OWUI
Olga Water Users, Incorporated
ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING MINUTES
Thursday, July 8th, 2023 5-7 pm — Olga Community Center
1. Call to Order 5:05PM Board members present Pat Boehm Guy Woods, Geoff Cunard, Dan Burke, Operator
Members present: Joe Greulich, Russ Mullins, Ann Galvin, Jess and Norene Nealy Harvey and Gail Glasser Mary and Jerry Clark, John Philips, Pat Roche, Dan and Grace Gottlieb, Alexandra Gayek, Fran Mac Millan, Sandy Taylor.
Annual Meeting presentation By Pat Boehm; He speaks about progress on the intertie. Pipe is laid, vault is not on island yet. Hope to have it within the next two months. Dan G asks about mothballing plant. “Has that decision been made?” Dan Burke: has been operating our system for 18 months. He speaks about the decision making process that led us to consider mothballing our plant. With the Rock Island project, we were able to move with intertie piping at considerable cost reduction. We had 3 things to deal with: Aging infrastructure, water rights, and state regulation. The state DOH prefers that small water systems combine. They also require that if one system buys water from another, they cannot also produce their own water, therefore it is in our best interest to mothball the plant. Norene asks what does cost sharing w/Doe Bay look like? Answer is that we shared the cost of the intertie equally, and may need to share infrastructure costs with them in the future. Geoff and Guy note that we will try to replace the special assessment with loans or grants. Dan Burke notes that the intertie was driven by financial decisions, and a lot of money was saved by splitting the cost with Doe Bay, and by jumping in with the Rock Island project. Pat talks about our leak survey and Distribution System loss. We plan to fix the leaks that were found at a couple of hydrants and a valve. We are also working to replace all meters. Guy notes that we do not have the money to do the meters right now, but we are working on financing. Harvey asks if there is a risk of Doe Bay growing so that we don’t get enough water? Dan Burke notes that our agreement with Doe Bay guarantees us the water we need. Grace Gottlieb asks about using State DWSRF funding. Pat notes we are working on that. Guy gives financial report: Looks like we will run through our reserves by the end of the year. We are pursuing numerous funding options, including DWSRF and other low interest loans. Alexandra Gayek asks about SWSMP, does it show hard numbers for infrastructure maintenance? She wants to know how our assessments are being
used? Are we looking forward to future needs? Geoff answers that this is one of the purposes of the SWSMP. It will be a working document that includes a facilities inventory, and planning for repair/maintenance/replacement of assets. Harvey Glasser expresses gratitude for all the initiatives the current board is taking on. John Philips asks if we can do Zoom meetings.
2. Other board business tabled until August meeting.
3. Next meeting time August 8, 2023 5:00PM
4. Adjournment 6:30PM
OLGA WATER USERS, INCORPORATED. owuistaff@gmail.com