Board closes in on sending project to bid

SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board had another light agenda Jan. 16 as the District works on final details leading up to the proposed project going to bid. In other business, temporary construction easements were discussed, the Board approved moving three properties to adjacent sub-districts and the Board voted on another section of the District’s by-laws.

District Manager Jean Curtiss said the plans for the proposed sewer project are currently waiting for approval from Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development (RD) has indicated to the District’s engineers that RD is ready to approve the plans once DEQ is finished.

The District is still working to obtain easements for the collection system off the north end of Pine Drive and at Seeley-Swan High School (SSHS).

Curtiss said the Pine Drive easement is being held up because the owners don’t have their names on the property. They inherited it years ago but only became aware of the property after the District attempted to get an easement. Curtiss is hopeful that they can have it wrapped up by the end of January.

The easement at SSHS was originally for the force main to cross the north end of the property. With the main route being changed, the District now needs an easement for a lift station on the south end of the property. The Board voted to obtain an updated appraisal to show the change that Curtiss will present to the school board at its Jan. 28 meeting.

The District’s engineers are working with Blackfoot Telephone to include a bid option for fiber optic conduits to be laid at the same time as the sewer mains are being installed. If it were financially feasible, Blackfoot and the District would share part of the cost of excavation and save the District money on installation.

As of Jan. 15 the District has received temporary easements for construction for 50 lots in Phase 1. District Secretary Felicity Derry said none of the easements received so far have come in under protest.

While this is only about a quarter of the total lots, Curtiss said she has talked to several others who plan to submit them. Director Davy Good suggested that Curtiss verify mailing addresses or use other methods to contact people. Some addresses where property tax bills are sent might not be the location of the right person needed to sign for the property.

The District initially set a deadline of Dec. 31 for landowner signatures but has since backed off on that date and will continue to accept signatures on temporary easements.

Curtiss said she has not calculated how many Volume Ratio Units (VRUs) the 50 lots represent. Single family residential properties will be assigned one VRU while other properties will be assigned VRUs based on either a conversion table found in the District’s Rules and Regulations (R&Rs) or on actual water usage.

VRUs will come into play when the District calculates the estimated monthly cost to operate the sewer. Current estimates of $130 per month per VRU are based on having 150 VRUs connected.

Another hurdle the District must clear is getting approval from their bond council that the bonds will be saleable. With the lawsuit filed by District landowner Don Larson still ongoing there are concerns that the bond council will not approve the project moving forward until that is settled.

There was a court hearing in the case to work on a schedule for the trial Jan. 15 however, the parties could not agree on a timeline.

Board President Pat Goodover said the District’s attorney Jon Beal proposed a schedule to have the case finished near the end of 2021. Goodover said Larson’s attorney didn’t provide a proposed schedule but disagreed with the District’s schedule.

Goodover said the judge wasn’t excited by the District’s proposed schedule and Curtiss added that the judge said they wanted it to happen by June. Goodover explained that the District’s issue with such a short timeline is that there are over 50 plaintiffs and just doing a deposition on each one would take longer.

Goodover said the judge has given the parties a month to agree on a schedule or she will set one for them.

During the meeting the Board held a hearing on changing the sub-district/phase boundaries. The Board was asked to move two lots in Phase 4 and one lot in Phase 3 into Phase 2 of the collection system.

The landowner of the lots in Phase 4 requested the change because they tore down their house and cannot obtain a permit for their new house because the Missoula City-County Health Department couldn’t find a record of their septic system and told the landowner they could not connect to the existing system.

The landowner was hopeful that if their property was in an earlier phase of the sewer project that they could convince the Health Department to allow a temporary connection to their existing system.

The house sat on a single 33-acre lot but there is a small half-acre lot that sits between the large lot and Phase 2 that was included in the requested boundary change. That lot has an existing house that is currently being moved offsite and a representative of the landowner said the intention is to leave it vacant.

The District’s engineer advised the Board that moving the property to Phase 2 would most likely allow for it to be connected with a gravity sewer line instead of a grinder pump system, saving the District money in the end.

One of the cons of the change would be that there are only 54 lots in Phase 4 and so when that phase of the collection system was constructed there would be only 52 lots splitting the cost.

Director Beth Hutchinson argued that the transfer of lots out of Phase 4 was bigger than just two of 54 lots because the two lots are a significant development potential for the phase. The 33-acre lot accounts for nearly one quarter of the total land by area. There are two lots in the entire phase that could easily be developed with a much higher density and this is one of them.

Hutchinson was not opposed to connecting the landowner’s replacement house to Phase 2. She felt there should be a way to allow that but not allow the future growth potential from leaving Phase 4. She said that while it has been expressed that the current landowner is not seeking to develop the property, a future landowner might wish to do so.

The representative of the landowner suggested that they could transfer just the lot that had the house to be rebuilt on if that would help solve the issue but Hutchinson said she was not concerned about the smaller lot because it has very little development potential.

Curtiss said that she didn’t think that was an issue because a single residential service line would serve the property. If the property were going to be developed they would need to have a collection main to the property and that would be determined later. Curtiss said that the over-density policy that has yet to be adopted would address where they funds would go.

Curtiss explained that the property moving from Phase 3 to Phase 2 was considered because it has an RV waste dump station located on it and some people have questioned why it can’t be hooked up in an earlier phase.

Curtiss said the phase change would save about 450 feet of pressurized pipe. The landowner would be responsible for pretreatment of the RV waste per the District’s R&Rs so the expense to either phase won’t be any more than any other lot.

The Board voted to move all three lots to Phase 2. Hutchinson recused herself from the vote saying that she felt she had a conflict in interest because she owns two lots in Phase 4.

In November the Board approved new by-laws excluding a section on Duties of the Board. In December the Board agreed to send that section back to the committee to rework it.

The committee recommended adding a section titled “Public Service and Fiduciary Duties” to Article VII, Composition and Responsibilities of the Board of Directors. In this section it states that both individual Directors and the Board as a whole have fiduciary duties as public servants and are elected “to act in the public’s best interest.”

The section titled “Duties” was recommended to go with essentially what Curtiss had proposed in December with minor changes. This section lays out the various duties including hiring and firing employees and agents, adopting and amending R&Rs, ordering audits of the books and setting the annual budget and rates for the District.

Goodover said that Beal recommended adding back in one of the sections that was originally proposed, stating in part that directors had fiduciary duties to the District and to the Board.

Hutchinson reiterated that she felt that Beal kept trying to narrow down the by-laws to promote a specific cause and are all a reaction to the lawsuit from Larson.

Goodover said Beal was very clear that he put in the words he did to protect the board against future lawsuits, not to address Larson’s suit.

While the wording Beal recommended adding was not specifically put out for this meeting, Goodover and Curtiss felt they could use those words because they had been publicly discussed several meetings ago.

Vice President Walt Hill moved to substitute in Beal’s wording to the first part of the Duties section and keep the list of various duties proposed by Curtiss as well as to add in the committee’s recommendation for the new section titled “Public Service and Fiduciary Duties.”

The board passed the motion unanimously.

The next regularly scheduled meeting is Feb. 20 at 5:15 p.m. at the Missoula County Satellite Office located at 3360 Highway 83.