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ADMINISTRATOR’S REPORT
JANUARY 2010
The final water line bill for October’s bill is still not paid. The engineer and the contractor are disagreeing about change orders and I can’t seem to get them to meet to resolve this. Since the NM Environment is also giving me a hard time about a variety of things, we will try to resolve all payment issues in January. More on NMED later on the agenda.
As you know, we had some problems at the plant. We think some can be traced to the Snakedance’s water line break that sent gallons of cold water to the plant. We think that the decrease in temperature may have killed the bugs that get rid of the ammonia and nitrogen. We have ordered more bugs and by this time, they should be starting to work. Also the centrifuge people should be here on the 5th, to start our machine. This should reduce our reliance on the sludge storage tanks. A line from one of the tanks apparently froze and broke, causing water and sludge to leak, but the leak flowed straight into the centrifuge building, so our lift station was able to lift the sludge back up to the equalizer tanks for recycling. We then hired S & R to come and start pumping out the sludge tanks and haul the sludge down mountain. We hope to begin the repair of the leak shortly. No sludge left the site and, in fact, none even appeared on the ground. Ray and Joey as well as the other members of the treatment plant staff spent several nights at the plant, making sure that nothing else would go wrong. Kudos to all for their fine work in this busy time. What this does point out is the need to begin the work on a new plant. SE Group has sent us some drawings for the Forest Service in our request under the Town Site Act. We should be moving forward on that in the next month. At the same time we need to think of ways to finance the acquisition of the land and the design and construction of a new plant.
Several developers have approached us about proposed developments, but we need to see the paper work before we can do anything. Replacing the treatment plant and finishing the water tanks have to be our primary goals this spring/summer, especially if any new development is to be constructed.
Finally, at the beginning of the month, I attended the Municipal League’s Attorney seminar. It was very informative and I am trying to implement a few things discussed, including more training for the police officers, especially on the use of Tasers. We also will begin the budget cycle, so we’ll try to phase some things in that need to be done, such as additional training for all staff on public records, electronic records and retention times.