Orchard City Irrigation District Meeting
March 6, 2023
The meeting was started by President, Andy Wick at 6:33 pm at the Orchard City Town Hall meeting room. All board members present- Andy Wick, Aaron St.Peter, Mitch Thomas, Jim Pizzino, and Joe Young along with Jeff Widener and Dee Dee Lousignont and 10 property owners.
Joe Young read the minutes from the 1/28/23 meeting, they were approved as changed by adding Jim's name as one of the Colorado Trust account signers.
Colorado Trust Accounts were discussed as far as who is on the account and how fast funds are available when requested.
Dee Dee gave the financial report showing that $280,000 was moved from the Wells Fargo money market account to the Colorado Trust accounts. The balances of the Money market at the end of February was $120,178.54 and in the Operating account was $23,811.01.
New Business
The archives/files (OCID, Fogg and Butte) are currently stored in the top of Andy's dairy barn. He needs to get them moved.
Andy found storage in the area at the Pods North of Eckert that are water and rodent proof for a 12x20 for $90 per month. Also the Secure Storage in Eckert has a small l0xlO that is waterproof but not rodent proof but they will keep bait scattered out to keep mice down. The cost is $55 per month.
There was discussion for this such as purchasing a Con ex to keep them - but where to keep the Conex. Also discussed to scan and digitize the files. It is the hope to do that in the future, but not a project and cost that the board wants to deal with right now. There are grants out there to help with the digitizing to look into for the future. Also some documents need to be kept as originals. There are about 5 file cabinets. The board has the duty to keep the records protected.
Aaron made a motion to rent the $55 smaller storage unit at Secure Storage to get them out of Andy's barn for now and to look into getting gri3nts and digitizing them in the future. It was seconded by Mitch. This will be paid on a 6 months at a time basis.
Andy will need help to move the file cabinets.
Other New Business
Andy asked Aaron to enroll in the Water Fluency class this summer. 3 of the 4 classes are online and the 4th one is in Alamosa. Mitch moved to reimburse Aaron for the cost of the tuition of $1504 and to pay for his travel cost to Alamosa not to exceed $2000. Aaron said it will not be that much. It was seconded by Jim.
The Orchard City culvert project at Iris and 2100 Road was voted on in the past and still needs done. So Tuesday March 7 at 10 am Andy, Mitch and Jeff Widener will meet with the City representative to look at the project to see what needs done to get started. The agreement was the Town will pay the cost to replace the culvert with the same size and OCID will pay up to $7500 to increase the culvert size. The current size is not known until it is dug out
Other new business is that the debit card is not working and is being replaced - waiting on the new one to come soon. Jeff will need it to cover costs for the burning and burn crew coming up soon.
Old Business
Gregg Helmsing said that the website to rent water is ready for testing.
Jeff Wick and Mitch volunteered to head up a committee to look at all the ditch system with Jeff Widener to decide what work/repair needs done and get it prioritized as to what work needs done soonest. And that work will need to get done by April.
The Historical decrees need to be pushed to prove use, some measure device is needed for Dry Creek decree. Circle Creek decree was proved but is was years ago, so need to try to prove it too. Jeff Widener says that the State tells us when we need to do it.
Other Old Business
The water committee meeting with the Bureau of Reclamation went well and the minutes for the meeting were emailed to the property owners and posted to the website. BOR still plans to start the project in the Fall of 2023 and we will need to try to dry the reservoir as much as possible before work is started.
Kim Kokesh recommends that we move the bank accounts from Wells Fargo to Alpine bank. Although many are happy with Alpine bank, Aaron suggested that if it is not broken, do we need to fix it? Since the majority of the funds have already been moved to Colorado Trust. Joe will inquire about services and charges for help deciding about moving accounts to Alpine.
The Colorado Trust accounts have been opened with $93,000 int the Plus account and $187,000 into the Prime account. The Plus account is suppose to make more interest and have more risk. But Aaron says looking at the first statement from them, there seems to be not much difference in interest income. It was decided to leave the accounts as is.
Andy will get a hold of the storage people to get started and Dee Dee will get a check for the first 6 months rent.
The Minutes for the Annual Meeting were read and agreed by the board that they were accurate. They will be read at the next annual meeting.
Andy closed the meeting at 8:10 pm