A special meeting of the Woodmen Hills Metropolitan District was held July 9 to schedule a date for the recall election of WHMD board president Jan Pizzi. The challenges regarding some signatures on the recall petition were resolved in favor of the recall committee, according to the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder office.After hearing public comment, the WHMD board set Tuesday, Aug. 25 for the recall vote. Although the board preferred mail-in, polling places will be open as well from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mail-in ballots also will be available through the El Paso County Web site at http://car.elpasoco.com/Election/Woodman+Hills+Metropolitian+District+Recall+Election.htm.Voters will decide whether to retain Jan Pizzi, and they will be asked to designate a board replacement.David Hightower will be on the ballot as a replacement. “I’ve posted my concerns and issues and the reason why I made the decision I did on the Web site http://woodmenhillsinfo.com/.” Hightower said. “I do not think that anyone up there is doing anything necessarily wrong. I just disagree with the direction the district is going in.”The board members also addressed another urgent matter.”We have five houses under water on Fort Smith Road,” said Larry Bishop, district manager. “The under-drain system is malfunctioning. Water is flooding these five beautiful homes and causing severe emotional trauma and physical damage to the property.”Bishop said three of the homes needed a backflow preventer installed to keep up with the seepage of water into their basements. He estimated the total costs for the three homes at about $55,000.”I’ve directed the engineer to start immediate design on a relief system, 8-inch pipe, that will run down Fort Smith and relieve all those homes of this under drain, of this water,” Bishop said. “My suspicions are that there is an actual underground river there. They’ve had unprecedented rains. I cannot predict when it’s not going to rain or when it will rain again. It is a district responsibility to remedy this situation.” The relief system could cost between $70,000 and $90,000, he said.The board approved the expenditures for the backflow preventers and 8-inch pipe, but Bishop said the permanent solution would be tearing up the street, pulling out all of the utilities and installing a proper under-drain system, a cost that could be as much as $10 million. “This district cannot afford that so I am taking the best course of action on a wing and a prayer, being extremely hopeful and optimistic that this will solve the problem,” Bishop said.Bishop cited two other engineering problems that precipitated the flooding: the pipe sizes and the foundations. “We’ve got about 300 homes with under-drain systems with 3-inch French drains. All of them are tied into one 4-inch line,” he said. And, the foundations were dug too deep, he said. “When you overestimate a foundation because ground water tables are too high, you basically create a lake under the house,” Bishop said.
