BOARD MEETING MINUTES, March 22nd, 2025

The meeting will be a hybrid format, both in person at the DWA building and online via Zoom. All shareholders are invited to attend.

Link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5160276420 Meeting ID 516 027 6420.

Call To Order: 10:05 AM

In attendance: Patrick, April, Sam, Dave, Darton, Paul, and Susan in person, and Todd online.

Guests: Bruce Cleland and Richard Foulkes in person, and Penny, Bob, and Andrea online.

Consent Items:

Approve: Contents and order of this Agenda.

Approve: Minutes of January and February meeting approved.

Information Items:

Guest Speakers comments (if any):

• Bruce: Keeping track of what’s going on. Curios about thoughts on well at 268^th St.
• Richard: Would like DWA to add date on top of minutes posted on website. Concerns from previous meetings –
  • Worried about the influx of people coming to 268^th St and Hake Rd.
  • Concerned about parking on the 268^th and Hake Rd and the potentiality of a parking lot.
  • Biggest concern is nosy folks coming down Hake Rd and wandering onto people’s private properties.
  • Concerned about increased danger to the area with increase of people on the street.

Board Member comments (if any): None.

President’s Report:

• April: We did a performance review with Dave – great work! Dave has done performance reviews with the staff, so salary increases in line for next year.

Manager/Operator Report:

• Dave:
  • Eddie installed pump #2 last Thursday and pulled other pump to see if he can fix it (it’s unlikely). He quoted $12,300 and came in at $12,000. The second pump will be more money because we’ll have to order a new pump (we had a pump in storage for the last pump replacement)
• • 268^th St property – I reached out last week to Ecology and talked to a couple people about the process for getting a water right to drill a new well on the property. Got mixed answers, no real clarification. I need to know what the process is to get a new commercial water right. Called DOH and got no help. Reached out to G&O and asked them what we need to do. We don’t want to transfer water rights; we want new water rights for 268^th St. Email from G&O:
  This site seems to be too far away from the Springs to be able to directly transfer any of the Springs right to this new well. I think you mentioned that the property had a 13gpm water right that has expired and a decommissioned well, but you’re hoping for more capacity than that. One option would be to acquire more land in the immediate area with water right(s) attached and transfer/consolidate any purchased rights to this proposed well/site. Otherwise, you could try to apply for a new right, but there would need to be more investigation into whether any new water right (and at what amount) would be sustainable for the aquifer. I’m not sure if Vashon is closed entirely to new groundwater rights, the way it is for surface water. We would probably recommend doing the hydrogeo investigation onsite first to figure out how much water the aquifer can sustainably yield, which will tell us how much of a water right you need to get (new or consolidated) – if you can’t get much water, there’s no point in pursuing rights here. The general (very rough) process is:
  • Exploratory Work
    • Hydrogeo investigation on site to assess aquifer condition/capacity
    • Water quality testing
  • Water Right
    • Meet with Ecology to discuss water rights status and consolidating water rights
    • Apply for change in water right (or apply for new water rights)
  • Drilling Well
    • Submit a notice of intent to Ecology
    • Design effort for drilling well
    • DOH project report and approval
    • Contractor drills well
    • Confirm well capacity and water quality 
    • File well completion with Ecology
  • Equipping well for service
• Paul: We want to do step one and two, and then stop.
• Dave: Talking to the well coordinator, this process may take up to 20 years, which is fine. We have the Springs that are viable for the next 10-15 years. I’ll ask if they have a hydo-geo technician.
• Susan: Is it clear how we obtain water right?
• Dave: Yes, step one is clear. We will be applying for a new water right.
• Bruce: The other thing is footprint – where would be put a test well?
• Darton: We need to triangulate the test wells so we’re not pulling from just one spot.
• Bruce: We’ll need parking, an access road, an infiltration pond, a well spot, filtration space, that area is limited and we don’t want to get into boggy, wet areas. There are only a couple spots.
• Darton: It would be nice to have G&O put together a critical area to see where we could drill test well spots.
• Bruce: Need to work with KC to determine that the trail systems don’t go through area we’re looking to use.
• April: Yes, we can do a test well without a water right and it’s required to do a test well before we can even apply for a water right.
• Susan: In terms of the easement, do we need to have everything defined?
• Darton: No, they’re two separate things, but it will be better for us to have as much information as possible when dealing with KC.
• Dave: Step one – reach out to G&O to do a survey to find out where wetlands are and price proposal. Their Ecologist can let us know.
• Susan: How much is this exploratory well going to cost?
• Darton:100s of thousands of dollars over the years.
• Susan: Can we accomplish a test well in 1-2 years?
• Dave: Depends on how deep the test wells are.
• Darton: 5-10 years drilling and engineering, so we’ll need to get estimates this year.
• Bruce: We could ask King County to bump payment of easement to pay for test wells. Eric Ferguson is one person we can connect with regarding this issue. I’ll reach out and try to connect people via email to get more eyes on this project.
• Dave:
  • Letter for King County parks re: Springs, Hake Rd, 268^th St and getting everyone at the same table – Dave and Paul to work on that email.
  • Need speech from April and Todd for annual meeting.
• Richard: Annual meeting is in June when so many folks are out of town. Why can’t we change to May or another time when more people are here?
• Dave: Good question. We start sending out info in May so people have ability to vote.
• Susan: June coincides with our annual fiscal budget.
• Richard: So, the meeting is determined by annual fiscal year?
• April: We could adjust the date, we would just be projecting longer.
• Paul: It’s in our bylaws and it would be a lot to change.
• Susan: We could send a reminder to folks earlier on to remind them to vote or attend.
• Penny: We could meet potentially earlier in June when school is still in session and families are still around.
• Todd: I never particularly liked the June meeting. We could consider a September or December meeting.
• Paul: In favor of September annual meeting. That gets our capital funds through the dry season when we’re doing all that work.
• Todd: September is still a problem because invoices from summer work are still coming in October and November, but that would be the one negative about September. How do we feel about having the annual meeting in September or December? December is obviously a busy time to have a meeting. We are looking at changing our accounting system one day to a fund accounting system, and when we do that, that might be an appropriate time to change the fiscal year.
• Susan: Could you explain a fund system?
• Todd: What you guys see and what we report is basically fund accounting. We use a financial accounting system (quickbooks), with a profit loss statement that starts over every year, but Dockton Water starts with a fund (carryover from previous year), so we refer to it as a fund system. I would like to see us shift our accounting package to a fund system versus a financial system.
• Richard: This was really Marilyn’s idea to change the annual meeting date.
• Dave: Water efficiency report (water loss for the year). I do this every year (not due until July 1) and I put it on the Consumer Confidence Report I send out in June every year. I calculated our water loss last year, even with the massive water leak last year, I figured we pumped 27,785,300 gallons of water between Sandy Shores and the Springs last year. We sold 26,777,661.99 gallons of water. We only lost 3.6% water. 10% is the target loss, and we’ve been hovering at about 8%, but I came up with 3.6% which is LOW. That is incredible and great news.
• Paul: We sold 26.7 million gallons of water, which is equal to 40 Olympic size swimming pools.

Water Production Committee:

• None.

CIP Planning Committee:

• None.

Finance Committee:

• Todd:
  • We used billing rates to build up capital reserves and that budget works out sufficiently with the billing rate of $45 as a base rate, 3.2 cents for the usage rate, and $22 for the capital charge. It’s a 7.8% increase on the budget for next year. How does the board feel about that?
  • Would we like to reduce the base rate by $1?
• Darton: I prefer to keep the base rate and change the use rate.
• Susan: To me, I look at what’s the total average bill, and how we collect it is not so important. I always wonder, how do customers respond?
• Darton: I prefer to keep my use rate down and keep base rate the same.
• Paul: I think we need to stay the course that we had and not change or plan. Instead of that $1200 being a bonus and start collecting and saving so that we are ready to settle with King County and not have to start from zero.
• Todd: We’ll have to identify a savings fund for that. We could do it knowing that we have the authority as a board to spend money out of the contingency fund.
• Paul: Can we use the franchise fee to cover legal fees?
• Susan: Another Vashon association had to pay $25,000 just last year.
• Todd: The ball is in the county’s court. We’ve been asking to settle our franchise for years. They’re working through our backlog, and they’ll get to us when they get to us.
• April: We did get a bill, but it seems high, and we’re holding off on it while we figure out the easement and well things.
• Susan: Building – Incremental improvements on the Dockton Water building. If we anticipate a number of people using this space, we really need to add another exit. There used to be a door on the east side, and if we’re anticipating greater use we should add another door. We should budget each year for building improvements.
• Paul: $5000 would probably be good, right?
• Todd: I think we should stop talking about public use of this building. I don’t see DWA having the bandwidth to deal with this project.
• Todd: With the proposed budget for next year, the average bill will go from $83 to $89, and a reserve bill would go from $64 to $69.
• Dave: I have a little bit of change to make from the operations side, and the lab is changing their rates.
• Todd: For next fiscal year we’ll be pursuing the Sandy Shores PRV, and then I’ve got $80K for Hake Rd project (engineering), $50K for the Springs (new well development), and $50K for annual meter improvements.
• Darton: I agree with Todd, that we should not use the DWA building for public use.
• April: I agree that we should table DWA building for public use, but still focus on improvements on building for safety measures.
• April: Operations budget – I like Paul’s ideal to roll over and continue to build franchise fee reserves. I would like us to be planning for a larger franchise fee annually instead of no franchise fee. And I agree that we need more in our unexpected project reserve.
• April: Did we put salary increase in the budget for our staff?
• Todd: Yes, we’ve budgeted for increased cost of living and increased hours.
• Susan: You haven’t increased the amount the association is paying for Good Neighbor Fund, is that right?
• Todd: We’ve doubled it from last year ($1000 to $2000), but it still doesn’t cover the needed cost for the Fund. We need more donations for the Good Neighbor Fund.
• Susan: I’ll draft a note to encourage more donations.
• Todd: The primary capital item I don’t have is for the Springs pump project.
• Dave: Still waiting on projections for that project. Probably around $90K would be a safe number.
• Todd: I’ll add it in a system replacements for $90K. How much would you put in for building repairs?
• Paul: $5K will be good.

Community Outreach Committee:

• April: We don’t have a formal recommendation form the board to shareholders because we’re waiting to meet with multiple organizations. I will reach out to Zach to see if the county is still interested in purchasing the easement or some part of the property. Based on all the input, shareholders want conservation of the land and watershed and we will prioritize that. There’s a very high interest that we have the ability to install a well for future water protection.
• Richard: Parking access – parking on the street (268^th and Hake Rd). And who is taking responsibility for down trees near trails and on property?
• Dave: Zach told us that we would not be responsible for taking down trees near trails and we would have no liability.
• Richard: Where is the parking area on Hake Rd?
• Dave: Where the little house caught on fire – the blue one – that’s the spot. That’s where the parking lot proposal is.
• Richard: The county would be in charge of building that parking lot?
• Paul: I don’t think the county is anywhere near to developing this. We need to tie in Hake Rd development projects (as well as the other county projects in the works) before we can get any additional clarity.
• Richard: I can’t imagine them doing a parking lot there, because they would need a water collection system. The other question was about the porta potties – How are they going to get them to be pumped out? They’re going to need a truck up there. How are they going to get a truck up there?
• Paul: We won’t know that for a while.
• April: For now, a lot of these are important questions for use when moving for with a potential sale. The county already owns what we often call the Larsen property and that land technically is public and open to the public. He was really clear that there will not be a road on the land the DWA owns, but it could be on the land that the county already owns, and if they do anything, it wouldn’t be for several years before they do anything. I will follow up with Zach about questions about parking, access, porta potties, etc. We can create a FAQ page on our website with answers to questions like these on the Dockton Water website.
• Bruce: One of the things Penny and I discussed is the motive for the county wanting the conservation easement. The county is trying to conserve a certain amount of acreage and will be interested in keeping this easement proposal open.
• Paul: It lets them build out density in Burien for keeping things green here on Vashon.

Old Business / Carryover Items:

• April:
  • Doxo statement on last billing and website statement stating “We are not Doxo” to be up soon.
  • Annual meeting Saturday June 28^th. Tasks:
    • April: Notice and Agenda, bylaw review and proposed changes, message from the president.
    • Todd: Finalized budget proposal and message from the Treasurer.
    • Sam: Format ballot, finalize candidate list, and ask candidates to complete statement to finish by April 25^th.

New Business / Discussion Items:

• None.

Other Business:

• None.

Follow-up for Next Meeting

• Darton: For annual meeting – Look at CIP and update.
• Dave: None.
• Patrick: Website statement re: Doxo.
• Paul: For annual meeting – Look at CIP and update.
• Sam: Update notes to include dates of meetings. For annual meeting: Formant ballot, finalize candidate list, and ask candidates to complete statement to finish by April 25^th.
• Susan: Will write statement about Good Neighbor Fund for next billing.
• Todd: For annual meeting – Finalized budget proposal and message from the Treasurer.
• April: Website statement re: Doxo; Notice and Agenda, bylaw review and proposed changes, message from the president for annual meeting.

Meeting End: 12:07 PM

Next Board Meeting: Saturday, April 26th, 2025 @10AM

Board meetings are usually held on the fourth Saturday of the month at 10:00 AM. The November and December meetings are often combined into a single meeting in early December to avoid conflicts with holidays. Upcoming meeting dates are on May 24 and June 28.