August 9, 2022

Sierra Los Pinos Property Owners' Association
Board of Directors Meeting
August 9, 2022, 6:35 P.M. via Zoom

The meeting was called to order by the Acting President, Keith Rigney, with the following members present: Kristi Cross, Jeremy Oepping, Ann Cooke, Josh Toennis and Cindy Hines. John Hines, non-voting member of the Board was present also. David Stuedell was excused.

Guests: Suzanne Star and Sandra and Ed Partridge.

Approval of Agenda: Cindy Hines moved to approve the Agenda; seconded by Ann Cooke and, there being no opposition, motion carried.

Approval of Minutes: Josh Toennis moved to approve the minutes of the July 12, 2022 meeting; seconded by Kristi Cross and, there being no opposition, motion carried.

OFFICER REPORTS:

PRESIDENT (Vacant):

VICE PRESIDENT (Keith Rigney):

(1): Annual Meeting setup: I promised I was going to meet with Scott DeWitt and set up Starlink down at Station 52. I have not done that yet. I made a note to message him tonight and set that up this coming weekend to make sure Starlink works. Then we will have an in-person meeting with virtual able to go there. We will have to work out some logistics there for recording the meeting. So, if anyone has ideas or knows what we have done in the past, that would be greatly appreciated so we can get those turned into minutes, because I know we kind of had an issue with that water meeting of who was speaking, what they were talking about, so we’re going to have to be very deliberate, if we get questions, that the name is spoken and it is well-recorded. I don’t know if anyone has any quarrels about that, but I’ll start working on those logistics these coming weeks.

Kristi Cross: I can help you with the recording logistics, Keith.

Keith: That would be awesome. I assume we will need a laptop down there. Would that be the Association laptop that you have, Kristi?

Kristi: Yes.

Keith: So we will meet up and talk on the sideline and we’ll get that lined up and we’ll figure it out. And that is Saturday, September 10th. What time do you normally set for that or do we have to set a time?

Cindy Hines: We have done 1:00 in the past, when it was in-person, and I think it was kind of like a potluck, and then the meeting started at 2:00. Then when we were doing it just virtually, I think we just started at 2:00, if that gives you some guidance.

Keith: I don’t know if we want to do a potluck this year or just do drinks and casual conversation. The potluck does scare me with Covid still going around, so I don’t want to push that if we don’t have to. If we could have bottled drinks at 1:30, meeting start at 2:00, to give us a little casual conversation before we all start.

Cindy: That sounds good.

Keith: Cindy, for a newsletter, I know you are working on that. Are we planning on sending that out after this meeting, or has that already been whipped up, ready to go?

Cindy: It’s probably about 50 percent ready to go, and it does have an article about when the annual meeting will be. What I would love to add is any information about who is running for the Board, which I saw you sent out today a couple of bios. Do we have a deadline for people to submit that stuff, because it’s got to go out in the mail to everybody?

Keith: Agreed. That’s why I tried to get those two that we have sent out, so we can get those sent out ASAP. I have not gotten any more hits on anyone wanting to volunteer, other than the immediate two that I sent out. I’ll follow up with anyone else that might have asked earlier and see if we can get them to hit on it as well.

Cindy: I’ll put it in the newsletter again, so that people know we’re looking for volunteers.

Keith: We can do floor nominations. I know it’s a little weird, not preferred, but that is an option, and we may have to divert to that if anyone shows and if anyone decides to help that day. Those are things we will have to iron out.

Kristi: Can you resend me the bios, because I didn’t get that email either?

Keith: Sure. That kind of irons out the next time we’re meeting, September 10th, and we’ll move on to number two.

(2) This is about the flash flooding that we’re getting in Upper SLP. So we actually have two streams running through SLP due to the Cerro Pelado fire. One is on the upper side of Los Griegos; the same stream passes Los Griegos twice. That damage is not as extensive as the lower stream. The lower stream actually starts at the end of Calypso, runs down the length of Calypso, runs down about 80 yards of Aspen, surrounds a house and then deposits out through the meadow, kind of in between Los Griegos and the start of Aspen, right next to the Volunteer Fire Department. That road has since become unpassable. It actually got Lee Taylor stuck in the Sandoval County rig, so he had to come and get pulled out. Since then the volunteers from the fire department did close that road. I think that should have been done; I don’t argue that at all.

So I did meet with Brian Riley. We talked at the fire station about potential things that could help us. Then we actually went down and looked at it. We actually looked at it on day three after the first flooding happened, and it was nowhere near as bad as it is now. Since then, I’ve been going down there continuously after flooding and taking pictures, so I have documentation on my end for how bad this is getting. Brian Riley did reach out to a Lawrence Crane and a Theresa Greeno about potential FEMA funding. Sandoval County did get approved for this type of funding within the last four days. I haven’t heard anything in the last four days, but I know they are working on it. I also sent out an email last night to USDA, the Emergency Watershed Protection. I tried to call them yesterday when I got off work, but obviously the offices were closed, and I’m also trying one more avenue of contacting ARPA. I haven’t done that yet, but I’ll probably be doing that after the meeting tonight. So I’m really trying to see if we can get some funding lined up to help us with these flash floods, because Aspen Grove is nasty. It’s going to take some brand new culverts, it’s going to take some brand new drainage, it’s going to take a lot of work.

We have kind of delegated ourselves to fixing leaks and maintaining our water system at this time, and I really don’t want to drain our reserve funds if we don’t have to. Keep in mind most of the funding that we are looking at to-date requires a 25 percent pay-down. So we pay 25 percent and they pay the other 75. Some of them require us to pay 100 percent upfront, and they will pay us back in 380 days. Obviously, that’s not preferred, but I’m just trying to get as many options on the table as possible, so we can present this to the Board and we can figure out what’s best for our Association.

I don’t know if anyone has any better ideas of what we should be doing now. I’ve been trying to push David Stuedell to do a lot of this, but he’s been out of the country. I think what we need immediately is we need to try and just get some quotes on the table to know what we’re dealing with, maybe get a contractor up here and divert the water to where we want it to go, so we don’t continually destroy these roads, plural. I don’t know if anyone has any better contacts than me or knows someone who would be able to help us with big equipment. I am all ears and all just trying to get this handled the best way possible. If anyone has anything, let me know; if not, then I’ll move forward.

Cindy: Keith, I think it sounds like you’ve made really good progress. I don’t, personally, know of anything else we can do. The only dirt-work people we know are Rudy Martinez, he’s down in Ponderosa, David Salazar, but I don’t know if they have the really big equipment that might be needed.

Keith: We could just bring them in and ask what can you do, can you divert this water for the time being so it doesn’t continue to make it worse. When I did meet with Brian Riley, I went out and I talked to the two houses on Calypso, spent two hours with them, just talking, because I don’t want them to feel like we’re just ignoring them, because that road is awful. I would hate to drive it every day and still pay Association dues. So I’m trying here, but it’s a rock and a hard place, and I really didn’t want to jump on fixes too early, because it’s just going to continue to run. If they don’t fix it upstream, whatever we fix is just going to get destroyed, because that’s the softer dirt.

Jeremy: Thank you for the efforts, the work that you have done with this. One thing to consider, I guess, is David has our road crew coming out in a couple of weeks to do the rest of the roads, and they, obviously, have equipment that can help us there. Do we consider having them not doing some areas that we think can last another year, and spending the money to make sure that the roads that are impassable get reopened. Just a thought; thank you.

Keith: I completely agree and I did pitch that to David, but he’s out having fun, and I don’t blame him in the slightest. So I just made him aware, once he comes back, we’ll literally have to hit this. I agree and whether that is bring up a couple more trucks, just to make it passable, or like you said, there’s probably a few roads here that we don’t have to grade. And for me, preferably, if we don’t have to grade a few areas, let’s not, because we have graded these roads for 30-plus years and haven’t put fill back, and the deeper we can keep our water and keep our electrical, I’m happy. But no, very good idea. I’ll talk to David and we’ll get that moving forward.

(3) I need approval from the Board on two subjects here and these are both due to the Water Management Team. I don’t mean that as a bad statement, it’s just things that they are trying to set up for us, which is very good. They have come up with two policies that they think would be beneficial to our Association and beneficial to future HOA activities. They are asking for approval to draft new policies; not asking for approval, but just to draft it for us to make edits and/or approve once it’s drafted.

The very first one is charge of water pulled from hydrants for contractors/service providers. We have already drafted two MOUs to save our water system, and we are not charging the County, but we will charge the Santa Fe National Forest, and you guys will see that later, but we want the ability for contractors or county or whoever it may be, to come up and pull water out of our system for x-amount of rate. And in that policy, the Water Management Team will fix the rate, they will do all that research for us, and then just provide it to us. If you have any questions, I can go into that more, but it’s more if contractors want to come to spray the roads before they grade, or contractors want to come and they need water for pouring a pad for the Intel tanks, whatever these contractors need for water, they will have to get approval and then we’ll charge them for the amount they pull. That’s the first one.

The second one is a hookup policy for new houses. This is not lined out in our policies or regulations or anything and we’ll have to do some research here what it currently costs to do this, but there will be a hookup policy for any new houses that come into Sierra Los Pinos, and it will cost x-amount of money to hook up to our main lines and get it ran to a meter, and then after that, the homeowner will be responsible for the meter to inside the house. Both policies, I think, should be very easy to do, but I think are pretty important.

So, back to the first one, approve/disapprove, what are your thoughts on a charge of water pulled from hydrants for contractors/service providers? Any quarrels, questions, concerns? It’s simply in the draft stage now.

Jeremy: I don’t think it’s a quarrel or a concern. My expectation would be is that if we bill a contractor, they are simply going to put that into their estimate and we’re going to end up paying it. It feels like a bit of a merry-go-round.

Ann: My comment is that, please, have them develop their policies, and bring their policies to the Board. I would also suggest that they give their reasoning for the policy, so some kind of background information as to why they decided and what the amounts are they’re going to charge for number one and number two. At this point, we don’t have enough information about the policies. As you said, we’re not approving the policies, all we’re doing is approving them developing the policy. I’m all for it, go develop the policy.

Cindy: I agree. I say have them develop the policy, bring it to us, we’ll review it and suggest changes or accept it as it is.

Keith: And I know that John Hines has stressed many times in the Water Management Team that if we do charge contractors, they’re just going to charge it back to us, and I wanted to make sure that I explained this policy correct, so I don’t know if Suzanne or John Hines can say if I explained that first policy correctly or not.

John: Primarily, we’ve discussed if we have a contractor coming in to do roads, there’s no point in charging him water, because like Jeremy said, he’s just going to charge it back to us and that’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. But for other cases, if we have a contractor that comes up here – for example, you said if they want to use water for the Intel tanks, or if we have somebody who wants to build a swimming pool up here, and fill it with our water, at the present time the Architectural Committee pretty much denies those kinds of things because of the water issue, besides other reasons, but like when we had the fires coming up here, we actually had some people trying to get water, that weren’t working for us, and they weren’t working for the forest service, they were actually a contractor working for somebody else that were trying to get water. This way, if we have a policy set up, they’re going to have to contact me, and we can set up how much water they’re allowed to take, we’ll put a meter on it, and then they will be billed whatever we come up with, the amount for that water, just so we can do a better audit on our water system and keep track of what water is going in and out, because that’s what we’re obviously trying to do in the first place. But like Keith said, the Water Management Team wasn’t going to spend a lot of time and effort on this if nobody was interested in us doing that. But if they are, then we’ll go ahead and spend the time and effort to do that and present it back to the Board for approval.

Ann: Please develop the policy.

Cindy: Agreed.

Keith: I don’t know if a motion is required here, but everyone that I heard is in agreement, but we’ll move on to number two, the hook-up policy for new houses in the subdivision. What do you guys think, good, bad, ugly?

Ann: Please develop a policy.

Cindy: Please.

Jeremy: Agreed.

Suzanne: I just wanted to say we used to have a hook-up policy of $500; and, when we discussed this at the Water Management Team meeting the other day, it was decided, just by the few people that were there, that that cost doesn’t cover the cost we need to charge the new buyers of the property. So that’s the reason this is coming about. We did have a $500 connection fee, and I don’t exactly know where it exists, but that seems to be what they were charging in the past. We felt that was too low.
Ann: Please go ahead and develop the policy.

Suzanne: Thanks.

Keith: Thanks, everyone. We’ll move on to (4). Lee Taylor, the Sandoval County Fire Marshal, he would like to talk to the Board about the Intel fire suppression tanks. So I have been talking to Lee on the side. We have been talking about getting these tanks up here for I can’t even tell you how many years, and there has been a lot of miscommunication to-date, a lot. The reason this project hasn’t moved forward is due to that miscommunication. Lee Taylor has offered to come to us as a Board directly and tell us what he wants, what he sees as a benefit, etc. Once that is complete and we have his “want or wish” list, whatever you want to call it, I would highly recommend that we pitch off that list to the Water Management Team, which will allow them to look into the logistics of how we meet what he wants, what we can meet, what we can’t meet, what helps us, what helps him, so on and so forth. There are no real approvals for this, but I’m just letting you guys know this is coming forward, and my suggestion would be just to move it to the Water Management Team. Once again, once they come up with a policy agreement design, the Board will ultimately have the approval of what we want and what will take place. If anyone has any questions on that, let me know; that will be a reoccurring thing that we’ll be working every other Saturday with the Water Management Team, so there will be updates there.

(5) Talking about the Water Management Team (WMT), a couple of high points came up, so material has been received for line replacement from the meter loop testing;

We are replacing our highest leak rate area. I know that they want to start the end of this month. There is some tentativeness, if we can get our contractor here or not. I am working on my end to try to push some of the billing forward. That might be happening the end of the month to get a new section of pipe in.

The WMT is going to try to contact the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office to set up an agreement for access to SLP during fires and other events. In the Cerro Pelado fire, no one was allowed in. We were just lucky enough that Shawn Weary was allowed in, and he was able to kind of limp us along and get generators running, even though once he got the generators running, our power came back. So the WMT is looking to create an agreement between us and the Sandoval County Sheriff to allow our water operator in to maintain our system. We’re going to see what this holds. Since the Sandoval County Sheriff is not convenient up here, Barbara, who lives in the area, who is not on this call right now, she has offered to start this conversation with the County Sheriff, just to see if this is even possible, to see what it takes, to see if it’s a thing. We don’t want anything to happen to our system, so that will be a developing thing, and I hope everyone agrees that that’s a good thing, because I really do.

The very last thing is we’re actively working on the memorandum of understandings between the County and the Santa Fe National Forest. I believe the County one is in a pretty stable state. The next step for that is I am going to present that to Lee Taylor and we’re going to have a discussion on the side, make sure what he needs is in that MoU, make sure what we need is in there. Once that is done and changes are made, we’ll present that MoU to the Board for approval. That will get approved, we’ll get it signed off at the County level and we will then be able to protect our system.
Any questions on the WMT, or did I miss something?

(5) I had this from the last meeting as well. I know this is still a huge ask, and I have not done my part, because I had some life things come up and I was not as productive last month as I wanted to be. I am trying to get a nice, ironed-out budget by the September 10th meeting. I want to utilize this to show what it takes to be nominal in our Association for funding, budget, whatever you want to call it. I also want to show improvements and kind of a plan in a year or two what those plans cost, things like that. I think this will really help us in the Association in the future if we have to increase dues or go to billing, or whatever it may be, I just think this is important that we really try and look at this budget and get it ironed-down really well. Specifically, it’s mainly for the water, maybe now some road things, but I did not follow up on my part with that and I will get to working on that hopefully this coming weekend.
SECRETARY (Kristi Cross):
Mine will be short and sweet. The June meeting minutes have been posted to the website. He did that for me. However, I’m still waiting for the service provider list to be posted, so I will ping him again on that. I will also get it posted to the Facebook page that we have. That’s all I have.

TREASURER (Jeremy Oepping):

The balance in accounts as of June 30, 2022:

◦ Operating Account: $162,620.50
◦ Reserve Account: $104,515.67

As of July 31st, we have 7 delinquent accounts totaling $14,288.71, which is an increase of $495.67 from last month. Liens have been filed for each of those seven, which is the reason for the increased charges there, and that is per SLPPOA lien policy for any accounts exceeding $500. So those have been completed.

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

• There was one change in property ownership in July. We welcome:

Kyle D. Spielvogel and Taylor V. Fetrow to 560 Hovenweep Loop.

• I have a quick update on the Jemez Development, LLC properties that we’ve talked about getting a road agreement for. Our attorney has been working with them. The sale that was supposed to take place a month or two ago had fallen through and we were trying to make sure that that road agreement was put in place with the current ownership so that it could easily transfer. As of a few days ago, we have not heard anything back on that. We’ll keep checking, but that may be in limbo again until there is another sale.

I did have a few notes. This is my final Board meeting. The annual meeting in September, I have documented contacts, processes, notes and those sorts of things from the perspective of treasurer, from sort of how I have run the role in the last three-and-a-half years. I’ve also provided a 2022 budget, so this year’s budget, and the five-year overview to Keith to assist in future budgets. I will provide the annual meeting financial review to Keith on or around September the 8th, so that that can be read into the record, as I will not be in attendance at that meeting. Obviously, I will be available to the new treasurer for questions for an appropriate period of time, to be able to walk through and answer any questions that might take place.

The only other thing, Keith, that I had on my list was if you wanted to have a conversation around slow payments, I can sort of speak to some of that as well. Thank you.

Keith: Yeah, if you can, just give a brief overview on SLPPOA payments, because I know that was a hot topic in the WMT. Thank you, Jeremy.

Jeremy: I guess it’s a question back to anyone on the WMT, what is the expectation of how quickly payments will be made? Is there sort of a time trend that you all thought was appropriate, that we are not hitting?

John: Jeremy, in my contract, it says from date of receipt of my invoice for labor, I will be paid within 15 days. So that’s kind of what I have assumed is the schedule we’re working on, but I do know that we’ve fallen really short on that, not only in me getting paid, but also in our contractor getting paid. So, standard is 30 days, and I’ve never thought much about it unless it was 30 days overdue, but when it gets to be 60 days, then it kind of becomes an issue for me.

Jeremy: Okay. And I think 15 days is probably appropriate as well. A few things: The first item that is likely to cause delays is, as treasurer, I receive all of those invoices, either through email or in the mailbox, and typically, I only pull those things – I do them in batches. I don’t do them as they come in, as this is a volunteer gig, and I don’t have time to go through them every single day, so there is very likely at least a week where they are sitting and nothing is happening with them. So that’s the first item.

The other thing is D.A. Salazar was one of the contractors that I think was listed in the email string, and I am not sure what their expectations are. I have actually had email conversations back and forth with their person and, at one point in time, they were actually sending their invoices directly to HOAMCO, which is not how we work. So they were getting hung up there, because it needs to come through the treasurer, in order to be properly coded and put against the proper budget account. So, there may have been some challenges there, that looks at that, as well. But definitely, 15 days makes some sense. Again, there are options.

Obviously, I am stepping away from this role, so hopefully you’ve got somebody that has a little more time than I have and can get to things quicker. There is another option, that the invoices could go straight to HOAMCO, as well, and sort of take us out of the middle man area. That’s sort of a broader conversation around treasurer duties that you and I have talked about, Keith.

Keith: We’ve lost Jeremy. So Jeremy and I have been talking about this. One of our other avenues to try and solve this problem is get a credit card in the Association’s name. That has been approved through HOAMCO; that has not been proceeded forward with, because Jeremy is leaving, and it requires a name from the Association. Once I knew it needed a name, I didn’t want to slap anyone’s name on it until I knew who was going to be here for at least a year. So that is in the pipeline. We’ll, obviously, be able to get a certain limit on that. After that, it will be paid directly through HOAMCO. So that should be an almost instantaneous pay as fast as a credit card. So bear with me until we get that set up.

HOT TOPICS:

Keith: As of July 5th, between the elections on September 10th, we will be losing potentially five Board members. We currently have two possible volunteers, both of those bios have been sent to the Board. They will be put in a newsletter and sent out for votes. That still does put us potentially two to three members shy since July, which is not ideal. We do still have enough for a quorum, but it’s by, like, one. There is not a lot of leeway there and it does put a lot of work on other volunteers. So, if anyone knows anyone that would like to serve on the Board, please let them know. We’re going to be hurting for some help. We have a lot of water issues going on; we have a lot of flooding issues going on; and there is not enough time in the day. So let me know if there is anyone there that does want to help or if anyone wants to stay. Thank you everyone for your time on the Board and thank you for helping us to get to where we are. We may bug you for a while just for some gut checks and things like that, but we’ll try not to.
Cerro Pelado Fire Flooding: I talked about this earlier. I am going to try and ask the community for help if everyone thinks that is okay. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but what I’m looking for is labor to fix the road, funding, etc. I don’t have enough time to chase this down. I’ve been trying the best I can. I’m scared we’re going to hit winter and we don’t have things lined up, and now there are a couple of spots where pipe are now one foot deep instead of four, and we’re going to have some frozen pipes up there, or someone is going to drive through there and hit our main electrical line, or whatever it may be. I’m just worried we’re going to be behind the ball to this. If anyone has any help on this front, please have them get in contact with me and I’ll gladly run that down the best I can.

STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS:

Water (John Hines):

John: We’ve had a few issues in the last month, but primarily we did the meter loop system, and we did come up with each section, what the leak rates were on System 1. Where we found the greatest leak percentage was between the Aspen Well and down to the co-mingle valve in the Meadow. So, I’ve contracted David Salazar to begin construction on replacing that line and see if we can get some of our leaks down on System 1.

I’ve got estimates for generators for the wells and for the booster station. The last week I’ve had to co-mingle 1 and 2, because every time we have a lightning storm, the Meadow Well is tripping out. So I’ve replaced a breaker, which seems to have it working right now, but we need to put lightning suppression on all the wells, and I’ve gotten estimates for the cost of that.

Obviously, because of the flooding, I’ve walked all the lines and making sure we didn’t have any lines exposed or damaged from any debris.

System 1:
• Pumped 642,000 gallons, 78,000 gallons of that went to System 2 for the co-mingle.
• Used: 285,514 gallons, with leak rate of 49.4%
• Average Daily Household Usage; 104.6 gallons per day
• Leak Flags – 8, with all being repeats from month before
• We had 10 people using over 7,000, with 8 of those having leak flags.

System 2:

• Pumped 140,740 gallons
• Used: 164,846 gallons, because we added that other 75,000 from System 1.
• Average Daily Household Usage: 84 gallons per day
• Leakage rate of 2%
• Leak Flags – 2, and both are repeats
• Users over 7,000 gallons – Four, none with leak flags

As far as water compliance goes, System 1 was absent of coliform and e-coli, with a disinfection residual of 0.10 mpl. On System 2, we had zero coliform and e-coli, with a disinfection residual of 0.08 mpl.

Unless anybody has any questions, that’s my report.

Ann: Yes, I have one question. The replacement of the line, is it going to be six-inch or four-inch?

John: Four-inch.

Roads (David Stuedell):

Keith: Road maintenance is scheduled for 8/22/22, so we have about 13 days and hopefully our roads will get fixed. Jeremy made a good point earlier that we should contact our road maintenance people and see if we can help Aspen a little bit, maybe Calypso a little bit, see what we can do. It does not hurt to ask. David is on vacation in Italy.

Legal (Vacant):

Keith: I don’t think there has currently been any legal activities. Any legal activities there have been, I’ve been picking up or sending them to the area which it needs to be, but right now, we have no activities.

Firewise (Ann Cooke):

Ann: Two issues I want to discuss. The park has been thinned, and I hope people are pleased with how it looks. Part of the seedlings have been taken out. It was a full day’s work; three guys and me volunteering, just to help haul slash. They checked everything, spread it as best they could. That bill has gone to Jeremy; I don’t know where it is in the process. It was about $2600. So, Jeremy, do you know if they’ve paid it out yet?

Jeremy: It was submitted a day or two after I got it. That was in my batch, yes.

Ann: Thank you. The second thing is that there was a chipping day up here, run by Lee Taylor and the Volunteer Fire Department. I asked John Fredlund how it went, and he said they came, they saw, they chipped several – I think it was a few large piles, and lots of smaller piles. The last email that went out had a lot of hits on it, so thank you for everybody who participated. That concludes my report.

Architectural (Josh Toennis):

Josh: We had three requests this past month. The first one was for a carport to be built on Aztec Lane. That was approved. The next one was a deck extension on Benito Way; that was approved as well. Then the third one was for our snowplow contractor to build a cinder storage structure, along with a loading ramp for loading those cinders during the winter; that was approved by the Committee. But now the expenditure of the funds will need to be approved by the Board. In talking with the contractor, he’s probably only going to have time to get to the loading ramp this year before the winter, so he’s going to do it in two stages. So the first amount of funds for the loading ramp will be around $400.
Ann moved we spend $400 to build a loading ramp for the cinders for our snowplow contractor; Cindy seconded the motion; and, there being no opposition, the motion carried.

Thank you guys. One of the bonuses that we might be able to use this loading ramp for is for the sandbagging machine, since no one has a tractor that's tall enough to load it, that if we had this loading ramp, you would be able to back it down and be able to use one of our tractors to put sand into the machine. So that may also be another benefit that we will get out of this.

That’s all I have for architectural, unless there are any questions?

Parks (Cindy Hines):

The stuff on the agenda is from last month, because I didn’t go in and make a change. I apologize for that. But really, there is not a lot new. The Black Bear Park really needs to be mowed and weedeated because of all the rain we’ve had, so we’ll try to get to it as soon as we can, but we might reach out and just ask if two or three people would come down all at the same time and help. It will go a lot faster if we can do that.

Ann: May I make a comment? I don’t see any need, and this is a personal comment. I don’t see any need to extend mowing past the general area of where the playground equipment is. The reason we thinned out the seedlings was not to have more area to mow.

Cindy: Sounds good to me. If everybody agrees, that’s what we’ll do. We will do as far as we have time and manpower for, but I agree just right along the road, where the weeds are getting pretty high and then right around the playground equipment is a good place to start. And then if we’ve got enough people and time, we’ll kind of move toward that direction and get it done if we can. Thank you for that.

Road signs, I’m hoping this weekend we can get a few more of those up.

The newsletter will hopefully go out this weekend. I was going to mention to Kristi and Keith that last year I helped with ballots, and there’s kind of a process to it. So I’m happy to work with you guys as far as getting that stuff out for this year’s annual meeting. There are some weird labels that you have to put on the outside of the envelope that comes back. It’s a validation label. I have all the templates and everything for that. And I just did a mail merge with the member list and those come out pretty well. So just let me know when you’re ready to work on it and I’ll be more than happy to help you with that. I’ll go ahead and send the templates, I guess to you, Kristi, just for now and I’ll cc Keith on it, too.

The last thing is I’m working kind of with Mike Schact, our webmaster, and I’m working on a new, simpler website for us. In talking to Mike, most of the things on our website can be done very simply on just kind of a WordPress site and it will be a lot easier for us, as a Board, and whoever comes after me, to maintain, rather than the site that we have now, because it’s so complicated. He did suggest though, because that site was built to accommodate the water information that we want to let people have access to, that what we may do is keep that old website in place, and maybe just reduce it down so it’s a place for people to go to get their water information, because it does work well for that. He would probably have to keep doing that, unless he could teach somebody else how to do it. But it will be a lot easier than trying to maintain the whole website, with posting minutes and doing all of that, which even though I won’t be on the Board anymore, I am willing to be the web person if you like. I would be happy to volunteer to do that.

But one thing that I wanted to ask, as I’m setting up this site, is I’d like to include a lot of photos of the area, it just makes the site more interesting. So I can go out and take some pictures, but I’ll bet people have photos that are already done and you can just email them to me and I can use them on the site. Anything from over in Monument Canyon and Redondo and pictures within the subdivision, it would be nice to have some of those on the new website. So, if you have anything, just email it to me.

As I’m setting it up, I’m more than willing to talk to the Board about how I’m setting it up, and what pages are in it and things like that. The whole point is to make it simpler than it is currently. So, if you don’t have any questions, that’s my report.

Ed Partridge: I haven’t been able to see any water readings since May on the webpage, and I don’t know if it’s just me or what?

Cindy: No, it’s an issue. Our webmaster is having an issue with the water reports themselves. They’re in an Excel spreadsheet, and there’s something about it that is not allowing him to post it for some reason, so we’re trying to resolve that. I will probably get involved, since John is the one that sends them and I can work with him and we’ll try to figure it out between him and Mike, how to get those on there.

Ed Partridge: Okay. I’ve been looking at it on my own, and kind of keeping track of it, but it would be nice to see it.

Cindy: Exactly, and we do want to keep providing that information.

OLD BUSINESS: None

NEW BUSINESS:

Keith: None, other than some flooding, but that has been touched on multiple times.

ACTION ITEMS:

Keith: I don’t really see any action items at this time, unless someone else sees action items. The only one I could think of is spread the word that we need volunteers. Please send them our way and we’ll do what we can to get them on the Board.

The next regular board meeting is scheduled for Saturday, September 10, 2022. We’re going to do this at 1:30, and this will be down at Station 52 in Sierra Los Pinos. It will be in-person obviously and through Starlink on Zoom.

Cindy Hines moved to adjourn the meeting; Josh Toennis seconded, motion carried and the meeting adjourned at 7:35 p.m.