October 29, 2014 at 8:30 AM - Operations & Education Committee Meeting

Rationale:  No payments or additional activity.

Rationale:  We have organized 6-7 people from the Prague area to cut firewood at Czechland Lake to dwindle the large Elm tree piles down.  Started burning the smaller tree piles at Czechland, in the process a fire started in the engine compartment of the Bobcat.  It is being repaired by Virgl Implement and a claim to insurance has been processed. We completed our fall spraying in various locations and continue to rogue out invasive trees on many locations. Took the 2010 Chevy in for warranty work on the transmission.

Rationale:  The initial order for trees will be approximately 10,200 depending on inventories and availability.

Rationale:  Letters were sent to our partners requesting payment for their share of the $24,753 study cost. We have not had any new information regarding the study from the COE.

Rationale:  M.E. Collins has not started the erosion repair below the Lake Wanahoo dam. Estimated time table is to start the week of November 3, but have it completed before mid-November.

Rationale:  Letters were sent to the list of cooperators explaining the changes in the program, the lower budget amount and the priorities.  We have not had any response.

Rationale:  This month we've been running ads on the Wanahoo detour,  fall fertilizer restrictions and the SkyTEM helicopter flights.

Rationale:  This month we've been running ads on the Wanahoo detour and fall fertilizer restrictions.

Rationale:  The fall issue of the Viaduct was distributed in area papers and electronically the first week of October.

Rationale:  We worked with Erika Hill (NARD) and Katie Cameron (ENWRA) to coordinate publicity about the SkyTEM helicopter flights. Several newspapers, radio stations and TV stations ran stories on the flights. 

Rationale:  Thompson and Miyoshi attended a workshop at USACE on using social media to promote emergency awareness and preparedness. The workshop had several good ideas for tying social media campaigns to specific events/dates that we will incorporate into our future efforts. 

Rationale:  The East Central Land Judging Contest was held on October 8 at Homestead Lake. 168 students from 11 schools participated, with teams from Milford, Norris, East Butler and Raymond Central qualifying for state. Milford placed second at state and qualified for national competition.

While our numbers were similar to the past few years, we had several new schools attend this year, and statewide there were a record number of contestants and teams.  

Rationale:  We received a sponsorship request from the Nebraska Science Bowls, scheduled for February 2015. (see attachment). We have donated $250 to this event in past years. 

Rationale:  A new vulnerability has been discovered in older versions of the "Secure Sockets Layer" protocol that's used to secure online transactions. Our website is not vulnerable to this security flaw, but the web server may need to be upgraded to a newer version of Windows in the near future, depending on changes to our payment processor's requirements.

Rationale:  After the last board meeting, we contacted our ISP to discuss our Internet speed. Our speeds during regular office hours have been very good since they installed a point-to-point antenna for us, but during the board meeting our speeds got progressively slower as the night went on.

After looking into it, they discovered that their access point at Mead (where our service comes from) was being overloaded at night, as people got home from work and started using the Internet. They doubled the bandwidth to that access point to alleviate this problem, and we will have the president of the company "on call" during our next board meeting at the office so that they can respond in real-time if we experience any speed issues. 

Rationale:  Coliform samples will be taken on October 29th, sample results should be known by board meeting.  

Staff collected samples for testing of Trihalomethane and Haloacetic Acid.  These are by-products from the breakdown of chlorine.  Results for both the trihalomethane and haloacetic acid have shown levels well below the MCL. 

Staff completed some one-call request for the Bruno line this month.

Rationale: 

Coliform samples will be taken on October 29th and sample results should be known by board meeting.

Six Colon customers have been sent disconnection notices and staff will be visiting these people closer to the 10th of the month.

Staff will be attending the next Village of Colon board meeting to discuss water and sewer concerns.  That meeting is scheduled for November 5th at 6:00 pm

Rationale:  Staff has received an update and the draft of this study is nearly complete.  JEO will be meeting with Brainard and Dwight before December to go over the draft.  A possible well field may have been located with some early favorable sampling results.  JEO will forward us the draft report once completed.  

Rationale: 

• Game and Parks informed staff that the date to spend the $20,000 grant for the Czechland project has been moved forward to December 31st. 2014.