PUBLIC WATER DISTRICT #13
Minutes of the February 4, 2009
Regular Session of the Board of Trustees

The Board of Directors of Public Water District #13, Jefferson County Missouri met in regular session at 7:08 p.m. on February 4, 2009 at the Lake Tishomingo Community Center, Hillsboro, Missouri.

Roll Call of Directors
The following Directors being present or absent as indicated:
	Name	Present/Absent
	Marilyn Meyer	Present
	Rich Hirsch	Present
	Rick Lippitt	Present
	John Hindrichs	Present
	Ken Jost	Present

Also present: Traci Newberry (TN, MDNR), Donna Martin (DM, USDA-RD), Bob Sweeney (RS, PWSD#13 attorney), Tim Robbs (TR, Taylor Eng.), Mary Leiweke (ML, PWSD#13 publicity), and Janet Hirsch (JWH, LTPOA liaison).

Approval of Agenda
Motion was made by Rich Hirsch and seconded by Rick Lippitt to accept the agenda. On voice vote, all Directors were in favor of accepting the agenda.

Project Update
[Electrical Circuit Installation Discussion]
RS: It is my understanding that at each residence there will be a holding tank and an electrical connection to a pump. Also, that the homeowner will be responsible for installing an outside electrical disconnect that the pump will connect to. Specs for that electrical service line will be provided to the homeowner by the District.
TR: We'll be installing a pump control box that will be connected to the homeowner-installed power disconnect. 
RH: The illustration shows only one box mounted on the wall of the house, but there really will be two, one a disconnecting switch installed by the homeowner and the other box, a pump control box installed by the District.
DM: The Board can have the homeowner install the electrical circuit for the pump, but we want to make sure that the homeowner uses a licensed electrician and that someone certifies that what was done meets code.
RS: That is my number one concern: getting the electrical circuit installed right. Even though the Board sets guidelines; we are leaving it to the homeowner. Who's going to certify that the installation is done right? 
JH: We have discussed that. I'm an electrician by trade. The Board will spec 2 or 3 disconnect boxes that can be used and in the specs it would say that the box would have to be installed according to the National Electrical Code. Then someone would come around and inspect the work. We can't really tell them they have to hire a licensed electrician.
DM: Yes you can, because the District will own that pump and you want to make sure what it's connecting to meets code.
RH: Can't the Board require that the homeowner get a permit from the county so the county would then be responsible for inspecting the installation of the circuit?
It was not known if Jefferson County required a permit to install an electrical circuit.

RS: We don't have electrical or mechanical licensing in Jefferson County. In St Louis and St Louis County electricians are licensed. Jefferson County does not have that. 
JH: In Jefferson County the contractor is licensed. 
[It is unclear to me (RH) as to whether Jefferson County licenses electricians.]

RS: Isn't it true that you want the homeowner to install the electrical circuit as efficiently and as inexpensively as possible and yet correctly? And the "correctly" worries me. If the District did it you could get economies of scale and consistency. 
DM: We don't want the contractor for the District going inside the home. That would be taking on too much liability. If it's something that can be done on the outside of the house, we're fine with that, but not on the inside. That's our policy -- any upgrades have to be done on the outside of the house. If the District chooses to have the homeowner upgrade the service and bring it to the outside, we want certification from a licensed electrician saying that it was done correctly because the District will own that pump. And if it's not running properly, that's your headache.
JH: We talked about someone going around and inspecting the circuits that were installed.
DM: Who's going to pay for that inspection? 
JH: That wasn't discussed.
DM: You need to talk about that. Typically, that's the homeowner's responsibility. If there are several to do, it may be possible to get a discount for the inspection.
DM: I also think it will become a major obstacle that the electrical circuit gets installed and certified by the time the District's contractor gets there to hook up the pump.
RL: If a licensed electrician puts in the circuit, would it also need to be certified?
DM: I'd just get the electrician putting in the circuit to certify it.
RL: So someone doing it on their own would still have to have it inspected and certified.
RS: It would be very difficult to get a licensed electrician to come out and certify work that they didn't do. And that's a problem.
MM: What if we stipulated in the specs that the circuit could only be installed by a licensed electrician and provide a list of electricians that are qualified and we recommend. Any other installers must be approved by the Board. 
RS: Electricians licensed by St Louis County would be acceptable. It will be easy to get a licensed electrician to do this work, but I don't believe you will be able to get a licensed electrician to certify work that he did not do. So it will be a problem if the spec says that work does not have to be done by a licensed electrician if it needs to be certified. 
TR: Perhaps there could be the statement "Deviations will be considered on a case by case situation."
DM: You have to be careful to treat everyone equally and fairly.
KJ: I think a lot of these houses are so old that they will have to upgrade their electrical service, especially some of the smaller weekend homes. 
DM: Has an inventory been done to determine how many houses will have to upgrade their electrical service? Because that gets very expensive.
DM: I really think we need an inventory of the houses to give homeowners an estimate of what it will cost to install the electrical circuit. Once you find out how many houses need to be upgraded, you may want it to be part of the project. Or you may want to change the way you want the upgrade to be done -- like from the outside of the house. That's what we've done on every other job because of one project where we've had a lot of problems with pumps kicking off and circuit breakers blowing. In that project, homeowners installed the circuits themselves. 
RS: Were the problems because homeowners installed a hodge-podge of connections?
DM: Yes. A little bit of work now will save you a lot of trouble down the road. 
DM: At Cedar Hill Lakes they had an electrical engineer look at every house in the project. They then put together three proposals for Ameren's review. All upgrades were done from outside of the house. They put on a separate subpanel and upgraded the meter base at the same time. 
TR: So you are not going into the house and tying into the house circuits?
DM: Right. Upgrading from the outside is more costly though.
RS: From a legal standpoint it's much "tidier" if you never go into someone's house. If we stay on the outside of someone's house there is less liability and it's easier to get this done on our time schedule. If individual homeowners are responsible for installing their own electrical service, it's more likely to not get done. We lose control over the timing of it.
MM: If a homeowner does not install the electrical circuit on time, can we go in and install the circuit and then charge them for the work?
RS: You could do that. You could treat it like a weed ordinance, where you offer the homeowner the opportunity to cut his own weeds and then, if the homeowner doesn't do it, the city cuts the weeds and then bills the homeowner. But you can't really do that in this case because of the timing issue. The electrical circuit has to be in place when it's time to hook up the pump. 
DM: There is also a problem of coming up with a budget we feel comfortable with because we won't know who's going to install the circuit and who won't.
JH: The problem with coming off the electrical meter base is that all the lakeside homes have their septic tanks on the lake side of the house and their electrical meters on the street side of the house. Also, many houses have concrete under the meter, so they will have to run a pipe from the meter all the way around the house which will be unsightly and a lot of work. So there will be a large amount of labor involved.
DM: That's why we're asking for an electrical inventory to be made, so we have a true picture of what it's going to cost. So you don't hit that cost overrun because there's a lot more linear feet than was projected.
ML said that in the past homeowners have been told that there would be no upfront costs and that now we are talking about having homeowners pay to install an electrical circuit. Because of this many people that were in favor of sewers will now oppose them.
DM: That's why I think we need an electrical inventory. To determine how much this will cost.
JH: Very few will need to upgrade their service, unless they had 60 amp service and they added on to the house. 
DM: What would you estimate your cost would be to update the electrical service from the outside? $2500 maybe? 
TR: You probably have a better idea on the cost.
DM: If the District contractor is going to do the electrical work, you need to get Ameren to concur on whatever you propose.
ML: We had our electrical service upgraded to 400 amp. Paul Woods (Ameren) is the guy that handles this area and he had to come out and inspect and sign off on our upgrade.
DM: You should probably check with him and see what Ameren's recommendations are. In your dealings with Ameren get written quotes. In our experience Ameren sometimes forgets what they quote.

[Service Pipe Discussion]
DM: What about the service line? [This is the pipe between the house and the tank.] If you were going to put the new tank where the old tank was, there would be no problem. But since that is not the case, you will need a temporary easement to put in that service pipe. I'm I correct?
JWH: No. By the subdivision's restrictions, the homeowner's association has the right to lay and maintain any sewer pipe.
DM: But the District is not maintaining that pipe. From our standpoint as a lending agency, we want the easement to say that the District is not maintaining the service pipe from the house to the tank, even though the District will own it. We want it made clear to the homeowner that the District is installing the service pipe, but the homeowner is responsible for maintenance of the service pipe.
JWH: So what the District installs, the District must own?
DM: Yes. Somewhere it has to say that the District owns that pipe, but you are not going to maintain it. I need to have a statement in my folder that proves that you still own that service pipe and you did not give it away. 
RS: I think we can declare that anything we install is owned by the District and that the service pipe has to be maintained by the homeowner. I think this can be done in an ordinance. 
RS: I think it's cleaner to adopt an ordinance declaring the District owns anything they install, based on the authority granted to the District by statute and by the original grantor. 
TR: Here's the problem we have with going with outside electric. Our surveyors have already visited each site a number of times and we didn't pick any of that up. So we would have to go back and pick up every electrical pole and do another electrical route. You have to walk each lot. 
TR: The Board needs to decide if we want to go ahead with the electrical inventory. 

There followed a discussion on whether an electrical inventory could be completed. The conclusion was that it could not be done via telephone since most homeowners could not be depended on to determine the amperage of their service panel or count the number of available spaces for additional circuit breakers. The fact that a sizeable portion of the houses are not occupied in the winter would make doing the inventory difficult even if each of the houses were visited. 
DM: Typically the engineer's electrical engineer on staff does the inventory.

DM: Here's a question: If all sewer components are installed and the homeowner did not install the electrical circuit, so the contractor cannot hook up the electric to make the system operational, can the District charge that homeowner a user fee?
RS: Yes. It is possible that you couldn't charge them the entire amount. The law as I read it is that you cannot charge someone for a benefit they did not receive. You are providing them the opportunity to connect. Once they have received the opportunity to connect, they have received a benefit. I say that perhaps you couldn't charge them 100 percent is that the inability to flush the toilet removes some amount of benefit. But you should be able to charge all of your fixed costs. And at this point that should be 100 percent.

[Electrical Easement Discussion]
RS: Here's the legal quandary: you have the right "to lay sewer pipes and water pipes and appurtenances thereto through or across said lot" up to the point of where you touch someone's house.
RS: In terms of the electrical system that needs to be installed, it is definitely an appurtenance, I think that part is OK. It's the touching that concerns me. If what the District owned never touched the house, I feel pretty good about it.
DM: So if they put that box somewhere other than on the house, that would be OK? 
TR: We can put it right by the house.
RS: I think you have the authority to do that based on Restriction #13 and the Corporate Easement Deed (CED).
RS: This electrical system is part of your sewer system. It's an appurtenance. 
RS: I think you should get permission from everyone that will allow putting the control panel on the house. For those that refuse to allow it, you could mount the control panel on a post in the yard or get permission to attach to the house by a mass eminent domain action. The area to be condemned would be where the panel would be mounted.
There followed a discussion of costs associated with the condemnation and the time frame involved.
"Carrots and sticks" proposed to encourage people to sign easements:
1) If you sign the installation will be nice and tidy. Otherwise, we'll have to put a stick in your yard. 
2) If the District has to pay for any easements thru condemnation, etc., user fees will be higher.
3) If one person holds out and costs the District money, the neighbors pay the award. The money one person receives will come from his neighbors.
DM: If someone doesn't connect, they come off of the user list and the user rate will increase a little bit for everyone else.
TN: We based our rural sewer grant on 262 hook ups. Earlier I heard that we may be connecting fewer houses initially. This will affect the Rural Sewer Grant amount.
JWH: At this point Bono Del is considered phase 2 because of the expense of running pipe to the Bono Del  subdivision to service 20 users
DM: Easement deeds should probably be held and recorded all at once right before we are ready to go to bid. That way it minimizes the time between when the deeds are recorded and loan money is paid.

[Miscellaneous Topics Discussion]
RS: Is the beginning of the condemnation process satisfactory to qualify as obtaining of easements? 
TN: All we need is for the District's attorney to sign the DNR form.
DM: We're a little bit different. If there are several properties being condemned, probably not, because we don't know what the outcome will be. If you only had five, then we probably would go ahead with it.

TR: We expect to have the drawings for the collection system done by the end of next week. The hydraulics may not be complete. Our plan is to have everything available for review by the end of March.
DM: It will take at least two months for us to review the plans.

DM: We would like to see a title commitment on that; that there are no encumbrances on the property. Before construction you will have to get an owner's title policy.

DM: We also need the signed USDA-RD legal agreement.

DM: We also need the opinion of Bond Counsel (Gilmore & Bell) that the bond election was valid. 
Marilyn will see if there is information in the files on this.

DM gave us an updated check list.

DM: Tim, eventually I need a color-coded map for the easements for the attorney. I also need a map that has all the houses on it and a corresponding user list. 
RH: Not all houses here have posted addresses. We do have all of the owner's addresses.

TR: Can we get a copy of the names, addresses, and lot numbers of all the owners?
JWH: Yes, I will furnish you with that. 

RS: Because of 911 requirements, every house has to have an address. I will look into getting a 911 map that has addresses for every house. 

JWH summarized progress made by the District in completing MDNR's check list.

TN and DM indicated a common bank account could be used. And it can be an interest bearing account.

Adjournment
There being no other formal business to come before the Board, a motion to adjourn was made by John Hindrichs and seconded by Rich Hirsch at 8:58 p.m. Motion passed with all Directors in approval.

Respectfully Submitted,

Rich Hirsch
Recording Secretary

Approved this 11th day of February 2009.

___________________________	_________________________________
Secretary	Chairman
February 10, 2009