DLPOA Board Meeting June 10, 2010

This is our first meeting in June. We actually had several visitors (including two wives). Commissioner Larry was here for the first half hour.

Treasury: $8700 checking, $40k+ CDs.

The secretary forgot to bring last month’s meeting notes.

Fish: Fish pens have been emptied. Trying to get brook trout next time.

Net Pens – Fish & Game club withdrew their offer of fish pens because of some state bureaucracy red tape thing. There would be a problem with water quality because of fish poop by adding more fish according to some local biologist. Seems like we would have to pay for a study on this issue but the cost of the study was more than the cost of the fish pens. Deer Lake has a 9.5 year turnover, compared to 1.5 for lakes with an outlet. There appears to be some sort of pissing match between F&W and DOE. We are guaranteed fish for Ken and Jim’s existing pens for the next season. Anyway, any hopes for this year are gone. Maybe we can put some pressure on whoever and whatever so that we do not get screwed next year.

Roadside cleanup – 1100 lbs.

Chilli feed – 15 people or more.

There is a proposal to convert the chilli feed to a breakfast feed instead – then go out and pick up.

We need to get a letter into the county for our cut of the hotel motel tax for our fireworks.

Membership – create a banner to promote membership, to be hung at the entrance to the lake roads. Voted on and passed.

Road Safety – if you have a problem, call the sheriff. We have a deputy that lives on the lake, at least at the moment.

Water Quality – lake has come up 7 inches since last measurement, but is still 13 inches below full pool, which is an inch lower than last year.

Milfoil – Brian and Kevin are going to nuke the narows with 2,4D sometime in July. They have the permit to apply 24d on our lake. All the various agencies have signed off. July 6-8 or so. They will use a granular material (so it sinks) to be applied in the narrows toolies. Notification is 10-21 days prior to treatment, to everybody within a quarter mile. Day of treatment must post no swimming in that area for 24 hours. Will use a backpack blower device to get the stuff below the water surface. DLPOA asked that it be delayed a week because of July 4 weekend and the larger than normal population that will be here. They agreed. Does not affect the fish. Loon Lake has been doing it for several years. Our permit runs till next year, at $500 a year or so just for the permit. Bottom Barriers already in the narrows will be pulled out first.

Dock Demo – 25 people showed up. 800 ft of docks crunched. 8000 lbs of just styrofoam, 6 dump truck loads of burnables. $325 is dump fees. Back Hoe was donated. Ken Ring led the group.

North Deer Lake Sign – Dealing with the side logs and anchors. Sign is almost painted. We had a big discussion as to exactly where to put it, and where to put the auxiliary informational signs. We are now thinking of putting those above and below, but the Kniksu sign might get in the way. We cannot block the road that intersects with North Deer Lake road, and we cannot be too near the power pole that is in the area. We have a permit for our sign. We think most of the other signs there do not. We could get power from that pole for lights. It has been 10 years since we last painted the sign. The posts are toast, but the boards of the sign are golden still.

3^th July Kiddie Parade – there will be people with walkie talkies and a bullhorn to organize everybody at deer lake resort and on the way to west bay. Picnic at west bay. Two sheriff deputies.

D2 and Mike Egan will drag the fireworks barge around the day of and day after the fireworks.

President – we need a president. Mike will be gone in a couple of years. We all think that Ken Ring would be a great candidate, but Ken himself is not real open to the idea. All the other obvious candidates are either busy professionally or already have other gigs or ...

Pancake feed – set up Saturday afternoon 2pm, then start the process Sunday morning 7am.

Done 8:15

DLPOA Board Meeting May 13, 2010

Visitor – Larry Gunther, county commissioner for this district. Shooting ordinance – Loon Lake did a universal shooting ban. Ours would be a partial ban. Need to discuss this with all the commissioners. Call Pauly, clerk of he board, to get on the schedule. Sheriff’s view is, this is hard to enforce.

Budget still sucks. Sheriff hired five people with a grant, which ends in 2012. So they are trying to find $500K over the next three years to fill that hole. Maybe try for a 0.3% sales tax. Otherwise three deputies get whacked. County employee furloughs will start. New labor negotiations start this year, and county will ask for givebacks. Will be active in coordinating activities with federal agencies, like fish & game, forestry. Different than simple cooperation. Coordination gives the county a degree of control that cooperation does not. 395 will be repaved from Clayton to Dragoon Creek. So expect delays this summer. Got 10 new patrol cars from Washington State Patrol.

Treasurer – fireworks deposit made, walts, DOE for 24 d application. 164 paid members. Property taxes. D&O Insurance – Discussion to blow away liability insurance on the swampland. Voted to keep the insurance, but look into adding a deductible.

Merel Ott, county commissioner District 2. (Was not here at same time as Larry). – gave Kudos to Larry the commissioner. Thinks that Stevens county government works really well. Employment going up in county. Lumber mills are cranking up or getting reopened. Biomass generation plant being built. Will be a long road. Not too keen himself on a sales tax increase. 70% of county budget is labor. Trying to deal with state regulatory oppression, and state funding of criminal justice system. Need to be self sufficient as possible. Not keen on passing ordinances that cannot be enforced (eg shooting, dogs).

Mike Phillips – Lake up three inches from last month. May is normally the high point of the year.

Milfoil – will run out of grant money by end of summer. Will do 2,4D on about an acre in the narrows. DOE has stand alone grants available for fighting milfoil. But they like to deal with LMDs. Can only ask for this in October. LMD is voted on by property owners regardless of what county they live in. Need to get honking on this soon. Will follow Loon Lake’s process. Not sure if it is a simple or super majority of property owners required to vote for it.

Bottom Barriers are in the narrows, will be pulled off in June. We will not know how effective they were till then.

Roadside Cleanup – Tim Dssack will do the east side, Mike the west side. Usually get 30 people, need maybe 4 people to cook the chili after the cleanup. At the firehouse.

Annual meeting – this year at 10am, at the firehouse. Pot luck, but we supply hot dogs, buns, condiments, juice. Need people to bring desserts, salads.

DLPOA exec meeting that previous Thursday 6pm, at Salvation Army camp.

4^th July – parade. Mrs Nokes will help. Larry Nokes will be in it. Need the kids in the front of the parade to keep everything together. Mike will work with sheriff department. Need about 8 monitors. Mr Ring will coordinate those items.

Mr Gregerson has the fireworks docks, and wants some anchors to hold them onto the shore. Motion passed. Mike Egan and I will be the barge movers.

Boat parade man (jarvis) – start at the narrows “in front of his place”, going counter clockwise.

Pancake feed all set to go. Need volunteers day before to set up, then 530 am to start cooking or something.

16000 fish released. 6-9 inches. DOE killed the grant for 2 new fish pens because they needed some EnviroWienie study to permit it or something.

Lake Map Signs – they are being painted. PUD and Mike did a site survey and there are some quibbles. Moving the Kinitksu sign would help out.

Dock Cleanup. Salvation army camp billed DLPOA for cleaning up the burn pile area ($180). T&J construction will provide excavators and bulldozers, but still needs another truck.

Lee Baily got a bunch of boating rules handouts encased in plastic so we can put them out into the open areas.

Fire chief assessment – 12 volunteers looking for a new fire chief. Ended up with a 123 ranking of the applicants. Commissioners ended up with the same rankings. They have approached the #1 candidate and hope to decide on him next week.

Dock at public access – Fish & Wildlife controls. They have looked at it, and if a dock was donated to the cause, they would consider installing and using it. They are also looking for a different public access area, but just about every inch of lake shore is owned by somebody.

845 done

DLPOA Board Meeting 4/8/10

Visitors: Mike Slater and Paul Dye, Bob Hoskie– LogSmarter. See the web site at Logsmarter.com. Their land borders old Boise Cascade land, now owned by Forest Capital. FC did helicopter spraying of their trees, so the spray went everywhere, then they logged the land. They did some investigating to find out who these guys were – offices in Boston, Portland, Coeur d’ Alene. They own over 2 Million acres of land around the US. There was a Public meeting Nov 20 2008 about their logging practices, which people were upset about because of the unsustainable way they are doing the logging. They were asked to name any parcel that they selectively thinned – none. Aerial spray to kill the brush, then log it over. They do replant, but it is a monoculture of trees, not a variety. Plus every living thing got killed by the spraying. They plant larch, and kill off all the pines. This is going on now between Orin Rice road and Addey Kitteridge road. Also Taylor flats and Stranger creek. These are all watersheads and drainages for these areas. Killed all the huckelbery plants too.

FC is now operating within the law. Logsmarter expects that the land will get devastated, and be sold off for development. The west (wet) side made the forestry rules, and our dry areas really are not amenable to that practice, but that is now the legal way to do things and there you are.

You can try to change the regs. Hence the petition. Dry land forest issues. Logsmarter is asking that east of the cascades that clearcuts be limited to 40 acres. Asking for larger raprian buffer zones. Ask that they Reforest at state minimum amount per acre. Plant Tamarack, larch, red fir. No pine, no white pine.

May 11 – State forest practicers board meeting (the guys that set the regulations) –Logsmarter is trying to get some petitions by that time to get the board to consider their objections.

Boise bought the land around our area in 70's. Their plan was to clear cut, but DLPOA went to them and grumped, and the clear cut turned into selective cuts.

SkipWells – fire district – $1.6 million budget thanks to the levy that got passed. They did hire a full time mechanic. They are replacing the fire fighter that left. They are hiring a chief, to replace the old chief that retired. The levy said they would replace the breathing apparatus. They got a grant that will buy 43 devices, so they still need to buy another 10 or so. $3500 per tank. Because of that grant, some of the levy money can be put into other goodies. Got another grant for an air filling trailer to fill these bottles. Will have them all by May. Everybody at Tum Tum station will be trained on using the trailer.

Bought a new medical truck, cut price from $150k to $91k because of the in house mechanic.

Our class 7 fire rating still exists.

Volunteer retention – 85 % of new volunteers last a year, 25 % left in 10 years, 9% at 25 years. How do you keep these guys?

We have 2.5 volunteers for our deer lake station. 2 training days a month. 6 weeks to get to minimum standards.

Sherriff Westerman – no shooting zone issue – Waits Lake has one, passed by the commissioners. Loon Lake had one, but then it got rescinded. State Laws RCS reckless endangerment laws (9a) might cover this situation. Very tough to prove. Easier to deal with are felons who have guns. That is 5 year in the slam. Also if you have domestic violence conviction, you lose your gun rights. Rcw 9.41.040

There are some breakins around the lake, mostly during the day. It really helps if people are checking on their neighbors houses when they come to the lake, especially on weekdays.

The Meeting – 137 paid members for this year. Mailed off the fireworks deposit for the $5600 total.

Fish – Jim Santora released his pen last Monday. The ceremony was attended by an aqua culture class. Average length (of the fish) were 6.5 in, range 5-8 in, 2.5 inches.

4^th July – discussed where to load up the docks. Seems we upset the property owners last year by talking to the wrong person.

Water quality – 22 inches below full pool right now. Should reach the max by mid May. Water coming in from springs, and there is still some snowpack on the mountains. The public access area is useable by big boats.

Millfoil – we paid for permits for chemical eradication, but did not use them. However, the company we paid did not ($400) make the payments. So the county did it and will be billing us. This is the guy that has the licenses to spray the stuff around.

We WILL need to create an LMD probably next year to keep the millfoil eradication going. That means an extra hit on your tax bill.

7:30 start for boat parade.

Road cleanup 8am may 22

dock cleanup 9am June 5

annual board meeting 10am

pancake feed 7-11 July 4

The pancake feed is mainly a community building event that happens to make some money. Used to buy things for the fire department. Maybe should now spend some of the money for local usage. Maybe cost of lake cleanup. Environmental stuff.

Proposed a new starting point for the boat parade of head of the narrows.

We now have SLPOA branded shirts, caps, etc available.

Done at 8:30.

DLPOA Board Meeting 3/11/10

Mr Westerman, deputy sheriff, was supposed to come to the meeting to talk about the no shooting ordinance, but did not show up. Loon Lake did have an ordinance but dropped it. We have absolutely no laws about shooting anywhere on or near the lake, and it is not likely that anything will occur. There are laws for state land, and federal land, but not for unincorporated land.

Will contract with the bang bang guys for 3rd of July again. Mike and Mrs Nokes are dealing with that.

Geese and Duck Control Options. – not much, live with it.

Water Safety Flyer. -- Want to get more printed up for annual meeting, newsletter notice.

Regional Lakes Conference – Mike and Dennis went. DLPOA donated to the support of the conference. A report will appear in the next newsletter. Mike is going to get some soil samples analyzed for phosphorus.

Fire chief – Present guy is resigning. Feeling is he did a great job, especially scaring the crap out of everybody enough to get the fire house bond through. There is an evaluation on April 16-17 for a new chief. The district is interested in having a dlpoa member be part of the evaluation committee.

Dock cleanup – We think that a local company (Terry Reid) will provide dump truck and excavator this year. June 5.

Extra board meeting on June 10.

D2 will look at bylaws.

Jarvis will lead the boat parade. Clockwise this year.

Mike and Mike took the North sign and took it apart for maintenance and moving. Dave Watkins (aka Hippie Dave) will reassemble them for us to near the public access area. He may also do the East sign. Brian will birddog this project. Maybe it will even have lights.

Newsletter – End of April.

Fish – NE Washington fish club asked for 2 more fish pens. Fish & Game does not know if they will have a budget for fish food. DLPOA is asked to put in $1K for food for one pen. If you are interested in doing a fish pen, you need electricity, and 15 ft plus of water depth.

Predators – Macks and small mouth bass. Some people feel that Bass seems to be the bigger problem. Limit is 10 bass per day. PLEASE don’t throw them back. There are some people who would love to have any fish that you don’t want. A suggestion: have a contest : a Big Mac for a big mack.

Trying to determine what fish next year to stock – F&G would like to Rotenone the lake, but we do not think that is politically popular. Eastern Brook chomps down everything including bass.

New Business – Could we give the pancake feed money to the fire station? Need to talk to Skip and Lee Bailey about that. This apparently was the original purpose of the pancake feed way back when.

Done at 8:30