Attending Members: Mary Esther Putnam (Chair); Dall Winn; Jeff Gardner; Spence Beckstrom.
Also Present: Gerald Schiefer (Fire Chief); George Cropper (Treasurer); Beverly Udell (Secretary).
Guests: John Vance; Guin Winn; Mary Holly; Helga Love; Larry Higgins.
Absent: John Nichols
1. General Business:
a/b. Welcome – Meeting was opened by Mary Esther (Chair) at 5:07 PM and the Pledge of Allegiance was said.
c. Minutes: The Minutes from the meeting held on July 9, 2008 were read by each Board member individually. Dall motioned to approve the Minutes as corrected, Jeff seconded that motion and all else approved.
d. Pine Valley Building Permits Reviewed: None
* Dall asked if anyone had heard back from Judy Randall regarding the UTV rules. Thus far, no one had. * Helga Love brought up how there seems to be so much extra noise in the Valley. The construction noise seems exceptionally loud. And also loud is the helicopter (property owner’s) that has been flying in and landing in the Valley.
e. Board Member Reports:
Mary Esther: The ‘Community Emergency Response Team’ (CERT) training has been going really good. One group has already graduated, another will start tomorrow. * Regarding the proposed Local District for Pine Valley – there has been concern about paying for an additional treasurer in addition to the one we already have for this Board. George has already mentioned that the addition of another District’s duties to his already PVSSD duties, would be just like taking on another part-time job. The same would go for the secretary position. Talk continued about other areas of the Local District that would need to be worked out, such as who would be on the Board – for simplicity would it be the same members that we have now for the current PVSSD, or would the Co. Commissioner appoint different members? Should the current annual $150 fee be lowered by say $25, so that $25 can then go towards the Local District without having to raise fees for the property owners? Would property owners then write two separate checks, or could the combined fees still be in one? Obviously everything would clearly be spelled out, and all agreed that we want to avoid raising the annual fee. Right now we are having to pay the 2009 Sheriff’s fee of $8000. The ideal would be to have two side-by-side Districts in the Valley, as it would be too big a job to try to keep everything, including billing, totally separate. Spence mentioned that the Local District would start out with no money if it was totally separate from the PVSSD. George would like to see the Local District money to be started on a calendar year (Jan. 1). For 2008, the PVSSD will have to transfer funds. We would need to come up with a detailed contract for the Sheriff which would say what our expectations were. Beverly suggested that if we need the property owners to pay with two separate checks, then we would almost need to send out two separate bills or the people would be confused and just write one combined check for $150 because that is what they are used to doing. Income and accounting will be a chore for both Beverly and George, but from what we see, the outgoing might only be the one check made out to the Sheriff each year. Would we have to consider insurance? There would need to be two separate sets of minutes.
Spence: Spence asked Beverly (who is on the PV Dinner Committee) if anyone had yet spoken to her about a ‘fence out’ as a possible Dinner Committee project? This would entail fencing the cows out of the valley (using the existing fence line plus adding some other) and also paying someone for future fence maintenance. Bev responded that the request regarding ‘fence out’ had not yet been broached to the Dinner Committee.
Jeff: He talked to Wendell Gubler who said that right now he and his crew are heavily involved with paving roads in Gunlock, but that he would be happy to at least come up and look at our road situation. Mary Esther suggested calling Wendell back again and ask for a specific time that he could come up, so that Jeff could then arrange to ride along with him. Mary Esther suggested also asking Wendell about the possibility of chip sealing our roads.
Dall: Brought in simple drawing board plans for a proposed addition to the fire station. They are considering a 45 foot by 65 foot addition. Right now it is simply in the idea stage. This would be funded by Impact Fee monies. So far two contractors have been spoken to, the last of which said that he would do it at cost for Pine Valley, which of course would make the price substantially lower. We also would still need to add exhaust fans to the current bay. Jeff did a 2009 ballpark figure of our Impact Fees. George suggested also adding a small roof to our existing training room front door to ward of ice at the entrance in the winter.
Fire Chief – Gerald: See attached report.
Treasurer’s Report – George: See attached report. * George wants to transfer some money from the Wells Fargo account into a savings in order for it to be able to gain some interest. The Board approved that transfer.
2 – Public Comments: Wandering cows continue to be a problem for some property owners. The way the laws now read, if they want to keep cows out of their yard, the property owner is responsible for fencing them out.
Dall moved for the meeting to adjourn at 6:30. All were in favor.
The next Board meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 at 5:00 P.M.