February 8, 2022

Sierra Los Pinos Property Owners' Association
Board of Directors Meeting
February 8, 2022 at 6:34 p.m.
The meeting was called to order by the President Paul Lisko with the
following members present: Cindy Hines, Ann Cooke, John Hines, David
Stuedell, Paul Rightley and Keith Rigney. Jeremy Oepping and Kristi Cross
were excused.
Guests: Suzanne Star, Barbara Van Ruyckevelt and Mary Moore.
Approval of Agenda: Cindy Hines made a motion to approve the agenda;
seconded by David Stuedell, motion carried.
Approval of Minutes: Paul Rightley moved to approve the minutes of the
January 11, 2022 meeting; seconded by Keith Rigney; motion carried.
PRESIDENT:
OFFICER REPORTS:
Paul Lisko reported:
With respect to the Special Meeting on Water held in November, Kristi has
been really dedicated to getting the meeting transcribed. I have learned a
lot, if we ever do this again, about having people identify themselves. She
has gone through it and there are times when the conversation is garbled
but other places some of the people are not identified. She did it as best
she could and then she’s given it back to me and I thought by now I would
have gone through it, but it’s like 48 pages long and I’ve been working on it
for a week now, and probably will need another week to finish. Once I am
finished, I am going to forward the minutes to Keith Rigney, Paul Rightley
and John Hines. Those are the three Board members who were there and
I would ask you to listen to the recording and read the transcript to make
sure we have it correct. Keith, you had quite a few good points to make
during that meeting, and I want to make sure, when we both have listened
to it, that it is, indeed, you that said the things that are being said in that
meeting. All three individuals indicated affirmatively they would listen and
proofread.I attended the Environmental Finance Center Networks Webinar on Water
Loss Series for Small Systems. It was scheduled on January 27th, but my
internet was out. They did send a recording of that, and I was able to
review it on January 30th, and it’s a half an hour long. I still have it and if
you’re interested, I can send it to you.
We had the final meeting with NV5 before sending out the bid documents,
and that was held via Zoom on January 14th. People from the Board who
were in attendance, besides myself, were John Hines and Jeremy
Oepping. Then we talked to Arvind Patel about it and approved it to be sent
out after that.
The next step was to send it to the Albuquerque Journal to get that ad
placed in their legal section. Because of difficulties in transmission of the
ad, it was all delayed by one week. It was listed in the Albuquerque
Journal. I also had it run for two weeks in the Los Alamos Daily Post, and
placed in our local paper, After The Thunder.
Next has to do with the road maintenance agreement, and I did get the title
company to affirm that they had collected the $520 fee from LANet for their
being able to be in Unit 6, I think it’s Lot 3. The agreement was notarized,
sent to the County for recording and the County mailed hard copies back to
the Title Company on January 25th. In an email I received today, they
indicated everything is taken care of and they are mailing us a copy for our
records.
I got an email from a new resident at 456 Hovenweep, who was requesting
the policy and the application for vacation rental property, so we might see
another one of those.
As far as the request for the contract documents, as of February 2nd, I
received five, but I have received two more now and, of those seven that
have now been received, three of them are actually from contractors.
Of the other four, one is from a water resource company. It made me think
that it’s almost like another engineering group, like NV5 is, and they
probably wanted to see how NV5 was doing their document. That’s all I
can assume; I don’t know that for sure. The other three of that seven are
actually clearing houses for subcontractors. In other words, there are thesegroups out there that have all these subcontractors listed, I’m not familiar
with how this works, but the subcontractor pays some sort of minimal fee to
be part of this group and then once the job is awarded, then these
companies will contact the contractor saying, do you need a subcontractor
to do this or that, because we have these guys in our organization. So
anyway, right now we actually have three contractors that are going to be
bidding on it.
Finally, I’m going to request reimbursement for things that I have been out
of pocket for: $245.18 went to the Albuquerque Journal to have this ad run
for two weekends; $97.28 for legal ad to run two weeks in the Los Alamos
Daily Post; $42.05 for extended cloud Zoom storage, which I think this will
be the last month that we need that, once the minutes are approved.
$19.54 for travel expenses to go down to Jemez Springs to get the road
maintenance agreement notarized and mailed out. So all of that ads up to
$404.05. I am asking for motion to be reimbursed for that amount.
Cindy Hines moved to reimburse Paul $404.05. David Stuedell seconded
the motion; motion carried.
Next up on our agenda is Keith Rigney, who, if you haven’t heard, we have
to extend congratulations to him for him being a brand new daddy.
Keith Rigney: Thank you, everyone. I’m actually holding her right now, so I
might try to make this quick.
VICE PRESIDENT:
Keith Rigney reported:
I have not made any posts on Facebook since the January meeting. I know
Paul has been looking into having another one set up for our new water
board, but we will touch on that soon.The second thing would be the memo regarding our current issue the
Board is facing on the back end for emails. It seems we are getting a lot of
communication on our end for the co-mingle project and what should or
shouldn’t be done. So, to address this – I feel like we’ve gone over this
subject for the last two or three months with no real resolution as to either
ends of the parties, so I was looking into drafting a memo that would
address these issues and hopefully soothe some people’s hearts on what
we are trying to do with this co-mingle, if we do the co-mingle, things like
that. I have not had time to look into this due to having my daughter this
last week. I, hopefully, will at least get some formatting and get some
words on paper by next meeting. I also assume most of that memo would
be very brief and short, as in us creating a small water committee and
things like that, and the water committee is mostly likely going to drive the
importance of that document and/or what goes in it.
That’s all I had; thank you everyone. I’ve been kind of out with the little girl.
Paul Lisko: Barbara, did you want to jump in here with any comments?
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Well, yes, I would like to – I didn’t quite
understand what Keith is going to do. I’m sorry to hang you up, Keith, and
congratulations. But did I hear that the Board is – well, I didn’t hear a clear
message on whether or not this co-mingle project is going to be – you’re
going to send out information to the members to see how they feel; is that
what I heard?
Keith: No. I will not be sending out information to the members about the
co-mingle. We have had a lot of emails to the Board stating that we should
not do the co-mingle, we should do this instead. So what I would like to
address in this memo is to show our members, the people who are
concerned, that the co-mingle may happen, may not happen. We don’t
know yet. It depends on a bid, if we get a bid. What mainly this memo is
going to show is what our priorities are as a Board when it comes to water,
pretty much is what it’s going to be. It’s going to be very brief, very
concise. It’s literally going to lay out if we do the co-mingle or not, which isa big “if” right now. We don’t know. We all understand we have more
pressing matters at hand, but there is a process we are taking, and this is
the start of it, and it’s been going on for a long time.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Oh, okay. I just wanted to be upfront where I
was at, and I don’t want to hold you up, but I was going to go back to my
first objection and enter that into the minutes, and then I had just a couple
of comments toward the end. But I do plan to send out information to the
members with my opinion and some data that I have, and I wanted to be
upfront with the Board on it.
Keith: That is perfectly fine. I mean, we’re not trying to hide anything. We
are doing our best as we can as volunteers, and the best we can as
members in our community. An opinion, at the end of the day, is an
opinion and we’re all working hard here. Sorry we’re not as fast as we
should be.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: No, I’m not complaining about that. It’s just the
project, you know, and I just have some objections and I just wanted to put
those in the minutes.
Keith: Your position has come up multiple times and I know you object to
us even doing it, because we do have bigger fish to fry, and I do agree – us
as the Board do agree, but when this co-mingle initially started, inflation
was not an issue, and the project would have cost a lot less than what
we’re looking at now. And due to that price increase, the Board can
definitely say no to a bid, can definitely say no to the project as well, but it
is dependent on the price that comes in. But I feel, and this is a personal
opinion, we are using this co-mingle as leverage, and this leverage is going
to be that we can show our community that we have x-thousand feet of
pipe that needs to be replaced and the current going rate, due to blank,
blank and blank contractors is this per foot. And this co-mingle will tell us
this, because we’re going to have, hopefully, three to five bids. And if they
all come in high, then we say no to the co-mingle, but now we can go back
to the public and say with a firm stance, this is what it’s going to cost to(1) do a co-mingle if we feel that’s important, or (2) fix System 1, because
this is the cost-per basis. If they look back at us and they go, no, this is too
expensive, we don’t want to do extra dues, we don’t want to do extra time,
whatever it may be, well, then we’re going to look back at them and go,
well, we need volunteers, we need equipment, we need help. There’s 150
units in here, there’s got to be something we can do.
So this, to me, is a leverage option. Whether we do the co-mingle or not,
we need a solid project that people will give us bids on, because we can’t
go out to the public and go, here, we need the entire System 1 fixed.
Everyone is going to look at us and go, that’s crazy; that’s not going to
happen. So what we are doing now is just little pieces of pie, we’re going
to extrapolate it with data, and that’s how we’re going to solve these issues.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Well, sure, and I understand what you’re going
through, because we’ve faced these issues for years. So I’ll still continue
what I was going to do, but I don’t have to hold you up, because basically
I’d like to read my first email into the minutes so there will be context, and
then I have three requests and comments after I read that. So you can
stay if you want to, or go; it doesn’t make any difference.
Ann Cooke: I do not agree to reading in anything at this time. This is for
the Board of SLPPOA. If you’d like to submit your email for the record, that
would be great, and I would suggest emailing Kristi to do so.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Well, I have sent the email and then –
Ann Cooke: Paul, would you like to then continue? I gather it’s already
been submitted.
Paul Lisko: As far as I know, it’s been submitted.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: If it’s been submitted in the minutes of my email
on January 12th, at 11:34 a.m., then I do have some comments to make, if
that’s okay.Ann Cooke: I would suggest not at this time. My time is precious. I made
it for this Board meeting, and I’d like to go on.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Well, I requested time in advance with Paul
Lisko. I even followed up that I was on the agenda.
Paul Lisko: Right. And what I told you was once we were discussing that,
you could bring up whatever you wanted to discuss, but that’s not an
opportunity to just start, you know, presenting all kinds of stuff. I tend to
agree with Ann. We can certainly include your email. I will send that email
to Kristi and have her put that in the minutes for this meeting, and you were
saying you had three comments. If you want to put those comments in
writing and send those to us, send those to either myself or Kristi. I will
make sure they get included in the minutes, as well.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Well, so I don’t have any time on this meeting
after I requested it.
David Stuedell: I’m just curious about this. Would something that’s not
actually discussed, how would you put the email in the minutes if it wasn’t
discussed in the meeting. Is that really appropriate? I mean, regardless of
whether we allow it or not, is that appropriate to put something in the
minutes that wasn’t discussed?
Ann Cooke: It isn’t in the minutes. It’s just an addendum to it.
Cindy Hines: That’s correct; it’s not a problem.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Okay, since there’s a big deal about everything,
I’ll put everything in writing, because I have an official request that I wanted
to make for the members list for my letter that’s going to go to them
regarding the co-mingle project. Would I send that to Paul again? Can I
trust you, Paul?Paul Lisko: I certainly hope so. If you don’t feel you can trust me, then I
guess you could send it to somebody else that you do.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Well, I requested to be on this agenda and it
didn’t happen, so I’m just making sure it’s the right person.
Paul Lisko: It’s happening right now.
Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Okay, thank you very much, you will get a
request. Thank you.
Paul Rightley: Keith, that was a great report. (Short discussion about new
daughter and more congratulations from the members).
SECRETARY:
Paul Lisko reported Kristi is not here, but she did send him some updates
of things that were on her list.
She indicated the welcome packet will be sent to the Board next week to
make sure it covers everything. And then, as far as the contact list, she
said honestly it’s been on the back burner; she had too much going on at
work. So I’m sure she will get to it when she can.
One thing I wanted to mention, last meeting we talked about taking our
Zoom account and paying another $50 a year so that there would be a
transcription from the Cloud recording. Again, I checked into that and you
have to have a minimum of ten licenses; right now, we have one license.
The cost would be $199 times ten or $1990. I signed up for a ten-day trial
with otter.ai, because it only costs $100 a year and they are going to
transcribe a meeting, then I will have Kristi review it and see if it’s
worthwhile. If Kristi finds that this is a good service, I would like to entertain
a motion that we pay the $100 after the free 10-day trial is up.Keith Rigney: Paul, would we want to wait on actually approving this until
we get word from Kristi on how good a job they did or not?
Paul Lisko: No, I don’t want to wait. I mean, I’m going to hear from her;
she’s going to let me know. We have a free trial for ten days. So that’s
going to end, you know, in the middle of February and so it’s 100 bucks, it’s
not much, and I want to make sure if she’s okay with it, that I have the okay
to spend the $100 to get this. I mean, it’s not a big pull here. On the other
hand, if she reviews it and says I don’t want this, then I won’t spend the
money.
Ann Cooke moved that this transcription service and the $100 be approved
on the written approval of Kristi. Cindy Hines seconded the motion; motion
carried.
TREASURER:
Paul read the treasurer’s report from Jeremy Oepping, dated February 8,
2022:
• The balance in accounts as of January 31, 2022 is as follows:
o Operating Account: $177,781.59
o Reserve Account: $128,716.08
• As of January 31, we have 47 delinquent accounts totaling
$49,002.03. This is an increase of $43,110.44 from last month.
Annual assessments were officially due at the end of January, so I
figure some of that must be for folks who are delaying payment for
their annual dues. A reminder, late fees and interest do not start until
April 1st, but are retro back to January 31st. Five accounts are over
90 days for a total of $5,812.07, which is the same as last month.
• The January amount of $666.67 was transferred to Reserves during
the month.
• There were two changes in property ownership in January. We
welcome:o Scott C. DeWitt and Amber E. Gaston, 170 Aspen Grove
o Sheryl Pounds, 1341 Los Griegos Road
Jeremy submitted documents and design to the webmaster for an updated
financials website in early January, and that has not been done yet. Right
now, it’s not user-friendly; the site needs a complete rework. It does not
allow Jeremy to simply upload documents himself. Mike, our webmaster,
mentioned multiple times that he is not interested in doing that rework of
the website to accommodate what Jeremy is trying to do with the financials.
So, point for discussion, can we put out a call for a new webmaster to
review design and possibly get this done?
Does anybody have any suggestions on that, on who we might be able to
contact to get that done?
Paul Rightley: Paul, I would –
David Stuedell: Just a quick comment. It really isn’t exactly on subject, but
you know, the cost that we’re paying for the current website is very small.
There’s a good chance with this redesign it will be a considerable amount
of money, just because of inflation and all that, so just keep that in mind,
but that’s all I have to say.
Paul Rightley: So, can I make a statement. I think your point is really on
target there, David, and I would say, you know, the site is working. What
part of the site isn’t working would be my question? What do we need to
solve, what do we need to fix, to try to go to another solution, because for
me, it is actually working, but that doesn’t mean it’s working for everyone.
What do you think, Paul?
Paul Lisko: What I’m reporting here is what Jeremy reported to me, is that
he’s trying to get our financial documents updated to the website and make
them more transparent for membership to take a look at and that’s not
happening. In order for it to happen there has to be a different design put
into place, and so the webmaster is not interested in doing that. So that’s
basically what it gets to, and it’s a matter of making those financial
documents – because Jeremy has been talking about this for a couple of
months now, about making those more accessible to membership, but if wehave a webmaster that’s not willing to do the work on helping him get that,
then we’re kind of stuck.
Paul Rightley: Paul, I fully respect Jeremy and our webmaster, and so I’m
curious maybe you’d want me to look into this. Is there a legal requirement
to have the financial information updated as Jeremy wants? So what are
the legal ramifications and then what are the financial ramifications for the
Association.
Paul Lisko: No, there’s no legal requirement to have that; but, again, in the
interest of transparency, that’s why he wants to do it, and I agree with him, I
think it’s really good to make that stuff accessible to membership, rather
than have them try to fish around, trying to find it, have it all in one place
and anybody who wants to see it can see it. So, again, there’s no legal
requirement, but it’s just a matter of convenience.
Paul Rightley: So, I agree with you, Paul, that is a great idea, but
according to what you’ve just said, it’s going to cost money, and now you
ask the membership, are you willing to spend more of your dollars for our
homeowners association to provide you this information or not. That is a
question some people may answer one way or the other. That’s all I’m
saying. I’m not trying to say yea or nay, but we have a pretty good system,
it’s working now. I’d love to make it better, but if the webmaster says no,
then maybe – I don’t know, what are the other options, and I haven’t heard
any of those. So thank you.
Mary Moore: Paul, I’d like to weigh in, it’s Mary.
Paul Lisko: Go ahead, Mary.
Mary Moore: I’m just saying transparency should be a goal and, as a
member, I would certainly appreciate an easy-access website.
Paul Lisko: How do we get there? That’s the thing; right, how do we get
there? Does anybody have any ideas? Does anybody know anybody that
can handle this? I mean, I agree with David, I don’t want to increase the
cost of our website; but, again, our current webmaster isn’t interested in
doing this work, or this rework of the website to include these financial
documents on there, but I think it’s important that we do that. So, does
anybody know of anybody that can just take on that particular task to get it
done?Suzanne Star: Paul, this is Suzanne. The website actually has a finance
page, and it has a table where we used to post our end of year reviews, our
audits. I don’t see there’s any reason why they can’t just post the financials
every month on that page. And to that thought as well, is that the financials
for December right now are posted under the January 22 minutes. The
minutes aren’t there, but the December financial is there. So it got posted,
but it’s in a place where nobody will find it. But I’m just suggesting, just
take the finance page and put more stuff on it. That doesn’t take that
much, and he doesn’t have to do a redesign and all that fancy stuff. Just
one suggestion.
Paul Lisko: Jeremy is not here, so I’m just carrying this water for him. I’m
not knowledgeable about this; but, again, the reason why this is bold on the
agenda is the way he presented it to me. So I’m not privy to all the ins and
outs of how this design should take place. You’re saying that the financials
are posted there already – great. But apparently Jeremy is interested in
getting something else as far as a design. So, unless he’s here to kind of
address this, I’m kind of shooting in the dark. I don’t really have all of what
he wants done on this, so I think at this point we’ll table it and wait until he
comes back next month to address it more fully. That’s my opinion
anyway.
Moving on, Jeremy mentioned he sent an email to Kristi and Cindy on
January 30th, asking if they had any other concerns with discontinuing
Quick Books and moving management and maintenance of our monthly
member phone list and documented water and endpoint serial numbers to
HOAMCO. I got a comment from Kristi where she said she’s fine with
moving on from the antiquated software and letting HOAMCO handle it. So
she has no objection to that. Cindy, do you have any objection to that?
Cindy Hines: I do not have any objection. I think that’s a great idea and we
should move forward.
Paul Lisko: All right. Then I’ll just tell him to move forward with that.
And then he wanted me to mention again about the water conservation fee
mixup. I think we covered this once before. It has to do with the mixup by
the State in 2018. It’s completely resolved now. The Association is current
on its fee and has a credit balance of $86.27 with the State and, depending
on time, Jeremy may request a check or leave it to apply to July’s fees.And that concludes the treasurer’s report. Any questions about any of
that?
STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS:
Water:
John Hines reported:
January was a tough month. If everyone remembers, we had a power
outage for three days and so we maintained our water, but our tanks
actually emptied, and then when power did come back on, we had a tripped
relay. So I replaced that relay, and then I had to replace the batteries in the
Levelcon because the sending units kept trying to send information, but we
didn’t have any power, so I had to change all that out. Then the Forest 10
well quit working again just towards the end of the month and I ended up
having to reset the Levelcon sending unit, and I rewired the time clock and
cleaned up a lot of the electrical parts that were antiquated and not in use
anymore. So I got that all straightened out and it’s easier to see what’s
going on now.
I did weekly well and pump inspections.
I had a red light flash February 3rd, which wasn’t actually for January, but
it’s close enough. For some reason the booster pump kicked out, but I
reset it and it’s been running fine ever since.
I completed my State operator exam and passed with flying colors, so I am
now a licensed New Mexico water operator. (Congratulations from the
Board members)
I got ahold of Pacific Meters and I scheduled for Thursday for them to come
up and look at our totalizing meters to see what they have to do to
recalibrate those.
As far as the wells go:System 1:
• Pumped 589,000 gallons, which was down from last month
• Used: 245,606 gallons
• Average Household Usage; 132 gallons per day (which was up
considerably from December)
• Lost: 343,695 gallons; leakage rate of 58%
• Leak Flags – 8 (in the previous month we had 12)
• Users over 7,000 gallons – eight, which was down considerably
from December. I assume a lot of that had to do with people
being in town and having company and baking and everything.
System 2:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pumped 185,270 gallons, which was down from December
Used: 113,528 gallons.
Average Household Usage: 60 gallons
Lost: 71,000 gallons; leakage rate of 39%
Leak Flags – 4, all being repeats
Users over 7,000 gallons – None
Both System 1 and 2 are in compliance: System 1, Total Coliform,
Absent; Total E. Coli, Absent; Disinfection Residual 0.13 mg/l
System 2, Total Coliform, Absent; Total E. Coli, Absent; Disinfection
Residual 0.18 mg/l
Paul Lisko: John, the only thing I didn’t hear was an explanation on why
some meter reading usage numbers doubled last month.
John: What happened was, when Mark Stanley left, he took a program
with him that we did the anonymous report on. So I’ve been having to
manually transfer everything off of the confidential report. I had a friend
come over and he made a macro, so now I don’t have to physicallytransport each one of them, it automatically puts it from one over to the
other. And, for some reason, not on all of them, but on some things it
doubled the amount. When I was notified of it, I did catch it and I did send
the updated one or the correct one to Mike, so the correct one was posted
on the website. I’m trying to figure out why it did that. This month I did it all
manually again, just because I was scared to death that it was going to
double it again. So that’s where we’re at.
Also there were seven meters that were not read because of snow and I
couldn’t get a read on them. You will remember we had a significant
snowfall around the first of January. If we were billing for water, I would
definitely go get those correct reads, but since we’re not billing and it was
only seven meters, I did not go locate those meters and dig them up just to
get a read on them. So, if someone feels differently about that, I guess I
can go dig them up, but right now I don’t feel it’s a necessity. It does skew
our numbers a little bit, but it’s only seven meters, so I don’t think it skews
them that much.
Mary Moore: I have a question. John, we were gone over the New Year’s
holiday, so if I understood you right, you said the power was out for three
days?
John: It was two days almost.
Mary Moore: Okay, we were just wondering, because when we leave the
house, we need to prepare for that kind of thing, so that’s quite amazing.
Okay, thank you.
David Stuedell: I have a comment. When the power is out – you know,
this isn’t directly to water, but when the power is out for more than, say, 24
hours, I think some kind of notice should go out, because that can affect
people in many ways. They won’t have heat and who knows what will
happen, and all kinds of stuff. I’m just wondering if we could set up some
kind of notice if power goes out for – what do you think?John: Dave, how do you propose you send out a notice if we have no
power?
David Stuedell: Well, we have cell phones; post something on the
Facebook site or something. I just think –
John: We could post it after the fact when the power comes back on.
When the power is out, there’s no way we have any access to Facebook or
emails or anything.
David Stuedell: Well, yeah, you do. Verizon’s power is not out; is it?
John: Yeah, but I don’t have cell service right now when the power is on,
so I don’t know how many people are in that boat, same as me.
Ann Cooke: I have a simple solution. If people are interested in knowing
what’s going on up here, they should talk to their neighbors and ask their
neighbors to notify them if something strange occurs.
Cindy Hines: Ann, that’s a great idea. We had neighbors for a while who
lived in Albuquerque and they just asked us. They said, if something weird
happens, like the power goes out for a long time, call us and let us know
and then we’ll come up and check on things or, you know, we would go
over and check on it for them. So that’s a great idea.
Paul Lisko: Anything further for John? (No response). David, you’re up for
roads. Go ahead.
Roads:
David Stuedell reported:
We got our sander in. Jonathan has been sanding the roads. I hear it’s
been working well. I’ll continue to follow up with him, but any comments or
concerns with the sanding and the sander? We paid, I think, $6,000 for the
sander. Our other sander had come to the end of its life. It was an old
version. It’s a new sander and it’s an electrical sander; it doesn’t use a gasengine, so I think we’ve made a big step forward into the future on sanding.
Any comments on sanders?
Paul Rightley: I got to my house yesterday just fine; thank you, David. We
are lucky to have Jonathan.
Paul Lisko: One comment I wanted to make on that, and this was
something we can think about maybe in the spring and summer. I
happened to be at the firehouse when Jonathan pulled up with his family
members to load cinders into the sander, and he and the family member,
they couldn’t even use the little front-end loader that they had on their
tractor, because they couldn’t reach it up high enough to dump it into the
box of the sander. And so, what they were having to do was load that thing
with shovels by hand. And I thought, man, that’s some labor-intensive stuff
there. So one of the things I’d like to suggest and, David, maybe you can
keep this on the back burner for the spring or summer, is if we can get kind
of an area below where those cinders are at, so that he can pull the truck in
there, so it’s lower than the cinder pile and then he’ll have an easier time
loading that with the front-end loader from his tractor. Because he’s doing
a great job and I don’t want to see him get frustrated having to load all that
stuff by hand. So just a comment.
David: Okay, that’s a good comment. I’ll talk to Jonathan about that and
we’ll try to figure out a method, either build a ramp or dig a hole or
something of that sort. Yeah, that’s a good point.
And then the next thing is, you know, we’ve had several complaints about
the berms being – when you plow, you get a berm in front of your driveway,
especially in certain spots it’s worse than others. We’ve addressed this
with Jonathan and he’s done some research. According to his research,
there is no easy solution. My only thought on this one is that, obviously, he
could clear the berm. Either we just do it kind of pro bono for a few people
who complain or we set up a charge, you know, say $20 or something and
then he collects that money for the extra work that he does clearing the
berm. Let me open this up to discussion.
Ann Cooke: I would suggest that there are – I know someone, Mark, who
will plow our driveway. Why don’t you get a list of people that they can hire
to clear that if they so wish. I did not appreciate the complaining with
regard to this the last time, because I so much appreciate being able just toget out on the roads. I appreciate having the roads plowed, and I
understand that sometimes things will be blocked. That’s the price of living
up here, and find people to come and clear it out for you, but I don’t think
it’s the Board’s -- or the Association should get in the business of doing pro
bono work or to pay for people’s convenience here. We’re getting it 90
percent done, the last 10 percent, it’s like plowing your driveway. I’m done
with that.
Paul Rightley: I would make a point, Ann, that on Thompson Ridge, which
is sort of a sister organization, much smaller, but they have a whole
separate thing, they bill people differently if they get their driveways plowed
by the plowers. I’ve had property I’ve been dealing with for 30 years up
there, and sometimes we pay for it and sometimes we don’t. Yesterday I
could not get into that property, but that was because I didn’t ask them to
plow it. So, no, I understand. It is definitely the roads need to be plowed,
but not everyone’s driveway.
David: All right, those are two comments. My thinking is see how it goes. I
know Suzanne, who is on the call, she had concerns about the berm.
Barbara had concerns about the berm and called our plower bad names,
which didn’t make me happy. So let me come back next meeting and see if
we have a solution. As far as other people plowing, I mean, obviously, our
plower cannot clear the berm on everyone’s driveway; it’s not fair to him.
He can try lifting the blade when he gets by a driveway or something. And
so, there’s things, like everyone else said, I get out there with my snow
blower and I just blow it away. If you don’t do it right away, it does freeze
up. So, I can sort of understand concerns, but like everyone else said, we
live up here, we have to deal with some issues that other people don’t have
to. So, unless we have a clear solution, I guess for now we’ll play it by ear
and I’ll look into other solutions and I’ll see what Jonathan wants to charge
to clear someone’s berm and stuff like that.
Ann Cooke: And, David, personally I think he’s doing – he’s not trying to
block anyone in. This isn’t malicious. It’s just a matter of what occurs. I
would put a caution, just as a general good policy, that if he’s paid extra to
clear the front of somebody’s driveway, if you will, it can start looking like
he blocked them on purpose in order to get this extra charge. I’m not
saying that that occurs, I’m just saying the perception starts being there.
Maybe there are other people that would like to make $20 clearingsomething in a heavy storm. I noticed that this happens more
predominately when we’ve got a large snowfall than when we don’t; right?
David: Right. Paul do you have any opinion on this?
Paul Lisko: I’m pretty much leaving it to you, David, to work with Jonathan
and see what you guys can come up with and we’ll address it next time
with any kind of practical solution you may come up with, with regard to
clearing driveways of berms that are left behind from this plowing. I think
there’s been a lot of good suggestions made out there. There’s probably
some kids out there that you can hire for next to nothing, if you have a
driveway there, to come over and clear it out for you. I think you guys have
covered the gamut.
David: All rightly. I guess Suzanne was mentioning something about
putting flags on the – Suzanne, you said something about putting flags on
the place where your water meter is. Do you want to address that?
Suzanne Star: No. The only thing that I’d like to just recommend, and
we’ve talked about this before in the early times when we had the meters
installed, is that the meters get buried. Sometimes the snow plower
doesn’t even know where they are at. So, to keep them from getting
crushed or getting damaged, it might be wise for us to think maybe next
year to go ahead and flag them so that especially the snow plowing doesn’t
run into them or pile snow so high that John’s got to go out with a shovel
and start shoveling them off. There’s no reason for that. The snow has to
go somewhere, I know, but it doesn’t have to go over the meter cans. And,
at some point, as John suggested, too much snow on a meter can and the
meter won’t read anymore. So that’s not John’s responsibility to go out and
start digging out the meter cans. This is just a suggestion, we talked about
it before and we were going to do it before. In fact, I think a couple of years
ago we did flag many of the meters, but I don’t know what ever happened
to that.
Paul Lisko: I have two comments to make on that, Suzanne. First of all,
I’ve seen a number of – there’s like these orange rods, orange and white
rods that are near a lot of the meter cans, so they actually don’t get plowed
under. I’ve got one at mine, and I’ve seen my neighbors have them
sticking up as well.And the other thing, as far as not being able to read the meters, like John
Hines said that there were seven of them that couldn’t be read, but are we
assuming that it’s because they got snow plowed on them, or they just got
buried by the snowfall and had nothing to do with the plower?
Suzanne Star: I would think the only way you’re going to know that is to
have John take a look at these meter cans and determine whether, number
one, the meters just aren’t reading, or why they’re not reading, and then he
can maybe report back, but while we have a big snow – I have snow over
mine too. Jonathan did go ahead and pile about a foot and a half over
mine, and you can still read mine, but if it gets too heavy and gets too icy,
you might not be able to read it. So I think John would be the best one to
just kind of check this out and decide whether or not it’s a problem. I mean,
yes, you’re going to have a snowfall, and you’re going to have snow
buildup on your meter cans, that’s obvious. But anything added to that may
not be able to get the reading through, the transmission through, and that’s
not John’s job to go out there and dig meter cans out to get the readings.
Paul Lisko: No, it’s not. And, again, I think most of the meter cans are
flagged, not with actual flagging, but with those rods that are sticking up
next to them. I’ve seen those rods all over the place. Do you not have one
at your meter can?
Suzanne Star: No, I don’t, but maybe what you’re saying is that they did
flag them years ago when we talked about it. I just didn’t know if they did
or not, because I’ve never seen them, but no, I don’t have one, but my
meter can was also one of the ones that was put in long after most of the
other meters were in. So maybe that’s – you could just go around and find
out, or if you have a place where we can get some more of those rods, I’ll
put one up where I am, too, because I think it’s important that he knows
where the meter can is, where the stand pipe is, and not too much snow
gets piled up in that area. There are other areas around my house he can
pile the snow up. He doesn’t have to pile it up over the meter. So that’s a
good idea. If you tell me where there might be a rod, and maybe some
people who don’t have rods on their meters, maybe we need to explore that
and put those in.
Ann Cooke: Suzanne, you go down to Ace Hardware and you get a fence
or I believe it’s a fence or whatever, post or whatever, and you pound it in
the ground by your can.Suzanne Star: Well, I’m not going to do it right now.
Ann Cooke: No, it’s obvious not now. Just go down and get one of those.
I think they’re all of what, five bucks, ten bucks.
Paul Lisko: About three bucks.
John Hines: Could I jump in? This is John.
David: What they have, and on, I think, a better note on that, if we were
just going to allow other people to buy their flags, is that they sell fiberglass
flags for bikes at Metzger’s. I got one there, and it has a flag and it’s
fiberglass and it’s just a rod. We might want to buy ten of them as a Board
and have them just in the shed for people or areas that are an issue.
Paul Lisko: That’s a good idea. John, what were you going to say?
John Hines: First up, I want to make sure that everybody knows that the
meter cans that have snow on them isn’t necessarily because Jonathan
plowed it on them. A lot of our meters are off the side of the road where
Jonathan couldn’t reach them, but the homeowner, himself, has plowed
snow from his driveway and pushed it on top of the meter. Besides that,
every meter has got a standpipe by it, where there’s a valve in it, and we
had one down on Forest Road 10 that the standpipe got hit with the snow
and then it froze, and we had to thaw it out so he could get water again.
So, it’s not just the meter that needs to be protected, it’s the standpipe also.
Paul Lisko: John, is there some way you can find where these fiberglass
rods that we’ve been talking about are, maybe purchase a bundle of them
and just have them there in the storage shed, so that when the spring thaw
comes, if people don’t have one to mark their meter can and standpipe, we
can get them one?
John Hines: Yeah, I can do that, but I would venture to guess that 50
percent of them aren’t marked. So I would say there’s probably more than
75 meters that don’t have any markings on them, but I can look into it.
Paul Lisko: Well, let’s just start out and get a bundle of them, a dozen,
twenty, whatever there is, and we can advertise that we have these
available, maybe in the spring newsletter, so people can go out there and
get one and mark their standpipe and their meter can.Mary Moore: Paul, I have one last thing to say about that. It would be a
great idea to mark all the meters. I’ve been on a couple of volunteer things
where we were looking for leaks, and part of the process was to turn all of
the meters off, and it’s really not straightforward to find everybody’s meter.
It would be great if they were marked. It would really make that process, if
we ever do it again, it would make it much, much easier.
Paul Lisko: Okay. That’s another reason to get them, but let’s start out
with a small bundle and say that they’re available and give them to
homeowners and have them put them in the ground next to their standpipe
or meter can.
Mary Moore: The only other thing I would say, interestingly, about that is I
can think of at least two meters that are actually inside people’s private
property. In other words, they’re not on the easement, they’re in people’s
yards. So that might be a little tricky in a couple of cases, but anyway, it
would still be very helpful if they were marked.
Paul Lisko: And we’re giving them to the homeowners, so it’s not like
somebody is going to come out with a shotgun and shoot me because I’m
coming across their property with a four-foot-long fiberglass rod. We’ll
make them available and if they want them, they can come and get them
and put them next to the standpipe.
Legal:
Paul Rightley reported:
With regard to the status of the vacation rental permit for 66 Ashley Lane.
On January 11th, I sent a letter, to that individual saying, hey, you have until
February 28th to respond. When I sent it on the 11th, I was going through
certain emotional issues, but I figured, looking at what is required in that
document, that I didn’t want to just send it with a two-week deadline. I
figured I would send it with a deadline that was at the end of the next
month.
Paul Lisko: Did you get a response from them or not?Paul Rightley: I have not received a response. I do not know who checks
the mail for the Association to see if they got a response. So I don’t know if
there has been a response.
Paul Lisko: Well, Jeremy is not here. He’s the one who checks the mail,
so we will have to follow up with him. But here’s something to consider. If
the guy just kind of blows you off and doesn’t bother to respond, I’ve had
one person within the subdivision that had a vacation rental property and
decided that they just weren’t going to comment and continued to do what
they were doing. Well, one of the interesting things about that is if you find
out who they have got it listed with, whether it’s Airbnb or Vrbo, the next
step is to send a letter saying, we will be notifying them that you are not in
compliance with the regulations of the homeowners association, and that
usually gets their attention. So I’ve had to do that once, but let’s wait and
see if he comes through.
Paul Rightley: Sure. You can suggest that I don’t give him as much time. I
like that. I mean, I get it now with what you just said. So it makes sense.
Let’s see what happens at the end of the month and then maybe we’ll send
such a message.
The other problem is the dog breeding organization on Mesa Verde, and
we have said that’s a moot issue now that, according to their website, they
are not going to be doing it anymore. So they sent a response. I’m going
to respond to that response saying the Board considers it moot, because
that’s what they’re saying. I’m going to ask them to please acknowledge
that they are not going to make this a business anymore, and then we are
going to be done with that. And that is my report.
Firewise:
Ann Cooke reported:
Everyone who asked me to keep them in the loop with regard to the grant
have been pointed in the direction of the grant. I have had no contact with
Chris Romo. He is doing his triage, and I assume he will let me know if
there’s anything we need to know about it.
I have been in contact with Southwest Fire Defense, and when they come
out here, they will notify me and we will walk the Black Bear Park, hopefullynot under three feet of snow, and I will get an estimate for the further
thinning of all the seedlings in that particular park. That ends my report.
Architectural:
Paul Lisko: Josh Toennis is not here, but he did report to me that there
were no new architectural requests received in January.
Parks:
Cindy Hines reported:
As far as parks go, we still need to burn out the stump that had the wasp
nest in it last fall. So John said he would work on that. He’ll let Lee Taylor
know that we’re going to be doing that, and we’ll send something out to the
neighborhood, so when they see smoke, they’ll know what we’re doing.
Road identification: The one thing I want to do while it’s winter months is
see if we can find a source to get the unistrut posts and purchase some of
those, because the sign company no longer sold those. I may have told
you that before. And what they did sell were much more robust posts,
that’s kind of a square-shaped metal post, and they were $60 apiece, so
we said no thank you, and we’ll just see if we can find the unistrut for
places where we don’t currently have posts. We’ll get that ordered and in,
so that when the weather turns nice again, then we can work on getting
some of those put it.
Newsletter: I think maybe I’ll wait until March, if that sounds okay, unless
there is something that you feel like needs to go out right away. I took
notes on the things we talked about tonight, as far as marking the meter
cans and all that, and we’ll make sure that gets in there.
Working with Kristi on the welcome packets: I will still complete a page
about the water system and how you check your own usage and all of that,
and that will be a nice addition, I think, to the welcome packet. That’s all I
have unless people have questions.
OLD BUSINESS: None.NEW BUSINESS:
Paul Lisko stated new business is establishment of a water management
team. We had an initial effort and discussion, which occurred February 5th
at the Firehouse. Present for that meeting was myself, Suzanne Star, John
Hines and Harold Corn. I sent a statement – I attached a statement to the
zoom invitation. It’s basically laying out that we have changes coming to
the water system. We would like to get people involved to serve on a water
management team. Now, this is separate from the water committee, and
we’ll talk about that a little bit later. The water committee was the one that
was going to try to develop a rate billing structure that we could share with
membership and see if they wanted to go with that.
What the management team is doing, it’s going to be an auxiliary arm of
the Board that will make recommendations on managerial, financial and
technical management of our water systems. So we want to try to recruit
people to be on this management team. They’re independent of the Board
to the point where they will develop recommendations to bring back to the
Board. Right now, John Hines is on that, and I think Keith Rigney had
expressed an interest in working on that, and I hope he still will do that. If
there’s other members of the Board that want to join, that’s fine. We
cannot have more than five members of the Board that will work on this
management team, because if we do, then that will constitute a quorum
and it will have to be a Board meeting. So we don’t want to go past more
than four members on the team. We also want to encourage other people
from the community to get involved with this. So if you know of anybody
who might be interested in participating in this, now is the chance. If you
want to get involved and have a say-so about what’s happening with water,
and the direction that we’re going to take with this, now is the chance for
people to get involved with that.
Does anybody have any issues with the draft statement, because I want to
put it in the newsletter and also post it on the Facebook page. The one
thing that’s lacking in there is who should be contacted if there are
members of the community that want to get involved with this management
team. So I will open the floor for discussion at this point.
Cindy Hines: Paul, I think there should be some kind of application process
for people who are interested in being on the team. Does that make
sense? And we could come up with a list of what we want to know andthey can put it in letter form or we can put it in a PDF that’s fillable, where
we ask certain questions, that sort of thing.
Paul Lisko: Is there a form you have in mind or are we going to have to
draft one?
Cindy Hines: We can draft one. It can be pretty simple, and I’m happy to
do it. I’ll just need to talk to the members of the team, but we’re getting
ready to decide who is going to be on this management team, and I just
think that might be a good way to go about it, to get people’s interest first
and then look at who it is and have a review process and then invite people
to be on the committee, team, whatever.
Ann Cooke: Cindy, if you do do this application, which I think is a very
good idea, as you make the form, think about the criteria that you would be
judging them by, as who gets in, who does not; i.e., you’ve paid all your
association dues is an example versus those who are in arrears. I don’t
mean that has to be a criteria, I’m just using it as an example. But also,
especially with regard to the water, this is something more in a personal
concern. I understand there are individuals who are chronic overusers, in
which case I don’t know if you would want to have them on this particular
committee.
Cindy Hines: I agree, and any of those things that you think would be good
to include, either call me or email me, or something. I would love to have
the ideas to include, and then we’ll send all of the ideas out to the full Board
or we’ll talk about it at an upcoming meeting.
Paul Lisko: Ann, I think those are two excellent criteria to include in there.
I agree with that, because if you have someone who chronically uses
20,000 gallons a month, then they’re going into that with their own agenda
and not with the agenda of working on a team effort. So I think those are
great suggestions. Cindy, is it okay then, for the contact, that I put your
name, your email address down there?
Cindy Hines: Yeah, go ahead and do that; please use the Parks1
@SLPPOA, rather than my personal one.
Paul Lisko: In the meantime, let’s see who we get to sign up for this. We
can work on an application and present it at the March meeting.Do any of the Board members object to the way that this statement is
written? Is there any issue with it that you don’t like and want to have
revised? (Paul read the statement) Do you have an objection to putting it
in the March newsletter and posting it on the Facebook page? That’s all I
have for that.
ACTION ITEMS:
Paul Lisko: First up is Ann on the progress of the committee to develop the
water rate billing structure with RCAC’s help.
John Hines: Paul, this is John and I’m going to speak towards that, instead
of Ann tonight. Ann and I met the other day for a couple of hours and we
hashed out a bunch of issues. Ann has done this stellar work on this,
working with Joe from RCAC. Basically, with Ann’s input and my input, I’m
writing up three options that we’ve come up with for this, and then I’m going
to send it to Paul Rightley, who is also on this rate study committee, to get
his approval. As soon as I get that, then I’m going to present it to the Water
Board for their two cents’ worth. Once that happens, the rate study
committee is pretty well done. That’s where we’re at right now.
Paul Rightley: I will say, thank you, John and Ann, for all the work you are
doing. I will review it as soon as I get it.
Paul Lisko: The whole intent of doing this was so that whatever option the
Water Management Team wants to go with, we can present this to
membership to say, here’s what we have in mind, in terms of a water rate
billing structure. Will a member be able to plug in their water usage
numbers from last month or the month before and get a handle on what it
may cost them on a monthly basis?
John Hines: Yes.
Paul Lisko: That’s exactly where we need to go with this. Can you present
it to the Team on the 19th?John Hines: I’m not going to be here on the 19th, so it’s going to be difficult
for me to present it. I think, unless we run into some hiccups, we can have
it ready to be presented to you by the 19th, it’s just I won’t be there to be
able to do it.
Paul Lisko: It’s not to me; it’s to the Water Management Team. Thank you
all for the work you’re doing on that.
Mary Moore: I’m a little confused on who the water committee is, what are
you speaking of, Paul?
Paul Lisko: The water committee was assigned a couple of months ago.
It’s comprised of Ann Cooke, John Hines and Paul Rightley. They were
assigned to work with Joe Valdez and people who work with him on the
Rural Community Assistance Corporation, to develop a sample water rate
billing structure. What we are working toward is taking water away from the
annual assessment and going to a monthly billing system. Right now your
annual assessment is about $1000 a year. And so, what we’re looking to
do, is whatever the cost of water is on that, let’s say it’s $400, we’ll take
that $400 out of there and the annual assessment will be $600, and
members will be getting billed on a monthly basis for the water that they
use, based upon the algorithm that the water committee comes up with.
There’s nothing set in stone about it. We will have a special meeting to
vote on either remaining as is or going to a monthly billing system.
Mary Moore: Thanks, Paul. I understand it’s just those three people
working with the RCAC.
Paul Lisko: Next, I want to talk a little bit about delivery and installation of
the Intel water tanks to SLP Fire Station 52 for fire suppression. I’m going
to give you a chronology here. I sent an email to Theresa Greeno, the
Sandoval County Emergency Manager on January 11. I didn’t hear
anything and followed up again eight days later. She replied on January 25
and said she’d set up a meeting. Then I received an email and she wants
to set up a meeting on Monday, February 21st, down at the Fire Marshal’soffice, so I’m planning on attending that in person to discuss further on
getting these tanks up here.
I’ve lived in this community since 2014 and there’s been three separate
attempts to get these water tanks up here. Lee Taylor, the La Cueva Chief
indicated he wanted at least 30,000 gallons for structure fires up here,
which will help our ISO rating. Intel is decommissioning the tanks, taking
them down, none of that costs us anything, and then Taylor is getting
approval from Sandoval Fire to trailer transport these – or probably Public
Works to trailer transport these tanks to SLP. Then the only thing we need
to come up with is a crane to unload them. But the other thing I thought of
from a tactical perspective is how are they going to get across the little
bridge by the Rio Vallecitos drainage. That’s just a small, concrete bridge,
and I’m not sure it has the capacity to actually hold a big tractor-trailer
hauling a tank like that, let alone a crane. I put a request in to the New
Mexico National Guard for help with the bridge and getting a crane.
Sent an email to the Fire Adapted people to request a grant to see how
they might be able to assist us with this, in terms of setting up the tanks
and plumbing them. Also, to see what might be available to straighten out
that really sharp turn from High Road to Forest Road 4A to make that
alternate evacuation route more accessible. I heard back from Gabe and
he said they really don’t have the money for those tanks, but I’m going to
pursue that a little bit more. He wasn’t really sure about funding for
straightening out that 90 degree turn uphill onto Forest Road 4A, but I’m
going to talk with him more about that.
The next regular board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at
1830 hours.
Paul Rightley moved to adjourn the meeting; Cindy Hines seconded,
motion carried and meeting adjourned at 8:26 p.m.