy copy to the tenant, I mean, but I but our what we're entrusted with is protecting our organization.

I mean, I again, I don't mind doing it as a courtesy, but I think we we're entrusted with keeping our organization, out of trouble.

Nathan:

Yeah. For for clarity, that is what we currently do. So if there is a tenant, we'll put we'll put the account, in terms of like the billing, communication, all of that stuff will go into the tenant's name.

But any, any information that's sent via bill is automatically given to the landlord, assuming we have, you know, all their updated address information on file. So we do.

Tera:

But I would request that you put some of the, communication that you had in writing. Yeah,

Nathan

absolutely. I think I think a letter is probably the way to go at this point.

Jason:

I like that. Does that have to be a registered letter? Kim.

Kim:

No, Nate just might have to take the stand in a courtroom, but that's no problem.

Nathan:

I'll have Susan write the letter.

So this does stand on the, agenda as an action item. Whether or not the board would approves or denies the request. to forgive the amount owed or to give the the moneys owed in the amount of $875.86, or if there are any other, directions you'd like to take, we can certainly the letter, it sounds like as a next step, but,

Tera:

yeah, what I'm hearing is that it's, it's a denial with the steps to resolve it by sending the letter and then, I mean, I don't know if you need a motion, but a motion to deny request with with in the follow up items, which is, will communicate in written communication.

but at this time we it's a I make a motion to deny.

Board Voting All Speak:

I'll second the motion to deny having that. we'll move to a vote. Jim. Begun last time. Approve. Tera. Approve. Jana. Approve. Leah. Approve. And I approve as well. So at this time, we're going to deny that request.

Nathan:

Okay, so just so I understand clearly the the letter that I'm going to be writing basically outlines the payment options that we have already given them.

do you guys have any, specific appetite for. So the, the current, their water services currently on. so we, we left it on pending the board's decision. I think what my preference would be, would be to get the letter sent out as quickly as possible the next time we do our broad sweeping payment or broad sweeping, you know, shut offs.

Well, they're not really broad sweeping. The next time we process our bills and do service disconnects to just re add them to that list, and then move forward with the process, like we, we normally would

Jason:

think. That sounds reasonable.

Leah:

Out of curiosity, what is our process around disconnect due to non-payment.

Nathan:

we are very generous. So your account has to be 60 days in the rears before you get your first notification.

90 days is when we actually shut off. So once you hit that 90 day mark, we, you know, we have a running list that we maintain a usually the week after that, we read about about 7 to 10 days after we read our water meters. And I'll get all of those processed. We know where all the accounts are at.

then we have a 24 hour shutoff notice that gets physically posted to the to the address. and then we also when we go shut out, when we go actually do the shut offs, we'll try to make a final attempt at communication, knock on the door, give them one last chance to pay by the end, the day before we disconnect, the service, once the account is brought current or they've worked out a suitable payment plan with us.

we'll go reinstate service. We only do that Monday through Friday. During our normal business hours. We will go out and reinstate service if somebody absolutely needs us to. On an after hours call. Once their accounts been brought up, and they can prove that it is so, you know, if they go on, you know, Saturday they get home, they don't have water, they go online, they pay their bill.

they can call our emergency pager line and have a technician come out to do it. if we do it after ours, that comes with 100, $150 reconnection fee. other than that, we just get to it the next business day after Payment's been processed. Thank you.

Tera:

And I agree with, Jason, I mean, this is a kind of a critical thing, and it sounds like that would allow the time for the the tenant and the landlord to work that out since the tenants aren't willing to pay for it.

And, I mean, nobody wants to be without water, toilets or don't flush or whatever. It's kind of a critical need. So, I appreciate that we have a, you know, a generous policy. And I would like to give it a little bit of breathing room to see if it can get resolved.

Nathan:

Sounds good. All right. Next item I have on the agenda. I messed up my bookmarks in my pdf, so I apologize. I'm doing a lot of scrolling. is. Oh, I just want to give a quick, quick update on the credit card fees and, bank driven bill payments. So the we have seen a really, really strong uptick in the number of residents that are coming in to fill out ACH forms for automatic payment.

So that is absolutely fantastic. I had, meant to get Ahold of, to track Jackie down today, and it just slipped my mind. I wanted to get a get an actual number so I can tell you how many of our accounts we've swapped over. I mean, just sitting in my office, we have. We've been averaging, like, 3 or 4 people a day, physically walking in, calling about it.

We're sending out a lot, a lot of them. But we've gotten more in the mail. So we've had a a large number of people move away from credit card payments entirely to go to the, FT transfers, which is, fantastic and very helpful. when we and I don't one of the things that I don't think that I or that I neglected to highlight when we put this agreement in place with us with CUSI, the payment processing people, we were able to for no additional for no additional money, effectively we lose, we lose a bunch of fees and then pay an extra $2,000 a year that is directly related to bank

bill payments. the details are in the last month's board pack. If you went through, one of the biggest struggles that we have are when you go through your financial institution or your bank and you use your, their bill payer system. historically, what's happened is you go in and you type in Castle Pines Street, better district, and you pay your water bill, and then that bank physically prints a cashier's check, mails it to our payment processing center in Texas on behalf of their customer.

And then it kind of goes through the way that anybody else would, you know, mail in a check to the bill pay. We have consistently on a monthly basis, those payments just vanish where we'll have a customer because the bank does it as a cashier's check, where the money will come out of the customer's account and never makes it to us.

this past November, we had, I think like 95 of them from the same batch just not show up. so what we were able to do is change the way that that process works. And basically set up a direct relationship through CUSI. So now people that are using that bill pay feature through their bank are no longer going to get a check cut and mailed.

That'll be done through an electronic for some sort of electronic transfer that goes directly to us. the batch payments that we get every day, like it comes with a much easier to use report. They're much easier to audit. When we go through. We look at those every day to make sure that the money that we got into our account lines up with the money that was sent, all of that is now kind of in one form.

it's taken quite a bit of time off of, for Susan and Jackie up front every day. It's just a lot easier process. And the and the net cost of the district for that was $0. And so that was something that is going really, really well. So there's so far, you know, a full a little bit more than a month away from actually enacting this fee.

And we've already seen some really good benefits come out of it as a result.

Tera:

The thanks and just a request on that, I noticed that on, I think it was the social media that we were looking at before. It just talked about how it was a process fee. If we could be consistent in that language and make it clear that it's it's a pass through fee, we're not charging a fee.

We're basically passing through the fee that we're being charged. There was one I think I just sent you an email on it. That kind of makes it clear, but in a couple of different places, whenever, can we just be consistent in our language about that fee? Because I don't want to give the impression that we're all of a sudden starting to charge a fee.

We're just we're we're passing through the fee that we were paying for.

Nathan:

Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We can go back through and look at, you know, what's been sent out. So emails are, you know, we can't get those back, but we can go back through and just look through social media post, website post,

Tera:

whatever's on our website, that kind of thing.

But just consistency. There.

Nathan:

All right. On to the next one. for the parcel parcel transfer update. And this is, was actually helpful when I responded to, their letter because a lot of this was fresh on my mind. So we did meet with, we being in Castle Pines North metro district, met with, Larry at the city of Castle Pines.

Jay, his counterpart, and then the subcontractors that he's going to use to take kind of the last step before we finalize our game plan and really put together that, like hard timeline and schedule deadlines to get all of these parcel parcels transferred. and really just kind of make sure we're all on the same page and set the general overall tone.

and so we, we have a list of, there's 19 of them that are only going to require title work. So they're going to start work on those immediately. Then we have kind of a progressive like these are the ones that we need to get done first. and really what we went through, there's a lot of there's a lot of kind of options that were outlined, outlined in the cost estimate, that Level of given us that we're really just not going to have to touch the vast majority of them.

So the utility pothole isn't something that we're really going to have to do. in our meeting, we were going through kind of parcel by parcel just to like, see if there was anything that we could, at least at this stage, identify as potentially needing, a like an elegant engineered survey. There weren't any that really popped off the page for that.

We were able to go through and look at the sites that we're going to, like break out real property rather than easements. So where we've got, well, sites and existing lift stations, we don't want those sitting on easements. We ultimately want to own the land that they sit on. and so really those few, few locations where the lift stations are currently sitting in existing parks, trails and open space where we need to identify a new property.

and there's only a handful of them. I think there were three of them. that we really needed to work for are really going to be the only ones that have like a high level of increase. And other than that, the approach is really going to be like, let's do the absolute minimum it takes to get the IGA transfer done.

so we're going to be minimizing things like utility locates, focusing more on just getting the easements that we need to find, any title paperwork that needs done and really roll through. And so it seems like we've got a really a good workflow in place and developing, that's going to be able to get us through this, at least efficiently.

Jason:

What's your confidence level that this is going to be done by the end of the year, after you guys have had this meeting?

Nathan:

I'm have a really high level of confidence, especially after the meeting and kind of talking through, you know, it was helpful to have the subcontractors there. We were able to give them direct access to our GIS system because it's, and you can get through that, through a web browser, external log in.

and as we really went through and kind of detailed what we were going to actually need, Bill Buntrok, who's the surveyor that, is going to be doing? It kind of even had this, like, large sigh of relief about the amount of work that he's potentially going to have to do. And that was really, his piece was the one that was the most likely to take a ton of time, but we really cut a lot of off of what he thought his projected workload might be.

So we're, you know, we're going to be staking, we're going to be defining easements, but we're, you know, not going to be worried about necessarily like staking property lines and doing all of that kind of stuff unless there's a real, defined reason for us to do so. but not only, myself, but everybody else that was involved in the meeting thinks that the, the end of the year deadline is something that we will be able to, we will be able to hit and we're actually hoping we come in, well, in advance of that.

So they're going to look at the schedule and try and set that deadline, the project completion, that deadline will still be the end of the year, but the target date for project completion, we're hoping will be late fall.

Tera:

And what about a revised cost estimate?

Nathan:

Yeah. So the it'll still be the the same line items. And so the total cost estimate really just be a product of like how much work we have to have to actually do as we go along.

So what we're doing is we're just taking the number of units out of individual line items that we do and drastically reducing, so if you go through that proposal, you can kind of see, you know, this is how much it cost to do the title paperwork. Well, that's one that's going to have to sit on every one of the properties and then it'll be very a la cart after that and whatever it takes just to get those individual parcels.

And so each parcel will kind of be its own, its own little animal to some extent. but I don't think it's going to be it's going to be a large amount of work, but I don't think it's going to be as complicated as we feared getting into it.

Jason:

Can we get a monthly update on how much it's costing? Yeah, absolutely.

James:

Okay. and one question, you talked about owning some of the properties versus, yeah, essentially, you know. What what's the word you guys use? easement. Easement. Sorry. Slip my head. what are the impacts to owning that property versus an easement as far as maintenance, insurance, that kind of thing? of the property itself, it's an easement.

When the owner of that property initially be, you know, cutting grass, cleaning trails, that kind of thing, plowing snow, if that's an issue. and what's the financial impacts of that?

Nathan:

so that'll be it'll be something that we would we'll have to kind of directly break out. So the, the, the only areas that we're looking at owning property is where we have a physical structure on the site.

and then so in terms of like the long term financial implications, it's really not going to affect us much now because the water and wastewater side is side is already doing that site maintenance. so lift station three is probably our best example. So live station three, is on a section that's relatively adjacent to two websites...

You got me talking websites, adjacent to two, well, sites. we want to make sure that we own that land. one, because a lot of these facilities need to have security measures, so we need to get it. We need to protect the public from being able to get into it. And then we're, you know, it actually makes it easier for us to maintain.

So once we once we secure a facility and we own the property, then we're doing things like, you know, putting gravel down around, well, heads and making sure that we don't have brush encroachments or we're keeping weed abatement or weed control down or, lift station sites or, you know, we've got driveways to these facilities are going to need to be continually maintained that we're already maintaining.

So it's really just giving us more control where we need the where we have physical structures. The vast majority of this will all be done through easements. So when we're talking about like water and sewer lines that are just running through these open spaces, all of that will be taken care of through easements. So I think there's really only three areas that we're going to need to break those real properties up.

But there's not going to be an associated increase cost because we're doing the maintenance anyway.

James:

Appreciate you going through that. Thank you.

Nathan:

All right. But keep plugging along. so for the, filter rehab project, we do have a couple updates on that. So, we're we're wrapping up, a lot of things at the water treatment plant, which is great. We're, waiting on the final water quality testing for over for the, tank rehabilitation program, which is where we went through and lined and did some structural evaluations of all of the process tanks that are on site.

The HVAC project is done, and we are moving forward, with, well, with the, the liquid ammonia sulfate project as well. So all of those are kind of getting into their final stages and will be wrapped up this year. The filter rehab project is kind of the last major project that we have planned for the water treatment plant.

the actual construction of that won't happen until, and the bid as well, and likely won't go until 2025. So the stage that we are currently in is the filter pilot program. So we are evaluating, four separate filter for separate filter medias. and honestly it's just kind of cool. So one of the things that I'll be looking to do, either if we attach it to a study session, I was thinking about the May study session will be out there for 16 weeks, and then we'll be well into this.

You guys can actually bring the board out to the, to the water treatment plant. So you can see this thing. We ended up having to construct a whole separate building, basically on the outside of the water treatment plant to be able to accommodate the size of the skid, the things like 11ft tall and 12ft long. and it's basically four miniature water treatment plants that are all active and up and running.

And so, the reason that we want to pilot that first is just identify the media that's going to do the best job. So specifically, we're looking for iron for the highest level of iron and manganese removal. and the way that we ensure that it's going to do that is by using the water that we're going to be ultimately putting through that filter.

And so this whole thing is connected to our raw water line. once we get the final view, it's the VOC volatile organic compound testing back. Basically, once they give us the go ahead, then we can use our treatment plan again following the, tank rehab project. we're going to fire up the plant. We'll start cycling through Wells and will be running a miniature water treatment plant right outside our normal water treatment plant.

Kennedy Jenks is handling the vast majority of that. Semocor has provided them some report, some support, just getting sample bottles ordered, stuff like that. I, they're using my colorimeter to test chlorine samples and things in those things, but other than that, Kennedy Jenks is running the entire pilot pilot study, including all of the necessary testing, the media app, the media activation.

but it's just something it's really cool to look at. So I wanted to get you guys, get you guys out on site.

and then the last one that I have under Capital project updates that I just wanted to bring up was the, well, vault rehab project. so with each one of our, each one of our wells has an associated, well, vault with it, and that's really just the vault that contains, like the flow meter for the. Well, there's some pressure monitoring equipment in there.

There's, like blowdown capability, which is like, you know, if we when we turn a well on if we know it has a lot of iron in it when it starts up, we don't want to send a giant iron slug to the treatment plant. the vaults are just they've been in really, really rough condition for a long time.

And so this is, really just going to go in. We're going to go into the vaults. We're going to make sure that we've got one consistent equipment throughout the district so that when we need to replace parts or replace meters or replace communications equipment, you know, we'll be able to use a more standardized set of parts. and then we're also making sure that the vault condition is safe for, you know, entry to make sure that we don't have any groundwater penetrations.

We'll be lining some of them. that project is ready to go to bid. I think that is scheduled on April 19th is when those will be.... I can't remember if that's when we're going to take the bid or run or receive the bid. But anyway, third, fourth week of April, it'll go out and then we'll wait to to get the bid results.

So that'll either that'll show up likely at the May board meeting. and we'll have a more in-depth presentation and we'll have the, bid selection at that time. But that one's up. And getting ready to roll. All right. Any questions on all of that stuff? That is giving me a very dry mouth.

Jason:

I don't see any questions. Thank you very much. We'll go ahead and close out. the district manager's report and we'll move on to item number ten. Director's matters. Does anybody have any....

Nathan:

I apologize. So the posted agenda does have one, one extra item. item ten is listed as determinant determined the necessity for the April study session.

I think that we already did that. But just to clarify, it will hold the April study session and then we'll use that to discuss the, civil penalty. Fine. oh, and I did get one other update. Well, before I forget about it, I did get an email, late this afternoon from, Andrea at Dominion Water.

She is going to be ready to present to it. Looks like she'll be ready to present to the rest of the board at the April board meeting. So we'll plan on having her in, for that as well. She's got a meeting scheduled with Centennial the first week in April. and then we'll have her come back around for the board meeting following that.

Now, you can go to Directors Matters, which is technically 11, because I forgot to send you guys the updated agenda.

Jason:

Great. So we approved the wrong agenda. Thanks, Nathan.

Tera:

The one I'm looking at is right.

Jason:

so. All right, moving on to thanks for the Dominion update. That was going to be one of my matters. So, anybody else have any matters they want to discuss?

Tera:

First. Oh. So. Yeah. I just want to say thank you, Semocor, for taking up the, They took over our what? Cleaning up our water treatment plan, or they took over a huge, I mean, anywhere for to save money. But, I saw that they. Yeah, we're taking on a huge. What, $30,000 is that a month?

Nathan:

so that was a that was an annual savings. Annual savings? Yeah, we were we were spending roughly 38 or $39,000 on our annual cleaning contract just for the lift stations and the water treatment plant, really at a level of service that wasn't all that great. Anyway, but we just, I mean, I can't even begin to tell you how many cleaning companies and contracts we reached out to, and they got the job because they were the only ones that responded.

And so, yeah, Semocor was able to, they actually just added an additional staff person to kind of help out with things like that. and so she's going to take over cleaning districts and she does so far done a phenomenal job, like scrubbing down grease off of pipes and lift stations. That's been cool to watch.

Tera:

So please let them know that we're grateful.

James:

just want to talk about, the bottom of monarch. And we had a little tour of the facility along with some of the engineering people. I don't know if you want to do that, and then I'll comment on that. Possibly.

Nathan:

yeah, absolutely. yeah. So following, last month's meeting where we had talked about the interconnect pump station and the three electrical drives that needed to be replaced out there, we were able to meet on site with a host of people.

Gilmore was out there. Kennedy, Jenks. I sent representatives. Jim and I came out and really just had a good discussion around it. And the the ultimate end of that discussion was to just kind of hold off a little bit on worrying about whether it's time to replace them or not. There's a lot of unanswered questions as to why those drives failed.

And so rather than focus on replacement, we're, moving forward with a, with a more comprehensive study that's really going to look at not just the drives, but the electric electrical system in their entirety, just to make sure that we're not missing anything or that there's anything else that's, coming up. And it'll also give us a better idea of how urgent the replacement of these is.

So, you know, hopefully we'll be able to go through, really identify what's going on, and then, you know, best case scenario, if we need to replace the drives, add that is a capital project for 2025. Or at least we'll know for sure that if this is something we need to address immediately, we'll have all the data points that we need.

James:

and. Yeah, there's a couple, things we kind of went through the facility, listen to what everybody had to say, looked at some millis, you know, oscilloscope traces of what was essentially the power feed coming into the facility. And each one of these variable speed motor drives that drives these water pump motors, you know, to, again, you know, basically spin up when there's a need and slow down when there's a need.

and what I saw on one, the oscilligrams was essentially a diode board that was going bad. it was classic. I was actually looking for some stuff online that I could actually cut and paste to make a little presentation, but, basically that drive was going bad. and concern there was, you know, and, and Nathan brought it up whether or not there's something, sympathetic going on between the three drives, particularly if, you know, they're not all on and they're still becoming damaged.

So, there's a lot of cases where when these motors spin up and spin back down, if they're not actually filtered properly, they can that back EMF and push through the transistor and the transistor section and actually controls the speed of these motors and actually blow up some of these diodes that are on the front end. So you take an AC three phase AC coming off the line and you rectify it and turn in, it's DC, and then you're switching that DC to sort of make it look like AC.

And so you have a diode section that's very common, extremely common. So you have a diode section that rectifies and makes DC. Then you have a bunch of transistors that switch it. And that's switching frequency and the width of those. basically the duration of that switching actually makes the motors go faster and slower. So that that's system can respond to loads.

you know, basically the loads go up and down during the day. And so those motors go up and down during the day. And as they sped those motors up, you could actually see this diode board go crazy, like it was completely malfunctioning on that one drive. and so they back off that motor or they, they slow that motor drive down and it calms down.

And so there's obviously something malfunctioning there that needs to get repaired and replaced. But it wasn't clear to me. I made the suggestion that, you know, we need to monitor both at the input side. At the output side of the motor, the motors were meggered, which means that they put a, basically high voltage across the windings to see if the motors themselves are good.

And the electricians and electrical engineers indicated that the motors themselves are good. So that's a that's a big, you know, thing off our plate that the motors themselves are actually operating properly. So it's isolated to the drives. But the drives themselves, you know, at least the one that we were looking at appeared to be malfunctioning in a pretty serious way.

so either that diode front end on that drive has to get replaced or the whole drive itself would have to go replace, everybody there seemed to think that due to the, you know, these things are limited life, they go bad. And at least some of them appear to be nearing the end of their reasonable lifetime. So I think we may be in a situation where, yeah, we could potentially replace or repair something if the manufacture would even do that.

it doesn't sound like you're having much luck with talking to the manufacturer. so we may be forced to purchase new drives going forward in the future, which would be a big bill. But I suggested that they do this monitoring to make sure we don't have a power line issue or a filtering issue of power coming into it.

So we don't replace these drives and then just blow them up again, because that very well could be an issue. So I don't know where that stands at this point. So.

Nathan:

Yeah, I actually just got a slew of emails on it this afternoon. I'll forward them over to you so you can read all the technical details and schedule that they've got planned.

Tera:

So you were saying that the useful life on these drives, I thought these were the drives that we had replaced and then they're failing again. Wasn't that the stuff you guys were looking at? Then you said something like, they're getting close to their useful life, and I think

James:

I'm just going off the information. I heard it sounded like somewhere in the 7 to 10 year time frame.

So correct me if I'm wrong.

Nathan:

Yeah. So we've done like major we've done some major component replacements on them. and that's those are things that we'll all look at is really getting through and getting into them and making sure that we know manufacturer dates, install dates, to see what we've got in there. unfortunately, when we were actively working through a lot of those, it was when I was running around with like a chicken with my head cut off as the only operator.

So a lot of those details are a little bit fuzzy. So we need to do some research as part of this effort to make sure we have that dialed.

James:

You also indicated, Centennial or someone else other similar drives of similar issues. Yeah. PCWRA okay. So and we were supposed to go in kind of see if we can collaborate and see if they're seeing some identical issues and whether or not it's endemic to this drive type in this manufacturer.

Nathan:

And I have a meeting with, well, not really scheduled meeting, but West and I, the district manager, that we are going to talk about that briefly on Wednesday after we have our board meeting down there.

Jason:

All right. That's a lot of information. Thanks, Jim. Thanks for doing that.

James off mic:

You can thank Jana there, she wanted to kind of get through it. I actually had a PowerPoint. And like I'm not, doing that.

Jason:

any, directors have any other matters. Hearing none, we'll close out that section number 11 and we'll move to adjourn the meeting. Thank you everyone.