This is the final communication from the current Water District Board. It covers:
- Transition of the Districts’ Boards
- Reflecting on the accomplishments of the past two years
- Known risks ahead
- Progress on the District Rejuvenation Projects
A. Transition of the Districts’ Boards
Current Board Members
| Water District Board Members | Sanitary District Board Members |
| Bill Campbell (Chair) – terms ends June 30 | Casey Short (Chair) – terms ends June 30 |
| Chris Mastrandrea (Vice-Chair) – term ends June 30 | Tom Mattia (Vice-Chair) – 2 years remaining |
| Bob Cerelli – term ends June 30 | Mark Engberg – terms ends June 30 |
| Tevis Dooley – 2 years remaining | Darr Tindall – terms ends June 30 |
| Sam Garrison – 2 years remaining | Open Position – 2 years remaining |
Board Members-elect:
NOTE: Write-in candidates may or may not have been aware of their write-in candidacy. Each candidate must accept the position by signed letter to the county by July 5. See John Mercereau’s comment at the end of this post.
| Water District Board Members Elect | Sanitary District Board Members Elect |
| Richard Petrich – 30 write-in votes | Casey Short – 52 votes |
| Mark Engberg – 50 votes | |
| Owen Dufka -3 write-in votes | Doug Caffall – 25 write-in votes |
B. Reflecting on the accomplishments of the past 2 years
1. Utilities
Over the past 2 years, significant progress has been made to rejuvenate the plants, equipment, overall infrastructure and administrative processes. The lion’s share of the credit goes to Matthew Gardner who single-handedly carries the compliance, operations and maintenance burden 24x7x365. It’s a heavy responsibility that Matt takes seriously, as he is the one who is responsible to the State – with his certifications on the line. Until very recently – when an experienced relief operator could finally be found – Matt has gone without any time off, no nights, no weekends, no vacations. The load takes its toll and Matt has our sincerest appreciation.
The below table lists the major accomplishments of the past 12 months, but they are only the long term projects that were known and budgeted. In addition to those projects, Matt has maintained, refurbished or replaced all sorts of pieces, parts, pipes and equipment. He has also implemented a preventive maintenance system that tracks & schedules all of the maintenance work that needs to be done according to manufacturer recommendation, though unfortunately we don’t have the manpower to catch up with the backlog and keep pace with current needs. Matt’s diligence in trying to get ahead of the maintenance curve has brought the chaos under control.
2. Forest-Watershed
The Forest-Watershed has been sorted. Discussions with Business Oregon led to an approved plan-process for the federal ARPA-funds to be used to decommission/ repair the roads that were identified in the Ecological Road Assessment. Two State-compliant procurements were conducted; one to to select and contract with a roads maintenance/ construction firm, and the other to select and contract with a consulting forester who oversees their work. The road work is more than halfway finished and it is expected to be completed by this fall.
A Public Access & Recreation Policy was developed that aligns with community input gathered through surveys and open forum meetings, with the exception of allowed hunting that was a requirement of the grant award for the property. This policy was reviewed, refined and approved by the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), also required by the terms of our grant award.
A long term financial plan for operating the forest-watershed was developed. That plan is now the basis of the District’s State-required budgeting and expenditures process. After the ARPA funds for road work and related forestry are spent, the District’s forest account will be used to pay the ongoing operations expenses. At the forecasted spend rate, and without significant donations, hefty rate increases amd/or a tax levy, the forest will need to be logged in FY2029-2030 in order to continue to fund ongoing operations.
3. Administration
To be compliant with Bureau of Labor and Industries laws, the Districts’ Personnel Policy was updated so that staff will paid for their on-call time. Following the advice of legal counsel, staff were back-paid for 7 years of on-call duty.
Standard administrative and financial accounting processes continue to be defined and implemented, though there is still a ways to go. As part of this work, we have significantly upgraded our information technologies to securely; 1) support those processes, 2) provide redundancy and up-to-date capabilities within the operation control systems for both plants, and 3) allow both plants to be controlled remotely from staff phones.
Over the past two years, the Board Chairs have taken on all of the administrative activities for the District (utilities and forest-watershed) to allow Matt to focus on the operations and maintenance of the utilities. When Matt runs into any administrative obstacle, the Board Chair deals with it freeing Matt up to move onto other operational work until the issue is resolved. As demonstrated by the number of expected and unexpected accomplishments over the past two years, this approach works exceedingly well.
To finally relieve the Boards of administrative responsibilities, without putting this burden back on Matt, a State-compliant procurement process and a tax levy have resulted in a 2-year contract with a District Administrator. The contracted Administrator will function as District staff so that the Boards can return to a policy-only focus, per Special District Association of Oregon (SDAO) guidelines and District policy, and Matt can focus exclusively on the core business of distributing clean water and processing waste water.
C. Known Risks Ahead
After two years of an in-depth look at the District and its business, we identified two critical risks that we have been trying to mitigate and that continue to loom into the future.
1. Experienced operators are almost impossible to recruit and retain.
It’s been a little over 2 1/2 years since the District has had its full complement of 2 experienced operators. The District has been unable to recruit an operator with any level of experience, even though a position with a generous salary and benefits package has been posted on regional, state and national job sites. This same recruiting/ retention challenge is shared by Cannon Beach, Seaside and other north coast communities. It seems to be virtually impossible to find qualified staff to come to the coast to fill open positions.
Matt Gardner has been a District employee for the better part of a decade. Over that time, he has developed into one of the most knowledgeable, experienced and respected water & sanitary plant operators on the North Coast and likely throughout most of the state. (As you can imagine, he is in high demand). Since we have not been able to support Matt with District employed staff, the current Board has been creative in staying within budget and patchworking together a set of contractor resources (and Board member volunteers) that leverage Matt’s strengths, provide him with job satisfaction and offer him at least a semi-balanced life style, so that he stays engaged in the District’s work.
To keep the Districts moving forward, we have had to look beyond the old ways of doing things. Creativity will continue to be required as the Districts are still falling a bit short in the maintenance work that needs to be done.
2. The Districts’ business model may not be sustainable
Historically, the District operated as a self-contained business where employed staff operated the plants, took care of the equipment AND did almost everything else – billing, accounting, budgeting, financial planning, mowing, office/bathroom cleaning, board support, community outreach, compliance, procurement/ contracting, grant writing, etc. In the more recent past, this “in-house’ approach became less viable as it failed to leverage the skill sets/ strengths of the staff, left critical activities undone or done at a sub-par level, and resulted in the significant, crucial deficiencies identified in the Spring 2023 engineer’s report.
Over the past two years, the current Board has been transitioning the Districts from an “in-house” model to a “managed-contractor” model where staff (Matt) focuses exclusively on the core-business specialized tasks and non-core functions are outsourced to a range of contractors with the relevant skill sets.
Looking ahead … With the backlog in preventative maintenance, the continued rejuvenation of the utilities, the newly identified need to stabilize the 40-50 year old underground infrastructure, plus government mandates for additional compliance activities and projects, such as the Asbury Creek intake relocation, the District is faced with an increasing work load. That work load comes at the same time as a vanishing experienced work force (i.e. no experienced operators), a very limited number of appropriately skilled contractors (specifically information technology) and rising costs. And, these costs are being borne by a relatively small rate-payer base. In this environment, it is unclear how long the “managed-contractor” model will be sustainable.
The current Board has just begun to explore alternatives for managing and operating the utilities and the business of the Districts. Under consideration are 1) intergovernmental agreements with other municipalities to build scale, and 2) “outsourcing” the work of the Districts to a private firm. These considerations are starting points and may not be the ending points.
Bottom line, a new course into the future needs to be evaluated and charted.
D. Progress on the District Rejuvenation Projects
In addition to standard operations tasks and addressing unexpected challenges that present themselves, the following progress has been made on the FY2024-2025 budgeted rejuvenation projects listed below – with green indicating completed. (The complete set of projects with status can be found by clicking here .)
- Project 1 – Replace Operations Control Electronics for the Water Plant. COMPLETED
- Project 2 – Replace Webb Lift Station. COMPLETED
- Project 3 – Upgrade & Bring Current the Business/ Admin Computer and Data System. COMPLETED
- Project 4 – Find, Compile, Electronically Store and Provide Access to Required Business Documents. AS TIME ALLOWS
- Project 5 – Implement an Asset Management System. COMPLETED
- Project 6 – Upgrade & Bring Current the Districts’ Web Site: COMPLETED
- Project 7 – Inspect Water Lines for Lead. COMPLETED
- Project 8 – Corrosion in Water Plant. COMPLETED
- Project 9 – Replace Operations Control Electronics for the Sanitary Plant. COMPLETED
- Project 10 – Move Asbury Creek Intake. IN PROGRESS
A.C. Water District Board (Go to Home Page) 
3 responses to “June 19th – Our 2-year Term in Review: Progress & Risks”
Thank you to the board for your service and special thanks to Matt for continuing to provide us with the best award winning groumd water in Oregon! Reed Morrison
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I did not publicly offer to run for, nor will I accept a position on the Water Board. Please remove my name from the”elected” list on the last email from the district.
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Many thanks to Matt and the Board for the careful and persistent work you have done to maintain and improve the water system in Arch Cape. – Marian Vollum
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