Call to Order: 10:15 am
Welcome: Paul, Vice President
Present/Quorum (yes): Todd, Clint, Matt, Morris, Gini, Paul, Dave (Manager). Guest: Armen Yousoufian (for a small portion of meeting)
Consent Items
Approved? – Contents and order of this Agenda: Approved
Approved? – Minutes of September meeting: Approved.
Information Items
Guest Speakers comments (if any): None
Board Member : None
President’s Report (Darton):
- Darton was unable to attend this meeting. Paul led the meeting and had nothing to report for Darton.
Manager/Operator Report (Dave):
- Skylar will join Dockton Water on Nov. 1 at 8 am. First training will be helping to flush mains. There has been some brown residue in the flushed water that is likely leftover from the Sandy Shores project.
- Dave brought up a question regarding designating non domestic vs. domestic on secondary water shares bought by people who have outbuildings that are used for art studios and such. It was decided that if it is a new water service that is for a non domestic use it will be a billed the non domestic rate.
- Jim Beale has been hired to take down the trees on the DWA property up at Sandy Shores. This will happen the first week of November.
- Dave will send out the termination letters this coming week for Erin and Patsy.
- Dave requested Tacoma Diesel replace the Generator panel that blew because it still is under warranty (although at the end of the warranty period). It is an expensive component and when it broke it caused some issues to the system which we have had to pay for.
- There is no update on the Small System Plan yet.
Committee Reports:
Finance Committee (Todd):
- We are at the 25% stage of our budget. We are ahead on our income at 30% which is not unexpected at the end of the summer months. Bus. Ops. are high due to legal fees. When taxes are paid year to year varies which affects what the budget looks like. System Ops. are lower. We transferred $15K in to pay for the Small System Plan which we haven’t been billed for yet. Tax payments are low because we haven’t seen a bill for a Franchise Fee yet.We are slightly ahead for unscheduled expenses.
- We have $34K surplus in operations at present which will be spent during the winter. We are still behind in Capital Improvements, as expected, which we will be working on to get to just minus $68K this year.
- At the end of September we have $290K in the bank. Our goal is to build this back to $500K in the future.
- The legal fees associated with the Franchise Fee litigation is an unknown at this time. We do have a couple of places in our budget that will probably be able to help cover these unanticipated costs if necessary.
Water Production Committee (Paul):
- Not a lot to report. Just cleaning up loose ends at the Sandy Shores project still. We are not moving forward with discussion with KC regarding the Dockton Springs well point issue at this time. We discussed the idea of having Dave speak with the contractors at the Dockton Dock rebuild to see about extra water needs.
CIP and Planning Committee
- Nothing new to discuss.
Old Business / Carryover Items
- It was asked if the billing change for the non domestic water users to match our new rate rules had occurred. It hadn’t; Dave will draft a letter to Century Link and the Fire Department and send it to the board for review and then out to the accounts.
New Business / Discussion Items
- None.
Other Business
- We discussed the idea of online bill payments. One of our board members has been asked about this possibility by several shareholders. There are several issues regarding instigating this: cost, management requirements, and cyber security risks. We are a very small system that is attempting to contain costs. It is probably not worth adding this as a payment option because we do not have the management to handle it nor do we want to add costs.
What did we decide?
- Dave to reach out to the Dock contractors re water needs.
- Dave to keep track of tree removal in November at Sandy Shores property.
- Dave to draft letter to newly designated non domestic accounts.