Board Meeting
October 27, 2025
Transcript
Describer:
Board Meeting Agenda
Monday October 27th, 2025, at 6:00p.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. Public comment period. (Three-minute maximum per person).
IV. Consent Agenda: The items listed below are a group of items to be acted on with a single motion, second and vote by the Board to expedite the handling of limited routine matters. The Board has previously received information on these matters and/or discussed them at a prior study session. Any board member may move an item from the consent agenda to the meeting agenda at this time.
A. Approve August 18th, 2025, Board Work Session Minutes.
B. Approve August 25th, 2025, Regular Board Meeting Minutes.
C. Approve September 15th, 2025 Board Work Session Minutes.
D. Approve September 22nd, 2025 Regular Board Meeting Minutes.
E. Ratify claims for payment including check numbers 29357 – 29405 and electronic payments issued from September 10th, 2025 to October 15th, 2025 totaling $1,290,905.69
Proposed Motion: I move to approve the items as presented in the consent agenda dated October 27th, 2025.
V. Consider: Approve Monday October 27th, 2025, board meeting agenda Proposed Motion: I move to approve the board meeting agenda dated Monday October 27th, 2025
VI. Finance Director's report. Eric Harris.
A. Finance Report overview
B. 2026 Draft Budget overview.
VII. First 2026 Budget Hearing (second hearing to be held November 24th, 2025)
A. Open public hearing and receive comments.
B. Close public hearing.
VIII. Legal Counsel's Report. Paul Politio Esq.
A. Update: Ridge Golf Course Agreement.
B. Update: Castle Pines Town Center demand letter.
IX. District Manager’s Report. Nathan Travis CWP.
A. Update: Well failures.
B. Update: Monarch Waterline Phase 2 complete.
C. Update: Lift Station Renovation Project.
D. Update: Stantec Study.
E. Update: Board Meeting software update.
F. Discussion: Study Session meeting format.
X. Director’s Matters.
XI. Adjourn.
Board President Jason Blankaert:
Good evening and welcome to the Castle Pines North Metropolitan District Board meeting. Monday, October 27th, 27th at 12. 6 p.m.. And it's going to be one of those nights, Okay, we'll call the meeting to order, and we'll pledge of allegiance.
All:
I Pledge of 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. All right. Thank you. We'll close item one and we'll go to roll call.
Board Member Director James Mulvey:
Jim. Present, conflicts and no conflicts. Thank you.
Board Member Director Tera Radloff:
Tera. President. No conflict. Thank you.
Board Member Director Jana Krell:
Jana. Present no conflicts.
Jason:
And I'm Jason Blankaert. Present. No conflicts. We're missing Leah tonight. We'll go ahead and close out. Item number two, the roll call, and we'll move on to item number three. The public comment period. Public comment is designed to share your thoughts and concern with the district, but it is not an interactive discussion. If you'd like to give public comment, please sign up on the clipboard at the back of the room.
Or, if you're attending virtually, type your name and address in the chat feature to be placed in the queue. It looks like tonight we've got, one person that would like to speak. David, let's take the microphone up there. Yes, sir. There's a button in the in the middle of it that looks like a. There we go.
Okay, so if you'll state your name and address for me, please.
David Brighton, Castle Pines Resident:
Good evening. My name is David Brighton. 12402 Jasper Point way. I have a question about the billing. I have a bill here earlier in the year where I only used a thousand gallons of water for the year, but I got billed for 3660 gallons of sewer. I understand the average.
I understand the way that works. Fine. I have no comment with that. But when I only use a 1000 gallons of water, why do I pay for almost 4000 gallons of sewer for that month?
Jason:
Nathan, you wanna jump in?
District Manager Nathan Travis:
Yeah, I can, so it's, you know, just the the standard way that we calculate rates, there's not really a perfect way to grab sewer usage just because there's no real way to meter it. And so it's a fairly common way to capture that usage in the industry to use that winter time average.
We use, December, January and February months to calculate that average out. There's no real automatic mechanism that I'm aware of in our billing system that we could go in, if somebody has a use below, below their winter time average and recalculate that. And the other side of that coin is if somebody uses significantly more water, indoor usage, outside of those months, there's no way that we could really account for that increase their sewer bill.
So it's just the way that our rate structure is set up. It's fairly industry standard.
Jana:
So then that was the average for December, in January, for every resident. It's specific to
Nathan:
Its individual resident accounts. So each account has we take the average of just one home or one cat one account in the in January, December, January and February.
Those whatever the usage, are those three individual months that averages out. And then we use the true average of those numbers to calculate the the sanitary rate specifically for that account for the year. Then that would have been based on your.
David:
Yeah, I understand the logic that makes perfectly good sense, except when you don't use 3660 gallons of water that month.
Now, the previous year I went through all my bills, added it all up, and it came out of my $105 in overpayment. Because of that system. And I just think regardless of what's been said, that's an unfair practice and a very simple remedy to change where it says a thousand here up, you just put a thousand in there and pay the $8 or whatever it is, and not the 27 bucks.
Jason:
Thank you. maybe Nathan cannot at this account specifically.
Nathan:
Yeah. I'm aware of the emails he sent last year, and we could go through that same process across all of the district accounts and will probably get some sort of disbursement. That's, you know, some above and some below. It's the wastewater rates. It's a little bit of an imperfect system for sure.
But it is, is the way that we've got it currently structured.
Jana:
Do we get any other feedback on that.
Nathan:
This is a question or criticism complaint, whatever you want to call it that comes up almost annually. We usually have I don't know, it's probably no more than 2 or 3 individual calls in any given calendar year related to it.
So it does come up and
Jana:
It might be worth looking into if there's like if you think of it just as a like an Xcel statement, if like an if then situation, if your usage is less than your average, then one governs just something to think about.
Nathan:
Yeah. We can we can look at that and the rate structure for next year.
I don't know what our software capabilities are doing that because we would only be under that modality. We would only be capturing homes that use less water in any given month. That would have an impact on the overall wastewater rate. So we, you know, if we're collecting less water because we're adjusting some of our accounts down for that, but don't have the ability to adjust the other accounts up, that's going to have an overall, you know, increasing and inflationary impact on the rate.
Jason:
Okay. Well, thank you for your comment. Okay. All right. We will go ahead and close out, the public comment period. And we'll move to item number four. Looking over the consent agenda. Approve August 18th, 2025, board and work board work session meetings. Approve August 25th, 2025 regular board meeting minutes. Approve September 15th, 2025 board work session minutes.
Approve September 22nd, 2025 regular board meeting minutes and ratify claims for payment, including check numbers 29357 to 29405 and electronic payments issued from September 10th, 2025 to October 15th, 2025, totaling $1,290,905.69.
Tera:
I move to approve the items as presented on the Consent Agenda dated October 27th, 2025.
Board Voting All Speak:
I'll go ahead and second that and we'll move to a vote.
Jim. Approve. Tera. Approve. Jana. Approve. I approve as well.
Jason:
We will now close out item number four and move on to the item number five.
James:
Can I just, make one comment real quick? I'm okay with the consent agenda in general. But if we can kind of. It would be, if possible, if we can keep within like one month back on the meeting minutes and work session if that's possible.
Because sometimes, like I said, I read through these things and two months back, sometimes it's really hard for me to kind of remember and pick out any differences in them.
Nathan:
Yeah, that's something we can make sure we get done
Legal Counsel Paul Polito, Esq.:
And I'll take the blame on that one. I'll make sure to get the meeting minutes in earlier so we can actually read them timely.
I was a little tied up with a trial last month. So my apologies for that.
Jason:
Thanks Paul. Okay we'll move on to item number five. Now, consider approving Monday, October 2027 October 27th, 2025 board meeting agenda.
Tera:
I move to approve the board meeting agenda dated Monday, October 27th, 2025. As presented.
James:
I'll second.
Board Voting All Speak:
Very good. Having a second. We'll move to vote. Jim. Approve. Tera. Approve. Jana. Approve. And I approve as well. The motion passes.
Jason:
We'll close out item five and move on to item number six, the finance Director's report with Eric Harris. Financial report overview.
Financial Director Eric Harris:
Good evening. Board, on page 18, you have our or our financial report for you this evening. As stated from a high level, impact, high level review. The story is the same as the report in prior months. We have, you know, higher repairs on our water distribution system. And so, just wanted to report that, in addition, our water usage is, flat through.
Describer:
On screen. Packet Page 18
TO: Board of Directors – Castle Pines North Metropolitan District
FROM: Eric Harris, Elevated Clarity (EC)
DATE: October 27, 2025
RE: Financial Report – October 2025 Board of Directors Meeting
General Fund Activity
As of August 2025, the District recognized $982,456 in property tax revenues received from Douglas County
and $50,293 in specific ownership tax revenues. This includes $13,196 in delinquent property taxes collected.
This represents 99.39% of the budgeted property taxes from the District’s mill levy year-to-date. This is a
slightly lower percentage than compared to-date in 2024 (99.88%).
Enterprise Fund Activity
Billed water usage in the month of August 2025 was 97,641,000 gallons, a 7.8% increase from water
usage in August 2024. Cumulatively for the calendar year at the end of September 2025, the District has
billed 0.00% more in gallons than in 2024.
Eric describes an annual Total Billable Usage in Gallons grid showing volumes from January 2022 to September 2025 actual and cumulative numbers for each year.
Eric:
And if you look at that blue bar, for, September year to date. So that's just something of a, there's something to note about approximately 525, million gallons, 525 million, 100 million gallons. And, so that that was just one item to report, moving, forward. You know, we will report updated projections here shortly.
Note in the financial report, there's a couple, other items, we just would like to mentioned, we're generally seeing some capital costs that are shifting to next year. And so we're accounting for that in our proposed budget. There have even changed or updated some of our budget numbers that are not operating expenses to account for that for next year.
Several of those are, oil and gas that we discussed as well in the last meeting. Several immaterial, several, not operating expense items. And then we also updated, an expense related to PCWRA for the pond lining that we've discussed at length. Right now, Nathan is going to discuss it further in his his report, as is Paul.
So those are just a couple items we wanted to report that had a financial impact operationally. Well, we fully transitioned Susan into our, billing representative, if you will. Our technician. She's our point of contact for a monthly billing perspective right now. CRS is last day. CRS of Colorado was on October 8th of this month. And then we're also up and running on our new banking platform with UMB that, purchased Citywide.
So that's just something else that we would like to report as well. Certainly are we are open to any questions you may have this evening.
Tera:
Thanks, Eric. I do have a quick question about that, expense that you pointed out about South Metro water supply dues of 16,667 that were un-budgeted and have been paid unpaid for several years.
And so is that one lump sum? And then how much do you think they're going to run monthly? I think yeah. Or whatever the billing cycle is.
Nathan:
Oh yes. Yeah. Let me get back to that. I was just looking at that. We're looking at this line right here. So South Metro Water Supply Authority, is an organization that we are a member of.
Describer:
On screen. Packet Page 19
Notable variances reflected in the Statements of Revenues and Expenditures with Budgets through August 31,
2025, are listed below:
-South Metro Water Supply Dues – ($16,667) – These were un-budgeted and have been unpaid for
several years.
-Water Enterprise R&M – ($948,426) – The District has incurred higher than anticipated repairs on its
system specially for the Distribution System and Well Repairs.
-CRMC Annual Assessments – ($61,966) – Assessments came in higher than anticipated for 2025.
-Well Control Vault Rehab – ($346,157) – Increased costs associated with timing with the project.
Nathan:
Their primary goal is to help their members, overall reduce their, water usage and then also potentially purchase new renewable supplies. The majority of the work that they have done is on the Wise project. We've maintained our membership largely just to be good neighbors, be involved. We also take advantage of some of their conservation programs that they offer through Resource Central.
Those are actually South Metro projects that we wheel through. The 16,667 is an annual due. When we were going through, I was, talking to, Lisa Darling, who runs SMWSA, and really just asked her like, hey, I don't think we've been getting an invoice. And so, when the Parker inclusion failed, it just never really got reinstated.
As an accounting perspective, it was kind of presumed that we were going to be there. So that 16,667 is an annual charge that will go moving forward, because of the kind of like mutual error on not paying it for the past few years. We're just not going to do anything with that. So that'll be the authority to write that off or whatever they do financially.
And then we'll have this cost annually going forward.
Tera:
Thank you.
Jason:
All right. Good question. Any other questions? Okay Eric we can move on now to the 2026 draft budget overview.
Describer:
On screen. Packet Page 46 - 57
CPNMD STATEMENTS OF REVENUES AND EXPENDITURES
MODIFIED ACCRUAL (BUDGETARY) BASIS
Year-to-Date Actual Through December 31, 2024
2025 Adopted and Projected Actuals, Year-to-Date Actual, Variance Through July 31, 2025
and 2026 Proposed Budget
Eric:
Yes. On page number 46, you have an, the updated budget from our work session last week. that, we took, comments back from, you as a board and included those budgets. And we've also continued to adjust for timing as well. So just wanted to present this for you. This evening, just for, you know, a final look if you want a final look, but another chance to ask questions of staff at this time.
Also, as a, part of the budget hearing for this evening as well.
And as, as mentioned, one of the one of the larger items that came up is in our non-operating expenses associated with the wastewater capital spending with for PCWRA, and it relates to the phasing and, how the project will be funded as well. The authority met this last week and is currently looking at many different options, and it's meeting again on November 3rd.
So we're constantly kind of moving and adjusting for what the authority's board is going to be doing. So, Nathan and Nathan and Paul will talk a little bit more about that this evening.
JASON:
All right. Very good. Any other questions regarding the budget?
Hearing none. We'll go ahead and close out that item and continue to close out item number six. So we're going to open up, public hearing for the first 2026 budget hearing. The second budget hearing will be held November 24th, 2025. Does anybody have any comments they would like to make?
Steve, if you'll state your name and address.
Steve Dawes, Castle Pines Resident:
Steve Dawes. 5703 Jasper Point circle Castle Pines. So I listened to the study session and the presentation by Bartle Wells, and I have to say, had some difficulty following it. One of the reasons is that the Bartle Wells report wasn't published on the website, and it wasn't published for today's hearing, either. And that appears to be the basis for the consideration for rate increases next year.
So I would encourage the board or staff to get this on the website so people can have some idea what’s being proposed is a critical document seems to me. So I went through the financials and Eric was kind enough to explain some of the numbers to me because it's sort of like when I took calculus in college, it's just turned to a blank for me when I looked at a big page in numbers.
It's hard to understand. But he explained to me that for the actual, 2025 budget compared to actual expenditures, we're running a deficit. And I looked at the study session report was around 227. If I'm reading this one right, it's around 810,000. And I say deficit because for simple people like me, if you have revenue and you have expenditures, the difference is whether you have plus or minus.
I understand from Eric for accounting for government agencies, they have to take into consideration capital investment that you have, etc. but bottom line is spend more money than we made. Same for the proposed budget for 2026. I'm reading it right because of proposed capital improvements of what was like $7 million or whatever it was, it's going to be a significant deficit.
So so then I, I got hold of this today from Nathan, but tried to follow Bartle Wells, his presentation last week and the bases for what I understand to be their proposed increases. So it looks like what they're proposing for the water fund is a 4% increase over the next five years. Page 13 of their report. And for the wastewater fund, 4% per year over the next five years did not appear to me that there was any specific calculation of what the contracts and expenses are going to be by contract and equipment and manpower.
It was more of a here's what we plan on doing next year. And here's what we think the costs are going to be without actually looking at contracts or, or, you know, equipment that's expended. Is that fair to say?
Nathan:
I didn't know my mic was still on. So the capital expenditures and forecasts, we do look at, current staffing costs projected, all of the things that come with staffing.
We we look at all of that, and then there's a, an, inflation assumption to move forward. And the same thing for the capital expenses. So we don't have, you know, contract bid dollar amounts, but we do have, high leverage, high level. We called budgetary numbers for those And those are projected against existing cut projects and costs that we know of this year.
And then some some assumptions on the rate are on the right,
Steve:
Basically estimating next year based upon this year.
Nathan:
In some respects, yes, with the exception of the capital costs, those are real projections based on projects.
Steve:
Okay. So last year the board increased water rates by 7% and wastewater rates by 8%. So with the proposed, Bartle Wells recommendations for next year, that means the water would be over two years 11% and wastewater 12%.
I'm not saying that the rate increases as proposed by Bartles Wells are not necessarily, unjustified, particularly since when you look at the proposed 2026 budget, the huge amount for capital improvements makes a big difference, no question about it. But I look at this and I wonder, does the average person you're constituents get the picture on this?
I mean, I spent I hate to say it, but 3 or 4 hours sorting through this stuff, trying to figure it out. And I looked up the consumer price index, to see what the rate of inflation has been in the 2024 for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was 2.9% in 2025 3%. And so your proposed rate increases are significantly higher than the consumer price index.
And I wonder if your average citizen appreciates the reason for that. So, one of the, getting to is I propose that you explain this to your constituents, not with these pages and numbers. Okay? This is not going to work. One page that says, okay, in 2025, we're projecting a loss of whatever it was. Eric told me the number 227 on the study session form, and it looks like it's higher than the one we got today.
Proposed loss in 2026 is several million. Reason, huge amount going to be spent on capital improvements. Here's why your rate increases are exceeding the consumer price index. One page explain this. I don't think anybody's going to be able to spend few people are going to be able to spend the time I did trying to figure all this out, listening to the Bartle Wells presentation.
And if you look at his report, page 13 and on page.
20 essentially they say the same thing. We're going to have increased expenditures, therefore we need to raise it doesn't say why 4% was chosen. In fact, I couldn't get from his presentation at the study session why the number 4% was there as opposed to 3.5 or 4.2 or anything else. It seemed to me just a basic guesstimate.
And so I think that the citizens are entitled to know this in a simple and understandable way. This gets me to a larger point, I believe, and Nathan correct me if I'm wrong, that the reason we're spending this much money, or going into reserves, are essentially save money to pay for these capital improvements is because they need it, right?
I mean, we've got aging infrastructure. I suspect that that aging infrastructure is one of the principal reasons that Parker backed out of the inclusion. I have lobbied this is at least the third time, to you guys, to send out information to the public that says, here's what Parker said, that they don't want to include us for, and here's our response.
So I'm making this up because I don't remember what they were. But let's say Parker said, your lift stations are in terrible shape. We don't want to be part of your organization. Our response is, yeah, okay, now we're spending a zillion dollars to fix these lift stations. And in the, water program, we're spending another $8 zillion to fix infrastructure that they complained about.
I think the mere citizen should have that information. I will tell you anecdotally that over the summer I was at a neighborhood gathering and people were I said, don't know how it came up. I said, you know, I've been going to these board meetings ever since Jana and Mr. Mulvey and, and, Leah were elected. I think my attendance record is pretty good.
And, I said and so they said, oh, why didn't we include in the Parker? The only explanation I've really heard is because it got messed up, but a specific answer or analysis was never given. So this is in the last year and a half. This is the third time and probably the last, that I'm going to lobby you to put out some information that says, here's why Parker didn't want to be included, but we had some problems, and here's what we're doing about it.
I think it would improve the public's perception of the hard work and good job that you're doing. And I don't think the public gets it. That's my comment.
James:
Can I take this one for a second? not to make this interactive, but just to kind of talk through that. I agree with you. It was one of the reasons when we had was a party in the park or whatever, that, I requested the same information because it's not easily digestible.
If you just look at this stuff to pull that information out. That was provided. And in a nice it was like two pages. And I had the same comments that I think it's a great story. I mean, when we came in here, I don't know, you toured, you've probably toured the water. Excuse me. Sorry, but you you toured the water treatment facility, right?
You've been through there, and and honestly, we walked in there and I was a little distressed, and it's probably more than a little distressed. Just the chemical smell, the leaks. The various things that were problematic just from visually walking through. And I think, you know, that was one of the big spends that we did. Obviously, waterline replacement was, necessary, due to anybody who watches TV or, or drives through the district understands, we were getting a significant number of waterline breaks that had to get managed through.
We were spending, I don't know, was it 6 or 8 times a year? You had a water line break? It was some some large number. I forget what you were telling us early on, but yeah, significant breaks. Yeah. That were, you know, $60,000 a break or something like that. So you start looking at a half $1 million a year just plugging leaks, and then the attendant disruption to traffic and people's lives and what have you.
So I agree with you. And I think to Nathan's credit, we talked to the communications people and they put together I think it was like two pages front and back because there was a ton of stuff that we did. But again, it's not digestible. And I think if you can stick that up on the website and you could go look through those projects with the dollar amounts associated with each one of those projects, you would get a very good sense of what we fixed since we've been here, you know, last couple of years.
So to me, like I told him, I thought it was a great story. We're spending people's money. Our money. We live here, too. But we were doing useful, necessary things with that money that prepared us to go into the future, you know, ten or 15 or 20 years. And that's kind of the main focus. Like the lift stations, the water line breaks, the, you know, the water treatment facility, those are all the big things.
And yes, you mean I wasn't here for Parker, so somebody else would have to speak to that. But I, you know, I've heard things from different people. But I wouldn't want to comment on the different things I've heard. So we would probably have to ask Nathan or somebody else to kind of go through that history and kind of explain some of that.
Some of it, I believe, is true from what you know, from what you're saying and what I've heard. But again, I wasn't here. So it would just be essentially hearsay at this point in people's opinions. So.
Steve:
Well, but last year, council report to the board for several months running listed the reasons Parker cited. Do you remember that? But we never responded to it.
I don't know why wouldn't your citizens,
Jason:
Responded to it how?
Steve:
Okay, Parker, listen, I, for six reasons say a dozen reasons that they didn't want to have the inclusion.
Jason:
Yeah there were six.
Steve:
What was our answer to those reasons?
Jason:
We didn't have to answer because he had already closed down,
Steve:
We didn't have to do anything about it. Right. I'm suggesting it would be important to do something about it.
Right. Well, actively say okay, Parker said. We have these problems on the wastewater side. Here's what we're doing about it now. The reason the inclusion didn't occur is because Parker had these objections to whatever the problem was. Here's what we're doing about it now.
Jason:
That's not entirely fair. First of all, none of us on the board were part of that.
We all came after Parker inclusion had already broke.
Steve:
But it's not about you. No, I'm just. You.
Jason:
Let me finish. Yeah. So what I'm saying is, yeah, we can give you the reasons. And we've made progress, have not completed most of those items that were on that punch list that they complained about, but there was a lot of negotiating in the background.
That was not was more of the reason why the inclusion didn't happen. It wasn't because of those items.
Steve:
Well, all I'm saying is, I hear when people find out I've been going to the board meetings on allowing, why don't we go with Parker? And I don't have an answer for him, even though I've attended all the board meetings since you guys, the most recent three were elected.
And I think that it behooves the board to publish. I know you report in and articles in the paper and in the newsletter that goes with the bills, things that you're doing. But whatever the reason, Parker didn't do it. People don't understand why. And it's how many years, two or so years after that inclusion failed.
I think your residents are entitled to know why it didn't happen. Maybe it was because, they wanted more money than we were willing to give them, or vice versa. Negotiations failed. Maybe it was because, they saw deficiencies in our operation that we didn't agree with. I don't know, but today, people still don't know why we didn't have a conclusion.
I don't know why we don't have inclusion other than the list of things they gave. That's all I'm saying.
Jason:
Well, thank you very much, Steve. Appreciate it. We will go ahead and close out item number seven and move on to item number eight, the legal counsel's report with Paul. Paul, you have an update on the Ridge Golf Course agreement.
Paul:
Before we do move on to legal counsel's report, I would advise to just go ahead and close the budget hearing.
Jason:
Yeah. Oh, sorry, I thought I had, okay, we will close the public hearing for the 2026 first budget hearing. Is that correct? That's right. Okay. Thank you. And that will open up item number eight, legal counsel report.
Paul:
Good evening. Board. So on the agenda today, is an update regarding the Ridge Golf Course agreement. This is a, an agreement with the Ridge Golf Course to deliver, raw water, to them for their operations. The goal today was to present you a finalized agreement. We'll have to push that back until next meeting.
Only because we couldn't meet, with the folks over at the Ridge. They had to push the meeting back. That was, set for this morning until later this week. So I'll be presenting the finalized version, for you at the work session, and you can approve it at the next meeting. But, the big idea behind that is we're just fine tuning.
Number one, the rates themselves. And I think Nathan and Eric may have a little bit to speak on regarding that. And then just fine tuning some terms as far as the delivery point and whatnot. So, again, you'll, you'll have that in front of you at the work session. I'll pause here in case Nathan wants to jump in and and talk about this agreement.
Describer:
On screen. Packet Page 58
MEMORANDUM
TO: Castle Pines North Metropolitan District
FROM: Seter, Vander Wall & Mielke, P.C., Paul Polito, Esq. and Kim J. Seter, Esq.
DATE: October 23, 2025
RE: Legal Status Report for the October 27, 2025 Meeting
UPDATE REPORTS ON MATTERS IN PROCESS
MATTER: RAW WATER AGREEMENT – THE RIDGE GOLF COURSE
Status: CPNMD will be entering an agreement with The Ridge Golf Course regarding its use of CPNMD raw water. Counsel is reviewing the agreement and amending certain terms, including terms to limit the delivery of water when not reasonably available, clarify the rate structure, and clarify the delivery point of the water.
Action: Consider and approve/reject agreement. Staff recommends approval.
MATTER: DEMAND LETTER TO CASTLE PINES TOWN CENTER
METROPOLITAN DISTRICT NO. 1
Status: CPNMD invoiced Castle Pines Town Center MD No. 1 on May 12, 2025 for unpaid anniversary fees due on the 4/28 anniversaries for 2022–2025, totaling $354,315.72. The demand for payment was sent on August 20. The Castle Pines Town Center MD No. 1 delivered full payment of $354,315.72 on October 16, 2025. This issue is now resolved, and legal counsel’s office has calendared the annual payment date to confirm that funds are timely received.
Action: No action required.
Nathan:
Yeah. One of the things that we're working on finalizing through that agreement is making sure that we take care of the board's concern over having guardrails around their usage. So the existing agreement does have language that effectively says that this water is not guaranteed to be available to you. And then there's also a minimum amount of water that we provide that we agree to provide pending availability.
So one of the things we want to look at in, doing an update to the current agreement is strengthening that language so that it's, you know, really clear that like, yes, we will make sure that when water is available will provide it to this amount. but there are varying factors other, you know, as determined by the district that may limit those deliveries.
And so that'll give us the ultimate hammer we need to make sure that they curtail water usage or that they don't have kind of a runaway system, or runaway usage. And then we're still working through finalizing the ultimate agreement with PCWRA on how this contract is going to be executed for the actual construction. So, it seems like every time we have a board meeting down there, the entire landscape around this changes.
So I think we've got it fairly dialed in. the two things that we're currently looking at. So we're we're looking at whether or not we want to break the project into one or 2 or 2 phases, or award it all at once. There's about a $400,000 difference. So the leaning there is to award the contract for the actual construction work all at one time.
The first $3.5 million of that are going to be financed. There is still a question on whether or not that is going to be a term for 30 years at 3.5%, or 20 years at 3.25%. The 20 year option was brought up at the last. At the most recent meeting with PCWRA so it wasn't something we had considered before.
And then that how to fund the remainder of that project, is still a little bit of a question. So we'll either be getting a state revolving fund loan, the work needs to get done this year by or this 2026 calendar year. But, we'll either have, state resolve or a state revolving fund loan that covers that difference or will be cash paying the full amount.
I think it's another $1.2 million that would, effectively work the same way that the wastewater lift station loan is. So we will loan that money to our wastewater fund, from our enterprise fund to, like, cover that back end. So it's still a few measly moving pieces there. and I'll let Eric.
Eric:
Yeah. So that was the the one large change that we had was an increase about $1.15 million from, as a wastewater expense.
And we factored that into the rates associated with the reuse customer and the Ridge Golf Course as well over the next 30 years. As Nathan mentioned, the challenge with this has been more than likely trying to trying to get all the parties on the same page. And I've attended these meetings with Nathan, certain certain parties would like to cash fund.
Some would like to take advantage of financing depending on the structure associated with that. And of course, everyone wants to take advantage of the phasing the projects are bringing together under one phase as well. So that has been the, continual challenge and so the question was asked, can the district's cash finance to take advantage of this going forward?
We can but it just it does it does come out of a reserve and we have to factor that into our rates as well. Other other people are processing that or, passing that along directly to, in the form of an assessment to a particular golf course. Some are, factoring into rates. And the city, town of Castle Rock has mentioned that they are going to just cash fund the entire phase two of the project.
So there's, it seems like every party is doing it a little bit different way. And, has been changing over the last month or so.
Nathan:
Yeah. Castle Rock is going to do a similar to wastewater. They're going to do an interfund loan. So they're going to do a loan from their water enterprise or whatever account that for their water wastewater enterprise fund to the enterprise fund that's set up for the Red Hawk golf course.
They're all in the town, but so
Eric:
And, so what we will be doing is factoring this in, into our, rate analysis and bring it back to the board at the next time that we meet to see the impacts on reserves. We don't expect it to be a major impact on reserves. But that goes along to the point that we are budgeting now in accordance with having, our funds appropriated, which hasn't been done before, our restricted fund balance, unrestricted fund balance and renewable water as well.
And so you see those breakouts that you have at the bottom of the financial statement, so that that is and you'll see it look kind of, odd for this next year. And he saw that in, as, in the great work session that we had last week as well. But we knew that, it is going to, over time, recoup and be just fine as we expected.
So at least as it, what's in our existing capital improvement plan?
Jason:
Questions?
James:
Maybe I misunderstood. we talked about breaking it into two phases. Is true, you know?
Nathan:
Yeah. So in one of the initial approaches that we were looking at was building it into two phases. And so one of the requests of the board, which is myself, Josh Shackleford of the village, and Mark Marlow at Castle Rock, was we really wanted to make sure that we understood what that phasing is going to cost us.
So, you know, if we, you know, do the do it as one whole contract award or if we break the phasing down, and it was more it was it was a pretty significant difference. It was a little bit over $400,000 total project costs increase if we phased it. And so that's why the leaning is to go back toward, rewarding it as one single contract.
James:
Okay. Yeah. I only reason I'm keying in on this is Eric. You said two phases. It sounded like it was still in work. And so listening here and listening here, I heard two different things. And, I just want to understand if it's a single award, what's what's the number? And if it's broken into two phases. I know the delta now I think is $400,000 or some number like that.
Yeah. It was, What is that number. You know I got A or B. What are those two numbers.
Nathan:
It was roughly 7.7 and 8.1
James:
Okay. All right. And,
Nathan:
I think Eric might have the,
Eric:
Yes. 8.1 right now. Okay. Thanks. You know, I apologize, when I say two different phases, two different, capitalizations of the project.
James:
Okay. In the period of performance for this contract, it made it sound like it was a single year. Correct. Okay. All right. Thanks. Appreciate it.
Jason:
Any other questions? okay. Thank you. Paul, let's move on to the Castle Pines Town Center. Demand letter.
Paul:
I am happy to report that the district did receive a full payment of that $354,315.72 that was delivered on October 16th.
And so this issue is now resolved, and we are all going to be keeping an eye on that anniversary date. So this won't get missed again.
Moving on to items other than on this legal status report, there are a number of items in the hopper, that I'll be planning on on presenting over the next few meetings. I am looking at, closure for the stormwater enterprise. I think this should only take a simple resolution, but I'm just looking into this and make sure that, the district is closing its stormwater enterprise appropriately.
I'll be drafting an inter fund promissory note between, the two funds in order to to loan money to the water fund. As has been discussed at a few meetings here, looking into, or I'll be drafting rather an amended and restated service plan for the district to more accurately capture what services the district is not providing at this point.
And so we're looking at removing storm drainage, parks and recreation and street maintenance. I'll also be updating the service area boundaries. That'll be going through some internal review, between, Nathan and Eric and the the goal here is to present it to the board about January 2026. I'll pause here if anybody has any questions.
Tera:
I just want to make sure, because at the beginning, I think, I think what we're doing is the city has the MS4 permit and they have the stormwater, and we're cleaning up, our service agreement such that they have that we have that. But I heard you say something that actually sounded like the other project that we're doing, which is loaning money between the two funds, which doesn't have anything to do with stormwater, because that's not ours, yes?
Paul:
Right? Well, it's loaning to the water, fund from that store.
Nathan:
And so that's a it's a promissory note for the exact project that you're referencing. We're just going to make sure that it's legal, that it's documented, that we have that inter fund loan in place for it from the water to the wastewater enterprise fund.
Tera:
That doesn't have anything to do with the stormwater and restating or a okay thing.
Paul:
Right? Right.
Other than that, be updating these, rules and regulations for a lot of the same reason to remove these outdated services, parks, trails, stormwater, be adding, some language as to, back-flow prevention authority, and then just clarifying, certain ownership. What is the district owned? What is the city owned? I'm just clarifying those those new boundaries.
Those are the big picture items in the hopper. Again, I am prepared to, the goal is to present that to the board over the next few meetings. If anybody has any questions on any of these ongoing projects, and I'm happy to answer them.
Tera:
Thanks. Just another quick question. Heard anything back from Hidden Point?
Paul:
I was wondering the same thing this morning, because they had their meeting last Monday and I did send the district manager an email.
I haven't gotten response yet. To her credit, I sent it this morning, so, not to throw her under the bus. but as soon as I get an email back, I'll go ahead and forward it to the board. Thank you. Absolutely. Any other questions from the board?
James:
Yep. Just, hopefully it's a comment. And really, Eric, since you've been here, you caught a couple of things.
Appreciate it. Going through the past, auditing, you know, auditing the past records and things like that, I appreciate it. And then kind of addressing, you know, missing charging people and then us not paying our own stuff. It's a bad look. Again, I'm not really down on anybody, but I was just wondering if there's some place that we have a master list of all the people you know, the puts and takes, what we what we need to be paying and what people.
You know what organizations and groups should be paying us. And if you know, we can, you know, hopefully everything's clean at the end of this year and we can kind of make a tick list so that we don't miss paying someone and we don't request payment from someone else going forward. Again, I mostly congratulatory because, you know, we I think we've cleaned up things and I think everybody sitting here understands what we had previously was not working well.
So thank you. But like I said, I just think it's a bad look if we're, we're missing things, as a group. And it would be good if we could get that list together that we just kind of go down it every year and just say, you know, what are we paying? What are we not paying, and kind of thing.
That's all.
Eric:
Thank you. Thank you. we are, we've compiled a kind of a monthly checklist, if you will, as well as our budget. And then in addition to that, we are we're kind of going through, several different cycles right now. one of the items, so, Molly and I will be doing is we're going to be sitting down with Susan and documenting all the billing procedures that are associated with that CRS was doing.
We're also going through a lot of the files as well. And so we what we have, developed is those items that we have missed, we do have them on a checklist and we're going through those on it, at least on an annual basis. We have the same items that we do on a monthly basis, but we're asking all the questions.
We're making sure we try to get all the all the items that we can find associated with our financials, addressing timing, associated with, like, the city, the monarch project, if you will. There is, we have to be very intentional as we kind of seek out and find all these items. So, we're continuing to do more work on that.
Jason:
Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Hearing none. We'll go ahead and close out item eight, the Legal Council's report, and we'll move on to item nine, the district manager's report with Nathan. Nathan. first up is, well, failures.
Describer:
On screen. Packet Pages 62 to 64
Memorandum
From: Nathan J. Travis
To: CPNMD Board of Directors
Date: 10/26/25
Re: District Manager’s Report
AGENDA ITEMS
Well Failure Updates (Agenda Item IX.A)
• Re-installation of wells A-1 and A-2 is underway. The full equipment and labor costs are being covered, by Layne with a small equipment discount being provided to Lane from the manufacturer.
• A6 Update: Well equipment has been pulled, good news here. No holes in the draw-pipe were found. It is most likely an issue with the pump. We will know more when equipment inspection has been completed.
Monarch Waterline Replacement Phase 2 (Agenda Item IX.B)
• Work continues on the Monarch Roadway Replacement Project. However, the waterline portion of the project is complete! Final connections were made last week, and all testing has been completed.
Lift Station Renovation Program (Agenda Item IX.C)
• Scope A (Lift Stations 1, 2, & 5) is set to begin construction near the end of November. This scope will include some traffic impacts, including closing Serena Drive North of Hidden Pointe Blvd. Sigler and I are working with the contractor to ensure that impacted residents are appropriately notified, including general timing and duration.
• Scope B (Lift Stations 3, 4, & 7) are at the 90% design level. Site applications for Lift Stations 3, 4, and 7 are in review with CDPHE. Progress has been made to secure the additional easement for lift station 6, we are currently waiting for the Montessori School Board to approve the easement request. The scope of this bid has been widened to include the metering flume replacement near Daniels Park Road.
Stantec Study (Regional water supply study) (Agenda Item IX.D)
• At the time of the Board Meeting I will have attended a meeting for the Regional Water Study, and will have updates including timing for the board.
Board Meeting Software: OnBoard (Agenda Item IX.E)
• I have decided to move forward with OnBoard for a meeting platform to help improve the flow of information to board members, and streamline the meetings. Implementation will begin in December,
allowing us to get familiar with the program ahead of the meetings beginning in 2026. We will keep the process the same until the completion of the November board meetings.
Packet Page 62
Board Work Session Format (Agenda Item IX.F)
• Just want to touch base and discuss the pros and cons from the meeting setup used at the recent Work Session
ADDITIONAL UPDATES
Well Status Updates
• LDA-1: Well equipment has been reinstalled, and the well is operating properly.
• A3: Well Equipment has been re-installed and is operating properly.
PCWRA Reuse Pond Project
• Included in the consent agenda is the PCWRA bond repayment IGA. This IGA only confirms our commitment to pay our portion of the total project cost. The exact amount, final project scope, and funding source is still being discussed by the PCWRA board of directors.
• Holdover: At a recent PCWRA board meeting we were informed that the State Revolving Funds (SRF) are not available for the fall application deadline. This does not mean that the funds are not available, however we will be exploring different funding options. We were also informed that we may be “surprised” by the projected project cost, though we have not received the updated estimate it is likely that project costs have increased significantly. This may require us to fund part of the loan through the SRF and self-fund the remaining portion of the project.
Conservation
• It is my recommendation that we discontinue the Lawn Replacement Program, and instead augment our own in-house program, and continue our partnership with Resource Central for the “Slow the Flow”
program. The Lawn Replacement Program did not gain any significant traction after two years, and those funds would be better served in our own rebate program.
Staffing/ Human Resources
• Posting for the Deputy District Manager Position will go live this week.
• We have hired a Field Service Technician. Their first day was Monday, 8/25 and I look forward to introducing them to the board at a future meeting
Project Updates (for additional information please refer to the engineering report)
• Holdover: Monarch Phase 3: Due to the condition of the existing 14” waterline on Castle Pines
Parkway, we were unable to complete the loop to Sherman Street. This prohibits the constructability of “phase 3” at this time. Instead, this work will be added to the scope of the Castle Pines Parkway Rehab project scheduled for 2026. While certainly not ideal, we don’t have any other viable options.
• Filter Rehab Program: We are at 90% designs, and have begun to hold meetings regarding pre-procurement,constructability, and value engineering.
Packet Page 63
• Holdover: Well Vault Rehab Project: This project is 100% complete, final retainage has been paid. I will remove this item from future reports. This project standardized equipment at all our well-sites, replace outdated components, increased security, and rehabilitated aging concrete in 3 of the vaults. This work was focused on metering and control vaults downstream of the wells themselves.
• Holdover: Documentation and Asset Management: Additional work is being completed to include the recently completed Well-Vault Rehab Project. Equipment in the process of being added to the asset hierarchy.
Castle Pines Metropolitan District Tank Project
• Holdover: Castle Pines Metro is constructing a new water tank near our Treatment Plant. This requires relocation of the two large diameter water mains that feed our tanks. There is no cost to our District. CPMD will work with Kennedy Jenks to ensure installation is done to our specifications.
Website ADA Compliance
• Holdover: We are working with Sigler to ensure that the website is up to date and meets all ADA standards. Additionally, our board meetings are now broadcast with closed captioning.
JAM Ranch Inclusion
• Holdover: Jam Ranch has indicated that they would still like to pursue inclusion or service agreement for Wastewater services only, a meeting was held on April 28th to discuss this. Due to the renewable water requirement set by CPNMD, they have indicated their intention to form their own metro district for water services. The meeting will be attended by legal counsel, district engineering, JAM ranch representatives and myself.
Nathan:
Good evening. Yeah. I'll kind of run through the agenda items here. good news on the, well, failures.
Reinstallation for Wells A1 and A2 is underway. We did get confirmation from Layne that, although the manufacturer is not ultimately, choosing to honor the equipment warranty, Layne is. So Layne is effectively going to eat the costs of those wells, including all the labor and the materials. The manufacturer, I guess, gave Lane some small discount on the, actual materials, but that's that's all that they were willing to do.
So, we're trying to with the with the impending, filter rehab project, we're actually trying to keep our treatment plant online at a minimum level so that when that equipment does go back in the ground, we'll be able to test it before we shut down for the filter project. But I don't know if we'll exactly be able to make that need or not.
Jason:
And, I really appreciate that, Lane stepping up to the plate like this. But how long are they going to step up to the plate? Is this going to be for a year or is it just this?
Nathan:
I can ask for clarification on how long go stand by these ones. the other well, that we that failed last month is well, actually Paul's did you want to say something?
So you press the button. Perfect.
Paul:
This is a bit of a belt and suspenders approach. I have messaged Layne, asking for that specific manufacturer warranty. I've hit a little bit of a wall with them on the last few communications. They're. They're telling me that they can't even send it to me without talking to their legal team first.
And I made it very clear that we, the district, would very much like to take advantage of what it will. And as far as the filing of any sort of timely notices in order to take advantage of that, I express that that's very important to the district, and we do need to see that. So they're slow rolling it a bit, and I don't anticipate that this will be a real problem.
But, you know, again, exactly to that question, you know, this is a bit of a handshake agreement. And I feel the same way about it as you do it, as does Nathan. So, we'll be reserving our rights with whatever that manufacturer agreement is to the extent any notice is required. Hopefully we never have to use it, but,
Yeah, we are aware of that and take care of that.
Nathan:
And so the other well, update that I have, well, A6 so this is on the north end of the district, kind of. Oh, I can't remember that cross street, but it's, just past Esperanza, on Monarch off of Monarch the. So that is the well that, I, I notified the board last month that had, or even maybe even two months ago that had a pretty slow drop off in, well, production over a period of weeks.
We have pulled that equipment. At the time, we thought that it was a hole or a rupture in the draw pipe. That turned out not to be the case. So there's not a compromised hole drop pipe, which is good, because that could have led to, like bigger casing problems. And ultimately it could have caused us to have to redrill the well.
So we didn't find that. The good news is, that's the good news. The bad news is that we haven't confirmed what caused that sort of production drop off. The most likely culprit is the motor. So we'll get that up, to the facility. They'll take that or. I'm sorry. The pump that the motor, the, pump taken up.
Get it disassembled and see if there are any. You know, what could have been going on internally? It's an older pump. I think that one's been on the ground for 10 or 12 years or so. So it wouldn't be unheard of for that thing to have just kind of worked past its useful lifespan. And since there's pretty nominal cost to have them go take the motor with it and double check all the windings and bake it to get any moisture out of it.
We're going to go ahead and do that as well at the same time. So we should be able to get that back in. I'm not sure on the time frame certainly before we need it next year.
James:
Question. Question. Real basic one. Is that a line item in our or current budget for next year as far as paying that and refurbishing that or replacing it if necessary?
Nathan:
It is not a line item in the budget for next year. Those costs should hit this year, but I can double check and make sure the timing lines up.
James:
Okay,
Let's maybe just make a note and you know, next meeting to wherever we end up, just so we know. And then, second thing is, is on that corner is that the well, aligning itself, that's laying on the side of the road, all those pipes?
Nathan:
On the up the on the north end there, the other like, smaller diameter pipe that's the well draw pipe.
James:
Oh, okay. Yeah. It's it's stacked up there. Yep. You know, I just walk my dog past it every day. So I was just wondering what that was. Thank you.
Nathan:
That is that's what that is.
Jason:
Okay. Let's go ahead and move on to item number two, the monarch water line phase two update.
Nathan:
Yep. quick up, real quick update on this one. water line portion of the work has been completed. We brought it into service. did all the pressure testing, passed all the bacteriological stuff? e are, as far as the district concerned, done and out of that project.
So the city is, still targeting the week before Thanksgiving for substantial completion to get the work roadway open. yeah. Any questions on that one? Before we move?
Jason:
I don't hear any. Well, we move on, then to the lift station renovation project.
Nathan:
So along with that, we're getting closer on the completion of the city project, we're also starting to get a better picture of the timing for our lift station project.
So we're looking to start to start moving, equipment and people in mid-November, to start the scope A work. So that's the stations one, two and five. Those are all on the northern end of the district, kind of scattered around Coyote Ridge. Parks are all, generally speaking, of that area. We have been, staying in pretty close contact.
I've been saying pretty close contact with Sigler to make sure that we've got our communication stuff going. So we're going to be doing some, direct notification to a couple of residents that will be dealing with with station construction, like very close to their backyard. the bigger impact is going to be the traffic consideration. So we will have to shut down a portion of Serena from Hidden Point, north to effectively the entrance to Coyote Ridge Park.
And then there'll be some lane switch overs and hidden points. So those are really the dates that we haven't nailed down yet. So we're going to start doing some general, getting some general information out. And then once we get the, really targeted dates where we're going to leverage Daupler to get those that information out to hit the point, answering to residents so they know exactly when those traffic impacts will start.
Jason:
Are we going to put up right down the hill? What's that? Are we going to put up a traffic sign ahead of time. Start warning people that yes, lane closure is going to happen. Okay.
James:
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing because what we were dealing with with the resurfacing project was kind of a mess.
And they didn't stop people from coming into neighborhoods and having to do multiple k turn kind of thing to get out of the neighborhood. And, you know, like I said, just let's figure out how to do that cleaner and the city did.
Nathan:
Challenge accepted.
Jana:
My question on this one is, can I see more details regarding what's involved with this station for like, just so that on behalf of the board, I can kind of look at what are the limits of construction, what are the limits of the pipes that are being redone?
And then again, I don't know where one, two and five are. I know you said north, but even just so that I can have a good idea of the locations of those and what's involved. And that's just so on behalf of the board, I can get in the weeds in that offline. So thank you.
Nathan:
I'll be happy to.
Tera:
And that would be great because that's my question on your next one with scope B, because to me, when you say they're all around Coyote Ridge parks, like I can grasp that. But when I'm looking at three, four and seven from Montessori school to Daniels Park Road, I could not wrap my head around that. you do this.
Jana:
I've always struggled with the numbers of the list stations and so no that.
I mean, to me that's a big, no, I even wrote.
Jason:
Yeah. Don't don't we have a physical map?
Nathan:
Yeah, we we do and I can, I can get a map out to you guys too. And part of the confusion with the list stations that they're, they're numbered in the order that the construct construction was complete.
And so there's no geographic referencing like 713. Like there's no like north, the south, east to west. It's really just like that's the order that they were ultimately built in. And then there is no eight because we got rid of it. And then there will be no two. So I can get you guys a map.
Jana:
Right. Do we ever want to rename these.
Yeah. We could we actually I mean, especially if we're going to take two off-line, I don't
Tera:
I think we have the power to do that.
Jana:
But we could also give them names, not numbers. So, just food for thought, but, I'll make that What happens before I leave this board? But no, but back to, to the scope B2.
Same thing. I'd like to see the limits of the lines specifically, like the alignments that are getting redone. And, just so that I can have a good idea of what's included in that, because this is all great. I love capital projects. So thank you.
Nathan:
I can get you all that information, for scope B, just for the, for clarity, for the board.
That one doesn't involve any, sewer line replacement. So there's the scope B, it will be every project and scope B, all those limitations will be confined physically to those live station sites. So the only time we're going to have traffic implications are, is with scope a, scope B also just overall is going to be lower impact to the residents.
The lift stations are more out of the way. They're on private roads, for the most part. But we'll get you maps.
Tera:
And then my question on that one, as you referenced the Montessori school board and I'm wondering, do they actually have that purview or does that actually have to go to the overall Douglas County School Board.
Nathan:
The Monte
Yeah. So the Montessori, does have their own board. They are the registered landowner that we need to get the easement from. And they've, you know, indicated they're more than happy to do it, but
Jana:
Are we getting it donated a donated easement.
Nathan:
Yeah. There's that. We haven't there's been no discussion around cost. Cool. Bigger trade off.
There is like, you know, the pond that you guys do all of your science classes in won't have a risk of being full of pooh water. So they're they're pretty on board with it.
Jana:
And I'll be putting some thought into what we can name these lift stations. I’ll present an idea.
Jason:
Okay. We'll close that. And, let's, update the Stantec study.
Nathan:
So I met, with the other partners and Stantec earlier today to get a feel for where we're at in the project, what we want to do moving forward. We have generally identified about 12 different possibilities that we are in the process of evaluating. Today was actually kind of meeting to go over that scoring evaluation.
What became really, really clear certainly to, myself and then, Gina Burke and Austin Hamre our water rights people, when we were going through trying to score these potential opportunities to see which ones we wanted to look at further, was that we just really don't have enough quantitative information to confidently make those decisions or recommendations at this stage.
So the direction that the, that came out of the meeting today is we do have a pretty intense summary document pushing over 70 pages that talks about all these individual opportunities. So we've asked it for a deliverable by the end of the year that we get, get an executive summary of that document so we can get that to the board.
So you get the full 70 page document, which is a slog, but will have kind of the executive summary, the total contract cost, but shared between all members of, of whatever you want to call it, was $150,000. To date, we've only used about 50% of that. So we want to use the remaining 50% of that and then move into 2026 to kind of extend the overall projects so that they can do more quantitative data.
And so what we're specifically looking for is, you know, firm acre foot per year yields that are potential project might that might generate what is the projected cost. Specific timeline. So that was kind of a level that hadn't been that Stantec hadn't been asked to go into to really get to the point that we're in now.
And so that is where we're at. If you guys have any questions, happy to answer them.
Jana:
You go, okay. I don't I don't want to oversimplify this because I hear 70 pages of executive summary or of the summary. I fear that it will be condensed and still be 30 page, you know, is there a way to make it where it's the most apples to apples, whether it be a table or a pros and cons or just something like that.
So it's really digestible to the public or, I mean, if it ever becomes public or even when it's presented to us so that it's not, we have to digest this whole report. I don't know if it can really be narrowed down to a table, but that's what I want to see when I hear 70 pages. And I think, I don't want to zone out....
Nathan:
Yeah, we we asked that they keep the .... Yeah. We asked that they keep the summary to around three pages or less.
Jana:
That's perfect. That's okay. Good.
Tera:
And my request on that is please make sure that I didn't do it and that I on being. Yeah yeah.
James:
My only comment was is you talked about acre feet and costs and things like that.
But is the cost containing a summary for delivery costs and you know, any kind of new facilities or piping or anything like that.
Nathan:
Yeah. So the the focus will be largely on capital costs, legal costs. and then operational costs.
James:
And it's broken down that way. So we can kind of okay. Because one of the things that, you know, kind of comes to mind is we just went through, you know, our our costs basis for the district and raising rates.
And, you know, I think going into the future, probably water is going to be more expensive. But I want to get a sense of how much more expensive it would be to implement some of these things, just to kind of balance what we're doing and make sure it makes sense, that's all.
Nathan:
And then there are with that, there are some, some potential opportunities that are more immediately actionable.
And so the members, all the members isn't the right word, but the participants would be the right word. The participants are going to look at potentially bringing those to our individual boards, maybe even sooner. We really have a pretty good understanding of what it would take to get those, I bring those ideas to fruition. There's not a lot of more, not a lot more information that we need to move forward on some of those.
And they have, almost no capital costs associated with them. It largely be legal and paperwork. So, we may see something along those lines. January, February.
Jason:
Any other questions? Okay. We'll go ahead and, close out the Stantec study, and, we'll move on to the update of the board meeting software.
Nathan:
So, I did sign the agreement to move forward with on board the software package. I was able to talk to, West Metro fire has been using it for a while. They really, really liked the software a lot.
From a functionality perspective, it was just better than I think. I probably looked at half a dozen different platforms. This is the one that was most geared toward or not geared toward, but had the most flexibility when it comes to government organizations to make sure there are any compliance issues there. In terms of the cost, it's, you know, $5,000 a year.
So it's, an expensive look at a software package. But I have a pretty high level of confidence at this point. I did not want to try and throw that into, like, the meeting schedule for the end of the year to get everybody brought on to this platform, including, you know, staff, consultants and board members. So that, contract effective date actually doesn't hit until December 1st, and then we'll use that December all the way into January timeframe to give us all an opportunity to kind of get loaded up on doing get into the system.
I've talked to, Eric about doing, and Paul's hearing this for the first time to really cool with it, about just taking an old meeting, that we've already done, or a couple of them and using them to create kind of dummy meetings and works out through that process on the staff and, and get everybody up and looking at it, on board does have training that they offer too.
So we can also set up some training sessions with the board. The biggest question that I have there, is with this new package and this, may also be good to get Paul's input on, do we want to, as a matter of course, actually purchase devices for the board to use. So you have a district issued laptop or device for district and board business, including the on-board, on-board software, which is largely web based, but.
Jana:
First, I wanted to ask what, what will change for our meetings? Like, what's the biggest thing that we will notice as the difference from what we're functioning now as?
Nathan:
So you will have so one of the, one of the hang ups right now is that there's so many people that have to get information in for me to get a board, cohesive board packet out.
One of the biggest advantages to On-board is I can assign and would assign each individual, contributor to the board packet will have a section of the agenda that they control, and they can upload that documentation legitimately at any time. And so the board can also get notifications and see as those documents get added. So if we have, an example of this, you know, this past weekend is a great example of that.
I ended up down and out with the head cold and had some, you know, personal stuff come up, which delayed us like a full day. And so it kind of takes me out of that, that realm, you know? And, these guys got me their information Thursday, Friday or Saturday morning. Whenever it came through, it would automatically become available to the board as it populates.
And then it also has, some, some kind of and I'll be interested to see how this ultimately works. But it'll, you know, do summaries of the information that we put up in in the board packet. It generates that packet for us were, one of the add ons that, they were able to kind of work in at a discount or almost for free for us.
And to really get us through the package is like a meeting generator, a meeting minutes generator. So that be part of it. It's really good for remote meetings. So like the, you know, if you, if somebody has to call into the zoom meeting, whether it's your account or resident, it all brings us to the same screen. It tracks with package.
There's a lot of different different advantages to it. And I can send, a link out to you guys for the basically YouTube video that kind of runs through it then.
Jana:
And just to weigh in and I don't see the need for the metro district to buy me a laptop. So just my $0.02 on that. So.
Tera:
I concur. I'm glad you said that, because I know they did that at the city and actually hated it.
And then we're in the position where we have to own equipment that gets outdated pretty quickly so.
Jason:
And last thing I need is another computer to lug around. I am happy to..
Jason:
I appreciate that offer.
Nathan:
that you are leaning.
Jana:
However, Jim is sitting down there without a computer.
Jim:
You feeling lonely without one.
James:
It's symptomatic of where I work, so there's no personal electronics allowed anywhere near me.
Jana:
Would it benefit you to have a metro district?
James:
It would. But again, I, you know, it would mostly sit in a car outside. So, I mean, the only thing I would really appreciate is when I can get to my phone that whatever this new system is, it automatically like, if there's an update to the package, you know, that I get a notification on my cell phone and, and I think that would be super handy, and then I can forward it to wherever I can get to it kind of thing.
But yeah, I'm not real big on the iPad or tablet or cell phone from the city is to me, it's just a waste of money. And it's one more thing to carry around.
Jana:
So just to just to close this, this topic, the biggest benefit of this software is an improvement of our packets. That's the biggest.
Nathan:
Exactly. Okay. Sorry for the board perspective. And then the, benefit on our side is it's a significant reduction hopefully will be a significant reduction in the amount of time I spend. I've got probably, anywhere between 4 and 8 hours into just compiling packets.
Jana:
Do we save any money on Paul not having to do meeting minutes?
Nathan:
Presumably if it if the meeting minutes work?
Paul:
Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean it could go from me drafting them to just a simple review. Saves a lot of time and money. Absolutely. and the only thing I would be concerned about with this, and it's probably, it's probably moot anyway, if there's an easy way for the board members to communicate on the system as they get, items, I would just ask that you don't, only so that we don't have an open meeting, outside of the confines of an actual meeting.
Whenever three or more board members do communicate, whether it's in email or in person or whatnot, it is an open meeting. So just a reminder there. Otherwise, I don't see any, any real issue with this.
Nathan:
And that is one of the thank you for bringing that up. that is one of the software features that I liked most about on board is we can selectively turn on, turn on and off basically everything.
So it was the only one that had a really the only platform I looked at that had a really simple way to turn off your ability to talk to each other so you can put you can under that. You can, you know, it'll get assigned to you. If you're looking at your packet, you can go in and comment a comment on it, annotate it all you want to.
You're the only one that can see that, unless we change the program functionality and then there's no direct messaging capability, that we will have active. So you guys will be able to talk to us or comment us and we can see comments or questions, but it'll prevent you guys from seeing each other's.
James:
One final thing is, so if we get residents that basically email us and generally I just respond back and say, I'll have the district manager to contact you.
Will we be able to see feedback when you give that person feedback?
Nathan:
So, yeah, resident requests won't necessarily. This will be a pretty the On-board package will be a pretty close system. so it'll still produce a board packet that we can propose online, like we have been, but there's no real connection between resident emails coming in or those questions.
James:
Okay, so it's due to be the same thing and it currently is okay. No problem.
Jason:
All right. Great. I think we can close out, update and we can move on to the discussion and study session. Minute meeting format.
Nathan:
Yeah. I just wanted to quickly touch base with you guys and get some feedback on the new setup for the study session. just the arrangements. like anything you change, you want to keep trying it that way.
James:
Personally, I thought it was good. I kind of agreed with. I forget whether there was you or Leah or somebody, or maybe, but, you know, just the way it was organized, it was a little friendlier, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I, I kind of agreed with it. My only question was, is if, residents came to those meetings, how that would work.
Nathan:
Yeah. And they would just kind of be around us or. Yeah, off to the side and kind of, I guess almost like a peanut gallery setup.
James:
Okay. Yeah. I just didn't know. That was my only question.
Jana:
Steve, can I ask if I'm assuming you watched you watched it because you said I was getting. So would you mind giving us your feedback regarding how I know you didn't attend in person?
But still,
Steve:
I watched it with rapt attention. Seriously, I thought the of course I had to keep clicking it on and off to get those numbers up. Okay. no, I did.
Jana:
I thought you meant you were trying to look at the report on that. Never mind,
Steve:
No, no, no. I want to make sure that lots of people are watching that study session.
No, I'm kidding. It worked out real well. There was no problem from, visual perspective or audio perspective. I appreciate the fact that there is a narrative that goes below it, because there were several times that the presenter from, well, Bartle Wells a little hard for me to follow. And so I went down to the transcript to figure out what he was saying.
So I thought it was an A-plus.
Tera:
Well thank you. Yeah. I think he was a little soft spoken, so I wasn't sure. But we have such a great audio team, so hopefully they helped help that. You could at least, hear. But I really liked it. I mean, especially in study sessions where that is really not set up for public comment.
It's basically set up for us to work through everything being a lot closer and being it because, I mean, Jim never sees anybody but the back of my head, right? So, I really did like that collaborative set up a lot.
Jana:
I appreciated the round robin. I mean, same thing. And then, I mean, I actually even liked that I didn't have to turn my microphone on, so it felt more like I didn't have to formally have a thought I could have a conversation.
So for me, I appreciated that too. Very small change, but great for me.
Nathan:
Yeah. So I guess we'll we'll keep moving forward that direction. And it sounds good. I did appreciate at the beginning of that meeting, watching all of us go through the process of like turning our microphones off briefly every time we wanted to talk, but got the hang of it pretty quick.
I was proud of us.
Jason:
Yeah, I think overall that definitely format definitely worked so good. All right. Thank you guys. Any other questions hearing none. We'll go ahead and close out the study session meeting format. And we'll move to item number ten director's matters. Do any of the directors have something they'd like to bring up?
Tera:
So, couple things. Thank you for your public comment.
I hear you on communications. I think there actually are communications on our website from the Parker deal. That was in 20th March. Look around March 2022. But, so I understand what you're saying about how it leads into our capital improvement projects. I mean, I don't know how far we want to go dig up history, but for it's relevant with the process.
I hear what you're saying. Then I have a question for the district manager. So there was a, Douglas County Sheriff's Office had a prescription drug take back. and I forget the number of the thousands of pounds of the stuff that they took in, but I thought it was a great time to kind of maybe bring that to our communications team to, in case there were concerns or something.
I don't know if we have if we treat our water for that could you.
Nathan:
Yeah. So the. The, the regional water treatment plant that we are part of, the Plum Creek Water Reclamation Authority is not designed to remove part of pharmaceuticals. Virtually no water treat wastewater treatment plant is. They have done some testing in the past to see what those constituents look like coming out of the wastewater plant, but it's not optimized for it.
They may get some kind of, some removal through other processes, but it's really just not going to remove a lot of pharmaceuticals. And so that's definitely a concern. We started with the party in the park, party in the Pines, whatever they call it. Now, we did have a flush This, not that campaign. so I have spoken with Sigler about, you know, making that broadening that campaign to make sure that we really are getting that information out to the public.
It does have, potentially very severe, damaging effects on down on, you know, any watershed that's dealing with and especially with the hormones of pharmaceuticals going through.
Jana:
I don't know how frequent it is, but I do know in Aurora, they have a chemical roundup and a drug take back on behalf of the water. So I don't know if it's something we would ever consider, but Douglas County does.
Oh, so. But we don't do it in Castle Pines.
Tera:
No, it was the sheriff, which is Douglas County sheriff. Did a drug take back I didn't okay. Yeah, right. And I, I was just thinking that would might be an opportunity for them to partner. I don't know if it be the individual water districts or like, plum Creek water or whatever, because also we don't have it in our drinking water because we pull that from the ground.
Yes. So we don't have to treat the water, but the it's our wastewater that all of those things go into. But I thought it might be a great thing to turn over to our communications team, because if we could get more, you know, in line with that, or because, I don't know, maybe some people do throw them away.
Probably a lot of people do just flush them. But anyway, I just thought that might be a future. And if if the communications team would like an introduction to the communications team at, sheriff's office, I can help facilitate that.
Nathan:
Yeah, that'd be great.
Jana:
Can I, Tera, I like this idea so much because even to compare it, Douglas County has slash pickup the whole summer.
But when it's done in Castle Pines, it's advertised and it's localized and it's, you know, on a smaller scale, even though that's always available. It was actually nice that Our town did something like that. And I think, oh, that could be comparable. You know, it's always going to be there with the sheriff, but maybe the metro district does it.
I mean, we've really been doing a lot of active things like that. I, I, I really support that idea. So because especially since I didn't know that it even happened, but that's my own, you know, that concern.
Tera:
I just have happen to find out too. I don't know how well it was advertised. I think it was all social media, but I think it would be a great opportunity for us to help.
Nathan:
Yeah, I'd love to get in that communications pipeline and run that out. There have been several iterations, of various water districts for a town of Castle Rock well, over the years of different, you know, drug take backs and also chemical Round-Up. So it's it's definitely shifted around a lot. If the board wanted me to, we could look at doing something with a local event.
The biggest hurdle there would be we need a lot of volunteer help, since we just don't have a lot of physical staff members to get something like that rolling. But, we could we could look at doing a smaller version. And then in the interim, I'll make sure that I connect Sigler with I'll circle back around and get contact free and get those guys connected.
So at least as those events are coming out where our comms team is pushing them out.
Jason:
Okay. I just have one thing to say. On a personal note, Nathan, I would like to thank you very much. My step daughter, Lauren Scott, is doing a clothing drive, and Nathan has made this building available to them for that weekend so that they can collect their clothes and this facility. I don't know the date, though. Do you?
Nathan:
I don't yeah. So let her if you could let her know that. And if they want me to guarantee where that's going to happen, I need to know when. So I have not yet gotten the date from them.
Jason:
Okay, I'll get with her, and I'll have her give us the dates that they're talking about. But, thank you again for letting them do that.
James:
And, thanks again, trunk or treat had the little water thing there again, so that was good. So appreciate it. It's a positive advertising thing. So it was appreciate it. Thank you.
Nathan:
You're welcome.
Jason:
All right. I guess we can close out directors matters now and adjourn the meeting. Thank you everyone and have a great night.