Call to Order:
Welcome: Darton, President
Present/Quorum (yes): Darton, Todd, Clint, Matt, Morris, Gini, Paul, Dave (Manager). Guest: Armen Yousoufian
Consent Items
Approved? – Contents and order of this Agenda: Approved
Approved? – Minutes of April meeting: Approved
Information Items
Guest Speakers comments (if any): None
Board Member : None
President’s Report :
- Darton reconfirmed that our Annual Meeting is scheduled for next month during our regular meeting time: 10 am on Zoom
Manager/Operator Report (Dave):
- We have already received 51 ballots back from our mailing regarding the Annual Meeting which qualifies as a quorum.
- The Sandy Shores Filtration System is going through the final steps towards activation. Dave described how the filtration was done and commented on how well the sediment pond was working. The swale overflow is operating perfectly. Paul added that he has loaded pictures on the website pertaining to this. Dave is hoping he can schedule all the inspections and contractors on the same day for the activation. He noted that he had been in contact with the building inspector because our building permit is due to expire just short of activation so an extension of the permit would normally be required. Luckily our inspector was very accommodating and said she can just have the final inspection which will save us the extra expense of having a second inspection billed. This should save us at least $150 in fees.
- Dave described the items that will need to be finished on the Sandy Shores project. Todd asked if the demolition of the old pump house was part of the funds budgeted in the project. Dave said yes.
- Dave met with Ben Dahle regarding the updating of our water district plan. Ben has suggested that instead of going though and redoing the whole water system plan we instead just update it. The reasoning behind this is that according to DOH our water plan is already great! Since we had contracted with Dahle Consulting for a whole new plan this adjustment should save us at least 25%. Dave is meeting with Ben next Saturday and Darton will need to sign the amended contract before this meeting.
- The issue of commercial accounts came up during this review process with DOH. The way DWA has classified commercial accounts does not match how DOH classifies them. We have always used the 2″ pipe into the property as the designation of a commercial account. The pipe does not have anything to do with classification according to DOH. DOH classifies a commercial account as a business. The Orthodox Monastery, KC park, the fire department, Century Link site and DWA would all be commercial accounts by the DOH standard. Ben Dahle has designated 10 accounts as qualifying as commercial. His qualification criteria includes water useage. One of the reasons, beside billing, that this is important as far as Dahle is concerned, is because the designation is a predictor of that properties’ water usage. There are at least one account that is classified as residential but due to its excessive water usage it should be a commercial account. This sort of consideration needs to be taken into account. After much discussion about how to handle changing designations for existing properties we decided that we would probably choose to grandfather in properties that were not glaringly commercial. Strictly commercial locations like Century Link, the KC park, the fire department and DWA would obviously be converted to commercial accounts. Dave and Gini will be rewriting the DWA policies to reflect this change and presenting the changes to the Board for adjustments/approval. Once this is finalized we will notify the association.
- Dave sold two water shares. In so doing we were able to clear the list of water share owners who were wanting to sell their shares back. One of the good things about one of these sales is we will be able to be paid back over $3K of back billings from the account! In the future we will be selling water shares that will actually be providing money to DWA. Dave mentioned that while sorting all this out he discovered that we actually have more water shares available for sale that we had thought. We have 17 available shares.
Committee Reports:
Finance Committee (Todd):
- This month has been as expected. As has been common recently, we are billing for a bit less water than typical.
- Todd mentioned that we all should let people know, if we should be asked, that although according to the budget we are over budget, we did not know the final figures for the Sandy Shores project when we were predicting the budget. Once we did get those costs finalized we, as a board, made corrections to the budget to meet the new projection. DWA has kept to this adjusted budget quite well.
- $21K will be going out to Pacific Crest at some point as a contract retainer.
- Energy costs, as previously noted, are higher than budgeted.
- Todd asked Dave if he had any update on the Asset Spread Sheet we had contracted Zachary to make. Dave said he believes Zach is working on it.
- Todd said he had forgotten to include $15K in the budget for future engineering projects that we had discussed at our last meeting. He is hoping we will be able to work this in somehow next year because there are going to be great opportunities to get grants from the government for this sort of thing and we should take advantage of them if we can.
Water Production Committee (Paul):
- Nothing much to report.
- He asked Dave if he had logged the water that was used for the backflow at the Sandy Shores Filtration job. Dave said he had.
CIP and Planning Committee
- None
Old Business / Carryover Items
- None
New Business / Discussion Items
- None
Other Business
- We discussed a complaint by a reserve shareholder of the rate increase. Dave had spoken with her and offered her the opportunity to attend this meeting but she declined. Apparently besides sending a letter to the office to which Dave responded, she also entered a comment on the website. Unfortunately Dave had not seen this until today because it required him to go to a different location in the website than he was familiar with. The Board debated the shareholder’s letter and her position regarding the increase and has decided to not make any adjustment to the increase for her or any other shareholder. Dave will respond to her comment on the website with this information.
- We discussed the letter and documents Tanya, a previous DWA board member, provided to the Vashon Maury Island Community Council Housing committee regarding her plans for having DWA sell a 25 acre parcel in Dockton to King County for Income Restricted affordable housing. That letter made it sound like DWA was interested in selling the parcel which is not true. Last year there was a lot of DWA membership unhappiness when it was learned that this was even being considered by DWA. After DWA became aware of Tanya’s actions this month, Darton spoke with her and asked her not to suggest that DWA wants to sell this or any other property. Todd suggested that without making a big deal about it maybe we should note this on our website, but the board decided that maybe it was best to just let this pass and instead be sure Tanya knows her actions are unacceptable.
- Todd requested permission for volunteers of the Garden Tour (happening June 5/6) to park vehicles at the DWA lot since it will be very crowded in lower Dockton with 3 properties on the tour. The board approved this request.
- Armen said he was pleased to attend today. That it was a pleasure to listen in on a well run water district meeting.
What did we decide?
- Dave with Gini’s assistance will rework the commercial section of the DWA Policy (pg. 4, Section 3, Fees and Charges).
- Dave will send Darton the changes to the DWA policies.
- Dave will have Darton sign amendment to Dahle consulting contract.