President Steve Shirley opened the meeting by introducing Attorney Abby St. Lawrence, who provided an update on concerns about a house on Appaloosa Drive where rooms are allegedly rented out as apartments. She said the owners of the home are violating not only covenants but two county zoning rules. One that restricts parking and another that bans apartment buildings in single-family housing districts.
She has been in contact with county officials who have been investigating and will soon send a letter to the owners demanding action to bring the house in compliance with county zoning rules. The owners will have 14 days to comply once they receive the letter, she said.
St. Lawrence also talked briefly about the 46 Degrees North subdivision. Among other things, in response to a question she said she didn’t know if the homes in the subdivision will end up with individual wells or community wells as because of uncertainty over the legal status of new wells in Montana. The issue has been litigated recently in the Montana courts.
Shirley, meanwhile, said he recently received a letter from the state Department of Environmental Quality stating that it had reached a decision to issue a permit to approve a groundwater discharge permit to the developer, effective Aug. 1. The letter did add, however, that the state would be changing and strengthening requirements in the permit for monitoring any potential accidental discharges from the new subdivision’s treatment system. Shirley said TSA wrote to DEQ several months ago encouraging the agency to do just that.
St. Lawrence and Shirley also talked briefly about plans to renew efforts in the fall to rewrite covenants for the subdivision. St. Lawrence said the current covenants are outdated and were designed for a much small subdivision. She added that a rewrite would be a very involved process and would require all owners of property in the subdivision, not just those who show up at a homeowners’ meeting, to vote.
Engineer Tom Cavanaugh of Peccia & Associates, who provided an overview of the study just completed for TSA of selected storm drains at eight intersections. TSA’s drains, he said, are under-sized and clogged and can cause damage to the roads when they allow too much water to saturate the sub-base.
The report done by his firm (which is available for viewing on the documents page at www.treasurestateacres.com) suggests a plan for repair of the drains at the eight intersections that could be done for about $110,000. It involves the installation of lateral pipes in the drains that resemble drain fields.
During a general discussion of TSA’s road and drain issues, Culver Varnado asked Cavanaugh what it would cost to fix the drains, rebuild the roads that need to be rebuilt, and do annual maintenance of roads. An earlier Peccia report estimated the annual cost of maintaining TSA roads at $128,175 a year for all treatments.
Cavanaugh estimated the one-time costs of fixing drains and rebuilding at $750,000, in addition to the annual maintenance costs of $128K. Varnado said TSA might want to consider asking the county to set up a SID in order to take care of the costs all at once.
Meanwhile, the county commissioners have scheduled a June 30 hearing on TSA’s request for a 50 percent hike in residents’ payments into the RID that pays for road and drain work. Shirley asked if anyone at the meeting objected to that request for an increase, and no one did.
Representatives of Montana Internet gave a presentation on services they offer. They said that, if TSA residents were interested and if the subdivision were rebuilding its roads, they’d like a chance to install fiber optics wires in the streets. However, they said, they can also provide service by tower. They said they will be launching a phone service next month and a TV service in the next six months to a year. They also said they can offer speed services that a lot of customers like.
Treasurer Terry Atwood said he hoped some progress could be made on improvements to playground equipment in the park. Varnado, who is a member of the park board, said the board is planning improvements in the near future. Varnado also said the park’s fund is in good shape and so the board has asked the county to not charge TSA residents for one of their regular park levies.
There was a question whether anything more was being done about the “box-car” lot at the corner of Montana and Bobcat. Shirley noted that St. Lawrence had made several attempts to contact, by letter and phone, the owners of the lot to tell them they were not complying with TSA covenants. St. Lawrence also had investigated county rules so see if they were violating any county rules, but apparently there were none. The only option left, he said, was to sue the owners, and that would likely cost the homeowners’ association a lot more money than it has in its fund. No one pressed to sue at the last homeowners’ meeting when the topic came up. Shirley said the only option left may be for TSA homeowners to not patronize the business, and encourage neighbors and friends to do the same.
There also was a short discussion of the Christmas luminaries. Shirley said residents of some streets, like Red Fox and Cougar, are no longer organizing to distribute bags and candles. But there’s still interest on many of the streets in continuing the tradition. He said that what happened this past Christmas – giving out fewer candles, skipping those houses where residents didn’t want them, but giving reduced numbers to those that did – seemed to work OK.
This report was prepared by Steve Shirley