(Click here to view Mr. Kramer's letter.)
Dear Mr. Kramer:
On behalf of the SFTR Metro District Board and the SFTR POA Board, of which I have the dubious distinction of being President of both, I wanted to respond directly to your e-mail sent to Michael Hughes yesterday.
First, on behalf of Bill Wenstrom, a POA Board member, I wanted to point out that the current version of the original POA water committee has been working with the Metro District Board ever since the District was formed in 1998 and Michael Hughes has evolved, through his tremendous efforts, as the key source of detail information on the system. I handle the complaint department, as the responsibility for construction and completion of the water system lies with the Metro District and not the POA. That being said, I will address your concerns and opinions.
In short, I agree with you. I am approaching 10 years of property ownership on the ranch, the last 4 as a full time resident. I too am paying my $31 per month (although I pay it a year at a time so it is less of an irritant) and for the last four years have spent more time and personal expense as a volunteer to this ranch and this project than I am willing to admit to myself, much less my wife. That, frankly, irritates the both of us.
Please keep in mind that the $31 payments are for the telephone service as well as the water system. Of the total cost, the telephone service installation, which has been operable since June, 2000, accounted for approximately 46% of the total project costs.
There have been a myriad of mechanical, logistical, personnel, and weather-related situations that have contributed to what, admittedly, is nearly a year's delay in completion. I will not add to your irritation by going into minute detail on any of it. However, we do have nearly everyone who has volunteered to accept some area of responsibility for the administration of the Ranch's affairs working on this. We are attempting to bring this to a conclusion now. We are also attempting to keep our resident as well as non-resident owners better informed by putting updates on the website. We hope to be able to report significant progress in the next few weeks, after some modifications are completed to protect the integrity of the pumps. A local contractor who works with the city's water system is working on those modifications now. Everyone involved wants to get this phase over with so we can begin to tackle running and maintaining the system. We are also considering alternatives to relying on a "volunteer" group to run the system going forward. That will result in some expense decisions for the POA which we have tried to avoid through volunteers. Some of the impressions of "no one in charge" and "no one monitoring" or "no one caring" have to be a result of the fact that all of our volunteers have their own lives and livelihoods to deal with as well and aren't available all day every day to be on the water system job. But I assure you, we are all understanding of your feelings, because we have them too.
Thanks for your time, thanks for your communication, and I hope that you will bear with us as we work our way to conclusion of this project. I welcome your continued communication, and I will be happy to address any questions you may have concerning specific aspects of this project.
Jim Davis