Overall, this month has been a slog – we’ve been taking stock of where we are, assessing and organizing.  It has been about as much fun as doing taxes. 

For the Districts, February starts the budget cycle (which lasts until June). In preparation, the District Manager and the Boards are digging in and getting very clear on what needs to be done to stabilize and improve the Districts and how much it’s going to cost.  We held the first of two Community Forums to get your perspective on what we are finding.

Here are the monthly highlights:

1. Community Outreach about likely financial impact:  Please come to Community Forum on Saturday March 2^nd from 10-12 at the Arch Cape Firehouse.
2.  Watershed-Forest Progess
3. District Housekeeping- Technology, Admin and Finance

Community Outreach

The enjoyable part of the month has been preparing for and presenting at the Community Forums.  Briefing materials have been developed that paint a meaningful picture of what we are seeing, so that we can better reach out to the Community to get your perspective.  On February 3rd, a Community Forum was held via Zoom to give rate payers an early preview.  That briefing and interactive discussion seems to have been well received, with a good number of questions and comments. A common chord that was voiced was  “I now have a better understanding”.  Our take-away is that participants have a good sense of the hard decisions that will need to be made.

On Saturday March 2^nd from 10:00 – 12:00 at the Arch Cape Firehouse, another Community Forum will be held.  Based upon feedback from the Feb 3^rd Forum and from a number of business-financial professionals, we will drill down into the detail about: 1) the work needed and the likely impact on staffing requirements for the District moving forward, 2) how we anticipate involving the Arch Cape Community in the decision about how we pay for operating costs of the Forest-Watershed, i.e., logging, rate increases, taxes or a combination.  Be great to see you there so that you can weigh in.

Forest-Watershed

On a different front, the District has taken great strides in regards to the Forest-Watershed.  After a seemingly endless 6-month process, we now have the 2 key contracts in place.   One contract is with Vinson Brothers Construction to decommission roads across the Forest-Watershed and fix up others.  Their work will be guided by the roads plan which started out as the “Ecological Roads Assessment”, has now been formally approved by the Oregon Department of Forestry and will be funded by Business Oregon with ARPA-Covid funds that were obtained by the previous Board.  The road work will take 2+ years, since most of the work is weather dependent, with different parts of the work requiring different weather.

The other contract is with Morgans Resource Management to provide consulting forestry services, with the key element being the oversight of the roads work.  Mark Morgans, who some of you may know, will be replace Ben Hayes as Ben literally sails off into the sunset for 18 months or so on the Pacific. 

The contract with Mark was signed on a Tuesday and on that Thursday he spent some time in the Forest-Watershed and sent his assessment of what he discovered.  <Click on reports below>.   In short, it is a tribute to the thinking and work done by Ben Hayes.

On the Housekeeping Front

1. Starlink Internet: The Water District is now on a 30-day trial period using Elon Musk’s Starlink to get internet for the Water Plant.  Within 15 minutes of opening up the Starlink box at the Water Plant, the Internet was online and Bob Cerelli was listening to Yellow Brick Road by Elton John (Sir).   The more challenging aspect of the trial period is whether the Starlink Internet can be connected as a Virtual Private Network (VPN) with the Sanitary Plant’s Internet – as any Alarm from the Water Plant needs to be sent to the Sanitary Plant in order to be broadcast to the phones of District Staff.  If this all works, the District saves over $15,000 that Spectrum would have charged to lay cable.
2. Personnel Policies and Procedures: The Water District Board is in the process of evaluating and updating the Personnel Policies and Procedures based on new state mandates, the need for a bereavement policy and other things that are discovered.  This will be ongoing for another month.
3. New Contracting Rules.  Oregon State contracting rules change periodically and 2023 was one of those times. As a municipality there are some arcane procedures that we have to follow for updating our rules and taking exemptions from the State rules that don’t apply to us. This was all finalized at Thursday’s Board meeting.

Reports:  District Manager and Consulting Forester <click here>