Board Meeting
September 23, 2024
Transcript
Describer:
Board Meeting Agenda
Monday, September 23rd, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. 7404 Yorkshire Drive, Castle Pines, CO 80108
i. Resume Public Hearing, read comments sent via email into the record.
ii. Consider: 2023 Budget Amendment Resolution.
B. Consider: Approval of 2023 Audited financial statements.
C. Ratify claims for payment including check numbers 28799 - 28827 and electronic payments issued from August 22, 2024, through September 19, 2024.
August September Totals
Checks from August $0.00, from September $465,852.99, Totals $465,852.99
Electronic Payments (all funds) from August $23,288.32 from September $19,702.33 Totals $42,990.65
Total Expenditures from August $23,288.32, from September $485,555.32, Totals $508,843.64
IX. Legal Counsel's report.
X. District Manager’s report.
A. 2025 Budget Timeline.
B. Hidden Pointe Metro District inclusion update.
C. Emergency communication testing update.
XI. Discuss necessity of October Study Session, or potential work session.
XII. Director’s Matters.
XIII. Adjourn.
Board President Jason Blankaert:
good evening and welcome to the Castle Pines North Metropolitan District Board meeting. Today is Monday, September 23rd, 2024 at 6 p.m. we'll begin the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance.
Describer:
The board members and the audience rise from their seats and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, as the camera pans from left to right from the board to management staff to the audience and back to the board. When they are done, they sit down again.
All:
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:
All right. Thank you. we'll move on to roll call now. Jim.
Board Member James Mulvey:
present. No conflicts.
Board Member Jana Krell:
All right. Jana. Present. No conflicts.
Board Member Leah Enquist:
Leah. Present. No conflict.
Jason:
And I'm Jason Blankaert, and I'm present with no conflicts. And we are missing. So, who are we missing? Tera. Thank you. All right, so we do have a quorum, so we'll move on to item number three, which we can combine with items three, four, and five and approve all the September 23rd, 2024 board meeting agenda.
The Monday, August 26th, 2024 Board meeting minutes and the Wednesday, September 10th, 2024 special work session minutes. Do I hear a motion?
Board Voting All Speak:
I'll make a motion to approve. Do I hear a second? Second? Very having a second. We'll go to vote. Jim. Approve. Jana I Leah, approve. I approve as well. Those motions pass.
Jason:
Okay. That'll bring us up to item number six, the public comment period. Do we have anybody wishing to speak tonight? If you will stand up and let us know your name and address, please.
Describer:
Steve Dawes a frequent attendee, rises and comes to podium facing the board to the right of audience seating and to the left side of the board, near staff seating which is adjacent 90 degrees to the board and to the audience.
Steve Dawes, Castle Pines Resident:
Steve Dawes, 5703 Jasper Point Circle. I'm just commenting. I. Spoke at the last meeting because the presentation by the auditor lacked an audit report.
When the public agenda was posted, it was posted after 5:00, as you recall. And when you got to the audit report, it wasn't in the packet. So there came a point in time when the board was asked to vote on the audit report, and I raised a question about whether or not you should be approving a report that had never been published to the public or made available to the public.
And so the decision was made to postpone the vote on approving an audit report until the next meeting and that, the public would have until September 15th to submit any comments about the audit report. Hence, the minutes from the meeting of that August 26th are in error because it references the the budget amendment. My comment was not on whether or not the budget amendment had been published.
I think there was a draft in the packet that finally was published, but the minutes say that, it was still September 15th, that the budget amendment people were going to have to make comments on. And that is erroneous. So my request is that you amend the minutes to reflect what actually happened. It's not a huge point, but I think they should be accurate.
Jason:
Thank you for the minutes suggested there. Kim. Can we have those minutes adjusted?
Legal Counsel Kim Seter, Esq.:
We certainly can if you want to do it by consensus. I'll just change that if you would. Please.
Steve:
I would also note that if you look at the packet for August 26th, now the audit report is contained in it, but it was not at the time of the August 1st.
That's it. Thank you.
Jason:
Great. Thank you. Is there anybody else wishing to speak? Anyone online? Okay. Having nobody having no more, interest. We'll go ahead and close out and item number six, and we'll move on to item number seven. The communication director's report. Good evening.
Communications Director Bailey Budnik:
Good evening. Nice to see you all. overall, did anyone have any main questions on the report or topics we'd like to start with?
Leah:
I had a topic, and it came out of our special session. one of the things I was thinking about is, you know, how how can we define what successes and measure it? And so I would be curious, and it doesn't have to be this board meeting, but, I'd love kind of your thoughts at least by the next board meeting.
from a communications point of view, how how are we defining success and how are we going to measure that? and one thought that I had is, I know we're you're doing so much work. but I'd love to understand if it's if it's the right work. like, you know, are we reaching our residents in a meaningful way?
And how can we collect, that feedback?
Bailey:
Definitely. And I think moving forward as well. We started off in first quarter with that survey out to the residents. So ending in the fourth quarter, that same survey will be sent out. So that will definitely be a piece to that. and then I'd also like to highlight with that emergency notification, system that's going out on Wednesday at noon with the Daupler program, we can look and see every single comment that comes in either after hours or, if it just doesn't get sent to the office for whatever reason.
But there's like a detailed explanation of what, residents are seeing or concerned with, and that is something new to our eyes as well. So I think that's going to be definitely a piece to it as well.
Jason:
I think Nathan's going to talk a little bit more about that later. Right.
District Manager Nathan Travis:
yeah, I had put it on under mine. We can we can address that. Now. I don't know that there's a lot to add to it, just more letting you guys know that it's going to go out Wednesday. we had it it plan. I said basically the same thing at the last board meeting that got delayed.
There was a, chunk of contacts inside of the information that we sent to Daupler that, for whatever reason, just got dropped from the file. so we just had to do one more round of updating the contacts with residents, and then, yeah, that'll go out Wednesday. Bailey's got social media posts ready to go. we'll have a website kind of landing page on it.
So we're we're text limited. We can only do 160 characters. So, you know, the notification, I'll say something to the effect of this is a test of our emergency notification system. And then there's a little bit more information they can get on the website. That's all I had for it.
Leah:
A follow up question. so how can you help me understand what you mentioned earlier?
Like, we can gather additional feedback through the emergency alerts.
Bailey:
Yes. And also, and also I'm welcome to share a screenshot of how it looks on my end, but essentially, it's, a list of all resident comments and feedback from the last month that, to my understanding, didn't get sent through the office whether we were closed or, but Daupler essentially collects that information.
It shows what address it was at or at the location, and then it shows a document of, documentation of if, resources were sent out to address it and whatnot. But from my perspective, it gives us that chunk of, okay, is this a billing question? Is that, you know, something with like a sprinkler system someone has a question with.
So then we can really gauge what our people are really asking in this method.
Nathan:
I think at the next meeting, it would be helpful. I do have a slide deck from Daupler that I've been slowly adding our stuff to. so we could do a full presentation on the Daupler system at the next meeting. and roll through it.
That way you guys can kind of see all the functionality, and we can get more concrete details about how it operates, what we can do with it.
Bailey:
Yeah. And then with that, I'd like to add, because every month it gives a report and you can section it off by dates. So where all of the calls are coming from on a heat map, and I'd like to add that to the analytics and just get more of a literal picture and, you know, detailed response of what's going on, where with calls incoming.
James
Okay. And this I don't see it in the package, but I saw it, I guess, on the online one I looked at, it had to do with the SEP that we were doing, and it was really just the first paragraph of the description of what we're doing, but it didn't explain, I thought, in adequate detail.
And this may not even be you, and it may be, you know, a collaborative thing, but, it didn't really explain why we're giving money to Plum Creek. And then I think if we can add a line or two to that description, it would probably help people that, you know, we we're doing this in lieu of just giving money back to the state.
We're doing something positive with it. I kind of read it and said, we kind of had a miss there, so one or two Lines would be great if we could add that rationale why we're doing what we're doing. Okay. Thanks.
Bailey:
Definitely. Yeah. And then on the editing docket for this next month, Nathan recorded kind of a series on what that project is.
And then that will be added to that web page as well.
Jana:
So, to that Jim that already printed like that already went out, but would it be helpful to the board for us to peek at what's going in the paper? Just a quick like and if you don't hear from us for it, but that we could weigh in at all, or am I overstepping because I had comments on it too, that's why.
And then I found out it's too late. So.
Nathan:
Yeah. Let me think about how to build that into an effective workflow. There's it's few and far between. but there are definitely times where I've gotten kind of, you know, outside of board meeting comments and nothing super inflammatory or anything like that. But I have I will get occasional comments from individual board members that like, directly conflict with each other.
So, you know, it's usually around, like, phrasing around like, you know, I really like how this was worded, or I would have loved to see this worded differently. And so, I, I don't have a problem with you guys looking at it. I think that that would be helpful. Yeah. Let me just think about what that or Bailey and I can talk about,
Jana:
and I'm not trying to slow the process. Yeah, so
Nathan:
It would be a timed response, like, send it to you guys, let us know within whatever you 48 hours. Yeah. To look at this and comment. Yeah. But I don't think that would be I don't think that would be an issue.
Bailey:
Yeah, that would work great.
Jason:
Nathan, I have a question. Going back to workflows, how does the Daupler system workflow work?
What's the steps that, when it does it get initiated? Who initiates it? Where does it go next?
Nathan:
so there are several different avenues through that. So the primary functionality of Daupler is just, at its core, it's a call center. So, anytime the phone doesn't get answered here. So either if we have a high call volume or if it's after hours, you press nine on our communications or on our phone tree, and then that'll push you to the Daupler system.
from there, they have a live agent that answers the phone. They know a lot about our district that they have stored in our system. and that we've gone through and prioritized the different types of events. So there's a lot of phone calls that they can just push to our staff the next day. and then inside of Daupler there's a call tree.
So there's we they have our operators schedule our operator on-call schedule built into their system. And so it goes to whoever the operator is on call. there's a required response time if they don't hear anything, I think in five minutes they call that same operator again. If another five minutes goes by, they start going down the call chain.
and so it goes through after the operator on call doesn't answer, it goes to, Will Parker. And then after that it would go to me. so far I've never had a call go through. And then, the when the resident calls in, that also gives them the option of generating, well it generates kind of a work order, and then they send that resident a link, and through that link, that resident can add additional information like photos.
They can also track where operations is are, where operations is on their response time. so operation shows up, goes through the ticket, they can update the ticket with any of the events that happens, and then closes it out for the emergency system or the notification system that we're talking about. Now, that's really just directly, done by whoever has a log in.
So the admins on that account right now or myself, Bailey, and, Will our operations manager and Mark, our lead operator. And so for that text notification, it's really simple. We can log in, draw a geo boundary around the effective area for whatever we want that 160 characters and then send it out and it pulls the information using the information that was pulled from our billing system.
So cell phones, and I think email addresses. and then that just goes directly out. So it's as fast as, you know, as fast as it takes a type 160 characters and hit send.
Jason:
Are we going to get, monthly reporting on how this is being utilized? And, yeah, in kind of volumes. We're getting
Nathan:
that's what Bailey was talking about, was bringing those those reporting tools, into the communications director report.
So we'll see who's calling, what they're calling about, what our call volumes are.
James:
This may this may sound funny, but maybe you or Bailey could just, in 20 words or less, actually describe what the system is for people either online or present. I mean, we talk about it a lot, but the basics of it, I don't think, have actually been communicated as far as what the system is.
And what the intent of its uses. yeah.
Nathan:
So Daupler is a physically manned after hours emergency call response tool.
Jason:
All right. Great. Thank you. Bailey, does anybody else have any questions? Nope. Okay. Thank you, thank you. Out this section. All right. We'll move on to the finance director's report. Phyllis, are you with us?
Phyllis Brown, Community Resource Services of Colorado (CRS):
Yep. There we are. Here we go. Hello? Can you hear me?
Jason:
All right. Thanks, Phyllis. so what do we have in front of us tonight?
Phyllis:
Well, the first item, I think would be to continue to the budget amendment hearing.
Nathan:
Hey, Phyllis, could you. Do you have your headset in? No, I don't. Oh, man. let's see if it's, you can't hear me.
Phyllis:
I yeah, I am, that's much better. Okay. Because I'm, I'm not using my headphones, which is how I normally do it for you guys. You can hear me. Okay, so we have the budget amendment that we have to resume the budget hearing. So do someone want to open the budget? Hearing. And then, I don't know if there were any comments received on the budget.
Kim:
Okay, Kim, you may want to hear the comments from, Well, good. I would go ahead and open the budget hearing, and then Nathan has some comments he can read to the record, and then we can move forward. Pardon me. No, just open the public hearing. Reopen the public hearing.
Jason:
Okay. It's, about 616 on, September 23rd, and we are going to reopen the budget amendment hearing.
Okay. Phyllis.
The. Do You want me to go over the budget?
Nathan:
Well, so since. Yeah, since we're in the hearing. So is there anybody present that has any comments I would like to make, regarding the 2023, draft amendment, budget resolution. Okay. I do have we did open this at the last meeting. We did continue the public hearing, online.
And so, we sent that out via email. We also included it in our billing insert to give residents an opportunity to, make any comments that they had. we only receive two comments. the first one is from a Michael Briswa. B-R-I-S-B-O-I-S, its 7729 Haven Wood Drive. he wrote and said that he received he received interviewed the 2023 draft amendment resolution and cannot understand what is what this is about.
There is no background information provided to explain what is going on and why within the resolution itself. The third paragraph states all public comments were received and reviewed and this resolution is adopted. Are we to assume that this language represents the assumed outcome following public comments? The statement above cannot be correct as today's date is September 4th and the amendment provides for public comments through September 15th.
I think the management could do a much better job of explaining the proposed amendment, which apparently involves reallocation of several million dollars of taxpayer money within the general fund. They should also be responsible to reviewing and editing any any correspondence before hitting the send key. As it stands right now, I do not have enough information to comment further on the proposed amended amended budget, nor do I think my neighbors within the within the CPNMD do either.
Based on the correspondence in this matter received by email today. I did receive a respond to Michael following that. thank him for his feedback. Feedback. I told him that he was correct, that it was not the proposed final language. and then asked if there was any more concerns, for the content regarding editing, which he told me was just the date was all he was concerned about.
I also invited him, to set up a phone call with me if you would like, so that I could put anything on the website that he thought would be more helpful or explain it. And he declined to that request. The other public comment that we got was from. Lance Mettler, 7383 Norfolk Place, Castle Pines, Colorado.
his comment was, these are all assets that should be controlled by city government. A more consolidated approach to managing our city's resources is needed. I responded and said, Lance, thank you for your comments. Both CPA and and the city agree with you. This is the final accounting that is that is a result of an intergovernmental intergovernmental agreement that transfers our parks, trails, open space and storm water assets to the city of Castle Pines.
This is essentially the accounting that verifies that all appropriate funds have been transferred, leaving us with a balance due to the city of roughly $1.4 million. I'm assuming that the budget, amendment and auditor approve the transfer of these assets to the city will be will be nearly complete. The only remaining step is to finish defining the easements and completing the title paperwork to actually transfer ownership.
The city. The city is already in the process of public hearing public readings for the adoption of the associated ordinance. The remainder of the work is also well underway and will be completed by the end of the calendar year, satisfying the requirements of the IGA. So those are the only public comments that we got. And my associated responses for the record.
Jason:
All right. Thank you, Nathan. So at this point, do we move to a motion, Kim,
Kim:
if you want to come out of the public hearing and then you can have your own discussion and entertain a motion when you're ready.
Jason:
Okay. Having, no more public comment, we will go ahead and close the hearing, and we will return to our board meeting.
So at this time, I'll make a motion to, approve the 2023 Budget Amendment resolution as presented.
Board Voting All Speak:
I can second that. All right, having a second. We'll move to a vote. Jim. Approve. Jana. Approve. Leah. Approve. And I approve as well. So this motion passes. All right. Phyllis, we'll move on to letter B,
Phyllis:
okay? That is okay. The audited financial statements were presented by the audit partner, last month. So if if you have any further questions, I guess now would be the time to ask that the draft is the same as it was, except for a couple of minor wording changes, that we had discussed and the letter of, the communication letter that you guys got that's in the board packet, page 33.
That is also the same. So if you have any questions on that audit draft or what Russell presented last month
Nathan:
and Russell is here with us tonight. If anybody has any questions for him. He is. okay.
Jason:
Thank you for showing up Russell. we kind of went over this pretty thoroughly last board meeting. So, does anybody else have any further questions regarding this matter?
Board Voting All Speak:
I'm good. Okay. Not hearing any questions. I'll make a motion to, approve the, 2023 audited financial statements as presented. I second. Okay, having a second. We'll move to a vote. Jim approve. Jana I Leah approve and I approve as well. So that motion passes and we'll move on to ratifying the claims for payments.
Phyllis:
Okay. I just I want to, tell you the next steps would be that the auditor will be sending a management representation letter to be signed by, I think the board may be a board member.
And also Nathan, and once we they receive that representation letter back, that's a standard letter saying that we've given them all the information. We don't think there's any fraud. It's a standard, letter. Once we do that and we get that back, then we'll get the final opinion back and we'll be able to file the audit, and we'll send a final copy to Nathan.
Once it's been filed.
Board Voting All Speak:
Okay. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so, I'll make a motion to ratify claims for payments, including check numbers. 28,799 to 28,827. And electronic payments issued from August 22nd, 2024 through September 19th, 2024. For total expenditures in August of 28,288 and $0.32 for September, $485,555.32, for a total of $508,843.64. I'll second.
Great. Having a second. We'll move to vote. Jim. Approve. Jana. Hi, Leah. Approve. And I approve as well. So that passes. All right. Phyllis, is there anything else we need to be aware of?
Phyllis:
I'm just looking for the page to tell you. The page? so many pages in here. Hold on. Because we did present your information for property taxes.
Describer:
Speaking about the board packet which is found on CPNMD.com Page 91.
TO: Castle Pines North Metropolitan District Board of Directors
FROM: Andrea Manion and Phyllis Brown
Community Resource Services of Colorado
SUBJ: Financial Update
DATE: 9/23/2024
1. Property and Specific Ownership Tax
Douglas County tax revenues for 2024 received by the District through August 2024 totaled $1,130,253.75. 99.82% of budgeted property taxes from the District’s mill levy has been received YTD. Tax revenues for 2024 are allocated 75% to the Water Fund and 25% to the Wastewater Fund. Total taxes received includes $125,999 in backfill property taxes received pursuant to SB22-238.
2. Enterprise Fund Activity
Billed water usage in the month of August 2024 was 90,502,000, a 16.79% increase from water usage in August 2023.
A table of Total Billable Usage in Gallons from 2020 to 2024, see packet for more detail.
Billed sewer usage was 19,184,117 for August 2024 vs 19,493,666 for August 2023, a 1.59%
decrease.
- Water and sewer revenues for the month of August 2024 was $891,549.63 vs $780,646.08 in August 2023, a 14.21% increase. End of first page. Phyllis explains.
Phyllis:
It's on page. Should be 91. Phyllis. Oh, God. There we go. Okay, that's. So we gave you the the similar information that you've been receiving every month. and you could see your table that the water usage was up from 90 million to my 90 million, from about 78 million. So that was a 17% increase. The sewer usage was down 1.5.
Also given you the revenue for the month versus the month of August in 23, 14% increase. added a couple of little tables. And as we're finalizing the audit and just giving you some information, this is kind of the first step in getting to presenting you financial information. So this shows you your revenues and your revenues, revenues and receivables for the year to date.
So you could see it's it's going up from a beginning balance of 585 to 1 million, which is what you expect during the peak time of the year. Revenues to date of 4.7 million. Disbursement summary I put in here a a summary for year to date. So you can see total year to date. We've spent $9.5 million and the last table is the summary of your cash balance.
So as of August 31st $54 million. So that I think that helps give you a little snapshot of kind of those big, big numbers that are in the financials. And as we finalize the audit, they'll be reconciling through September so that we can prepare, bigger and better financial report for you next time. Okay. The next page to shows your property taxes is not much change.
We've already received primarily all our property taxes. So for the rest of the year, we'll just be getting some additional specific ownership taxes. And then the detail for all your disbursements follows. If you'd like to look through that and see the detail for the payments that were made that you guys just approved.
Jason:
Okay. Thank you. these charts are helpful. Does anybody else have any questions for Phyllis?
This is better than. Just. Yeah. All right. Very good. Thank you. Phyllis, unless there's anything else that we need to discuss, I, we'll go ahead and close out this section. And we'll move on to the legal counsel's report.
Kim:
you have a copy of my report. A couple of changes on page two. The sale of farm properties.
hopefully you all saw the supplemental report that I sent out this morning.
Nathan:
I just realized while I was sitting here that I misread your email, and so. Okay, I thought you said you'd bring copies tonight. I just I just misread it. So they have not. That's okay. you'll get an email with a supplemental report. Friday night, I spent a couple hours talking to this, Texas oil company, trying to figure out you've noticed over the last several months, we've been trying to figure out what we own and what we don't.
And we had kind of a dramatic break through. The number that's in your status report is no longer valid. it's much higher. And I'm not done yet because there's still something wrong. And I will figure that out over this week and we'll hopefully bring that number up even even more so it feels good to finally have a breakthrough.
And it's it's in that status report that you'll get.
Okay. I heard all the times. Yeah. And the only reason I'm being so mysterious about it is, of course, these negotiations are going to continue a little longer. And I don't want to disclose it to the public or to the oil company. What's going on? But, it's good. I'm very happy. We're happy. You're happy? Yeah. the other item is on page, three of four.
The Legae ranch family partial easements were completed. they were signed by Jason just at the beginning of this meeting. And that will be passed on to the city and to the, the easement, grantor. And that matter will be completed. Everything else is as it is in the report. And I can answer any questions if you have any.
Leah:
I'm I guess I'm surprised that we haven't heard from anybody. in regards to the Hidden Point Metro district, is it?
Nathan:
I have a little bit of an update for you.
Leah:
Okay. I was I was like, do they just not have people?
Kim:
Go ahead and update .
Nathan:
We're getting to my part early. so, former mayor I can't Jeff Huff is the current president of the Hidden Point Metro Board.
So he had, had a conversation with Michael Penney at the city about trying to move that forward. Kim's office has been trying to get a hold of their attorneys for several months now. so this last Friday, I was able to track down, Well, I had Jeff's information, but I was able to get a bunch of other information from the HOA.
And so I, sent Jeff an email, letting him know that I had spoken with Michael and that we still wanted to move forward and get this taken care of. And he called me almost immediately. So the law firm that they have is just been going the hidden Point Metro District uses has just been going through quite a bit of, turnover.
And so the they're just a lot of things that are kind of slipping through the cracks. So, Kim's office, and the new attorney there, Paul, is a Polito. Polito. Polito, is our currently working on drafting that inclusion report, hidden point, Metro disc, inclusion agreement. Hidden point Metro District has a board meeting on October 15th that at at least I will be attending, so that we can present that draft report, and then we will hopefully be bringing a hopefully get it there, which I think shouldn't be an issue.
And then we'll be bringing that to our board at the October whatever that is, board meeting. and then we'll, we'll get it moving forward. Assuming both boards approve it, which I can't imagine why they wouldn't. the entire process would probably be completed sometime early early next year. By the time we do public hearings and approvals and transfer of the assets.
just for, background as to why we're looking at doing this. So when the city imposed or got, solid approval for their 12 mills for, parks, trails, open space, recreation, Hidden Point got included in that as part of being part of within the city boundaries. Hidden Point Metro District is not technically within ours. So currently they're sitting under a 12 mill levy, from the city.
I think they have a seven mill levy from their own Hidden Point metro district. And then they do not have our mill levy, but they do have a 25% surcharge on their water bills for being an extra territorial service. And so the city is also working with them to take over some of their, I think some of their trails, I know for sure, some of their larger stormwater infrastructure that would be covered under the city's mill levy, and then also the stormwater fees that they're getting.
So for Hidden Point residents, it will it would remove their seven mill levy, remove the 25% surcharge that they're getting on their water bills, and then they would get our, imposed mill levy of 2.87 or whatever it is. so it's really beneficial for them. we're not really going to see much of a financial change in terms of the difference between imposing our mill levy and removing that 25%.
and it just goes toward the the districts kind of like our board in the city's more long standing goal of trying to consolidate some of those, local government entities, especially where it results in lower service costs.
Jason:
All right. Thanks for that legal, council's report, Nathan. Now, we'll move on to the, district manager's report.
Nathan:
All right, so for the district manager's report tonight, Kim, take it away. Okay. the only other item I had on the agenda, I'll briefly touch base on that, and then I'll go through, some highlights in the report.
Was just, wanted to briefly touch base on the 2025 budget timeline, and just let you know, guys know what the next steps are. So Phyllis and I, Phyllis, Andrea and I are working on the draft budget that will be sent to you guys, no later than October 15th. and then we will discuss that at the, following board meeting.
the next agenda item is to discuss the necessity of the October study study session. My recommendation for that would be to, go ahead and have that study session, but do it as another work session so that we can go through the budget items. and so that would be held on the 23rd. So we would send it out, assuming that we have that that work session, budget would get to you guys no later than the 15th, we would hold a work session on it that following 23rd, and then we would have, following Wednesday on the 23rd, and then we would have our, regular board meeting after that.
Jason:
I feel that's a good use of, study session. I don't know if the rest of the board feels, but I would encourage it.
Jana:
I think that works great.
Nathan:
All right. Cool. I will set up that meeting, as a budget work session for October. Wednesday, October 23rd. I think it might get into my report here.
so some capital project updates. We have started work on the waterline extension for, the monarch project. That's going well. We expect the waterline portion of that to take about 6 to 8 weeks. Weather dependent. the total project, I think, is look, is hoping to wrap up for this year, in late November, but we'll be done with our portion of it considerably sooner than that.
we have also started, work on the liquid ammonia sulfate project. So that's the capital project at the water treatment plant that is, kind of doing two things. So one, it's taking our LAS dosing room, which is currently upstairs and moving it downstairs. the primary driver for two primary drivers for that, one ease of maintenance.
So it's a it's a system that's going to have a lot more maintenance access. And then, actually meets the spill containment requirements for liquid ammonium sulfate. and then the bigger issue that we've had pretty consistently with that room is taking deliveries. So we have to where it's currently seated, we have to take these very large liquid ammonium sulfate totes and drag them on a pallet drag pallet jack across a, you know, hollow floor, great and all kinds of stuff.
It's really difficult to get to. and so all of that is being done. It's not a, it's not a huge project. it's probably a couple of weeks away from being completed. So we're well on our way. Is that a hard cut over?
Jason:
Is it just going to happen one day or is this going to be phased in and the other one phased out?
Nathan:
so it's great question. Yeah. So it will be phased. We do have back up dosing on our LAS already. So there's the existing room has two existing. It's one one supply but there's two separate pumps. And so to change that over we're at will get the new LAS room all set up with the exception of that second pump moving downstairs.
And so we'll move the current back up pump pump skid getting pump dosing pump skid. We'll get move downstairs. the the pump, it's blue and white pumps. Their local rep is going to be present. are integrator mountains, mountain peaks. Who does all the like SCADA controls and then operations and Kennedy Jenks will be there.
And so the idea is that we move one pump down, get it primed, set ready to go, and then get that pump fully working and dosing appropriately. And once we have that system in place, then we'll move the second pump down and then finish demolition in the top room. So we shouldn't have any, any dosing lapses or anything like that while we go through that process.
At least nothing that's significant. So we will phase the phase of the switchover.
Jana:
Any risk to loss of pressure? No.
Leah:
Discolored water? No.
Jason:
And when do we, speaking of discolored water, when do we switch over to, Centennial? That's coming up pretty soon.
Nathan:
yeah, I will have a I will send you guys, an email. next week on it. I have a, I have a meeting with Centennial Water in Sand. we may not. And this is all kind of late developing, unfortunately, but we may not actually do a full switch over this year.
and that will accomplish two things. So Centennial has been for the last few years now, doing some really, really heavy upgrades to their water treatment plant, for 2020, for 2024 and 2025, there are basically two, two large tasks that they needed to complete. The original plan that they had was to do a smaller shut down that would leave the majority of their surface water treatment plant online this year, and then do one that would take their surface water treatment treatment plant completely offline next year.
their contractor has asked them to switch those around, which actually will ultimately line up for us, potentially really, really well. So if we're moving toward our filter rehabilitation program next year, and next year is really the year that we need to be able to rely 100% on Centennial. so in the meeting that I'm going to have with Centennial is to either take a reduced delivery this, this fall and into early, this fall.
And winter and try and make that up, so that we're made whole in terms of our water accounting and use next year. And so the way that that would functionally look is it will either leave our treatment plant on. Well, we'll leave our treatment plant on in some capacity all through the winter this year. And then, to make up on those deliverables, actually go off line earlier than we normally would in the summer next year.
And so that'll allow us for our filter rehab project to basically buy some months. So we would have had from October until May next year if we delay that water accounting and shut down maybe even in September, like late mid August or late September, they said they can give us about a 4 million gallons a day deliverable to make up that difference.
So we could theoretically shut down mid to late August. It'll give us an extra six weeks to complete that capital project next year, which could be really, really helpful and take kind of some of this stress off of us having to put a pretty, pretty big project inside of six months. I don't have all the details hammered out yet, but when I meet with Centennial, I'll certainly be able to report that back.
Jana:
So just to make sure I understand this, it's going to be a wash as far as how much water we're borrowing. So that's the the reason for leaving our plant on when we would normally do the swap over. Jason was referring to. Correct. And that is so we can swap out the filter media to a different one, because while we're doing that, we're going to be relying on Centennial Water to, service our houses.
Nathan:
Correct. Without us. Okay. Without a back up. Yeah. And it's, for for clarity, we are doing far more than a media swap out. So we're
Jana:
I was I was summarizing that I think for the summer it's, it's part of that process to change to the grain sand product. And that's where that's the reason for this Centennial swap.
Okay, I got it.
James:
So how when when would we flush or is there a flushing event that's going to occur.
Nathan:
So we will do our flushing, like normal probably sometime late April, early May is when we have that scheduled on an annual basis. So we'll continue that. We'll continue that process.
Leah:
do we do any proactive communications around the flushing? I just can't remember from preview. I know, like we know we did after we lost water pressure. but just to let people know that their water might be discolored.
Nathan:
Yeah. So we do the month prior. So if we schedule flushing for the end of April, the bill that goes out at the beginning of April or early May.
So if we schedule flushing for the first week of May, beginning with the April bill, we'll send out a billing insert that has that information in there. we'll also post on socials and all of that fun stuff that we do and send out an email notification. And then while we're flushing, we do a daily update, the tracks, what neighborhoods those crews are in so that we can see where they're going.
in the communication protocol that Bailey and I had kind of worked through. if you guys will remember, one of the, one of the three areas that we focus on is things that we can predict every year. And so that's one of the things that we have already scheduled and built into our plan that every year at this time, that notification will start to go out and we'll and we'll get it out.
my hope is that that will be more effective than it has been in years past one, because we've just drastically increased the amount of work we're doing with our notification tools. we've gotten a lot more concise with our billing inserts, and the website is more and more refined, certainly since Bailey's come on and been able to do those, those daily updates.
one area that I think we I'm aiming to improve the most in terms of that communication is making sure that we're getting the, crew location updates from that from our contractor the day before. So we did have some consistency issues getting that information. we've asked that they give it to us by five, by 4:00 the day before the area, and there were definitely days we weren't getting it until 9 or 10 a.m. the day of flushing.
So that's an area that we can drastically improve on. And so we'll have, every year before we kind of have a pre pre con for that maintenance activity. And so that's something that I'll I'll impress heavily on them this year.
Leah:
Awesome. And this is a follow up. And I don't know if this is the most appropriate section for it.
But it just got me thinking about have we ever maybe considered doing like a town hall, where we can have people meet in person and we can, you know, it can be a two way thing where we give people updates and we answer questions. I don't know.
Kind of separating from like, number one, does it make sense just to do all that. But then I think the second consideration would be like legally, could we even do something like that?
Nathan:
yeah. We that's something that Bailey and I absolutely have have discussed too. And that's I think it would be great to have, you know, maybe 2 or 3 of them a year, especially ahead of, like, those kinds of seasons.
I think early spring would be a really, really good one. That was something that we, I think we even have a notepad somewhere, just like we are kind of tracking questions and things that came through when we were at the public events. we had talked about doing one even this year, but when we sat down, we really didn't have enough information to, like, decide what to begin to put in there.
Just because we didn't have a great idea what the community was asking. but I think early spring would be a great time to, to set that up. in terms of like legal side, it would just be we, you know, we posted to let people know that you have three or more director directors would be present and then just have like, yeah, like an open house or town hall, style event, kind of bring that and bring bring the community and ask some more free form questions.
Leah:
Yeah. And I love that. And maybe something to think about too, is, giving residents the opportunity to submit questions ahead of time. and that gives us, an idea of what to be prepared for. But it could also provide an avenue for residents who couldn't attend in person, to, to be able to share their questions and have them addressed in some type of town hall format.
Jason:
I guess this kind of just opens up. item number 12, directors matters. Oh, that's right, that's all right. I do have a note that we're keeping track, but there is an agenda.
Nathan:
I do have a couple more things on the, capital project side. I wanted to, voice. So the, other capital project that we're starting is the, well vault rehab project.
we did the, pre con meeting for that project last week. this one is really more so it doesn't directly impact the actual wells and electrical equipment. So like the dry, the VFD or soft starts, the wells, pumps, it doesn't really, address those very much, but this is really the control vault when it leaves the well.
So the water comes out of the ground through the wellhead and then it goes through basically what's effectively a metering vault. And so inside of that metering wall, there's some valving, there's a water meter, there's high pressure blow offs. we did an evaluation on all of those to look at structural structural issues. which there weren't. We're going to line a few of them.
We wanted to standardize our, well, equipment so that we've got new and accurate meters inside all of them. We wanted to make sure that they had standardized security on them. Some of them had hatch alarms, some of them didn't. and so we're really just going through to the code, some of the vaults redo some piping, we're going to redo the pipe quote pipe coating in there.
And then there's a little bit of a kind of moving target on one line item, specifically with the clay valves, which are a type of control valve coming out of the. Well, we have, basically identified in this process. We're going to tear all of those apart and then just see what they need. So that could be anywhere from before replacement.
More than likely it'll just be kind of a rehabilitation in parts kit. But that project's not going to take not going to take super long. we put we targeted that one for the winter. because regardless of whether or not our treatment plan is online, we can very much just jump from, well, the well, if there's a well that we need to shut down.
so this is on the production side. and we have talked through also when we go through and starting up those wells, part of, part of that process and standardizing the equipment with the high pressure blow off, which is basically a device that says, you know, the pressure is exceeding this parameter. we believe that the system may be in some sort of, jeopardy because of that, and it'll start dumping water on the ground rather than
Deadhead a pump and hyper pressurized the system. one of the things of this project, will the completion of this project will allow us to do is to also utilize those those, high pressure blow offs to do blow down procedures on the. Well, the reason that that is important and what a blow down is, what we would do is we would turn the shut the shut the isolation valve after that vault off.
So we're essentially closing the system between that well and that high pressure blow off system. And so we did we walk through this with PRV manufacturers that do all of that. And so what we can do is shut that valve. If a Well has been off for X amount of time, closed that valve and forced that well to discharge.
We do have a few wells that when they come on bring like a pretty heavy, ion filled slug of water with them, and we don't have the capability right now at all of our wells are, well sites to discharge that. We just have to take it at the plant and hope that our filters grab it. And so it's something that will really help our filter optimization.
and stop those heavy iron slugs coming through when we have, an already fairly impacted filter, and you get a giant slug of iron at the plant, you can get something called filter Breakthrough, or basically the filters to come to compacted, or to full to handle that additional iron load. And then that can cause, discolored water discharges out into the system.
And so it'll also help improve the quality of the water coming into the plant on, well, startup. And so that will ultimately be handled, with a little bit of trial and error and developing SOPs on which wells we need to do that with. But
Jana:
oh, that was part of my question. So are you putting the blowoffs at all of our wells?
Correct. Oh, we are okay. And so then again, to make sure I understand this, it is to blow off the heavy iron. First part. When you flip that well on, keep it from going into our water treatment. Correct. Yeah. So it just kind of just goes out onto the ground like you. All right. It's literally as simple as that sounds.
Okay. Just checking.
Nathan:
All right. And then the, rate study we're still working on, they do have everything from CRS. We did get pushed back a little bit on that side, just because we needed to make sure that the audit numbers, we're going to stay the audit numbers. so for that one, we're, they have everything from CRS.
We're working with Bartle Wells. they're the ones that have done our rate studies and updates forever. It's more appropriate to call it a rate update, because they're updating an existing rate structure that they've built. Susan at our office is currently going through and giving them three years of customer data. It's a pretty slow process because we can only download.
It's a ton of information. We can only download two months at a time. And so she's getting all of that information over to them. And then I gave them kind of a rough outline of at least our immediate capital project needs. And then we'll have, with the continuance of the, document documentation and Asset management project, which I also noted in my, or my board report, are more what will ultimately lead to a much more robust and long term accurate capital for forecasting program.
So we're kind of feeding all of that information. We have really good information on what we're going to do for the next couple of years, to at least get a solid rate estimate for the next couple of years in, and then we'll do another update basically every year. So as we build out that capital planning project tool and looking at our, you know, 50, well, I mean, for this really looking at our 20 to 25 year capital needs will feed that into the rates rate information.
And that'll just become part of an annual thing that we do is just keep keep feeding that rate study.
all right. so, Castle Rock, if anybody has any questions on those first and then I'll move on to one more, the Castle Rock, Plum Creek water purification facility tours. currently we have that scheduled for next Monday. I don't have that penned in ink yet, so that would be September 30th at 430. Castle Rock had originally told me.
Gave me kind of a date range, like pick any of the dates in here when I sent that one over earlier this week, they may have, conflicting tours of like 30 people. So, their, Tim Lambert, their operations super superintendent, is looking at, you know, maybe we go in before them or if we just join them or going after or if there are any alternative dates.
But right now, we're looking at September 30th at 430, and that may shift a little bit. for that, we'll just, we meet here at 430 and then, you know, carpool over, go through the tour and then swing back by,
Leah:
about how much time do you estimate it will take?
Nathan:
Total, port to port. Probably about three hours max.
Okay.
There's nothing stopping you from running out the door and grabbing an Uber.
I tend to have to get peeled out of really cool treatment plants like that. So.
All right. Denver parks, really quickly. There's nothing really for us to do here. Denver parks with the buffalo enclosure. did send us a final copy of all of their plans, because it's all after the top. We don't really have to approve them. We just know what it's going to look like. so as soon as they have a construction timeline, I'll let you know.
They also have some additional tap fees, if they want to activate the service at that point. But I don't have a construction timeline or anything like that. But you guys, approved that agreement, I think January, February, March. Somewhere in there. So that's long approved and still in the works. But I'll let you guys know if anything else comes up on it.
And that is all I have. Unless there are any questions.
Jason:
Okay. Great. Any other questions. All right. We'll go ahead and close out the director district manager's report. And, we'll move on to directors matters. Does anybody have anything they'd like to talk about?
Leah:
I do, I would love to talk about the public comment, period. So given our recent back to back boil notices and the sanitary overflow, I think hearing from our community is more important than ever.
and also, given that we don't always have a lot of residents here to speak, I, I personally find it off putting when we have to cut them off after the three minutes is up. and I know that's our policy.
Jason:
but, every, every entity that I've been involved with, Westminster City Council Pines. They all do.
Three minutes. It's pretty well accounted for. and there's been times, especially Nathan can and Kim can tell you that during the conclusion when things fell apart, there a lot of customers. And if they weren't kept to three minutes, those meetings went till midnight. And so if it wasn't kept for three minutes. So just having it on the books is three minutes is fine.
And we do give leeway when, when it's not a busy, jam packed, agenda.
Leah:
Okay. it doesn't seem that we necessarily give leeway. I know we've had the cut off to residents, with their comments, and they were, like, the only residents speaking. And so I was even just wondering if. And I don't know if I'm able to make a motion, but, consider maybe a five minute time limit.
And I think if we get to the point where we are having so many people come that, you know, we're meeting until midnight and five minutes is too much, then I think we can always reevaluate at that time. But to me, it just seems important to err on the side of giving the very few residents who come to our meetings to talk.
just an extra couple minutes.
Nathan:
Leah. So that is something that is decided by the board as a whole. Since this is a regular meeting, you are more than welcome to make a motion and bring it for a vote.
Leah:
Thank you. so I would like, I would like to make a motion to, update our public comment period.
Jana:
Open it up to us first.
Nathan:
Oh, so. So. She will make the motion. Then you can open it to discussion and then you.
Leah:
Okay. no. I'd like to make a motion to, increase the limit for public comment to five minutes, instead of three, with the understanding that if we get to the point where we are having to field too many questions, we can always reevaluate as a board.
Jana:
My thought on that is, could we potentially leave it at three but then flex it to five, like internally? We know Jason will give him 5 to 6 as necessary. And that way we wouldn't have to retract because I think if we ever did have a lot of people show up, I would hate to say, let's retract. We have a lot of people.
So, my thought is to allow the grace and here's a board say yes, please come talk. We are not going to set you to three minutes on the on the dot. So that's my thought of just instead of going backwards, just let that be a more friendly three minutes I don't know. That's my $0.02.
Jason:
No I think that's a very reasonable.
Yeah I think that's very reasonable.
Nathan:
From, from it's so good. I think from a, I guess from my, my perspective, I think something else that might help with that too, is, I like that. I like that idea of a friendly three minutes. And then even if we get to a point where we give them some extra leeway and we do need to cut them off, like maybe when we in that very intentionally extending the invitation to continue to reach out for me if they have any additional comments, things like that.
Like so, let them know that they that, you know, we, you know, we we keep that limited for, a time resource at the board meeting. We understand you have more question. If you have any further questions or comments that please forward them to staff, we'll make sure we get them to the board.
Jana:
And especially if it's a two way conversation where we're talking back then I really see Leah's point about, you know, we don't want to cut into their three minutes to but then to say, this is a great question, let's carry this over into, you know, can we set up a time to meet for coffee
Nathan:
for the full perspective there, the current
board approved public comment is three minutes without the director or staff response. So it really is as it's currently designed to go one direction.
Jason:
So since there's a motion out there, do we need to decline the first motion and accept the friendly 3 to 5 minute motion?
Board All Speaks:
Did you get a second. Oh no. Oh okay. So does that mean so there's no motion. So there's no motion. But but it sounds like we have an under standing okay. That makes okay okay Jim.
James:
Yeah okay. Yeah I'm good with that. I think, you know, if there's two people online or three people in here and we want to go ahead and say, you know, we're going to extend you to five minutes or, you know, it's three minutes with an extension based on the number of people that should. I think that makes a lot of sense, because some people have trouble getting started.
And then by the time they get to the media things, they're already at three minutes and we cut them down hard. And I don't think that's what we're trying to achieve here. So I, I agree.
Leah:
Awesome. Thank you for the compromise idea. I love it.
Jason:
Great. Anything else?
James:
I guess one poke for Nathan. in the in the pumping facility.
I'm still concerned about the lack of the compressor unless it was fixed. but we essentially have those two air bladders for, you know, potential issue if a pump failed. And since we have had issues with our variable frequency drives and what have you, it concerns me that we, you know, if all that water coming down monarch ended up in that facility, we would lose that facility and hence our connection to Centennial.
And I think that needs to be put on a list for fixing or replacement of that compressor.
Nathan:
Yeah it is. And thank you for that reminder. I'll, speak with, Greg and Kennedy. Jenks and I have been talking about that as well. there's a lot of concerns that we have generally with the way that that system was designed.
the fact that we genuinely cannot get the manufacturer rep out here to work on it is troubling. And so it's also a very, very complicated system. The engineering firm that did that design has a bit of a reputation at times for over-engineering. The crud out of things. So one of the things that, Greg was going to look at, I'll make sure that we keep a push on it is one if that system is even necessary, it is redundant to an extent that it as it does sit there, is a separate pressure arresting valve that will discharge that water.
but we actually might look at deleting it completely and looking at some other pressure arrestor. But that's something that I'll, make sure that we have under an engineering agenda to do a full true evaluation on, for, context, we're talking about the interconnect pump station, which is the pump pump station that connects us to Centennial Water and Sanitation District.
There is a very, very long and steep hill and a very big pipe. And so, gravity creates water pressure. And so especially if you have and water is not compressible. So especially if you have a high volume of water moving at a pretty high speed uphill, if that pump station were ever to suddenly fail. So when we shut the pumps down, they do it slowly for this reason.
But if there was ever a full building power loss and the water flow stopped, it creates a, condition known as water hammer, which can send it looks like 2500 psi waves through a system. And so at the interconnect pump station, there are two separate systems that are designed to arrest that pressure wave, to stop any kind of, like, massive system failure.
one of them is, very, very large. pipe the high pressure air tank that basically works with a shock absorber. It's fed by two separate, air compressors, and it's the the company that does those air compressors doesn't even really necessarily support them in the application that they're being used, which is one issue. this is also a system that is massive for that type of size.
So they really never designed something for that reason at this scale. And we've we've had nonstop maintenance issues with that. And since it opened in the past year or so, year plus it's been completely offline. We can't get anybody to come out and rebuild those air compressors at all. So we need to we do need to pay attention to that and make sure that one, the supplemental, pressure release valve is sufficient for an emergency.
and then two either repair or replace that other, that other system. So we'll get, we'll do an actual evaluation on it and, and get it taken care of.
Jason:
Great points. Does anybody else have anything tonight. All right. Not hearing anything I will close director's matters and we can adjourn the meeting. Thank you everybody.