June 21, 2022

Sierra Los Pinos Property Owners' Association
Board of Directors Meeting
June 21, 2022, 6:44 P.M.

The meeting was called to order by the President Paul Lisko with the following members present: Keith Rigney, Cindy Hines, Josh Toennis and David Stuedell. John Hines, non-voting member of the Board was present also. Kristi Cross, Jeremy Oepping, Ann Cooke and Paul Rightley were not present.

Guests: Mary Moore, Suzanne Star, Barbara Van Ruyckevelt, Harold Corn and Michele Ryan.

Approval of Agenda: As an added item, Michele Ryan is scheduled to present under New Business and if there’s no objection by anyone, we can move her up so that she doesn’t have to wait throughout the entire meeting. Since no one has objected to that, we will move her up on the agenda.

Approval of Minutes: Cindy Hines moved to approve the minutes of the May 10, 2022 meeting; seconded by Keith Rigney; motion carried.

NEW BUSINESS: Michele Ryan: Thank you for asking me to the meeting this evening. I am a board member with Jemez Valley Animal Amigos. I’ve been doing animal rescue since 2007, and I also work at the CWW Feed Store in San Ysidro, and I live in San Ysidro.

One of my interests is in helping people that go through fires. This last fire was my second fire working with the folks up there, and I learned a lot about what to do for folks who are being evacuated and on the run. So, I just kind of want to explain what’s available. There is this little two pages that I created and sent out to everybody, and it basically breaks down into large animals and small animals.

First, Jemez Valley Animal Amigos is only for small animals. What we can do when there is an emergency and there is an evacuation, is the first thing I do when I get that text or I get that robo call is I run to our sheds in Cañon and I gather up as many crates and cages as I can carry, and I get leashes and collars and stuff like that, and I run to wherever the evacuation area is. And I start setting up and I start talking to people getting out of their cars with animals, and trying to guide them on where to go if they don’t already have a plan.

What I have learned is your area is incredibly well prepared. People know what to do with their animals. It was incredible to me how few animals needed help, or at least what I knew about. So, what you can do, or what your area can do, is you can load your animal up and go to a place where you can make a phone call, and you can call our 888 phone number and leave a message and somebody will call you back if you don’t have a place to take your animal. We have people who call us immediately and say, I can take a dog over here, I can take a pocket pet over here, and they leave their names and phone numbers, and everybody really, really reaches out.

So on the second page, it talks kind of about, you know, what Animal Amigos does, and it has Animal Amigos phone number, which is 888-828-5822, Extension 4, and it has my personal phone number, because I’m lucky, Connie, that owns the feed store down here, is really proactive and allows me to just jump and take care of whatever needs to be done in the case of this kind of emergency.

There is other paperwork and other forms and other little lists of things that people can get from us, and the next time that there is a community meeting – that happens, I think once a year up at the Baptist Church up in La Cueva, I’ll bring all that stuff up. I didn’t go this year. I didn’t realize just how important it should be. So that’s kind of what Animal Amigos does with small animals.

As far as large animals, San Ysidro has a beautiful rodeo arena, and it’s well-built, and it’s got a rodeo arena out in front, and then there’s like 12 small and large areas to put animals in. I spoke with the San Ysidro Marshal, and we just want to invite people, because I had heard that some people didn’t want to evacuate because they had a pet bull or they didn’t know where to take their animals. One lady was told to take her animals into Albuquerque, and there’s no need to do that. If you’re headed out this way, you can bring your animals down to San Ysidro and you can dump – if you’ve got like two trailer loads of horses, you need to dump some off and then go up and get some more, you can dump them off right down here at the Rodeo Arena in San Ysidro and then run up and get the rest of your animals. The Rodeo Arena is very nice. We’ve got water there; all we have to do is bring out water buckets. If there is an extended time that people aren’t able to go home, we’ll get a trailer load of hay or whatever it is that we need to help people.

The only thing that we ask is that when you go in there, make sure all the gates are closed before you dump your animals out. And if you have a horse or something that’s kind of aggressive, doesn’t like anybody but you, you call me and I’ll make a sign to put out there so that nobody gets hurt. I live right across the street from there. Connie lives right around the corner, and CWW Feed has a facility to take care of goats and sheep and people with like a single horse.

This last fire, we had three different families of people with large livestock animals that we were able to take care of just at Connie’s. So people were able to just kind of do what they needed to do, and they didn’t have to worry about their animals. That’s what our goal is, as a community in San Ysidro and at CWW Feed Store.

So, basically, there’s this little thing that I printed out, and there’s not a lot to it. You are more than welcome, and please let your community know that if they want to sit down with us and say, okay, well, I’ve got these animals right here and what do I do, and they want to see the facility, we’re okay with helping people figure out their game plan. The next time they’re headed into Albuquerque, stop and see what the rodeo arena looks like, please do. If you want to stop and talk to the San Ysidro Marshal White, please do. We just want to be helpful. That’s kind of what my goal is here today. That’s it.
Paul Lisko: And that’s a great goal, Michele; thank you so much. Does anybody have any questions for Michele about the program?

Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: This is Barbara Van Ruyckevelt, and I do have a question, Michele. The problem with calling your 888 number is that it if people are evacuating, which will be in a hurry, they can’t wait to have a call back, and I’ve had this problem with Animal Amigos before when I was trying to call for a dog that needed a foster home.

Michele: The way our 800 number works is that it goes to email. And so, when there is an emergency, that’s why I wrote my phone number down below there, so that I can answer. There’s nothing I can do to change that, it’s just the way that works. It is all volunteers and, unfortunately, the way that system goes is it goes to people’s email. So it’s up to them to check their emails. There is no notifications that we get. There’s going to be a board meeting and we can ask that when there is some sort of an emergency, like if there’s another fire, that whoever handles extension 4, that they check their emails really regular. That would be something in our wheelhouse, I believe.

Paul Lisko: Any other questions for Michele?

Cindy Hines: Paul, this is Cindy. I don’t really have any questions, but I think what I’d like to offer to do is include some of the information that Michele provided to us in our next newsletter.

Michele: That would be great and I can get you even more if you wanted.

Cindy Hines: I’ll look at that and then I’ll reach out to you if we need to fill in or we need a little extra information. And I was thinking too that we might make copies for the annual meeting in case we have actual people present that we could just hand them out.

Paul Lisko: Michele, thank you very much for being here and making the presentation.
Since we’ve started the meeting, we have had a couple of other people show up: I see one listed here as Ann and Brad; is that Ann Cooke?

Ann Cooke: Yes, it’s me.

Paul: And also Sandra Partridge has shown up. Thank you, Sandra, for being here.

OFFICER REPORTS:
PRESIDENT (Paul Lisko):

The first thing I want to talk about was the sale of four lots at the top of High Road was terminated on May 20th. The buyers declined to sign the road maintenance agreement. The sale fell through primarily because the prospective owners were informed that they would not be allowed to construct a gate across High Road. That seemed to be their sticking point. They also declined to sign the road maintenance agreement prior to closing. Had the sale gone through without first executing the RMA, this would have then left the Association in the untenable position of either having to maintain High Road or negotiating with the new owners to not maintain it on a quid pro quo basis. In order to prevent the sale from going forward without the RMA in place, the Association’s attorney filed a notice of intent to place a lien on each of the four lots owned by Jemez Mountain Development for unpaid assessments going back to November 2020. This was really the only thing we could do to prevent that sale from going forward without the RMA being signed. However, I want you to keep in mind that the Association has and will continue to waive those past due assessments until such time as any or all of those four lots eventually sell. So, in other words, Jemez Mountain Development joined the Association in November of 2020 just in order to square things up so that they could sell a lot within the Association to LANET As you remember LANET did sign a road maintenance agreement. So, again, per the attorney, the only leverage that we had was to say that we were filing a notice of potential lien to assure that the RMA was signed before closing. So I want to make this really clear.

Again, I am resigning from my position, but I want to make sure that everybody understands that the reason why we need to get that road maintenance agreement signed prior to these folks buying any of the lots was if we don’t, then we basically, you know, have to take on the burden of maintaining High Road, which we don’t want to do. So, the trade-off there is they get to have those lots without being charged for water, since we’re not providing them with water. The only thing that they are going to be paying as far as roads is the cost of traversing SLPPOA roads up to the point of High Road. So it’s very important that if it comes around again, that the road maintenance agreement has to be in place prior to those lots being sold.

Does anybody have any questions about that, in particular?

I drafted 16 past-due account letters at the end of May, and I emailed them as attachments to Jeremy. Of these 16 past-due notices, two were for sizable, multiple delinquencies over years; 13 were for member owners in arrears for their annual assessments for only the most recent year; and each has been instructed to pay no later than July 1st.

Next, I attended the Water Management Team meetings on May 25th and June 11th. Typically, I’d wait until John had his report under committee reports for water, but I wanted to just have him address anything that was significant in his mind with respect to those meetings, and then I can follow up with what I had, and then Keith also had something. So, John, can you kind of fill us in on those?

John Hines: The main thing that came up was the Management Team thinks – decided that possibly I should get a bid from David Salazar to replace the line coming down the hill from up by Aztec – or San Juan, excuse me, down to Vallecito Meadows. So I needed to get the Board’s approval on the Management Team’s recommendation that I do go for that bid proposal. That’s part of the System 1 line that has not been replaced yet, and so we would kind of be filling in that gap. It has been replaced on both of sides of it, but that one piece hasn’t been. So, I just need the Board’s permission to go ahead and request that proposal.

Other than that, there were some issues brought up about the Management Team’s goals and missions and stuff, and I’ll let Paul talk about that more than me, because it’s more politics than it was actual water works.

Ann Cooke moved that John be given approval for requesting the proposal from Salazar to replace the line between San Juan and Ashley Lane. Keith Rigney seconded the motion and, there being no opposition, the motion carried.

Paul Lisko: The only thing I was going to mention there as far as the Water Management Team meeting of May 25th, there was also a primary focus on post-fire considerations regarding generators and evacuations, to track down Circuit Rider David Romero to track down possible locations for having contractor David Salazar excavate for leaks. Mention was made of perhaps investigating services of another firm, besides HOAMCO, as it has shown significant delays in paying our contractors in the past.

In the June 11th meeting, it was learned that David Salazar was unable to expose any leaks during excavation of Black Bear Park, per Mr. Romero’s recommendation. He seemed to think that there was a large leak there based in that grassy area that was on the north end of the park, but Salazar didn’t find anything there.

The other thing they mentioned was there was unauthorized drafting of water by US Forest Service contractors and crew from the flush valve at the junction of Forest Service Road 10 and Los Griegos. I brought this to the attention of the Cerro Pelado Fire IC for them to cease and desist. What it turned out to be – this was on June 5th, which was a Sunday – and luckily Suzanne was there and saw these folks. First of all, there was a red type six engine, which was a brush truck that was pulling water from there, and she talked to them, and they gave her some excuse and then took off. Then there was a large green, regular Forest Service engine that was there, also drafting water, but by the time that John and I got there, they had already taken off. So we went looking for them, we couldn’t find them, but we did contact some other Forest Service personnel, they gave me the phone number for the Public Information Officer for the Cerro Pelado Fire. I contacted him. He, in turn, contacted the IC for the fire, who called me, and I gave him the information. He brought it up at the morning briefing and then the people in the red brush truck, they were contractors from Oregon, and he let them go. He said, you can’t be doing that. Basically, what the IC told me was that they were just being lazy. They had another place closer to La Cueva that they were supposed to be drafting water from, and they didn’t. So he just canned them and told them to go home.
Those were contractors. So the other big green truck was a little more problematic, and the IC was trying to tell me it wasn’t one of theirs, it might have been something to do with the Jemez Mountain Electric Co-op setting up poles up there in the forest. So I was actually going to go out of my way and call the manager of the Jemez Mountain Electric Co-op, and then on Thursday morning, I saw, again, a red brush truck pass by. Actually, the big green engine went by first, and it was followed by the smaller red brush truck. I thought, man, this is too coincidental. So I went down there and, sure enough, that big green engine was parked right next to the flush valve, and my impression was they were just waiting until the coast was clear and they were going to hook up to it. I kind of confronted them and got their names and found out who it was that told them they could do that. Then I called back to the Public Information Officer and told him about it. So what this points up is that at some point, we need to establish a memorandum of understanding for potential drafting, especially from potable water. That’s a little much, and I think when I spoke to John, and correct me if I’m wrong, you had mentioned something about maybe getting something to place over that flush valve there and the one on Hovenweep, and securing it so that people couldn’t do that again. Is that my understanding?

John Hines: Yes. When I was at the conference last week, I talked to two hydrant manufacturers, and I’ve got their names and numbers. They actually have locking devices that we could order. All I have to do is get the serial number and take a picture of it and send it to them so they can see if they can match locking devices for those flushing hydrants. So that’s in the works right now.

Paul Lisko: Just keep us abreast of that and once you get pricing, because we’re going to need two, please let the Board know.

The next item, I gave the okay to John for Salazar’s estimate to dig for leaks that were identified by David Romero. His bid was for $1,276.50, and it would be covered by the Reserve Account, because we’re trying to track down leaks. We weren’t successful with that endeavor; however, Salazar is going to be doing some other work for us, as well.

John Hines: Paul, David is scheduled to dig at the other two places that David Romero identified, and they’re on Mimbres. And we’re scheduled to dig Friday at 9:00, because David has been tied up with another job in Los Alamos and that was the earliest available time.
Paul Lisko: And has he submitted a bid for that?

John Hines: It’s the same price as the other one.

Paul Lisko: In other words, it’s not covered by that initial $1300 bid, it’s an additional $1300?

John Hines: Correct. It’s like each hole he digs is $1300.

Paul Lisko: So, if we have two holes to dig, we’re talking $2600; is that correct?

John Hines: Correct.

Paul Lisko: And my understanding is these are leaks out of the old fire stands that are leaking; is that correct?

John Hines: Yes. One of them has reportedly been disconnected, but he heard water running through it, and the other one is not disconnected and he heard water running through it. So, it could be leaking where the disconnect was made or whatever; we don’t know until we dig it up.

Paul Lisko: We have some time here, I’m going to open this up for approval by the Board. So it’s roughly just under $2600 for David Salazar to dig up these two places identified by Circuit Rider Romero, where he has assessed that there are leaks. I will entertain a motion from the Board to go ahead and expend these funds from the Reserve Account.

Keith Rigney moved to allow David Salazar to dig two more holes for an
estimated price of $2600. The motion was seconded by David Stuedell and, with no opposition, the motion carried.

Paul Lisko: Next on my list, I signed and submitted a letter May 28th to retain the Turner Law Office as our attorney. Their original letter that was eventually emailed to us was dated March 30th. Rather than email, they mailed it to some address in Albuquerque, some PO Box 6790, which I assume is some old address for the Association. Of course, we never got that. The legal secretary wrote to me and said, hey, the deadline for this was like May 30th, since they sent it out March 30th. And I said I didn’t know anything about it. I asked Jeremy, and he hadn’t seen anything. When I finally looked at the heading of the letter, I realized that address was wrong, but I did receive it as an email attachment. I signed it, sent it in to continue to have Turner Law Office as our legal representative, and I advised the legal secretary to never again use that address to mail us anything.

I got an email from Turner Law Office on June 7th inquiring on the intent to place liens on Jemez Development on the lots in Unit 6. So, as I mentioned previously, on May 18th, the Association attorney filed a notice of intent to lien on the four lots owned by Jemez Mountain Development in order to protect the interests of the Association. Now, no liens were actually ever filed, because the prospective buyers withdrew from the purchase. However, Jemez Mountain Development had their attorney contact ours to clarify the rights of the Association to assess past-due fees and place liens on these lots to collect the fees. At this time, Turner Law Office is gathering information to send a reply to them. Once again, this was just expedient. It was the only way that we had to stop the sale from going forward without the road maintenance agreement in place. It’s what the attorney had said that we needed to do, and so now he’s basically explaining to them that we’re not going to charge them. Again, it’s clear, we’re not going to charge them for grandfathered in, we’re not going to charge them for any past-due amounts going back to November. And the only reason why this was brought in, we had no other way. The only way we could take that lien, according to the way the by-laws were written, is we had to go to the current owner, not the person who was purchasing the land, so that’s the way it came down. But, anyway, our attorney is following up with that, and as soon as he gets done with that, he will pass along that information.

Number viii: Board members inspected High Road, the turn onto Forest Road 4AM on June 12th, and then I emailed Brian Riley about this on 6/14. I kind of laid out for him what were the things that we saw up there. The people that were up there, besides myself, were Keith and Josh and David and Cindy, and then we also had both adjacent neighbors, which would be Shawn Weary and Kevin Stephens, and they were all there to look at it and neither of the adjacent landowners were opposed to getting this done. What we, as Board members, talked about and I shared with Brian Riley in an email was that the first thing we want to do is take down the Ponderosa pine that was there at the very top of the hill, and then maybe pare down some of that hillside as you go through the gate, to kind of smooth it out and make that turn not quite so steep. And then take out the aluminum cattle gate that’s there and replace it with a standard Forest Service pipe gate, and then the final thing we talked about was either install that cattle guard or get it out of there, because it’s not really serving any purpose the way it’s set up. So I sent all of that to Brian in an email, and then for the last – I’ve written him twice now, saying is the engineer okay with this, and I told him I’m also willing to send along a formal letter specifically addressed to the engineer, just to let me know. And so far that hasn’t been resolved, but I did share with them the information that the Board members had talked about with the adjacent landowners, and that we are okay with them bringing in a bulldozer to do that work. Right now, it’s still pending.

Number ix: I did submit my notice of resignation, per the by-laws, to the secretary on June 12th. Since Kristi is not here, one of the things that needs to happen – a couple of things that need to happen, is that right now my signature is on the checks, so somehow, some way, somebody has got to remove that, whoever is going to sign the checks, so that my name is not on there. There other things is, is right now if you send an email to the president1@slppoa.org, it defaults to my email. So that’s got to be fixed with the webmaster at some point. Then the other thing, the Zoom account that we’re all sharing here, it’s paid up until November 6th, so you can continue having these zoom meetings until then, but I paid for that out of my personal credit card, and I was reimbursed by the Association. So I’m going to leave it in place as it is now. Keith has a way to access that Zoom account, and it will stay in place until November, after which time somebody else is going to have to step up and start charging it on their behalf.

The last thing I have, I was invited on May 23rd by Martha Graham, who is the Source Water Protection Specialist with the New Mexico Rural Water Association to attend their annual conference in Albuquerque, to serve on a panel addressing water systems and wildfire and, as it was based on the recent experience gained from the Cerro Pelado fire, I agreed to be on this panel. I would entertain a motion to be reimbursed for mileage. It was 146.8 round trip miles at .585 cents a mile, and that totals $85.88, and then the meal I had down there was for $18.17. That’s a total of $104.05.

Josh Toennis moved that Paul be reimbursed $104.05 for participation in the New Mexico Rural Water Association annual conference; it was seconded by David Stuedell and, there being no opposition, the motion carried.
VICE PRESIDENT (Keith Rigney):

I am going to make this short and sweet, hopefully. My first thing on the agenda, we have tried in the past to get money outsourced and/or pulled from special assessments, or whatever we have tried to fix our water system. That made me think if we can’t outsource, maybe we need to look within, and I started looking at our other budgets to see what we could possibly pull from. So I wanted to throw out the option, if there was a possibility that we could steal, not borrow, some of the road budget towards fixing our leaks. We live in the mountains, personal opinion, we have bad roads. They will most likely always be bad. We get it graded and I feel like it’s good for a couple of weeks and then it’s bad again. And then we hit winter and it’s bad, and then it’s all year round it’s bad. And I don’t know, I’m not saying we don’t do roads at all, there are definitely power lines coming up in areas, red tape, yellow tape, you name it. We can definitely do some fill in a few spots. We could probably, instead of doing two loads of fill, we could do upwards of five loads of fill on these bad areas and get those brought back up to a reasonable state in this time, but we could still save, maybe even $5,000, and put that towards water. We just approved another bill for water for $2600. So, I wanted to throw out the idea of do we think it’s an option to start moving budget income?

Ann Cooke: I have an opinion regarding budgets. My understanding of the budget is that it is a guess for the coming year. My opinion is if you wish to spend over the budget for water, fixing things for the water, we just need to authorize it out of the contingency funds and do so, but I would not recommend rearranging the budget. If you want to rearrange the budget for next year, that’s the time to do it, for next year, and say you’re going to spend less on roads. All this is saying that in December, when we approved the budget, we guessed wrong, and I don’t think we need to do that at this time, is rearrange things.

Cindy Hines: I agree with Ann, I don’t think we should rearrange or transfer funds from one budget item to another. We have a reserve fund and, as long as we have a reserve fund, we need to use it, because that’s what it’s there for. Obviously, this is my opinion, but if we want to look to the future and try to get any kind of grant monies from anybody, they’re not going to give it to us when they look at our budget and see that we have 100-some thousand in a reserve account. I mean, they’re not going to even consider it. So, if there are things that we would like to spend this year on water, we should look at using some of the reserve fund.

Ann Cooke: And I would add, if Roads doesn’t spend it, that’s wonderful, they don’t need to, but I don’t think you should impose upon them that they shouldn’t do what they’re planning to do.

Paul Lisko: David, do you want to weigh in on this?

David Stuedell: Personally, I think that we have a good thing going with the roads. Obviously, it’s a good chunk of change. The roads are actually in pretty good shape compared to when I got there six years ago or so. We basically have a fixed amount that’s bid by Leeder for road maintenance, so we don’t have a lot of leeway on it. Either we do the roads or we don’t and we can cut back on fill, which we could save a few thousand on that, but then that just means that those spots where it needs fill don’t get it. So personally, obviously, I would say we should just go ahead with what we had proposed for the roads for this year. I’ve been holding off signing that agreement, because we had this on the agenda. So we need to get on the schedule with Leeder as far as doing the roads in August. If we want to put off the roads for this year, I mean, that’s the Board’s decision and we could do that and that would save $40,000. They probably could go for another year; that’s an option. But we either do it or we don’t do it, it’s not really an in-between thing. That’s all I have.

Paul Lisko: Thank you, David.

Keith: I just wanted to throw the idea out there, and I understand we do have a reserve fund. I picture reserve as emergency funds, if we have a catastrophic leak or something along those lines, not for neglect of 20 years of maintenance. I think we’re going to eat through that very fast. If we want to continue 1,000 feet of pipe at a rough estimate of $33, that’s going to be 33 grand-plus just to do 1,000 feet of pipe a year, and we’re going to eat through that in three years. And I know when I first started, we had to do an analysis of our treasury and see how much money, and I remember thinking back then that we didn’t even have – according to whatever it was back then, we didn’t even have enough money in reserves right now, as in we are supposed to have a certain amount in there and we were short. So that’s why I’m trying to avoid that. I want to get it budgeted and fixed that way. So if the consensus is we want roads done, we’ll get roads done. It was just an idea, because we do have a 50 percent main leak and we’re not getting any closer to getting that down. But I’m sure we can approve roads later.

I’ll move on to my next subject. We already touched on this, so I will make it brief. I attended the first Water Management meeting – my first – and it was very apparent to me and some people who attended that the Board has not stayed focused on what goals and priorities we have, whether that is roads, whether that is fixing our leaks, whether that is six-inch pipes main, we have not stayed focused and I think we need to decide on a plan of what we’re doing and we need to stay focused on it. If we would have done plans ten years ago, we probably wouldn’t be in the situation that we’re in. None of us were here, probably, but I want to set a plan, and I don’t know how we do that, or how we correct that, but I’m just putting that in people’s minds so we can talk about that in the future. I’m not saying let’s settle it now, I’m saying let’s put that on the agenda next month with your ideas and we’ll figure it out. That’s all I have.

Paul Lisko: The one thing that you had there on your list that I thought was important was setting the priority for either installing six-inch pipe or continue fixing leaks with four-inch pipe. The people who attended the
Water Management Team meeting were of the mind that we continue fixing the leaks with four-inch pipe. The impression that I got was that if that proved not to be as productive for whatever reason, then we may want to go to six-inch and just start from the pump side and just replace the line with six-inch line. One of the things that I mentioned was that’s a standard, and it was said well, that’s not our standard. Well, okay, but that’s the standard that every water system is going to, and if you want to have fire hydrants in the system, then you need to go with a six-inch line. It’s also going to improve capacity. Again, what the team had recommended was that we continue with replacing the four-inch pipe at 1,000 feet a year. But, again, if it doesn’t improve, if it doesn’t get past that 50 percent mark, at some point we need to stop and re-evaluate and maybe at that time we would say, okay, let’s abandon this four-inch line and go with the six-inch. That’s the way that I understood it. Is that the understanding that you had, Keith?

Keith: Kind of, in the sense there is a lot of logistics issues in going to six-inch. Our tanks are not big enough to fulfill six-inch. Yes, you gain capacity in the six-inch itself, but even if we go to six-inch lines and then put fire hydrants up, we still don’t meet regulations because our tanks are too small. So that opens up a whole other can of worms of logistics that we’re not focused on right now. We’re focused on leaks and only leaks. Personal opinion, but that was what I came to as a consensus.

John Hines: When I was at the conference, I talked to five different engineering firms and three different operators, and asked them their opinion about the four-inch and the six-inch, and I basically explained we’d be putting six-inch in the middle of our four-inch lines, that we wouldn’t be putting hydrants on them presently. If we did, we’d have to bag them, because we don’t have a six-inch line going to the tank and we’d collapse our main. They said we would be stupid not to put in the six-inch. And so I asked prices, and for valves, the difference between a four-inch valve and a six-inch valve was $200. The difference between a per-foot between four-inch and six-inch was two to three dollars. They said because the cost of putting in new lines is excavation, not in materials, and they said you would be stupid not to put in the six-inch, even if you just have six-inch in between two pieces of four-inch for now, that’s a six-inch piece you’re not going to have to replace when you decide to go ahead and replace all the four-inch with six-inch. So they were unanimously of the opinion that we should put in six-inch, even if it costs a little more money to do it, because in the long run it’s never going to be cheaper and we’re just going to be throwing good money after bad if we don’t. That’s what I got from them.

As far as the tanks go, we have enough water in our tanks to supply a hydrant. The problem is, we will be draining our tanks if we have to fight a structure fire, but the tanks can recover too. So it’s not like we can’t run a hydrant off of our tanks, it’s just that we don’t have the capacity. Another advantage to having the six-inch is we’ll actually be quadrupling our volume of water we actually have, if we have six-inch versus four-inch. So, we’d have much more water in our system besides the tanks in the six-inch pipe. That’s all I have to say.

Ann Cooke: So, John, could you modify, when you go out to get that proposal from Salazar, will you please ask him for six-inch line in that strip, especially between San Juan and Ashley Lane.

John Hines: Definitely. I’ll get two bids from him.

Ann Cooke: And I agree, especially that particular section, there’s not been hooked into it, and it would be one less section of line that we would need to replace later.

Suzanne Star: I just wanted to say that I would like to see you at least acknowledge the fact that Keith does have an idea here, and that means that we need to have a plan. Just going ahead and arbitrarily starting to put six-inch lines some places and in between four-inch lines, I think where he was going with this – at least I think – we just need a plan, and I don’t see that there’s any big problem with trying to get this plan going, especially for the next Board, which is only a couple of months away, and stick with it. Like he said, focus on a plan, and then we go forward.

Cindy Hines: My understanding of the Water Management Team is we are looking to them somewhat to come up with a plan and bring it to the Board. Am I incorrect about that?
Suzanne Star: You’re exactly right. This is something that the Water Management Team can take on, and we can go ahead and produce a draft for the Board to look at, and let the Board make a decision from that point or make modifications and send it back to the Water Management Team. That’s what we’re all about, so the Board doesn’t have to do all this work themselves, and I think that’s where we’re trying to focus at this point, so we can do it.

Paul Lisko: Any further discussion on this?

SECRETARY (Kristi Cross):

Paul Lisko: Kristi is not here. I already mentioned about the issues to resolve with my resignation, being the check endorsement and the default email, and I hadn’t heard any revisions to the welcome packet that she was working on. I did get something from her to update and revise the contact list of service providers. She pulled a lot of it off of Jemez Chat. I let her know – I kind of edited it a little bit as to who is still available, who still does some of the services that she was going to put out on this listing and make available to members of SLP. But she’s not here, so I don’t know what the final result of that will be.

TREASURER (Jeremy Oepping):

Paul Lisko: Jeremy is not here, but he has already submitted the HOAMCO financial statement in his report, which is dated June 14th.

The balance in accounts as of May 31, 2022:

Operating Account: $165,746.52
Reserve Account: $103,150.56

As of May 31st, we have 19 delinquent accounts. That total is $24,586.65. This is an increase of $576.76 from last month. He mentioned that I had drafted and he, the treasurer, had sent a reminder via certified mail to all delinquent property owners on May 23rd. The treasurer will work with the attorney and HOAMCO for liens to be filed per SLPPOA lien policy on any accounts exceeding $500 after July 1st. There were two property owners who are thousands of dollars in arrears, not just one year. Then there was one person who had made partial payment of their annual fees, but needed to complete the rest, but that amount was below $500. Then you had 13 member/owners who had not paid their current dues, which were assessed in January.

The May amount of $666.67 was transferred to Reserves during the month.

There were no changes in property ownership in May.

Jeremy is requesting reimbursement in the amount of $112.34. This covers postage and a printer cartridge. Ann Cooke moved to reimburse Jeremy $112.34; seconded by Cindy, and, there being no opposition, the motion carried.

The last thing on Jeremy’s items, which actually dovetails into the next section, he wanted to remind everyone that he has no intention of running for re-election at the annual membership meeting in September.

This brings us to the Hot Topics, and first up is going to be Keith expressing concern regarding four Board positions being vacated by September’s annual meeting.

HOT TOPICS:

Keith Rigney: I would like to correct that, it’s actually five. Kristi will not be continuing either. So we have a board of nine, and we will now have four. I wanted to point out that we have a retention issue for various reasons, various parts of life, but I would like to have the ability to either make a Facebook post or send out letters or something, because we need to get the public thinking about joining the Board. As you all know, if we don’t have four, we won’t be able to do any official business, which means we won’t be able to do anything, period. So I don’t know if you all have thoughts on this, but it’s not good.

Paul Lisko: Along those lines, I wanted to review the by-laws, which addresses this. The first one is Article II, Section 4, and it talks about the notice of meetings.

Written notice of each meeting of the members shall be given by, or at the discretion of, the Secretary or person authorized to call the meeting, by mailing a copy of such notice at least fifteen (15) days before such meeting to each member, addressed to the members address last appearing on the books of the Association, or supplied by such member to the Association for the purpose of notice. Such notice shall specify the place, day and hour of the meeting, ballots when used or a list of nominees and, in the case of a special meeting, the purpose of the meeting.

So, what I tried to do in the past was I always tried to get the notice mailed – and, again, it’s archaic. Because the way the bylaws are written, we have to go with actual mail, like US Postal Service mail, of these notices. Since the annual meeting is held on the second Saturday of September, September 10th, what I have done in the past is try to make sure that we get those out by the end of July, no later than mid-August. What that does, instead of doing fifteen days, it gives us a little bit more leeway to get those out. It also gives people a chance to get the letter, especially if there is a ballot in there and they want to mail it in, they’ve got some turnaround time to get that in there as well.

The other thing I’m going to read here is Article IV, Nomination and Election:

Nomination for election to the Board of Directors shall be made by a Nominating Committee.
Nominations may also be made from the floor at the annual meeting. The Nominating Committee shall consist of a Chairman, who shall be a member of the Board of Directors, and two (2) or more members of the Association who are not on the Board of Directors. The Nominating Committee shall be appointed by the Board of Directors prior to each annual meeting of the members, to serve until the close of the annual meeting. The Nominating Committee shall make as many nominations for election to the Board of Directors as it shall in its discretion determine, but not less than the number of vacancies that are to be filled. The Nominating Committee shall provide a written list of nominees prior to or simultaneously with the notice of the annual meeting or else all nominations shall be made from the floor.

Now, the problem that we’ve had with nominations from the floor, because of Covid, we haven’t had a typical, annual meeting. So one of the things that I was able to do, since it was all over Zoom, is prior to reading the ballots, there should be a motion made during the Zoom meeting that someone says, hey, I want to nominate so-and-so from the floor, especially if they haven’t been chosen by the nominating committee, and that will be good enough, if it’s seconded, that somebody has been nominated during that Zoom meeting. So, when the votes are actually counted at the Fire Station afterwards, if somebody has voted for that person, or more than one person has voted for that nominee, then those votes will count. But unless there’s somebody who makes that motion from the floor, we have had it before where someone says, I want so-and-so to be on there. Yeah, okay, well, you needed to nominate them from the floor, and that did not happen. So, at this point, with the combination of those two things, what we have to do is the nominating committee has got to come up with people that they can approach to maybe serve on the Board.

And I was thinking kind of long and hard about this, and I came up with one name that he may be amenable to it, his name is Bill Stellwag, and Bill was actually one of the folks that decided to count votes last time, and just new to the area, and I think that he may be somebody that we can approach – the nominating committee can approach to see if he might be willing to serve. Another person that I thought of that has in the past shown some interest in this, in the way that we run things, is Terry Stright, and Terry lives on Hovenweep just between Jack Nyhan and Pete Veverka, so he might be another person that the nominating committee can reach out to. Really, there wasn’t anybody else that readily came to mind. But, again, if we are going to fill – like Keith was saying, we can’t function with just four people. You don’t even meet a quorum then. So, I guess what I’m trying to establish here at this point is to make a nominating committee. Who can we get to make up a nominating committee and approach these people?

Suzanne Star: Question, please? Is this annual meeting now going to be Zoom, or is it going to now go to being a face-to-face down at the fire station?

Paul Lisko: I don’t know the answer to that. I know that people have – they actually like the Zoom platform, and that was one of the reasons that we maintained it. I don’t know the answer to that. I mean, that’s pretty much one of the things that’s going to have to be determined by this nominating committee, I would think, as to how the election is going to be handled.

Suzanne Star: Could it be determined by the Board right now, rather than the nominating committee?

Paul Lisko: I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question. What was it again?

Suzanne Star: I was going to say, couldn’t the Board make a decision on that, either this month or next month, to have a face-to-face? The reason that I’m making this comment is because the Water Management Team meets face-to-face, and I think that most of us that are on the Team, that have met, find that the face-to-face is working a little bit better. There’s a lot to be said for the Zoom, for all the people who are outside of this Association. It’s been a great thing. And I know that Covid is still hanging around, and we still have problems, but I think it’s possibly time that the Board starts thinking about the fact that they need to start getting the group together physically, in order to get more cooperation. Because it’s really easy to sit on a sofa and listen to a Zoom meeting. So that’s the reason I’m suggesting maybe the Board ought to think about moving back – at least starting at the September meeting, moving back into face-to-face meetings, where people can circulate amongst their own residents. I mean, a lot of us now don’t see anybody anymore, because we do this by Zoom. Just a thought. I think it might be worthwhile.

Paul Lisko: I agree with you. I think that is an excellent suggestion. One of the things that I was trying to facilitate for last year’s annual meeting was to have a combination Zoom and in-person meeting. Now, in order to make that happen, it has to be someplace where we can access the internet. Well, we don’t have that at Station 52 here in SLP, but I did talk to Lee Taylor about having it – and, again, there’s nothing – if you look at the bylaws, there’s nothing that says the meeting has to be at this fire department. So I talked to Lee Taylor about, perhaps, doing it at Station 51, which is in La Cueva, and he was tentatively okay with it, and then either Delta or Omicron or one of those other variants hit, and it came back from Sandoval County that said, no, the only people that are going to be allowed in the fire station, because of that, are going to be firefighters. So they kind of put the kibosh on us having that combination meeting.

The other thing that I did was to try and facilitate both a Zoom and a combination Zoom and in-person meeting was to see if the Baptist Church in La Cueva might have been available for that; and, as I recall, they had some other event scheduled for that same day, so they could not allow it. So, that could be one thing that the nominating committee, which is comprised of one Board member and two other Association or SLPPOA member/owners, that’s something they could pursue in asking those questions of either Lee Taylor or Eric Larson with the church. I agree with you Suzanne, I think it would be advantageous to do that. The other thing to keep in mind is that some people, who don’t live in the area, prefer doing the Zoom, but this would actually be beneficial to both.

So, again, we need a Board member who is going to be willing to step up and run the nominating committee. Who is that going to be?

** From 1:31:15.1 to 1:31:52.2 (Can’t hear any actual words) **

Keith Rigney: Obviously it’s the middle of the day, so while we’re on Hot Topics, I would like to say the Amburgeys, the very first house on your right coming down Forest Road 10 is having a 4th of July party, and maybe we can set up a nominating committee then. I don’t know, but at least we can get people together. It’s from 12 to 3; anybody who wants to show up, show up, bring food, bring your own beer, do what you want, just get the community together.

Paul Lisko: That’s an excellent suggestion, since there will be a number of people there, and this topic can be brought up at that time, and there’s still going to be plenty of time to try and get a nominating committee together, so that’s an excellent suggestion. Anybody else have any ideas?

Ann Cooke: Don’t we have a new internet provider in the Association, in which case maybe we should explore getting internet.

Keith Rigney: I think that’s a good idea.

Paul Lisko: As I recall, we were trying to get that set up with LANET and they had suggested putting a tower on top of the fire house, which would also help us with the Levelcon readings in the tanks, and Lee Taylor nixed that idea. If we follow it around this time, where perhaps the Association shares the cost of the internet with the fire department, that’s a pretty good suggestion, Ann, and it may be able to be worked out this time around.

I want to move on here. The next thing I have for hot topics is reviewing the Water Management Team mission statement and goals. I did send you a highlighted copy of the report that was drafted by Suzanne for the June 11th meeting. I want to go back to this mission statement that we came up with back in February and the mission statement for the Water Management Team is to improve the system to meet our future obligations of supply and delivery of safe drinking water and enhance property values. To me, that is short, simple and to the point. There was talk at this last meeting of changing that up. I don’t see any need to change that up. And the reason why there was talk about changing it up was to include the potential installation of the two 25,000 gallon water tanks from Intel. That, in my mind, is beyond the scope of the Water Management Team, and I said as much at that meeting, and it’s highlighted there. The other thing that I highlighted on that page was Rigney indicated the Board could use more help, and that the goals of the Water Management Team should be revisited and reprioritized. Again, being there for one meeting and wanting to revise this stuff, I have an issue with that.

Now, I completely understand that given all the people who have resigned from the Board or not going to be running again, it leaves us in a bind. But what we have to keep in mind is that the Water Management Team is not – is not – a decision-making entity. It is an advisory group only, and takes that information back to the Board. There is no way that we should be able to acquiesce and go yes, we’re going to turn this all over to them to run this information on water. That gets us to a very shady place, and I’m not willing to be there. So the one thing I want to let you know, is even though I’m not going to be serving on the Board anymore, I will continue serving on the Water Management Team. Again, the original goals of that, which I have also highlighted here is to remove the water cost out of the annual assessment, pursue a preliminary engineering report to identify and priority task for upgrades, which Suzanne just mentioned is something that we need to continue doing. Improve community relations through more proactive communication and through different social media sites, newsletters, and then develop a narrative on our infrastructure issues and costs to educate the members.

Rigney commented that the Water Management Team reassess the original goals and that the goal of remove water costs out of the annual assessment be placed as a low priority item. The reason why I bring this up is that I’m totally opposed to that. There’s a couple of reasons why, and I’m going to lay those out for you.

First of all, it doesn’t matter – again, I’ve mentioned this before. It doesn’t matter if you want to go to a mutual domestic, to a water co-op, to leave things as they are and apply for low-interest loans, you can’t do any of that until this organization shows that it can – that it has its expenditures on water and it also has its revenue that it takes in. Unless you can establish that, that fiscal responsibility, that financial status, you don’t qualify for anything. And let me tell you where this became – I just want to share this with you, because this became really important to me. I don’t know if many of you know this or not, but I actually applied for a job and got hired two months ago. I am now the Assistant Manager of the Ponderosa Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association. I will tell you the reason why I did that initially was because I was promoting that as a way to go, and other people were like, no, that’s not the way to go. But I wanted to become more knowledgeable about the way that those things operated, those mutual domestics operated, so if we ever got to a point where we are talking about it, I could speak knowledgeably about the ins and outs and how this stuff functions.

Now, I will tell you that what has been surprising to me. Think about the Cerro Pelado fire. We had the burned earth emergency response team that comes out after a fire and assesses how much of a watershed has been burned. Now, the watershed for Ponderosa, and they don’t have surface wells, they have a collection gallery that’s set up with a spring up in Paliza Canyon. And 17 percent of their watershed was burned, which was better than the watershed going over to Cochita, because 55 percent of their watershed was burned.

But here’s the interesting thing. I was able to identify some funding, and some other things actually to improve the size of their water collection through an Army Corps of Engineers program. They also have something through the Natural Resources Conservation Service called emergency watershed protection, that money was available. The only thing was, was that money, you could apply for it, but it might be six months down the road.

But then I found out that there was money that the State already has, that’s called – it’s under ARPO, which is the American Recovery Plan Act, which was signed by Biden back in February. If you remember, there was like 350 trillion dollars set aside for that, and the State still has that money. I found out now that I’m going to be getting a call from the Governor’s office in the next couple of days to talk about getting that money applied to Ponderosa. I’ve been working there two months and I’m in the thick of things with trying to get them the funds. And what became really clear to me was what the hell would have happened if, instead of that fire turning away from SLP, if it had come right down the center of SLP, burned a bunch of houses and destroyed the water infrastructure. Where would we be? We would be stuck. That $103,000 that you’ve got set aside in the Reserve Account, that’s not going to cover half of what would need to be done to bring the infrastructure back up to where it needs to be.

So what I am trying to impress upon you is that it’s important, it’s very important that we get water removed from the annual assessment and make it so that it’s a monthly fee based on a tiered system. The other good thing about that, and I’m throwing this out from a very humanistic point of view, I’ve already mentioned a couple of times that we’ve got people who live in this community that haven’t been able to pay their annual assessments. I’m sure it’s not because they don’t want to, I’m sure it’s because they just don’t have the money, or inflation is burying them, or they’ve lost something as far as jobs or some other way to effectively have liquid assets they can apply to that.

So, in my mind, that 10 percent of people that haven’t been able to pay their annual dues, hey, if I were to go to them and say, we have a deal where, instead of you paying $996 upfront, and now you haven’t paid it, and now you’re stuck with not only the $996, but now you’re going to be assessed penalties for not having paid it in the first place; instead of that, how about this, how about we charge you $625 upfront, you pay that in January, and then everything else; 30 or 35 bucks is going to be your monthly water billing, provided that you’re not using excess amounts of water. And really, the only people that are going to get stuck – like if you saw that email from Harold Corn, there was one person that was using 34,000 gallons of water in the month. For what? They’ve got an Olympic-sized swimming pool?

So, the only people that it’s going to affect is actually 8 percent of the residents that live here. There are 13 people that consistently abuse having lots and lots of water with no circumstance, there’s no consequences for them. So, again, if we’re trying to help out people in the community that may not have the funds readily available to pay their annual dues, it seems to me that one way that can actually help them is to take water out of the annual assessment and then just charge them that 625, or whatever it is and then put the rest on a monthly payment basis.

Anyway, that’s my two cents’ worth and I’ll open the floor up for anybody else who wants to comment.

Keith Rigney: Paul, I would like to correct you, in that I never said I wanted to change the goal of the Water Management Team. I never said that once. What I wanted to change is priorities, because we had the conversation earlier that our Board is very bad at setting a priority and sticking towards a plan or a goal.

So right now we’re saying there’s a 50 percent leak rate. We just found out we can replace any pipe with six-inch line; great. That means we can go to old pipe replacement with six-inch line. Now, what is the goal here, are we wanting to get our leaks down or do we want to put efforts towards this monthly billing. We have a priority here and we have five people leaving the Board and we keep getting tasks placed on us. We have to set one priority and move forward.

I have my own quarrels when it comes to monthly billing. I know another HOA, just on the border of New Mexico and Arizona, they went to water billing month to month years ago, and once again, they can’t find people to run it. When you can’t find people to run it, you have to outsource it for a special company, and that special company has lots of fees, lots of dues, which raises your prices. So yes, you may have annual dues of $635, and you pay $30 a month on top of that, but 30 times 12 puts you right at 1,000 bucks. You’re saving 50 bucks, and that’s just rough comparison, and then on top of that, we can’t find people to help, and we can’t do that.

I mean, we have five people leaving, Paul, we can’t have a whole other branch for water billing. We need to focus on our leak rate. We can’t branch out like this, and that’s why I said I did not want to change the mission statement, I wanted to change priorities. I think John Hines is doing great detecting leaks; Harold Corn is going out and detecting leaks. We haven’t replaced pipe in three years. Let’s get some pipe replaced. Yes, we may replace pipe and the number may not go down. Eventually, it will, once we get all the pipe. We need to stick to the status quo. We can’t be all over the place. There’s not enough effort in this community right now.

Paul Lisko: I agree with you, Keith. I agree that we go ahead and we replace the pipes on the program that we’ve established. And, again, I saw something from Harold now that he’s going to go out and do the mirror-loop testing, which I think is going to be much more accurate in terms of tracking down where those leaks are. So, yeah, I agree with you. I agree that we need to go ahead and replace lines, we need to get the leak rate down, but again, I’m going to tell you that another big priority is getting that water moved – again, it’s one of the four things that we talked about. So, if you want to focus on getting the leak rate down, great.

I’m going to focus on getting water removed from the annual assessment, because again, as I mentioned, we can’t – we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars if we have to replace the infrastructure in here at one fail swoop, because we have a wildfire or an earthquake or something else that comes through here and destroys it. The only way we can access any kind of those funds – like I say, it was clear to me, because I made a couple of phone calls, and boom, the Ponderosa had money lined up for it right away. We can’t do that. And the only way we can do that, in terms of long-term, in terms of fixing what’s wrong with this water system, is to go to that monthly billing.

So, I agree with you. I think that it’s imperative that we get the leak rate down, and whatever that takes, let’s go for that, but that’s not the only thing that I’m going to focus on.

Keith Rigney: That’s fine, but who runs the water billing?

Paul Lisko: We don’t have water billing, so I don’t know the answer to that, but the thing is, is it’s going to be something –

Keith Rigney: Well, you should. If that’s the plan you’re going for, you need a plan.

Paul Lisko: Well, okay. So, do you want to go with six-inch pipe or do you want to go to four-inch pipe. We don’t know yet, until you get in the thick of it and start doing those things; right? So, I’m the same way –

Keith Rigney: No, we got confirmation from John Hines –

Paul Lisko: I don’t have the – let me finish, please. I don’t have the answer about water billing, but what I’m willing to do is work with the Water Management Team to draft something to bring it back to the Board and see what they think, and get a vote from the membership, because that’s ultimately what it gets down to. If the membership is behind it, then that’s what we’re going to go with.

Keith Rigney: Paul, you’ve talked for probably the last fifteen minutes and I’ve got to talk for thirty. So we’ll take this off-line or in the Water Management Team. We’re not saving any effort here.

Paul Lisko: Okay.

Keith Rigney: Conversations have to go both ways. You can’t just talk for a minute and then – moving on, next topic?

STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS:

Water (John Hines):

Water Maintenance: Like I talked before, we met with David Romero last month and we actually walked the whole System 1, listened to every water meter and located every valve. I re-mapped them, to get exact locations. Thanks to Harold Corn, because he was a lifesaver on finding some of the valves that I couldn’t find.

David found four potential leaks. We dug up the first one last week, and we didn’t find anything at Black Bear Park, like Paul had mentioned. We’re scheduled to dig up the two that he heard on Mimbres, see if we can find those two leaks. The fourth one was up on Trilobite, so I’m not quite sure what he heard, because I can’t find anything, but I’ll figure out what that is.

We also attended two Water Management team meetings. We discussed priorities. I helped a homeowner with a water leak on his side of the meter, and I read meters on June 1st.

It’s an interesting month because of the fire, and I’ll tell you why.

System 1:

Pumped 682,000 gallons, which was 40,000 more than last month or two months ago.
Used: 361,500 gallons
Average Household Usage; 132.5 gallons per day
Lost: 320,000 gallons; leakage rate of 48%
Leak Flags – 9, with all being repeats from month before
Even though we were evacuated for a week, so we only had three out of four weeks of water usage, we had 17 people over 7,000, where the month before we only had 8. The largest one was 25,000 gallons.

System 2:

Pumped 204,000 gallons
Used: 200,000 gallons
Lost: 3,775 gallons; leakage rate of 2%, which is awesome
Leak Flags – 5, with three being repeats
Users over 7,000 gallons – Five, with the largest one being 31,500 gallons, with no leak flag

So I surmise what happened was some people just left their sprinklers on when they were evacuated and left.

As far as water compliance goes, System 1 was absent of coliform and e-coli, with a disinfection residual of 0.06. On System 2, we had absent coliform and e-coli, with a disinfection residual of 0.09 mpl.

I have four other subjects I would like to bring up. One of the things the Management Team talked about was during the fire. We only have one generator and, thankfully, Shawn Weary was able to get it going, and hooked it up to Hovenweep, and got it pumping water again after our tanks were empty, because the power was out. The Management Team suggested that possibly we recommend to the Board that we purchase two more generators, so we could have one at the Aspen Grove well and one at the booster station, because System 2 has to have one at the meadow well and one also at the booster station to push water on up the hill.

I’ve been talking with Mike Schact about getting the – he’s still having some issues with the reports, with getting them up, and so we’ve been in discussion about how I can make it easier for him. I sent him an Excel spreadsheet and somehow it’s getting messed up. It’s better, but it’s still not where we wanted to be, so we’re still working together on that.

The last thing is the State has issued our CCR for the past year, and so I’m going to be posting it at the Board meeting, and also I would like permission to be able to post it on the SLP Facebook site.

So that’s all I have. Going back to it, I’d like the Board’s suggestion about the generators, if they would allow me to go get bids and pricing on those, so I can come back to you with that. The other one was to have permission from the Board to post it on SLP. I’m not asking for permission to purchase the generators, just to get pricing for them.

Paul Lisko: I don’t think there’s any problem with you getting prices for that, John. Does anybody have an objection to John posting that stuff on Facebook? Keith, is it okay if he goes through you to do it, because you’re our Facebook guy; is that cool with you, or do you want him to just do it on his own?

Keith Rigney: It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I’ll be making a post for vacancies on the Board, so I can do both. It doesn’t bother me.

John Hines: Keith, I’ll just send it to you then and you can put it on when you want. Like I said, I’ll be putting it on the web page and also sending it to all of the Board members. The State has got new regulations, and I have to kind of document where we’re posting them and everything. So it came out very clear, other than we had one lead and copper rule violation at one household in one bathroom, and that’s been taken care of. So, other than that, the CCR came out really clean and nice.

Paul Lisko: John, I saw there were two items that didn’t get addressed in your report. One was any update on the discussion with the State Engineer’s Office regarding the multiplier and figuring gallons pumped?

John Hines: Yeah, they’ve got that finally figured out and settled, and it’s running good. This month was the first time the readings submitted were the exact number of gallons that we used. So, that’s all taken care of.

Paul Lisko: Thank you. The other thing I wanted to mention, for those of you that don’t know, John was appointed as a delegate to the Board of the New Mexico Rural Water Association, so cudos to John for that. Congratulations, John.

Anybody have anything else for John? Okay, David, you’re up.

Roads (David Stuedell):

I’m sitting in my car in Jemez Springs, because I’m on my way home from Albuquerque. So you might need to help me with the agenda part.

I think the big question is, do we want to allow me to sign the agreement with Tug Leeder, as far as doing our roads this year? Hopefully, we can get on the schedule in August. I think it was around $34,000 for the base part, and then it was like $1500 for each load of delivered and compressed fill. I might be slightly off on that number, but I would like to open it up to the Board, get their opinion. Basically, you know, just a little history is I don’t know of anybody else who – Tug, they seem to do a good job. We might want to get Windstream involved as far as seeing if they want to come out and locate lines, so we don’t cut their phone lines. But, other than that, I think it seems to have been going pretty good and the roads seem to be in pretty good shape. So, if we want to pass on a year, it’s up to the Board. I don’t really, personally, have an opinion one way or another. So, that’s all I have to say.
Paul Lisko: And then also on your items was the sale of the old sander/spreader for $500?

David: I mean, are we going to – do I get approval to sign for this year to do the roads?

Cindy Hines: I move to allow David to sign the agreement with Tug Leeder to fix our roads this year. Keith Rigney seconded the motion and, there being no opposition, the motion carried.

David: I’ve got a good story here. Too bad we don’t have Jeremy on the line, but anyways, I listed it for $500, got a number of replies. The first person that sent me said, okay, I’ll take it, I’ll send you a check. I said, okay, fine, send me a check. I’ve got Covid right now and I’ll come pick it up once you get the check. Sounded okay. I gave him the address; they sent a check, it was for $10,000. Well, it was for $9,750 or something. It was like, oh, please deposit that check right away, please deposit the check. I’m like, we wanted $500. So the bottom line is, I had Jeremy destroy the check. It must have been a scam of some sort, some Craig’s List scam. So, the long and short on the sander is we’re back to square one, and I’m going to repost it. Next time, I’m going to say you have to come out and give me the cash.

Ann Cooke: I think you made a good decision.

David: I have a feeling it would have bounced, and they would have got information from us, and it was weird all the way around.

That’s where we are on the sander and God bless Jonathan for being our plowing and sanding guy. He’s been working back and forth, mainly with Paul, as far as constructing a semi-enclosed pit, and Paul has better knowledge of this than I do. I think we’re pretty close. It’s about two grand worth of supplies, probably go a little more, because Paul recommended going with heavy timbers for the ramp part, but basically, we’re looking at putting a pit in and then moving the cinders into the pit, constructing it to the east side of the current pit. I don’t know if Josh has seen the plans or not.

Josh Toennis: I saw the email come through and I saw the sketch and everything. The only thing we will have to make sure is set backs and everything. Since we enforce that for the rest of the community, we should probably follow it ourselves. I thought I’d get with Jonathan and just walk down there.

David: Obviously, we want to get this – if he’s willing to do this, he’s doing the labor part for free, so it’s just materials. So we are lucky, we are blessed as far as our plowing and sanding person. So we’re doing good there. We’ve got a contract for next year, same price. We didn’t use him as much this last year, but a little bit. That’s all I have.

Legal:

Paul Rightley has resigned immediately. I’ve been asking him for over a month what the status is with this VRBO on Ashley Lane, and I’ve never gotten a firm response from him on any of it. So I’m going to follow up with this, because I have to find out from him exactly where this is at. I will take that on.

Firewise (Ann Cooke):

There was a meeting of the Jemez Mountain Firewise Communities, and they do have a website, so you can go look it up.

Then, as to Safeco Insurance Partnership, I’m aware that Safeco does do this, and they do provide a wildfire response. I don’t particularly have Safeco. I don’t know what the percentage of people around here do. I think it’s a very nice idea. I don’t know how practical it is. It’s a personal opinion, but I would prefer people not rely on others to do their Firewise in preparation for their house, and rely on somebody to haul their ass out of trouble. They should be preparing prior to a wildfire and thinking about their responsibilities. And it is very nice that the county is going to have the chipper, I gather, up here in June and July. I will get with Chief Taylor and see what his plans are, maybe for the volunteer fire department to do some chipping and see what we can organize.

Now, the thing that I wanted to talk about is the Black Bear Park. My understanding is the forest is still closed. I have hopes that they will reopen and loosen up some of the restrictions. As soon as that occurs, we’ll get a date for Southwest Fire Defense to do one day’s work in Black Bear Park. I’ve contacted the residents that live adjacent to the Park, and everyone is happy with the plan so far and are onboard with it. That ends my report.

Architectural (Josh Toennis):

I’ll be real quick here. We had two requests that got approved this month; one for installing snow stops on their roof and for resealing their house. The other one was for installing some solar panels, and both of those were approved. There are still two other pending requests that I am awaiting other information, so those are still in process.

There is no update at this point for the guidelines that are being drafted. So, that’s all I have.

Paul Lisko: I kind of threw that in there. It was a loose end that I saw that I was hoping to get some input on, on where that might be. Can you give us any kind of idea?

Josh: At this point in time, I don’t really have a time frame for doing it. Life kind of happened and spare time, there hasn’t been very much of it lately, so if I do get a chance to work on it, I can try and draft some more, but at this point in time I don’t have a hard time for getting those completed.

Paul Lisko: And then I was going to ask you, what kind of measurements are you waiting for, for that fence at 145 Hovenweep?

Josh: I’m waiting for a set-back distance from the center of the road.

Paul Lisko: This has been going on for three months, and it’s still an eye sore. When do you think it might be – do you have any kind of estimate as to when you think it might be settled?

Josh: I’m waiting for replies, so we will – I have some other stuff that I want to talk about during the executive session, so we can talk about it there as well.

Parks (Cindy Hines):

Last weekend we finished painting the playground equipment at Black Bear Park. I don’t know how anybody feels about the other park over at the fire station. I don’t know how much use it gets. I mean, I see people at Black Bear Park. But it has a really nice slide over at the firehouse park, and I’m wondering what people would think about possibly moving the slide from there to Black Bear Park. I don’t really care about the swing set and the monkey bars that are at the firehouse, but do you see any reason not to? Since none of us were involved in creating those parks in the first place, I don’t know if anybody would have an issue with it. I just think it would get more use, and it would fit. The other two items wouldn’t fit if we moved them to the other park. If you guys don’t have a problem with it, we may go over and look at what it would take to actually make that happen.

Sandra Partridge: When our grandchildren are here, that’s the park we use, and they love the slide. It’s closer to our house than the other one, and the history on the park behind the fire barn is that was built as an Eagle Scout project, and I just like to remember it as that, because we knew the young man, he was one of our neighbors, and a lot of people helped put in the equipment and everything there. So, just for me personally, a lot of memories there.

Cindy: Well, let’s nix that idea then, because I like that. I’ve been trying to think of maybe something to name that park. If no one knows of an existing name, maybe we could call it Eagle Scout Park. That would be kind of cool and maybe even put a little sign or something that says who created it. So I’ll talk to you more about that. Thank you for letting me know.

Those are the updates on the parks. Next would be road signs. We also got a few of those put up last weekend, and we’ll probably just do a few each weekend until we get it done. It shouldn’t take us very long.

We do need to purchase some posts. I was able to find some – it’s either called U-shaped or Unistrut – posts, actually through Home Depot, that weren’t terribly expensive. We’re probably going to need maybe ten posts or less, and they were somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 apiece. So I guess I could ask for permission to purchase those, so that we can get a few of the signs that don’t have posts, we can get those posts installed.

Keith Rigney: I will move to buy as many posts as you need until signs are gone; Ann Cooke seconded the motion and, without objection, the motion carried.

Cindy: Just one last time, if anybody has anything they want included in the newsletter, let me know. I’m going to start working on it and try and get it out in the next month or so. I will include the information about Animal Amigos, so that will help fill up the newsletter a little bit.

I do have an item, even though Kristi is not here, I do have the water sheet that she wants to include in the welcome packets. It’s done. I just need to run a couple of things past John and make sure that I have the correct information before I send that to her.

I don’t have much news about the slppoa website. I just have not had time to go in and play with it, but I did get a message from Paul about making sure the past newsletters are on there, and I will make sure that Mike gets those posted for us. That’s all I have, unless anybody has questions.

Mary Moore: I have a comment about the website. Cindy, were you aware that when you send out a request for a new account that the response comes back into the spam email?

Cindy: No.

Mary Moore: That happened to me recently, so I got some help on contacting Mike Schact directly, but had I not been able to do that, I would have been stuck in a do-loop. So, in other words, when you request an account, it goes to Mike, and he responds with his instructions, but that response went to my spam account and I didn’t see it in time, and it’s time dependent. So I don’t know how that can be fixed, but that might happen with other people.

Cindy: It’s good to know, but there isn’t anything we can do about it. It has to do with your email and your spam settings. That’s not something that the sender can do anything about. You would probably have to adjust your spam settings on your email to allow more things to come in, and that’s maybe not always a good idea. I would say just check your spam folder every once in a while. But it’s good to know; thank you.

OLD BUSINESS:

Paul Lisko: I was going to talk about District Ranger Brian Riley stated in an email June 8th that the thinning project from Mesa Verde Road to Forest Road 10 remains a priority and will resume when the Jemez Ranger District Crew is available after fire season. Unfortunately, the fire season started two months early this year. So they will get back on that thinning as soon as they can.

Mary Moore: It’s a little unclear about where the thinning would – I understand from Mesa Verde to Forest Road 10, but there’s another swath from Forest Road 10 west. I’m not sure what road that is, but are they going to do both areas?

Paul Lisko: Wherever they have it marked, Mary, that’s what they’re going to do.

ACTION ITEMS:

Paul Lisko: Brian Riley, talking about Forest Road 4AM, water bars engineering, the crossing near State Road 4 and resituating the gate. The blow-out erosion on SR4 has been completed late last year, and has been hardened with rocks. The USFS road crew plans to reduce size of water bars on FR4AM and will blade again. And then I already talked about the road crew engineer is going to be directing a bulldozer to improve the turn from High Road onto Forest Road 4AM. So, again, I sent Brian an email after we had people on the Board up there inspecting it, and then I followed up, but I haven’t got anything definite yet back from him on the engineer, but I will continue pursuing that until I have something more definitive.

The last item is delivery and installation of Intel water tanks to SLP Station 52 for fire suppression. I initially had an email exchange with FMO Masterson regarding the Intel tanks on June 1st and he expected to give me more information soon. Then I had an opportunity to be in a meeting with him on June 14th, at which time he asked me to take the lead on the project, be the onsite lead for the project, and I agreed to do that. At that time, he was telling me that they are still working on getting tanks transferred up here, but he also told me initially that he wanted to send up the engineer to talk about the layout of where these tanks were going to be. Once I have that information, I’m going to go ahead and file the request in compliance with architectural control policy. Now, the one thing that I did ask him, because it seemed like this would be good to know, when they set up similar tanks in La Cueva, from the time they got the tanks, until everything was engineered, and they got the tanks set up and filled with water, that was a period of eight years. And I said, well, that seems a bit excessive, and he said, no, it will not take nearly as long as that. He was actually saying it would probably take around three years to get it all set up and ready to roll. The reason why is because they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They don’t have to come up with a separate design for the pad and installation of the tanks, as far as the infrastructure. So that, to me, was pretty good information.

I will now open the floor for discussion on the project in compliance with architectural control.

Josh Toennis: I guess I can’t really have any say on that until I have more information on heights, placement, any kind of layouts, that kind of stuff. Then, at that point, it will be up to the whole committee to review the application.

Paul: And just so you know, the water that’s going to be used to fill these tanks is not going to be coming from our supply of domestic water. Somebody reminded me, because I was there when we filled the tanks at Station 1 in La Cueva, and what we did was we set up a train for water shuttling and we actually had trucks from all over the district that were drafting water from the river behind the La Cueva Lodge and kept moving that water over there until those tanks were filled. So, the same thing is going to happen here. Whenever those tanks get set up, the water is going to be shuttled from Las Conchas, where they can easily draft from the river there and then fill those tanks with that water.

Suzanne Star: One question that I had was first of all, who is going to own the Intel tanks?

Paul: It’s going to be the county, and it’s going to be on county property.

Suzanne Star: And that’s what the architectural control people are going to be looking at, to put those tanks on the property if they have room; is that right?

Paul: Correct.

Suzanne Star: And then the county will take all the financial responsibility of taking care of them, maintaining them?

Paul: That is correct. Anybody else have any questions about this? Josh, I will keep you in the loop; as soon as I find out what the plan is, I will let you know.

Suzanne Star: One other question, please. If these are going to be put onto the station property, is Josh then going to be contacting those people that own property adjacent to it before they decide?

Paul: I have no idea; that’s a question for Josh.

Josh Toennis: Yes. I guess if, depending on the size of them, if they could be considered an eyesore or anything along those lines, then yes, we probably would want to reach out to the adjacent property owners.

Suzanne Star: I think that would be a good idea, especially if you’re going to put two of them in, in the back. You might also, Josh, take a look at the survey. We have one, but I’m not sure if anybody can revive it. I’ve got one, but I don’t know, you’ll have to go back and take a look at it and see if the survey will actually accommodate those two tanks where they want to put them, make sure they’re on their property, not ours. Or, if they’re on our property, then you need to know that.

Josh: And that will all be part of the request and that will need plat maps and layouts and everything.
Paul Lisko: The next regular board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 12, 2022 at 1830 hours.

Ann Cooke moved to adjourn the meeting; Josh Toennis seconded, motion carried and the meeting adjourned at 8:59 p.m.