Approved: 6/16/00

Rough Draft:  5/10/00

 

GLACIER VIEW MEADOWS

WATER & SEWER ASSOCIATION

MEETING MAY 5, 2000

 

 

 

 

ATTENDANCE:         Ralph Goble – President                       Dan Smedra – Treasurer

Max Beavers - Vice-President Jerry Ryan - Asst. Treasurer/Director               

 

ABSENT:                    Justin Franz - Asst. Director

 

STAFF:                        Grant Parker - Manager                       Dorothy Anders - Secretary     

 

                                    (6) Property Owners

 

Ralph Goble called the meeting to order at 7:04 PM.

 

MINUTES:   Max Beavers moved to accept the minutes for the April 21, 2000 meeting with the following amendments. Jerry Ryan seconded the motion. Motion carried. By-Laws Change should read, Jerry Ryan motioned to change the Bylaws, Article III, Section 1. Fiscal Year to read, “The fiscal year of the association shall begin July 1 of each year and extend through June 30 of the succeeding year”. Max Beavers seconded it. Motion carried. Adjournment motion should read, “Max Beavers moved that the meeting be adjourned.”

 

TREASURER'S REPORT: (See Attached) This was the first opportunity Dan Smedra, Treasurer for the Water & Sewer Association had to review the Proposed Budget. Dan requested that the record reflect his concerns and comments they are as follows: A decision was made to hold the meetings during the week, when I could not attend. I travel, and I am on the road or working in Denver. I have never been able to attend meetings in the middle of the week; the General Manager was made aware of this before scheduling of the Budget Committee meetings. As an association we have had, special challenges. I feel the Board has rose to the occasion and stepped up to the plate to meet these challenges. As the treasurer, I have repeatedly tried to communicate to the staff and attempted to institute financial information that would better enable communication to Board Members the economic status, at the same time providing the needed controls, this has proved to be a challenge.

Part of that challenge was because of a small organization mind set, many small banks are currently failing because they felt they were to small to institute guidelines that are in the larger banking institutions. They have the mindset that would never happen to us, they are seeing such things as fraud because of the lack of guidelines. The decisions makers, the Board of Directors did two things; one they felt they were to small to institute guidelines or principles; the second thing was there attitude was we are a bunch of good people that would never happen to us. Right now in the regulatory realm a fairly laisserfaire attitude is taken in an effort to minimize the amount of regulations put on small business and rely heavily on moral-suasion. It is not good sound business to put temptations in front of your employees and not install controls. While the majority of the group is burned and burned bad. No one is too small to avoid fraud; I am not suggesting that fraud exists here by any means. What I am suggesting is that no organization is too small to install basic controls. There is real disappointment here. Convincing people on moral-suasion it is best for the Association by doing the right thing you are not installing controls and protecting the rest of the people.

 

There are a number of issues I am disappointed about, one is the financial system that I had actually invested a number of hours and hours in to persuade our previous management, to create a reporting system that actually showed where the dollars were coming from and going to. While that may not have been the best system, it certainly is a system we could work with and better from where we came from, we sought to improve it by buying new software, which we all approved. The typical approach to this type of software conversion is to run parallel systems, and before we dropped the old system, the new software proves to be running on track. Once that occurs then you let go of the old system. Unfortunately that was not the case here, the decision was to drop the old before the new was in place. The three budgetary cash flow tools which were in place were no longer utilized, posting was not done to those spread sheets, so they were no longer viable sources of information, what replaced them was the consolidated income and expense sheet. Again I am not being overly critical, I know there are constraints as to the hours in a day, and competence of personnel, I am just saying it is a disappointment and it creates a certain lack of uneasiness. With that, we can proceed with the budget.

 

There was a continued discussion regarding the previous bookkeeper not being able to balance, Peach Tree losing numbers and several hours were spent trying to decipher the financials. The current income and expense statements were produced from the bank statements to assure accuracy. This is to be only temporary. Our trainer for the new system quit on us before entry of the chart of accounts for the Water & Sewer Association. We have contacted a programmer and he will be here on Wednesday, we will close the office, hopefully he will be able to explain some of the set ups to us. We have also faxed a chart of accounts and income statement to our CPA, he will be coming out to help us set up our chart of accounts. We have run in to roadblocks but no one is giving up. Grant believes we will have the new system up and running in 2 weeks.

 

Questions were asked about tech support and we do have tech support but part of our problem is facilitating the interconnections of the various modules, these challenges are not unique to customized software, it is taking time to come up to speed.

 

The Board went over the itemized list for the Proposed Water & Sewer Budget:

  1. The Board felt they did not have enough numbers regarding valuation of exchanging the W&S septic truck for the R&R backhoe.

2.   The Board agreed to establish personnel salary/wage ranges in principle with R&R.

3.   The Board has already voted on changing the fiscal year to align with the R&R fiscal year.

  1. The Budget Committee requested permission to combine the budgets and revenues of the         community systems and all other applicable lots, only for presentation at the Annual Meeting. The Board did agree that only the presentation of the budget at the Annual Meeting may be combined. The W&S must have separate financials for the SIA, 12th Filing, Community System, and Annual Dues. The 12th Filing must be a stand a alone system until all phases of the project are completed.
  2. The proposal to compensate Management  $8,000.00 to offset the additional work load generated by the 12th Filing SIA project will be discussed in Executive Session.
  3. The Board agreed to contribute to the upkeep of the office and the maintenance facility since both are used by W&S; the suggested fee is $2,000.00.
  4. It was agreed to raise the following fees to keep these services self supporting:

Water Hauling                          from     $ 22.50            to         $ 30.00           

Septic (pump & haul)                from     $150.00           to         $160.00

Vault (pump & haul)                 from     $ 80.00            to         $100.00

 

  1. It was established that a contingency fund is already a line item.
  2. A motion was passed at a previous board meeting to establish guidelines on our investments; the accounts have never been established.
  3. It was agreed that all of our pipe, buildings and infrastructure should be inventoried to determine the remaining useful life and funding for replacement.
  4. It was decided a month ago what guidelines would be used to determine the status of improved verses unimproved.

The remaining items would be discussed later as time is of the essence.

 

STATUS OF FILING 12 TANK ISSUE: A discussion of the legal remedies will be discussed in Executive Session. Grant did verify that the backwash is classified as hazardous waste. Ralph Goble requested that the manager contact Culligan Water systems and inquire about a commercial system that would be serviced and/or changed out every 2 or 3 months and completely self-contained where we would not have to deal with the backwash.

 

STATUS OF SHAVANO/GREEN MOUNTAIN DEEP BURY PROJECT:  Our maintenance supervisor, Kent Christen, recommended to the Board that we pull off the Shavano/Green Mountain deep bury we have heat tape which is only 4 years old and would be sufficient to keep the water lines from freezing, our monies could be best utilized completing the Wetterhorn Ct.deep bury we have homes that are going in at Wetterhorn Ct. and the project could  be completed within the Shavano/Green Mountain budget. Max Beavers moved that we transfer from the Shavano/Green Mountain deep bury to the Wetterhorn Ct. deep bury and reallocate the encumbered funds. In the event funds are left over we will finish the Shavano/Green Mountain deep bury. Jerry Ryan seconded the motion. Motion carried.     

 

OLD BUSINESS

 

REVIEW BIDS FOR PHASE II / FILING 12 PROJECT:  We have received the sealed bids; Grant did review the bids to make sure that all parties are bidding the same specifications. The individuals who submitted bids are as follows:

            Connell Resources                                $

            Gerrard Excavating Inc.                        $305,188.80

We will not be accepting any more bids as an estimate of the complete project cost was published in our newsletter. The Board will be reviewing the prospective contractors bids, in addition, the bids will be forwarded to Mark Petersen to insure that each bid meets his specifications.

 

SIGN AMEMDED BY-LAWS CHANGING FISCAL YEAR: Ralph Goble signed the By-Law change.

 

DISCUSSION OF ADMINISTRATIVE COMPENSATION FROM SIA FUNDS: Discussed in Executive Session

 

NOMINATING COMMITTEE: (See Attached) We will have to additional candidates running for the Water and Sewer Board, Jerry Eubanks and Carl Bahus they will be added to the official ballot.

 

Ralph suggested that we do not send an envelope out with the Annual mailing; we will include an envelope when individuals request a mail in ballot.

 

 

NEW BUSINESS:

A statement was made that the Board appeared to be ungrateful to the individuals that served on the Water & Sewer Budget Committee. Dan Smedra did address this issue and he stated that he felt he was intentionally left out of the decision making process, once again he stated his schedule impedes him from weeknight meetings. Never the less the decision was made to go forward and schedule the meetings during the week, what happened then was a certain amount of historical knowledge was lost and many issues discussed had been discussed before. The entire process was unfair to the whole Board. The Board did thank the Committee and Dan did apologize for his schedule.

 

Max Beavers moved that the meeting be adjourned. Dan Smedra seconded it. Motion carried.

 

Meeting Adjourned at 9:07 PM.

 

Respectfully Submitted,

 

 

 

 

Dorothy Anders, Secretary