State funding

• Rick Dove met with Sophio Ortega (County Commissioner) and Carlos Miera (County Director of Community Development) on 5/21. At that Carlos Miera confirmed an earlier telephone call he had made: Funding is tied to the "Severance Tax Bonds Series 1998B" issue that is expected to yield cash approximately mid-July.

Forest Service land

• Rick called Carry Leven the morning of 5/21 resulted in here completion of the archeological study that same day. She found an are near in the south-west corner of our proposed plot that must be eliminated from our appropriation request in order to speed things through the approval process. In a phone conversation later in the afternoon Ron Thibedeau suggested that we measure the area and pull back the entire west line of the plot to eliminate this area. Rick and Bill Reifsnyder measured this as a 24 foot pull-back. A new plot map will be developed to reflect this elimination.
• As a result of the meeting with the County people earlier in the day I informed Ron that the County would be the owner of the land as required by the state funding. Ron then said that the FS 2700-3 Special Use Application must be resubmitted from the County - but that he would continue to processing the paper work while this is accomplished and expects that part to be done within two weeks (6/4).
• Rick informed Carlos of the resubmission requirement and volunteered to pick up blank form and fill out as much as possible - then give this package to Carlos on 5/26 Tuesday - they are closed Monday for Memorial Day.
• Relative to the community center - Ron is submitting the paper work for a combined fire-house/community-center. He does not expect this to meet any public flak but won’t know about the internal Forest Service position until the papers are submitted.

Fire district designation

• Rick called Jim Trehern at the State Fire Marshall’s Office on 5/21 and was told that the County must pass a resolution for us to be a fire district.
• At the 5/21 county meeting Rick inquired about the resolution status and was told that they though the resolution was passed but wouldn’t know for sure until the person in charge of that paperwork returned. Later in the day Carlos confirmed that the resolution was passed with an amendment for the state funding county responsibility - and that the attachment of the amendment was awaiting the return of a county employee out on sick leave. As a result, Carlos expected that we would see a copy of the final paper in about a week (6/28).

Fire truck garage

• Roy Blaz returned the inquiry call to Joan as she is out of state - and expressed doubt that the Hatchery would have the space to garage a truck as they used such space for feed.
• Bill Reifsnyder accepted responsibility to be point man on the securing of an acceptable garage.

Fire truck

• Bill also accepted point responsibility for securing a fire truck. He heard that the Amalia district had obtained a new truck and that their old one was in the County yard - but was unable to obtain any useful phone numbers to confirm this.
• Rick brought the Amalia subject up at the 5/21 County meeting and was told by Carlos that two truck were actually in inventory - one was a 1924 antique with a Bernalillo County insignia that would go up for auction soon, and the other could not be found as the man responsible for inventory was off to a Santa Fe meeting. Carlos will confirm the truck’s presence and origin when the inventory man returns. Sophio was encouraging about the likelihood that we could get one of these two trucks at no charge quickly to start our 12-month probationary period with the Fire Marshall’s office - returning it to the County when we are in a position to purchase a newer truck. Sophio believes that Sero also got a new truck recently - which may or may not free up their old truck.

Construction

• At the 5/21 County meeting Carlos provide Rick with a steel building catalog - suggesting that this was an affordable possibility under our limited budget. Rick offered that the community was unlikely to approve of an all steel building for aesthetic reasons as we wanted something that would appear more at home in the southwestern forest setting. One possibility is a post-and-beam steel building that we purchase and then with local labor provide walls - perhaps straw bale - that could be finished with stucco.
• The ball is in our court now: we must decide what we want and return to Carlos with rough plans so that he can go out to bid - as required. Carlos believes that he cannot go out for bid until the funds are available. Fundamentally there is a 10-day notice required on bids - but to this must be added the bid prep and publishing lead times. The work can be done in advance so that publishing the notice can happen as soon as the funds are available. If the bids are too high we can then purchase a steel building or portion thereof - always reserving whatever portion of labor and contribution the community is willing and able to provide.
• Next step: Rick will convene a meeting of the VFD organizing committee to plan the decision making process (see last item in this report).
• The $10,000 County-channeled Community Center funds must be spent by December this year according to Carlos. Also, in order to apply these funds a very involved Environmental Assessment must be done with 20 or 30 different agencies signing off. This process begins when the county sends a letter to each of these agencies informing them of the land location and intended use, and requesting that they investigate the site and return a letter saying that they are satisfied. This typically takes 3-6 months and often longer. We can expedite the process by helping Carlos with the bird-dog activity, eg, once he sends the letters we can follow up with each of the agencies and encourage them to complete their investigation. I volunteered to use our VFD Organizing Committee in this capacity.
• Carlos is prepared to start the Environmental Assessment process as soon as the Fire Service provides a letter saying that the initial paper work is approved - we do not have to wait for the end of the 45-day public posting time. We should also see how many of the Environmental Assessment items are already done as a result of the Forrest Service work in order to eliminate the need for these duplicate assessments.
• The Fire House construction plans will require an architects stamp on them. If we can find an architect among our community will to do this for free this will not be an expense. Otherwise, the County may be able to help here and maybe not - depending on the type of construction, eg, if we purchase a steel building the architects stamp requires virtually no architect time and perhaps someone in the planning department licensed appropriately could do this at no charge. Alternatively, if we can put the Fire House and the Community Center within the same construction unit Carlos can find additional Community Center funds to cover the necessary Architectural work.
• Sophio suggested that we go out and look at the El Rito fire house - suggesting that its single-bay construction would be a source of planning ideas.

Miscellaneous

• Water source letter to acequia association - Justin Friedman has accepted point responsibility for this action. Rick suggested to Justin that he wait until Rick finds out who needs to see this letter and what form they wish it to take. The subject was not dealt with at the 5/21 meeting - Rick will take this up with Carlos at the planned Tuesday 6/2 meeting with him.
• Web site - At the suggestion of the Board, the last VFD status report was uploaded to the web site on 5/12. Reports can be found by going to the VFD page at http://www.laplaza.org/comm/na/llna/Vfd/ and then following the link to the "VFD Library".
• Bill Reifsnyder and Rick Dove attended a meeting of the Taos County Fire Chiefs held at the Hondo-Secco fire house the evening of 5/21. The meeting was addressed by George Chevaz, State Fire Marshal. The principal outcome of the meeting was to revive the Taos County Fire Chief’s Association and institute regular meetings that will deal with common problems: coordinating multi-station work on large fires, standardizing a mutual aid agreement, helping each other attain higher ISO level ratings, etc. It was learned at that meeting:

• that a Level 10 fire district is considered worthless by the Fire Marshall’s office and will be eliminated if it doesn’t attain Level 9 status expeditiously (12-18 months). Cerro was the only class 10 attending and has been ready for some time to pass the class 9 inspection but had difficulty obtaining a readily obtainable truck from the County. Such bureaucratic slowness and difficulties were discussed at length - most being laid at the County’s door step.
• a Level 9 district can receive Level 8 (more) funding from the Fire Marshall if it has even a single small sub-area that gets a Level 8 rating by ISO. This can occur, for instance, by locating a suitable hydrant at a pond with at least 30,000 gallons capacity - houses within reach of this pumping capability will get a level 8 ISO rating.
• A fire house suitable for two trucks - a pumper and a tender (tanker) - is recommended to be 40’ deep by 60’ wide - with two doors. These were informal recommendations made by several of the chief’s when we asked the question about size of construction. They like the extra space for indoor training w/o moving trucks, and they like the two doors so that minimal opening is required when a truck has to move. Doors should provide 12’ of clearance as some tenders can be 11’ high.
• George Chavez was aware of the Lama LLNA meeting that Jim Trehern attended and expressed his regrets at not being able to attend as well.
• Peter Duran from the State FM Office gave us a copy of the Fire Chief’s Handbook that he has assembled.
• The Rio Fernando (Taos Valley) fire district just upgraded their truck and their old one is in the County yard. Russ Driskell, the fire chief, said that they had paid $1 to Santa Fe county for this truck originally. This turns out to be the truck with the Bernalillo insignia on the door that Rick had seen in the County yard earlier in the day. Russ claims it is quite serviceable.

VFD Organizing Committee (VFD-OC)

• The first committee meeting will occur at 5:30pm on Tuesday 5/26 at Rick’s barn - it is expected to end by 6:30. This and the previous report will be posted in the VFD area of the LLNA web site and reachable at: http://www.laplaza.org/comm/na/llna/Vfd/ (Then take the "VFD Library" link). Hard copy reports will be delivered to those committee members w/o web access. All members are expected to read the reports prior to the meting so that we can quickly establish action items and responsibilities for the next necessary steps.
• The VFD-OC consists of:

• Rick Dove, Chair, 505-586-1492, dove@parshift.com
• Terry Klein, 505-586-0206, nbuffalo@laplaza.org
• Bill Reifsnyder, 505-586-1151, william.reifsnyder@yale.edu
• Marc Rogers, 505-586-0056, marcroge@laplaza.com
• Rob Watt, 505-586-0708
• Nat Wilson, 505-586-1044

Attachments:

1) Environmental Assessment Checklist