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Meeting Minutes for March 12, 2024

Date and Time: Tuesday, March 12, 2024, at 2:00 PM

List of Attendees

Board Members: Debbie Lee, President

Kent Grant, Secretary/Treasurer

Ginny DeJong 

Morgan Wagoner

USDA Agency Representatives: NRCS - Ed McCaw

Guest: Kelly McCaw 

Call to Order

2:05 p.m. by Debbie Lee

Welcome and Introductions: 

Debbie It was mentioned that District Operations Training was being offered in Grand Junction on April 24th and 25th. The same training will also be offered in Broomfield (date?).

Approval of Prior Meeting Minutes

The minutes from the February meeting were distributed by Kent and were reviewed by the other Board members and Ed. It was mentioned that bookkeeper candidate Robin wanted reimbursement for QuickBooks, not Kelly, so the minutes from the February meeting needed to be corrected to reflect this. With this change made, Debbie moved that the minutes be approved, Ginny seconded, and the motion passed.

Financial Report 

Since we didn’t currently have a bookkeeper to prepare the financial reports like Gretchen had in the past, Kent gave a financial summary based on recent activity reflected in our bank’s checking account online summary and bank account statement.

Other Business/Discussion

  1. Election Update – Debbie Debbie spoke to Tiffany, County Clerk, and said she received a lot of push back. Tiffany said LPCD didn’t pay for last year’s list that County generated, but Debbie responded that we were told we didn’t need to pay because there we were not involved in the election. We were billed $27o or $540 (one or two lists). We need to get additional property owners we would have to mail to trust – trust can vote, not individual people in trust. We can be in this November’s election since a general election, otherwise special districts do elections in odd years.
  2. Scholarship Program – Debbie We currently have two applications from Ignacio and one from Bayfield, and requests for more information from others. Application deadline is April 2nd. We will review applications on April 9th Board meeting and make a decision.
  3. River Trailer – Ginny Has not been taken out to Ginny’s place yet. Kent is looking for a cover.
  4. IT Update – Ginny Domaind Name: Our offer to purchase our old domain name (laplatacd.org) back was accepted but no paperwork has been received yet. Ginny will set things up to protect this domain name and auto-renew it. Online Store: Is operational for ordering and paying for seedlings and survival supplies. Ginny could use more photos of seedling varieties for the store. Sales Tax: Send info to Kelly.
  5. Bookkeeper Update - Debbie Kelly McCaw verbally accepted our offer to her to be LPCD’s new bookkeeper, replacing Gretchen Rank who had resigned. Debbie moved to hire Kelly as our bookkeeper, Ginny seconded, and the motion passed. Gretchen requested that she be paid quarterly as opposed to monthly as Gretchen had been. Kelly has files and passwords for two LPCD laptop computers and will see if she can “decommission” the old Dell laptop that Gretchen had used prior to our replacing it with a new one (Lenovo). Kent has the District’s HP laptop at his home.

NRCS Report

Ed McCaw, NRCS Acting District Conservationist and Resource Team #7 Lead

  1. NRCS Hiring: Two Planners are coming on, one on March 25th and the other on May 5th, and both will be stationed in Durango. An Engineering Tech will be starting in Pagosa Springs on May 5th, the Tribal Liaison Position in Ignacio has been extended. Cynthia in interested in and wants to contact Ginny about. Having meeting in April. Current NRCS Vacant Positions: Program Support Specialist (Kristina’s position), Lead Planner, Resource Conservationist, Lead Forester, and District Technician. 31 Suttle St, Durango, CO 81303 email: laplatacd@hotmail.com website: laplatacd.specialdistrict.org USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender. Things are looking up and Ed is looking forward to working with those who are coming on.
  2. San Juan Watershed Meeting: March 29th at La Plata County Fairgrounds, 4-6 PM. Ed encourages all of us to attend, and there will be food!
  3. NRCS Programs: Regular EQIP focusing on irrigatin and urban ag. Act Now (faster way of funding things) with two-week turnaround if meet threshold and it is funded. Ed wants to focus Resource Team funds to what is identified as local priorities. Act Now doesn’t work well with that. Now moving forward with agreements and rankings. Has someone coming to help do CSP assessments and rankings. Need to have done prior to May. 184,000 acres of SUIT (Southern Ute Indian Tribe) rangeland signed up with CSP (first in nation!). It met threshold so is eligible. Finalizing agreement and will meet with SUIT to sign agreement by end of May and funding should be available by end of June. The state’s implementation rate is poor (50%), but Durango office has an 88% implementation rate. Ed is asking for more moneysince has more capacity then has had for some years. Was allocated $581,000 and asking for $1.6 million.
    1. Comment by Morgan – Have had a lot of people tell her how difficult NRCS is to work with. A discussion about this followed. Ginny suggested that our CD and be a go-between for landowners and NRCS. Debbie mentioned that checklists always help. Ed said if someone has been in the program trying to get funded for 5-6 years, they might want to apply with Bureau of Reclamation (BOR). Also, a good CD project to coordinate and administer. Lots of BOR funding ($450,000,000) coming down that needs to be spent in a hurry on the ground. Landowner has to cancel NRCS project before they can look elsewhere. Landowners can request NRCS conservation pan and preliminary engineering that they can take to someone else. The landowner needs to make a decision on what they want to do

Other Business

  1. Special Districts Association of Colorado: LPCD needs to renew our membership.
  2. Library Open House: our CD has been invited to participate in the Library Open House – Ginny is planning on going.
  3. City of Durango Business License: Need to check to see if we have renewed this – Gretchen may have taken care of it.
  4. Landowner Stewardship Workshop at Old Fort Lewis: Will be held on May 3rd (Friday). Ed will have a table there. Christy Kurd invited Ed to paraticipate.
  5. CSFS Nursery Seedling Delivery Fee: Kent had heartburn over the $2,000 cost of CSFS delivering seedlings to Durango - $2.50/mile both ways. Is this a topic that should be brought up at our upcoming local Watershed meeting and perhaps arrive at some consensus about and then send comments to CSFS State Office? Who should we be reaching out to about this?
  6. Seedling Sales: LPCD order cutoff will be May 1st. Orders should arrive at Ginny’s shop the first week in May. Distribution to customers will be on Friday, May 17th. If need be, will hold a “flash sale” on Sunday, May 19th. Note: Considerable time was spentby the Board at this meeting discussing and planning LPCD’s seedling and survival supplies sales program for Spring 2024 and this is not reflected in these minutes.

Next Meeting

Tuesday, April 9, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. at the USDA Ag Service Center, 31 Suttle St, Durango.

Meeting Adjourned

5:58 p.m.

Meeting minutes taken by Kent Grant, LPCD Secretary/Treasurer