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The Middle Trinity Groundwater
Conservation District met in regular session, Thursday, November 1,
and addressed a brief agenda.
Board members Fred Parker, Jerry Hinshaw,
George Bingham, Ed Dittfurth and Chairman Rodney Stephens – were
present. Board member Jerry Fronterhouse was absent.
Also present were MTGCD Manager Joe
Cooper, and field tech Wes Burris, but Sharon Mainord, administrative
assistant, was absent. Due to a scheduling mishap, the meeting was
held in the Dublin City Manager’s office instead of the City Council
chambers.
Elaine Smith, of Worried about Water, was
the only participant in the “Public Comments” portion of the meeting,
asking questions and warning of potential pitfalls for the Real Estate
Committee during their (recently approved) search for new property.
Although purchasing a building is one possibility, there has also been
some discussion of purchasing land and building a new structure.
“We wanted to ask how you’re planning to
pay for that facility,” Smith said. “Are there any thoughts on that
yet?”
Chairman Stephens informed Smith that it
would come out of the tax base funds.
“I figured that would be your answer,”
Smith said. “I just wanted to make sure that there weren’t any loans,
or bonds, or anything like that.”
Smith then went over several more points
of concern, reminding the board members that as a governmental entity,
certain rules and regulations will apply.
“My husband worked for a city for 20
something years,” Smith said. “He went through building a facility for
that city. There are lots of considerations that the entity has to do.
Number one would be to hire a construction management consultant, who
would be separate from a contractor, separate from anybody that had
anything to do with the District, to manage the budget, the building
codes, and to make sure the contractor does what he needs to do. Every
one of the board members would need to avoid any possible conflict of
interest with contractors or materials or that sort of thing.
Smith then gave an example of things that
could go wrong, and did for the aforementioned city – such as
forgetting heaters and outlets – adding that those are things you
might assume someone would put it, but they might not.
“Then, you’re caught in change orders,”
Smith said. “And change orders, are “oh, we forgot that we wanted
ceiling fans, so lets put in ceiling fans.’ Ceiling fans then would be
a change order. The contractor can then just about name his price,
because you’ve already got him under contract. We just wanted to make
sure before you dive into building a building, look into this sort of
thing.”
“We’ve had lawyer advice on it already,”
George Bingham said. Later in the meeting, the search for property was
discussed again, and Chairman Stephens announced that he was opting
out of the committee.
Stephens stated that it would be easier
for the three remaining members – Ed Dittfurth, George Bingham and
Fred Parker – to act as a committee, because a fourth member would
constitute a quorum and official notice would have to be posted for
all meetings.
In the “Manager’s Report” Cooper said
that Wes Burris was almost finished with the water level monitoring
for Comanche County.
“He completed the Erath County monitoring
last month,” Cooper said. “The state used to do this once a year, but
we’re doing it quarterly now, and we report our results to the Texas
Water Development Board.
They’re grateful that we’re taking over
some work for them, and we’re getting a lot more comprehensive data
than we used to have. And so far, we can tell that the wells are still
sustaining. So we’re not depleting our aquifer at this point in time,
and I don’t think we’re in any danger in the near future.
We’ll continue to monitor.”
Cooper also reported on several seminars
and conferences that he and George Bingham attended, including the
TWCA meeting in San Antonio in October. This included a side trip to
Pleasanton to visit the Evergreen Conservation District’s offices.
“George is part of the Real Estate
Committee and I thought it would be good for him to see what I
consider one of the nicer offices,” Cooper said. He also reported that
one of the more interesting presentations in San Antonio was on
Flooding in Texas. “They had pictures of Marble Falls,” Cooper said,
“during the flood (earlier this year). They talked about how they
managed that crisis. They did a really good job. They talked about how
they controlled opening gates to Buchanan, and all downstream. It was
interesting. Then there was another presentation titled Managing
Surface and Groundwater Interaction in Texas. It was kind of a painful
reminder of how our state laws are unique in that we view surface
water as one subset of the water, and groundwater as another. And the
law doesn’t really allow for the fact that we know they converge. We
know that springs bring groundwater to the surface, etc. And that was
another chance to hear about those concerns.”
In other business, Directors:
• Approved and ratified minutes.
•Reviewed the income and expense report
for the fiscal year through the end of October, which showed
expenditures totaling $219,098.25.
• Approved and ratified the payment of
bills. Cooper noted that it was a comprehensive list of all
disbursements made from District funds during the month of October.
• Reviewed the changes to the protest
letter (at the suggestion of Elaine Smith) that the district issues
against injection wells. Although no vote was taken, and there was no
official change to the Board policy, Directors did give Cooper the
authority to use the stronger “beefed up” version as he deems
necessary. |
