Assessment adopted and future of District discussed

SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board adopted a resolution setting the method and assessment to collect taxes for their 2021-22 fiscal year at a hearing June 28. Following the hearing, the Board held its regular monthly meeting where it discussed an action plan laying out direction for the District and hiring a manager.

The Board only received a half dozen protest letters out of the more than 500 properties in the District.

District Manager Jean Curtiss said she received a few phone calls regarding the assessment. One of the issues causing confusion is that some people have multiple properties that are taxed with one tax bill but they are being charged the equal assessment for each lot. She explained the reason for this is that the law regarding assessment methods reads that each individual parcel needs to be charged. Combining for tax billing purposes does not change the number of parcels.

Only one member of the public showed up to speak in protest at the hearing. John Richards said the District has been charging him for his six lots for years with no return on his money. He didn’t feel he would get a return from this year’s assessment either.

Richards suggested the District work to identify systems that are causing the pollution and getting them fixed.

“The Health Department is aware of [the RV dumpsite] that was put in in the 70s, a set of [cesspool] rings, for dumping non stop RVs right next to a test well. Well of course it’s going to be polluted, it’s got a set of rings. There is no treatment in a set of rings, its from the septic straight to the groundwater,” said Richards.

Richards feels there are many systems polluting. He said that while alternative systems are expensive, they are not $15 million, the cost of the first phase of the proposed central sewer the voters recently rejected funding.

Vice President Beth Hutchinson said that the hearing was to consider protests to the method in which the assessment was spread across the properties. While she said she appreciated the public’s comments, most of the letters were protesting for a variety of reasons other than the assessment method.

Richards replied that he didn’t think it was fair to assess all the properties equally because not all of them are equal.

President Tom Morris said that when they looked at the methods that were allowed by state law, he didn’t think any of them were fair but the equal assessment was the fairest to the most people.

For a protest to be successful more than 50% of the properties would have had to protest. The Board voted unanimously to adopt the resolution setting the method and assessments.

At last month’s meeting, Hutchinson presented the Board with a draft action plan. Director Cheri Thompson reorganized, simplified and added a couple of things to the document for the Board to consider at this meeting.

Hutchinson felt that it was over simplified and that more clarification would be beneficial. Knowing what the tasks are, will help the people performing the tasks complete them.

The proposed action plan includes improving the District’s communication with the public, collecting information on available solutions and funding, identifying and creating additional monitoring wells and collecting data on all the parcels in the District including lot size, current and future use, ownership and type of existing wastewater treatment.

While Hutchinson’s version was in the previous month’s Board packet it was not immediately available at the meeting for the Board to compare and discuss. The Board voted to continue discussion and try to create a final document at the July meeting.

Curtiss informed the Board several months ago that she planned to retire as the District Manager at the end of June. At last month’s meeting the Board voted to hire their secretary Felicity Derry as an Interim Manager.

After that meeting Curtiss reached out to the District’s attorney who cautioned against hiring the same person as a secretary and a manager due to the wording in state law. The law states the District must hire a Secretary “and” a Manager and the attorney felt it meant two different people though he could not offer up any court cases to support his opinion.

Curtiss didn’t feel the Board needed to hire someone to immediately fill the position as long as they were working toward filling it per state law.

After several Board members said they were not fully prepared to discuss the Manager’s job description, Hutchinson left the meeting stating that she was frustrated that it has been on the agenda for months and that the Board members were still not prepared to get it done.

Morris said he understood Hutchinson’s frustration because it had been put off for several months so the remaining Board members took up discussing the job description.

Morris felt that the job description was already pretty well laid out by state law quoting MCA 7-13-2278 Duties of Administrative Personnel.

Curtiss said they could look at what other sewer districts around the state have for job descriptions but Seeley is a little different in that Seeley doesn’t have a sewer system to operate.

The Board will continue discussion on the manager’s position at next month’s meeting.

In other business, the District’s financial reports indicate that after putting the proposed sewer project on the shelf there may be a significant amount of last year’s budget that will not be spent. Derry said more solid figures should be available by the August meeting.

Curtiss said that it is too late to change the amount of assessment collected for this tax year but that the Board could look at a reduced tax assessment for the next year.

While discussing upcoming agendas, Morris said he has had many people ask the board to discuss dissolving the District. Thompson suggested they get the action plan completed so people would know where the District was planning on going before discussing pulling the plug on it.

The Board’s next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. July 15 and will be held electronically. The agenda and information on how to participate will be posted on the District’s website seeleysewer.org