MINUTES

STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA CANE CREEK WATER & SEWER DISTRICT

COUNTY OF HENDERSON MAY 19, 1999

The Cane Creek Water & Sewer District Board met for a regularly scheduled meeting at 9:00 a.m. in the Commissioners' Conference Room of the Henderson County Office Building.

Those present were: Chairman Grady Hawkins, Vice-Chair Bill Moyer, Commissioner Renee Kumor, Commissioner Don Ward, Commissioner Marilyn Gordon, County Manager David E. Nicholson, Assistant County Manager Angela S. Beeker, County Attorney Don H. Elkins, and Clerk to the Board Elizabeth W. Corn.

Also present were: Utilities Director James Erwin and County Engineer Gary Tweed.

CALL TO ORDER/WELCOME

Chairman Hawkins called the meeting to order and welcomed all in attendance.

REVIEW OF MINUTES

Minutes were presented for review and approval of the March 17, 1999 meeting.

Commissioner Kumor made the motion to approve the minutes as presented of the March 17, 1999 meeting of the Cane Creek Water and Sewer District. All voted in favor and the motion carried.

UPDATE ON GRANT

Gary Tweed, County Engineer, reminded the Commissioners that last month the Town of Fletcher had contracted with Martin, McGill Associates to help prepare a grant application to go to the State for the high unit cost grant monies that were available to help with the proposed projects in the Town of Fletcher. It was a hurry and push to get this application in. The State responded toward the end of last week. Mr. Tweed gave a summary of the comments the State made. The two things that staff and the Board needed to discuss that had to do with priority were implementation of an infiltration/ inflow program (I & I) and the development of a capital reserve fund as part of the Cane Creek Water and Sewer District budget.

What the State is requiring now for most utility departments is a fairly stringent maintenance and operational program on your facility. Utilities Director Jim Erwin and his staff had compared that to what is being included in this maintenance plan and many of the items are covered already. Mr. Erwin thought we could probably undertake an I & I program which is where you go out and make sure that you=re not getting infiltration into your system, you monitor the system periodically. Then if you do have problems, you address those problems through a capital improvement project type approach. Mr. Tweed stated that was something that is needed in any sewer system that you have because if you=re not out checking your lines to see where you have problems, you=re just going to pay for it later on. He recommended that the Board authorize that program be undertaken. It would also give us some higher priority ratings with respect to this grant. Mr. Tweed thought that could be developed within the budget that we=ve got currently proposed for next year. What the State is telling us is that in the round of applications they received four hundred million dollars worth of requests, but we=ve only got 160 million dollars. This round is going to be very close on the priority as to how those projects are funded. They only expect to fund about twenty-five percent of the applications this first round. The priority rating is how they=re going to look at these things. Those communities that post the highest priority are those that are going to get the money.

Capital Reserve Fund

The second item that needed Board approval was the development of a capital reserve fund. In order to adopt a capital fund, this had to be done by resolution. A draft resolution had been prepared by Martin and McGill. Mr. Tweed had discussed this with Carey McLelland our Finance Director for all of our enterprise funds having a reserve fund set up such that we could be taking monies from our enterprise programs and develop a capital reserve fund to take care of future capital projects. By having both this I & I program and a capital Reserve program would increase the priority ratings that we will achieve for this project.

Utilities Director Jim Erwin informed the Board that the State is mandating by July 1 certain things that we=ve attempted to do in the past as we have had some manpower and money but not at this degree. Starting July 1 we=ve got to do quarterly inspections on our high priority lines where you=ve got high potential for failure. We=ve got to do annual inspections of sewer lines that are more or less out of the way, not seen by the public on a daily basis. We=ve got to do right-of-way maintenance, we=ve got to start cleaning a percentage of our lines and we=ve got to have a monthly test of our backup equipment and a lot of inspections and we=ve got to log all these things that we=re doing. When we have a spill they=re going to go look at the plan that we have in place and then depending on how close we follow the plan will be a large factor in how large or small the fine is. So those items were budgeted for. Mr. Erwin thought this I & I Management Plan is requiring some additional things that we may not have budgeted for specifically but you have to make repairs to your system, you have to do smoke testing and monitoring. There was some money in our budget that will hopefully cover most of these things in the I & I Management Plan.

Commissioner Moyer made the motion to adopt the resolution. All voted in favor and the motion carried.

Commissioner Kumor made the motion for the Board to adjourn as the Cane Creek Water and Sewer District Board. All voted in favor and the motion carried.

Attest:

Elizabeth W. Corn, Clerk to the Board Grady Hawkins, Chairman