City Council - workshop

For the special meeting work session on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, we'll start by item number A, which is the airport advisory committee interviews. And I think we're getting our first applicant. Hi there. If you'd step up to the mic, there should be a green light on. If there isn't, we'll make sure that it gets on. Oh, there we go. And if we'd state your name and your location, and what we're going to do is go down the line, and we're going to ask you a series of questions. And then if you have any questions of us, we'd be more than happy to answer those for you, too. But it's really going to be easy peasy. So if you start with your name and address.

Bernard car work, 1, 2, 6, 3, 2, road G I live down in the camera so I'm out of the city limits. But I'm a tenant at the airport. I have a hair airplane hangar there.

Fantastic. OK, we're going to start at the end over there and start with our first question. Would you like to start the other end over there.

Let's start let's start over here.

Hello, thank you for being here tonight. What motivates you to serve on the Airport Advisory Board? What professional skills or community perspective do you bring to this role?

Well, what motivates me, I suppose, would be to say that I think that an airport advisory board can help provide clarity to the city council, reduce uncertainty, and I think it can help you make better decisions when you're faced with a decision because it would provide you with additional information.

What was the second question?

let's see what specific professional skills or community perspective do you bring to this role so i think usually these airport boards have all pilots so i wouldn't be surprised if this isn't all pilots and i don't know that that's a great perspective because some diversity is probably good I'm an attorney. I'm admitted in California and New York. I have a business, a long-time business in New York. I'm a pilot at the airport. I have a hangar there. My motivation, I suppose, to go back to that just a little bit, I'd really like to see this board work I mean I think it would be it's a kind of a great idea Danielle was nice enough to send me I asked her how can I learn a little bit more about what this board's gonna do and what's expected of it and she sent me a handbook on boards in the city of Cortez and I thought it was a really good handbook I did notice, though, that the boards are all kind of treated alike in that handbook, and different boards might have different purposes, and I'd be curious, you know, at some point to understand what the city's looking for in this board and what your expectations would be. That might not be something to discuss tonight, but it would be something interesting to know.

Yeah. Good evening. What do you see as the greatest opportunity and challenges for the Cortez Municipal Airport over the next five to 10 years?

Well, at the top level, I think the biggest opportunity and challenge is if you have the bandwidth for it, because I recognize that as a city council, you have a lot of things in your portfolio to attend to, and the airport's only one of them, and you can't disproportionately address your attention to different departments. But if you have the bandwidth for it, I think developing top-level policies with respect to where the city would like to see the airport go, and what is the purpose of this airport? I mean, obviously the purpose is to land airplanes, but is it to attract visitors? Is its purpose, to what extent is it economic development? For some cities, the purpose of the airport is to repel visitors. They don't want the airport to get too busy and they don't want it to grow. But those are policy decisions that should be coming from the city council and to encourage you to address those things I think would be really helpful overall. Shorter term, at a much lower level, I think there's a lot of opportunity to improve FBO services at the airport. And then I think that with respect to the Part 139 certificate that you used to have and that could be reinstated, I think you need to understand if you want to tackle that or consider it, you need to understand clearly the budget that's involved. And then the more difficult question is what will that investment return for the city of Cortez? And it's usually, you know, with respect to economic development or providing the residents a portal out into the national aerospace system, a way to get to Denver and Arizona, which we already have to some degree with smaller airplanes. Thank you.

You've already touched on this a little bit. And by the way, I did receive your packet, and I shared it with the city attorney and the city manager. And the rest of the council has not seen that yet. And there'll be times. We'll make sure everybody gets to see that. Could you describe any experience you have with aviation, airport operations, piloting? How will your background help you evaluate and advise on airport policies and projects?

Well, I'm not... As you can see, I'm a little bit older, despite my movie star good looks. In my long life, I've flown professionally for an on-demand carrier worldwide. I've been a chief pilot for an on-demand carrier with worldwide operations, so I've been to a huge number of airports. To a much lesser extent, maybe being an attorney is a little bit of a help because I can flag legal issues before your staff might be aware of them. I have a construction background. That's probably it.

Thank you.

Welcome Bernard. Thank you. Board members help steer long-term goals like the airport master plan. Can you share an example of a multi-year project or strategic plan you've worked on and how you kept it on track?

I was a joint venture partner with some other people in a contract with the US government to rechannelize the Tijuana River that went several years. We used CPM scheduling to keep it on track.

I think you've shared a lot of information with us already, but I have this question that I'd like to put to you, and that is, is there a specific project issue or infrastructure need at the airport that you are most passionate about addressing?

You know, I think it's easy for people to come in here and have some personal preference that they want to advocate for. The airport works great for my purposes. I don't really need anything different out there. It's fine. I would like to see, I think, some improvement, if it is possible, with the FBO services, but if that doesn't occur, that's fine with me too. I think mostly, the unique situation here is that the airport's owned by the city of Cortez, yet it serves the region. So your pocketbook is there to benefit the county and the Utes and the whole region, and to balance that and to try and address when it's appropriate for you to expose your general fund to airport expenses, I think is a kind of a significant challenge. I know that my impression is the county here has kind of washed their hands of responsibility at the airport and kind of left it to you yet the county stands to benefit if the airport does well and attracts visitors and it's the same situation to a lesser degree with respect to the Ute Mountain Utes.

Well, that was easy peasy. You're all questioned out. What we're going to do is we had three prior on two weeks ago that came in interviewed, and we're going to have three again today. And at the end of today's council meeting or in the middle of it, somewhere in there, we're going to choose the people to be on our advisory board. And so you will know today if you stick around. If not, they will get a hold of you and let you know one way or another. And we have five positions available right now.

You know, even if it's my position that would be at stake, I'll say that you might consider perhaps not filling all of the positions. And if you've just got a bunch of pilots, which is fine, but if that's what it is, maybe you could go out and look for somebody from the Chamber of Commerce or the Mesa Verde country or maybe somebody that owns a motel or a restaurant in the hospitality sector. people that are interested in the airport for other reasons beyond just that they fly.

Yeah. Yeah, thank you very much. We do have some that are not pilots that have applied, so. Oh, great. One specifically I know of. So yeah, yeah, we're right there on board with you. Thank you, have a good night.

Hi there, if you'd walk up to that mic, it should be green. Can you tell us who you are and where you live? Chris Cassiagli, live in Cortez, Colorado. All right, do you live in the city limits of Cortez?

Just outside. Okay, what we're gonna do is ask you a few questions. They're very, very simple questions. We're just gonna try to get to know you a little bit and we're gonna start at the end.

Thank you for coming. What motivates you to serve on the airport advisory board and what specific professional skills or community perspective do you bring to this role?

Yeah, I think the airport's really important to the community. I feel like it has a, great impact on the local aviation as well as, you know, financially for the community as well. And I, there almost every day, I work as a flight instructor and it's one of my favorite places to be. And so I think my perspective kind of can maybe bridge the gap between any disconnect that might be between, you know, people at the airfield, flight training operations and things like that in the local community.

Can you share with us what you think is the greatest opportunities and challenges for the Cortez Municipal Airport over the next five to 10 years?

Yeah, over the next five to 10 years, challenges and opportunities. Challenges are going to be, I think, meeting the demand with the growth. There's limited hangar availability. There are currently no options for other businesses to come in there and rent an office or a hangar or something like that. And those are very closely tied together because there's a lot of opportunity over there. There's a lot of demand for needing places to put airplanes, and having something like that would be, I think, really beneficial to the community. It would bring people and commerce over here, and the airport would thrive, and hopefully the community would thrive as well.

Thanks for being here, Chris. Describe any experience you have with aviation, such as airport operations, piloting, etc. How will your background help you evaluate and advise on airport policies and projects?

Yeah, my background is I started as a pilot, private pilot, not too long ago. I started training years ago and then probably in the early 2000s and then stopped for a really long time, didn't get my private license till June of 2023. And I really enjoyed it. So I went on to get instrument, commercial, multi-engine and flight instructor. And... Everything in aviation is highly, highly regulated. And just I think being in the books, you know, with all that studying that I did and now as an instructor, really having my thumb on all those policies and regulations would help out with the local operations and the community, the aviation community.

Chris, board members help steer long-term goals like the airport master plan. Can you share an example of a multi-year project or strategic plan you've worked on and how you kept it on track?

Sure. My background as a business owner has been in information technology. I started a computer service company out of the front room of my house back in 2008. And I had a goal of where I wanted that company to be. I grew that company to a staff of about 15 employees and a couple commercial buildings later and ultimately sold it and we've we had several multi-year projects that went on mainly with the management of Business systems in all different sectors health care financial Retail all kinds of And I was involved in just about every one of them. And it was actually a really good ride. I really enjoyed it. And I enjoy being a part of it. And I like seeing things through and seeing them done right. And I think that's really going to help with development down at the airport. Thank you.

Good evening. Is there a specific project, issue, or infrastructure need at the airport that you are most passionate about addressing during your term?

Yeah, I like the idea of the apron expansion and having, you know, more developed property down there. I think that's a really good idea. I think access is going to be challenging. I think I can chime in on, you know, some good ideas when it comes to access. And my understanding is in the future there's been discussion of potentially even adding a crosswind runway and how that would you know, tie into everything. I really think that's a great direction and I'd love to be involved in that.

Okay, now we're going to start with the really hard questions. Okay. Actually, that's it. We're done. Thank you very much for applying. Thank you. We're going to have a decision today. There was three other applicants prior, and we will have a decision for you today. All right. If you're here for counsel, you will hear it. If you leave, they will get a hold of you.

Okay. Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you all. Thank you.

Hi, if you'd step up to that mic should be a green light on and tell us who you are and where you live.

Okay, my name is Brian Lyons. I live out on Pea Road at Dolores here in Muscle County.

Brian, we're going to ask you a series of questions. We're going to go down the line, very simple questions, and if you could just help us out by giving us your honest, heartfelt answers, we'd appreciate it. Certainly.

all right hello what motivates you to serve on the airport advisory board and what specific profession well i have a airplane that's based in cortez i've owned a couple hangers here in the

So I have a lot of perspective of what needs to be done here. I feel it's pretty important that we get somebody who has an interface with you guys because there's important stuff that happens there and we need to be involved with you guys to be able to intermediate between what's going on at the airport and what needs to be done down there also instead of just from, you know, from just hearing the perspective of the staff.

Thank you.

Yep. Okay. what do you see as the greatest opportunities and challenges for the cortez municipal airport over the next five days what i see as biggest challenges is just because of the cost of everything going up and that includes everything and that doesn't just with the airport but that's just everything in everywhere around it that's going to be an issue for everybody down the road as far as it can be and that's something that's going to have to be addressed and the inflation is going to be a huge deal for here real quick in my opinion and that's one thing that we'll have to try to figure out what's going to be the best for everybody

bit about how your pilot you mind expanding on the nation and how is your back well I

Being a pilot is probably about the best experience you're going to get for the airport and flying, and especially for years and years of it. And like I said, I do own a couple hangars down there, so I have some perspective on hangars and some stuff with the hangars and stuff, too. What I do in my day job is I patrol them. I own an advanced petroleum company that we do fuel and stuff like that. So I am familiar with fuel and production and stuff like that that may be a benefit to the airport, stuff like that. So basically, I don't think you can get any more experience than being a pilot for the airport, to be honest with you.

Thank you.

Brian, board members help steer long-term goals like the airport master plan. Can you share an example of a multi-year project or strategic plan that you've worked on and how you kept it on track?

so the mo i'm not 100 familiar with all the multi plan that's going on there i did see some the extensions on the runway and stuff like that and but i'm not all totally up to date on those exactly on what it is 100 and that's one thing that i'd have to get more specifically involved in to be able to do that but i work big you know jobs all the time that we do construction and stuff like that all the time and over you know make sure that it gets done and have questions will be pertinent to it. That would be everything has similarities that of any construction whether specifically toward that or not and I do deal with that every day.

Is there a specific project.

Well, what I'd like to see more of is, and we're doing it right now, and they're adding on the hangers and having availability to put the hangers because that's something that really needs to be looked at and being more, I guess the biggest thing it needs to be is addressed to make it more user-friendly for how the hangers and stuff ongoing down there are going to be and the setup on that to make it more user-friendly because that's one deal that we have. I mean, it's just kind of just put where it's easiest to go, and I think that's something they need to look for long-term.

Believe it or not, that's all the questions we have. Thank you. So we're going to make a decision later in council. And there is three others that apply prior. And there is five positions open with six people applying. So we will have a decision later on. If you don't stay for that decision, I'm sure Danielle or someone will get a hold of me and let you know.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you for coming. Okay, we're going to move on to our item number B on our work session, and that is the water system master plan draft presentation. And ready, set, go. I don't have any information on our speakers in front of me, so I'll let them address us and let us know who we're listening to and all of that pertinent information.

Can you hear me okay?

There we go. I'm Catherine Corella with SGM. And I'm trying to find the right...

Mayor Casey, maybe we could just do a quick introduction of what this is about and why how we got to where we're at while she's setting up Good evening mayor and council as as promised SGM provided us with a First draft of the water system master plan at the end of June we've had the opportunity to look through it provide some feedback and and do some initial revisions. And the next step sequentially would be to bring it to you guys, answer your questions, share out about it from a higher level, make sure you understand kind of what's going on in the plan. then we hope to give it to you guys for a month or a little bit more to review in depth and then provide your feedback for that in the meantime we'll be doing some public interactions and collecting public feedback and at the end of the whole process we hope to have a finalized water system master plan that will guide our infrastructure repairs and replacement and funding schedule for the next 20 plus years so I think that covers it all right well let Katherine take it away and I'm I'm here as well with we've got the presentation has is a PowerPoint but then I also have the hundred or so pages printed out if there's anything up any of the pages that were in the We've got more for you if you'd like a physical copy.

I didn't bring one for everyone, sorry. Could you guys see this presentation somewhere on your screens? Okay. So again, my name's Catherine Carrella. I'm with SGM. SGM's a full-service engineering firm that has been working for the city of Cortez since 2015. We were hired in 2015 specifically to do your water model, and we've been updating it for the last 10 years, whenever it needs updating. We also are your on-call engineer, and we do a lot of municipal projects for you guys. We're a Western Slope-based firm. I work in the Durango office. Today I'm gonna tell you about your water system master plan process, what we did, and the existing water demands and the forecasted future water demands, the capacity of your water treatment plant, the distribution assessment and recommendations. I'm gonna do a quick overview of the capital improvement plan and the recommended next steps. Also, feel free to interrupt me at any time if you have any questions about what we're talking about right there. So the purpose of any master plan is to have a forecast for a planning period and give city staff some long-term goals to work towards. This one is specifically about your drinking water system. So we reviewed and visited your raw water conveyance system, your water treatment plant, your storage tanks, and your distribution system. We forecasted future demands by analyzing the past three years of billing and production data. We modeled your distribution system with updated infrastructure that had been done since our last model update in 2019. We analyzed the treatment equipment for its existing capacity and we developed a prioritized capital improvement plan that's phased out over the next 20 years. So the first task was to develop existing water demands and future water demands. We developed, like I said, existing water demands based on the past three years of billing data and production data at the plant. Then we forecasted year 2050, which is in about 25 years. based on a point eight percent population growth and we worked with planning department to come up with that number in the state demographers office to come up with point eight percent per year and then we also estimated full build-out demand and that means full build-out of every developable lot in the city of Cortez which is kind of an unlikely scenario, and there's no year associated with it. It's just, you know, what would you be responsible for supplying if every single lot got developed? The way you design a treatment plant is usually based on your maximum day demand. So right now your max day demand is about 4 million gallons per day, 3.94. We definitely want to plan for 4.8 million gallons per day. That's your 2050. And then even more, you know, we want to build treatment plant beyond 25 years typically. So, overall, big picture, your treatment plant and your distribution system are in good shape. Your infrastructure right now supports your near-term growth and your existing conditions, but long-term, for example, year 2050 or build out, infrastructure will require capacity improvements. So we took those demands and then we went and analyzed every single piece of equipment in your treatment plant and came up with this figure, which is in your report. This figure is your total capacity and your firm capacity. I'll talk about the figure on the left first. The figure on the left is broken down by four treatment processes at your water treatment plant, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, and disinfection. The 3.9 MGD, the numbers on the blue bars, are your existing treatment capacity. Actually, the numbers just outside the blue bars and red bars are your existing total capacity of each treatment process. So you can see that your sedimentation process is at 1.8 million gallons per day. That's below your max day demand of 4 million gallons per day. And that's okay. You can still provide sufficient treatment capacity with some processes, you know, treating less than your max day demand, so long as it all works together and you have enough storage and raw water storage to meet your 4 million gallons per day. but it's certainly the bottleneck for future growth. Your sedimentation process is the one major treatment plant process that we recommend updating and starting planning now for. The red dashed line is your existing max day demand that I talked about, 4 million gallons per day. The green line is your 2050 max day demand. Your orange line is your full build out, future, future max day demand. the image on the right is your firm capacity firm capacity means if one of your pieces of equipment went down would you have a redundant system to back it up and still be able to treat water and meet cdphe requirements as you can see we don't have a lot of redundancy at the treatment plant the only one is the filtration and that's because we have both membrane microfiltration microfiltration and also multimedia filter beds And when the membranes were first built, the idea was to take the filter beds offline, but we ended up keeping them because they provide redundant systems. So the treatment plant runs both. And that's great for your firm capacity of filtration, but we don't have any other systems that do have that. So just a take-home point that is not out of compliance to not have firm capacity, but it is a goal to work towards. So the key findings of our treatment plant assessment which we also included the raw water supply system assessment in the treatment chapter are that your raw supply system is one of your highest priorities to address in the near term. The reason being is you've got one pipeline from Montezuma Water Company is where the McPhee takeout canal ends, and we've got a shared diversion structure from Montezuma Water Company's treatment plant to the City of Cortez water treatment plant. It's a single pipeline. It's been there a long time, 80s? 1986 installed we've never had any issues with it that being said it's never been properly assessed and so there's just concern that you know it being our single source of raw water there should probably be a redundant line or at least a raw water line assessment to figure out if maintenance is needed on it Number two key finding is that your water treatment plant facilities are viable for long-term planning. There's no need a new treatment plant recommendation in this report. Keep using what you've got, rehab what you have, and it should last you a long time. Your existing water treatment plant, as I said, can meet current demands, but does not have a lot of capacity to meet future growth. And then the last two items identified a couple of studies that we recommend to start planning potential future projects. One being your chemical storage and one being disinfection requirements. There's nothing that we recommend like jumping into design right away but further investigation to understand what those products might be. Moving on to the distribution system assessment. This figure is in Appendix A3 and really represents the outcome of the distribution system assessment. We came up with a pipe score of one to zero to 100 with city staff. That had not been done before for the city, even though they have really good GIS locations of everything. it had never been given a score. So now we have a roadmap for city staff to prioritize red being the worst condition, most undersized distribution mains, and then orange being the second most in need of replacement. The distribution system recommendations for replacement include really rigorous replacement planning. Replacement doing, sorry, installation, not planning. This is your plan. But the water master plan includes a lot of recommendations for flexibility and letting staff choose which ones to replace each year. We don't necessarily think you should just go after red pipes over the next 10 years. Make it make sense with other roadway improvements, storm water improvements, sewer improvements. Let them figure out what's going on every year and then plan. I should also mention city staff already has this in their GIS and they can begin to overlay this with the pavement condition assessment GIS and other GIS. the key takeaway from the distribution assessment is that the hydraulic modeling indicates that you have adequate pressures velocities and fire flows throughout the city which is great news none of the proposed projects are to improve upon velocities or pressures they're all for aging infrastructure which is key item number two That said, you have 71 miles of pipe that is nearing the end of its useful life. So stay on top of it. Keep going with your rigorous distribution replacement program or else it will sneak up on you. And then key item number three, distribution system and finished water storage have sufficient capacity to support all future growth through 2050 and beyond. So storage is in great shape too. Getting into the capital improvement plan, I think this figure in the master plan tells the story of what we are recommending. This bar graph is showing millions of dollars in projects. and capital improvement projects. So as you can see, we start out kind of slow. We recommend a lot of studies or kind of smaller projects, in-house projects that maybe don't need a lot of design work. But pretty soon, in five years, we start ramping up to some major equipment rehabilitation at the treatment plant, membrane replacements. these projects are phased over years so it's not all at once but it still gets quite expensive and then it was just hard to fit 20 years so the last 10 years of the master plan are all in that last bar that's not one year that's 10 years This might be a better way to show the capital improvement plan to you We prioritized Regulatory projects first which are shown in red And there aren't many of them But we know that the small reservoir outside of the water treatment plant has some outlet control issues that dam safety has been identifying for 10 years or so and it's time to address them and we also see other regulatory one I think it was the disk for all water transmission rehab it's not a regulatory issue it's just a high priority because there's no reliability with your raw water conveyance system so the red projects are based on regulation and redundancy needs and Then the yellow, phase two, are projects that address design deficiencies, treatment equipment that doesn't meet the current CDPHE criteria. You won't get dinged on it, but it's not, you know, I should start by saying that the treatment plant a lot of add-ons and so it's not like other treatment plants in our area that are like a package plant and it's one package it's like this filtration building and then this new membrane building and then this clarifier over here it's just years and years of add-ons so it's it's quite complex and there's no simple solution other than just taking care of what you have that would be the recommended solution And then phase three are the blue projects at the bottom, which are future growth, additional capacity projects. I talked about the sedimentation being your bottleneck for future growth. So a pretreatment project. Begin planning in the near term, but then scheduling it in 10 years or so. This deliverable is a spreadsheet for city staff to be able to play with. And when you're doing your budgets, you can move things around over the next 20 years. We hope this will be a resource for you for a long time. And additionally, you can play around with the phasing. So we're already showing projects taking multiple years, but you can stretch them out into longer or tighten them up into shorter with this. So now you've got your master plan, your capital improvement plan. The time is now to start scheduling these projects. For the next steps after this report, we recommend consider completing some of the recommended near-term investigations so that you can plan and adjust this capital improvement plan. These are kind of placeholder budgets that can't be known until you start investigating further with them. Start now with your financial modeling and forecasting, rate adjustments, exploring funding opportunities, which a few are identified in the master plan. Considering starting design of some of the projects that are recommended immediately. And then continue coordinating future planning with the capital improvement plan and hydraulic model So we will update the hydraulic model for you anytime you guys replace the water line and then you can focus in on new distribution projects will update and then you City staff will have the opportunity to update their own capital improvement plan as projects get knocked off Any questions

I want to thank you for this plan. I've been anxiously awaiting it for months now. Excellent. Which was a feat for me. First off, your presentation today with your graphics was really spot on and specific, and I didn't see a lot of those graphs and the charts in the actual report. So I was wondering if we could get a copy of those, because that makes it pretty straightforward. Even though what you've got in here is good, it's a little hard to tease out that sort of stuff sometimes. I had a couple of questions that may seem trivial, but I'm just curious as to your methodology and all of it. So on page number 73, you've got the capital improvement project risk classifications. And then back in the addendums in the back, you've got this 20-year capital improvement project graph that's got from 2027 to 2046. And in that graph, they're sorted by a risk rank that's a one to a 29 instead of the other one to five one sort of that you had that you were using on the other risk classifications. I was wondering how that one to 29 sort of fits in with the other overlay.

Well, I can speak to the,

Casey, can I encourage you to use the microphone, please?

So I can speak to the score that we asked for out of five corresponds to OpenGov. Okay, go ahead. OpenGov has a, if you, if we wanna, or as we fully utilize OpenGov, in all these categories, we put these factors in, like environmental risk and economic risk and demographic risk and so this helps us fill out all the columns in OpenGov because we've had none of this data in the past so the algorithms in OpenGov can't fully do predictive cost analysis until we have all the things in there.

Gotcha.

So we ask them to do that.

So I think you already answered my question, that that was based in OpenGov's sort of rating of it. Your one to 29 that's in the back is different.

I think the way I read it.

It's a 20-year capital improvement program.

I think it's the ranking. So it's actually numbering each project.

Okay. So it's just by the rank of how many projects there are total. Thank you so much on that one. That helps.

But I will confirm. And also, each figure in this presentation is in the report. We just pulled figures out of the report. So they're hidden in there.

Yeah, they're all in here, but just for your presentation, you've got a pretty straightforward. That's true. On those five slides. Absolutely. It really helped to have those five slides in the council members' hands. You've got it. So they don't have to dig so hard for that. The second is just a curiosity question. And on page 66, when you're talking about the controlling structure for the evaluation of the fire flow safety, you chose the Mesa Elementary School for that. Out of curiosity, Why was that chosen and not one of our larger structures in town, such as the Wal-Mart or the the high school or even what is the hospital or the other building that's packed builders? I'm sorry, Osprey. Yeah, I mean, there's how did you choose Mesa Elementary on that?

We didn't choose it. Fire controlling structures are based on the material that structures are built out of and what What size they are and how they're constructed.

Okay, so that's the one that was chosen because it's kind of the most difficult one to contain a fire with the material that's made out of and what's existing in the building. Exactly.

It's older. So your newer structures have suppression systems that are more modern.

Thanks so much, but yeah, this is quite the report. I know it's a master plan, but it's a report. Yes.

And I want to say thank you for prioritizing this. Like I said, we've been working for the city for 10 years. And to my knowledge, there has not been a water system master plan. So I've been itching to do this for you for a long time. So thank you guys for prioritizing this.

This has been a council goal now for a couple of years, I think, just to get this going. How do we look right now?

Excellent.

Good. How will we look in 10 years if we do nothing?

Not good.

There's a reason I asked this. I know the answer, but this is also on record. So we want the public to know what we're going to do and we have to do. If we do nothing, we're going to suffer. And so that's why I asked that question.

Yeah, the city's been great about prioritizing their water system. Their staff is a real do-it-yourself type. They use me when they need me, and that goes for all consultants in Cortez, I feel like. They really try to do it themselves, and they do a great job. Your staff are very impressive. And but I think even this depth of analysis pointed out some deficiencies that they weren't aware of and you know Just how fast it can sneak up on you if you don't do anything for ten years You will be in trouble and the next you know council will pay the price Thank you.

Does the council have any more questions anybody? Man, you did such a good job

I don't really have a question, but I would say we do look great right now and that we're holding our head above water from what I'm hearing. But we need improvements in here and we need we need to at least double our budget for the next three years. And then on the fourth year after that, it needs to triple. And the fifth year after that, it needs to go six times what our current budget is for water. So that's I mean, we look good at this moment in time, but we have to look forward to the future and what your recommendations are. And thank you.

Yeah.

With no further questions.

Okay.

This is the first reading, right, Casey?

So you'll be back next time? Yeah, process-wise, we're going to let you guys digest it for about a month. I don't know the exact council date, but we'll want to get feedback from you guys, and we'll want to share out with the public. Also, to the mayor's point that, yeah, if we don't do anything for 10 years, It won't be great and to Council Member Randall's point that it's progressively more expensive to deal with the infrastructure improvements so we want everyone to be able to digest that and we can certainly revise as necessary and then my understanding is we'll pass it at this point probably in early September, early mid-September. This isn't even a first reading because it's just a work session.

And then should they send feedback to you? No, to Drew.

We talked about if you're sending your questions and feedback, comments on the report to Drew, and he'll get them to SGM.

All right, thank you so much. Okay, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Casey? Is it that, how is our staff with digesting this? Where are you guys and your staff at?

I think the staff range the staff emotional range probably stretches from excitement to and dread anxiety but I'll kind of provide further context Randy Bailey and I have already started talking to people pretty familiar with all the different financing and funding opportunities out there because it is like a pretty long you want to have a long runway we've talked to Scott Baker's looked at the grant picture as well As Catherine said, Randy Hunt's really proficient. He knew about most of the things. I think the biggest unknown that's giving us all a little bit of stress is the raw water line. Nobody's looked at it for 40 years. It's got a 75-year predicted lifespan. But we want to get some cameras in there as soon as possible, which is scheduled for next year. On the distribution side, we feel really well equipped to put new water lines in the ground as fast as any contractor might with a similar size crew. But we're looking at how to staff for the pavement patch backs that will follow those water lines, because obviously, if we're just doing water lines, we're going to leave a nice little trail of pavement cuts behind us that people won't really enjoy. And then we've strengthened the partnership with sanitation districts. So we're working closely with them to make it as affordable as possible by bundling projects together and in connection with the PCI um ratings that you have for the pipes we're looking at you know the neighborhoods around alameda and south valley road and the other red and those also contain sanitation pipes that need replacement so distribution side we feel pretty good raw water we feel the most anxiety and in the treatment side know it's there's just necessary service life upgrades and expansion that ultimately needs to be done so there's not much to really fear it's just the natural life cycle of the infrastructure thank you

We are moving right along so that gives the Council an opportunity now to have some general discussions. I'd like to bring out that I discussed in Council quite some time ago about visiting some of our municipal functions like the airport of and uh... the water treatment plant so i think if we could get windy day email those days that she mailed me to the rest of the council and see if they would be in agreement what we have now is uh... we would like to work sessions they're not really work sessions is just like a work session like this on august eleventh at the cortez airport September 8th at the Cortez fire department and October 13th at the Cortez water plant and What we would like to do is a little tour those and I think it'd be good for us to see what we have at the plant so that's the suggestion that The council needs to discuss something they'd be interested in Sure these are tentative dates, but it's August 11th September 8th and October 13th

When was the September date. Sorry.

And those locations again were where the 11th was the 11th with the Cortez airport. OK.

The September 8th was Cortez fire department. And October 13th is a Cortez water plant. My only suggestion was I I think because of this master plan I would encourage to move that water plant visit up I think And I'm glad he brought that up because I agree Everybody agree with that so City manager if we could have the water plant on August 11th and And maybe we can work out some details later on, whether we want to carpool over there and do it quickly. And it won't be a big, drawn-out thing. It's going to be short and brief.

Yeah, Mayor and Council, we can absolutely do that. And then what we'd do is just have you meet here at City Hall, and we'll take you out in our pasture van to do that as a group.

So once again, August 11th will be the Cortez Water Plant. Let's move the September 8th, let's move the airport to that date, and the fire department on October 13th. So it's going to be August 11th, water plant, September 8th, the airport, and October 13th, the fire department.

Okay, the only caveat to that, Mayor and Council, is availability of the Fire Protection District. They're the ones that suggested September 8. They're usually pretty flexible, but let me just check with them 100% because that piece is not in our control.

Yeah, and the reason I set that date is because of our Airport Advisory Board, and it would be nice to go down there and see what all's cooking.

Yep, I agree. And I will do my best.

I have a question with the Fire Protection District. Why is that on there versus other departments?

One of the reasons, we work hand in hand with them and most of their fires are fought right here in the city limits of Cortez. And so I think we need to be good partners and see how they do things and see if there's anything we can do to help them. That's just one of many. I also think we need to go to the rec center. We have other places to go, but the fire department was just.

I have a question. About what time of the day would this occur on August 11th?

So I'm assuming it's gonna be roughly six o'clock roughly six o'clock.

Yeah, okay, so it would be Workshops, it's a workshop.

Yeah prior to the okay.

Yeah, these would be workshop sessions Give us an adequate time Well, like I said, I use the term roughly because I got a gauge and make sure I time it out just right It could be as early as 530 a solo plan to feed you all.

I

Thank you. May I make another suggestion if we're just talking about other organizations that we interact with that are a critical part of our infrastructure? I know absolutely very little about the wastewater treatment facility, even though it's outside of our it's it's a separate district. I don't we don't know anything about it. And we've had that come up recently with water use and the like. So it might not be a bad idea for us to reach out to them in the future sometime. But just another suggestion.

Yeah, that's certainly a good idea. We've gotta be careful that we don't use up all of our work sessions, but we can't do that down the road. Okay, does anybody else have any topics they'd like to discuss?

Nothing? This is an awful easygoing council.

Okay.

Let's go on to meeting minutes for the Montezuma County Board of Commissioners from July 6th through the 7th, 2026. Everybody had a chance to review those.

Okay.

With no further action, we'll close our work session. Meet back here at 7.30.