Water Company (Not TLPOA)

To the nice lady who left a nastygram on the answering machine, WE ARE NOT THE WATER COMPANY.  If you want to rant about the water company, please call them; we can’t help you. We are a customer of the water company, just like you.

For those of you who are still troubled by this concept, let me make it as simple as possible. Timberlakes Property Owners Association (us) is NOT the Timberlakes Water Company (them). Us is not them. Them is not us. We are different. We are not the same. We are the property owners in Timberlakes. They are the water company. They deliver water. We do other stuff. We have a different name, address and telephone number than they do. If you need to talk to someone about water, your water bill, your water meter, the construction project being done by the water company, why you can’t water outside, water on your knees, watercress, water boarding, or anything else relating to water, call the water company at 435.654.0125 or go into their office at 190 North Main in Heber City. They are there. We, on the other hand, are here, in Timberlakes. We are happy to talk to you about the stuff we do for the owners, which, by the way, does NOT include anything to do with water.

Gary Hume, a member of our Board of Directors, coordinates communication between our Board and the Board that governs the water company. Gary is not a consumer advocate for owners regarding their water problems. If you have a problem relating to water, you must contact the water company. Gary cannot and does not contact them for you. If you have […]

The Wasatch County Council held a follow-up information meeting tonight at 7:00 p.m. in the Wasatch County Senior Citizens Center. The purpose of the meeting, as outlined in the letter posted in my previous blog, was to inform the Timberlakes property owners of the construction bids and other cost changes in the proposed water distribution system improvements and to give owners a chance to ask questions.

Council Chairman Steve Farrell reviewed the revised cost estimates for the project, which are outlined in the above referenced letter. The cost was reduced almost $4 million by obtaining hard cost bids on materials and construction. Another $1 million was reduced by opting for a basic telemetry system than can be added to over time rather than purchasing a complete system up front and by having the Water Company crew perform spring development rather than contracting that piece out. Adding a contingency fund for unforeseen problems of $.5 million increased the cost. The construction period interest decreased by approximately $20,000, with the construction likely taking three years to complete rather than two, although that is still an open issue. The net total changes are a reduction of approximately $4.9 million. This is projected to cost each lot $6,400 up front or $44 per month for twenty years.

The Chairman opened the meeting for public questions. The following is my personal recollection of items that were clarified by the Council or the Water Board during the Public Question period. If the Council approves the project tonight, construction will begin within 30 days. It will take 2-3 years to complete the project. Some of the costs are still just estimates but the estimates should not be exceeded. Hard costs on some […]

We have received the following IMPORTANT update from the Timberlakes Water Company. Please read the following letter. There is a public meeting on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 7:00 pm at the Wasatch County Senior Citizens Center to update the public on the latest information regarding this matter.

If you cannot read the text size of the letter, please click here to open the letter as a pdf file, which you can print or zoom in.

This summary of this evening’s meeting is not official; it is just my opinion of what happened at the meeting. I provide it in an attempt to convey something to those of you who were unable to attend.

The Wasatch County Council conducted a public hearing this evening to hear comments from Timberlakes property owners about the proposed bond for improvement of the water storage and distribution system. They announced that of the 1531 lots, 523 lots filed a protest letter with the County. Since they did not receive a protest from at least 50% of the lots, they are not required to abandon the proposal. The County Council now has three options:

They can approved the assessment and proceed.
They can disprove the assessment and stop the project.
They can make changes and deletions and proceed with an amended project.

The vast majority of property owners who spoke agreed that the water system requires attention. It needs to be fixed. However, the economic impact on property owners of the current proposal, the manner in which information was disseminated and certain specifics of the proposal were questioned.

After hearing from many property owners, the Council announced they would take all of the comments into consideration and carefully and thoughtfully determine a course of action. They committed to informing the property owners of their decision and not just proceed without further communication.

John Blickenstaff

The Water Company has posted on their website a response to circulating rumors and mis-information. We invited their Board to provide us with a copy of their document, and received the following. This is their original document, with one exception: We spell Timberlakes as two words and their document spells it as one word. We conformed their spelling to ours and left everything else as written.
NOTICE TO ALL TIMBER LAKES LOT OWNERS
There has been a substantial amount of bad information, innuendo, and rumors being passed around regarding the proposed water project. We have tried several times clarifying this information and will try once again to set the record straight.

#1 – It is rumored that the selected design engineer is owned by one or more board members. An engineering contract has been let to “Horrocks Engineering” to design the system upgrades, but nobody on the board is associated with Horrocks nor has any ownership therein.

#2 – It is rumored that a contractor has been selected and that the contractor is owned by one or more board members. This is not true. No contract has been let, nor do any board members own any part of any contracting firm. No contract will be let unless the bond assessment passes.

#3 – Some people believe we have an ample water supply. Let it be known that at least twice last winter our tanks almost ran dry because we have to circulate and spill water from the fire hydrants to keep the lines from freezing. Had a line broken during this time, there would have been some areas on the mountain that would have been dry for several days or weeks […]

In our Board Meeting held in Draper on May 7, 2008, Mr. David Hansen, Chairman of the Water Company addressed the property owners and gave some very helpful information regarding the proposed bond that was not stated or not clear in the recent legal notice mailed to you by the County. We invited Mr. Hansen to review the information we previously posted on this issue. After doing so, he kindly provided us with the following letter, which we post here. Please read this letter before you decide how you feel about the bond proposal.

Dear Timberlakes Lot Owners:

Recently there has been significant controversy and comment regarding our attempts to improve our water system. We have tried several times and via several methods to convey information related to the needed improvements including two water rate hearings, an informational meeting, the mailing of a letter attempting to describe the plan, the posting of a water rate hearing transcript on the Wasatch County website, the mailing of the transcript to anyone requesting it, open discussions over the past 18 months at our monthly board meetings, and personal communications with several individuals explaining the proposed plan. As difficult as it is, it is impossible as a volunteer board to respond personally to every question asked. We hope you will understand the level of commitment offered by the water board, often without thanks.

As many of you may know, a letter was recently passed out at the entrance to Timberlakes which included several mis-representations or mis-understandings related to the proposed project. This letter did not identify the author, nor was it signed. The unfortunate part is that many individuals may have believed that the […]

We appreciate everyone who is calling or emailing us to express their opinion about the proposed Water Company bond. Many of you are confused, thinking that your TLPOA board is proposing the bond.

There are actually two completely separate entities operating the Timberlakes Estates subdivision. One is the Timberlakes Property Owners Association, or TLPOA. As a property owner, you are a member of the TLPOA. The TLPOA board of directors is elected by the property owners in the Timberlakes Estates subdivision to represent our collective best interests in addressing issues that affect the quality of life on the mountain. These issues include road maintenance and improvements, security, architectural building regulations, relations with neighboring properties, fire and safety matters.

There is another entity operating in the subdivision called the Timberlakes Water Special Services District or TLWSSD. This entity is commonly referred to as the Timberlakes Water Company. The Water Company is a separate entity from TLPOA. The Water Company is also operated by a board. Their board members are appointed by Wasatch County because the Water Company is a government agency. The Water Company was created by the County as a Special Services District. The Water Company, not the TLPOA, is proposing the bond. None of our board members has anything to do with the Water Company. We, like you, are property owners, so the bond affects us the same is it affects you.

Since the registered letters arrived in your mailbox, and someone started passing out an unsigned page about the bond at the gate, you good folks have raised some great questions, to the wrong board. In addition, it is rather difficult to find out a whole lot of information about […]