Paradise: Water board members call for split from sewer board

There has been progress made in the controversial Paradise Sewer construction project.

Very little of it has involved the actual sewer system that proponents would love to install down the middle of this small unincorporated town 6 miles southeast of Plains.

And while the actual project creeps along like a snail on life support, most of the action has shifted to the Sewer Board and its efforts to get its house in order.

Then there is the matter of more than $20,000 in Water Board funds that were apparently allocated to the Sewer Board without consent or adequate record-keeping to determine who authorized the funds and exactly where they went.

“The copies of those checks are right here,” said current Sewer and Water Board member Terry Caldwell during a recent meeting in Paradise. “They were mostly written without receipts or anything.”

The result of that oversight has added to a chasm that exists among members of the current Sewer Board, two of whom were appointed last year by now-retired Sanders County Commissioner Carol Brooker and are self-proclaimed proponents of the project.

“We don’t know exactly what’s going on because they were written by previous Board members,” said Paradise resident Janis Barber, herself a new addition to the makeup of the current Sewer Board.

That issue has prompted members of the current Water Board to call for a total split between the two Boards, which were, some say, never intended to be one combined entity.

Meet the new Board, same as the old Board?

The Who may have been wrong on that one, time will tell. But the recent recall of two sitting members of the Sewer Board has created a confusing situation to say the least. It’s a matter members of the Water Board take seriously.

Prior to the break-up of the previous Sewer Board, which was followed by Brooker appointing two members on her way out the retirement door, the two Boards were made up of the same members.

Under that situation, opponents say, the proposed $4.5 million sewer development project was pushed forward mostly without required public notice, opportunities to speak out and deals that were signed on a project opponents claim was never authorized by public vote.

The recall removed existing president Sunny Chase and one other member and resulted in a new faces on both “governing” bodies.

Now the Water Board is moving to address the many issues involved in the whole process, issue outlined in a recent letter from Water Board members to Sewer Board members.

“We believe these issues warrant a larger degree of separation between these two governing bodies in Paradise to better represent our residents and property owners,” the letter states.

The Water Board letter includes the names of current members who apparently support the document, including Judy Hawley, Caldwell, community activist LeeAnn Overman and local property owner/engineer Katy French.

“The ballot initiative forming the Sanders County Sewer District at Paradise clearly asked for separate acting Boards representing their respective obligation”, the letter continues before outlining specific changes it will implement to correct the troublesome situation.

At the top of the changes list is the matter of finances. The Water Board says it will no longer provide funds to support any Sewer District obligations and based that proposed change on “evidence of the Water District using Water District funds to support Sewer District billing”.

The letter calls that practice “highly irregular and legally questionable financial behavior”.

The break-up plan also call for a separation of assets that have been shared by the two bodies at the expense of Water District funds. Most publicly notable has been a squabble that has erupted involving where to have Sewer Board meetings, which for the past several months have been held in a garage-like storage area attached to a Water District building on the outskirts of the town.

The Sewer Board was recently informed it would have to find another place to hold their meetings due to the Water Board providing the space without compensation from the Sewer Board.

“We can’t move because we don’t have any money,” said recently elected Sewer Board member Dewey Arnold. “We are going to need to meet with our financial partners on these issues.”

That prompted Water and Sewer Board member Terry Caldwell to chime in, “We need to get financing so we can get an attorney to help us move on.”

Arnold and Barber were then asked to begin looking into the matter.

The last Sewer Board meeting was held in a local church building that is mostly used for sewing projects.

With that, the Sewer Board has mostly been trying to establish meeting operation standards such as those set forth in the time-honored Roberts Rules of Order publications. One of the big issues with the previous Board was the lack of proper transparency and operational procedure for conducting business that involves the public.

A large part of recent meetings has been spent squabbling over what those procedures are, such as proposing a motion, requiring a second to the motion, then conducting a yea or nay survey of Board members.

And with grant money matters creating a timeline for beginning the now scaled down project rapidly approaching, meeting any deadlines appears tenuous at best. Many have said the only way to proceed with such a project would be to start over and conduct all meetings openly in public, which opponents have long alleged were never followed.

And now with the Water Board cutting off funding, time is even more of the essence.

As one local resident who is mulling an election run for the open Water Board position put it, “you can’t have a sewer without water”.

And you can’t sew a sewer.