Lawsuit and by-laws top discussion

SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District (SLSD) held its April 16 meeting four days later on April 20 after a glitch in their online meeting software prevented the login instructions printed on their agenda from functioning.

While the Board eventually was able to join into the first meeting, they delayed it to ensure the public was able to participate.

At last month’s meeting the Board held off paying an invoice from Beal Law Firm that covered charges from March through December 2019 totaling nearly $48,000. The charges were for District business excluding charges relating to Don Larson’s lawsuit against the District.

There was no explanation offered as to why the attorney had not billed the District in an entire year.

“There might have been one month where I might have missed requesting an attorney bill, but beyond that, I requested attorney bills over and over and over,” said Director Beth Hutchinson.

Hutchinson said that the Board was deprived of the opportunity to change how they were using the attorney for nearly a year because of not being able to see the charges. Now that they have a bill in front of them, she felt they should appoint a committee of two Board members to analyze the bill looking for what might be negotiated with the attorney and secondly learn how to be more financially responsible.

District Manager Jean Curtiss said she has already gone through the bill line by line. While she agreed that the Board should learn from this, she felt that the billed charges were legitimate.

Vice President Walt Hill agreed that the Board should have been seeing monthly bills but felt they didn’t have any reason to not pay the bill.

Board President Pat Goodover made a motion to have two Board Directors look over the bill and discuss it at the next meeting. Hutchinson voted for it while Goodover, Hill and Director Mike Boltz voted against the motion.

A member of the public suggested the Board consider negotiating the bill down and several board members agreed.

Hill made a motion to negotiate the bill because of the lack of monthly billing and for the good of the District. It passed unanimously.

At the April meeting, the Board received invoice from Beal Law Firm for March of 2020. Hutchinson questioned why there was no invoice for January and February because the invoice received at last month’s meeting only billed through December of 2019.

Curtiss said a mistake had been made somewhere because she had the invoices for January and February but for some reason it was left out of the Board packet.

Goodover noted that there is also a discrepancy because the invoice through December showed $47,860.57 due but now the March invoice shows the previous balance was only $43,942.28.

Goodover, Hill and Boltz voted to pay the March invoice while Hutchinson voted against paying it.

The District has not been billed for attorney fees associated with Larson’s lawsuit. Curtiss said hopefully those would be covered by insurance.

Hutchinson didn’t feel it was very responsible for the District to not know what those bills look like especially because she thought that the insurance denied coverage two years ago when the lawsuit was originally filed.

Goodover said he spoke to the attorney and was told that the insurance is in fact paying for it. Hutchinson requested that be put in writing.

The Board again worked to amend the by-laws. Goodover explained that after the Board approved the changes to the by-laws in January, the attorney reviewed them and sent another round of suggested amendments.

The proposed version showing language to remove with a strike through and language to add was highlighted. It was posted on the District’s website for the public to view ahead of the meeting.

The Pathfinder questioned why the version with the proposed edits didn’t appear to have all of the edits either stricken or highlighted when it was compared to the other version on the website that was said to be the current by-laws.

“I highlighted what I though was important to highlight, understanding the rest of it was also changed. So that’s on me,” said Goodover.

Hutchinson felt the there was no rush to make changes and suggested that due to no incumbents running, the election next month will seat two new people on the Board no matter who wins.

Goodover argued that the current Board members were all up to speed on the by-laws amendments and by waiting two new people would have to be brought up to speed before they could make the changes.

Curtiss said that the Board had received the amended version at last month’s meeting and they were available on the website so they had met the notice requirements to change the by-laws.

Hill moved to approve the amendments made by the attorney. The motion passed with Hutchinson voting against it.

In other business, Amy Deitchler of Great West Engineering said that the plans for Phase 1 collection system and the treatment plant are completed and they were expecting to receive the Montana Department of Environmental Quality approval any day. The District received the approval Tuesday, April 21.

Deitchler explained that the project is now waiting for Larson’s lawsuit to be resolved and approval from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development.

The District has also been working on two easements required before going to bid including one off the north end of Pine Drive and the other on Seeley-Swan High School’s property.

Curtiss said the school board approved the easement on the south end of the school’s property where the force main to the treatment plant will be located along with a lift station.

The Pine Drive easement continues to drag on but Curtiss feels they are close to getting an agreement signed. The five people who own the property inherited it. They will have to go through a quiet claim process to secure a deed on the property in order to grant the easement.

The Board also took action on future phases of the collection system. They reviewed the Phase 2 collection system plans and gave Great West the go-ahead to take the plans to 90 percent design and signed a contract for a 2020 Preliminary Engineering Report (PER) update to the 2012 PER for Phase 3.

The next meeting is scheduled for May 21 at 5:15 p.m. The agenda along with the information on how to participate will be available at http://www.seeleysewer.org