The Woodmen Hills Metropolitan District board met Oct. 21 and signed an intergovernmental agreement with El Paso County allowing the county to study detention pond No. 4 and make improvements.Detention pond No. 4 is located between the Safeway store and Highway 24.In August, as reported in The New Falcon Herald, county engineer Andre Brackin said water from the pond has caused erosion on county and private property on the south side of Highway 24.Larry Bishop, the district’s manager, said the county had threatened to sue the district because of the pond.”That pond was built as designed. It was approved by El Paso County and … by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so my stance was, if the county wants to sue, they’re going to sue themselves because they approved the installation and the construction,” Bishop said.”We met [with county representatives] and decided litigation was the last resort and probably wouldn’t solve the problem.”After negotiating with the county, Bishop received an intergovernmental agreement that protects the district by preventing the county from using the results of the study in any potential future litigation.The board voted unanimously to sign the agreement, which gives the county until Dec. 31, 2011, to do the study and make any repairs.Keith Moultin, the board’s vice president, said he would like the county to take over drainage for the entire district. Bishop said it’s under negotiation now. He also said he offered to give pond No. 4 to the county, but they wanted money to operate and maintain it.The county should have been the owner of drainage facilities to begin with because it collects property tax from every individual in Woodmen Hills, and that’s the revenue they need for maintenance, he said.Service plan amendmentThe board also continued its efforts to amend the district’s service plan.The board directed Bishop to add local firms specializing in covenant law to the list of three Denver-based law firms already recommended by the board’s current counsel. When the list is completed, Bishop said he will schedule a public meeting where the board will interview the firms.The purpose of hiring a covenant specialist is to review the covenants of the various filings and determine how to amend them to allow the district to enforce them instead of the neighbor-to-neighbor enforcement that’s currently in effect.Board president Jan Pizzi said she’d like to get that analysis done as soon as possible because of the many people who want covenant enforcement.”I’d like to see if there is some way of getting a survey of how many people want covenant [enforcement] and how many don’t,” Moultin said.Bishop agreed to add a question to the next water bill and look at other ways to get feedback from property owners.”It’s incumbent we understand what residents want,” he said.The service plan needs to be amended for a lot of reasons, not just covenant enforcement, because the district is involved with some unauthorized things like mosquito control, Bishop said.Before the district can present an amended service plan for approval by the El Paso County Board of Commissioners, the district’s current assessed valuation has to be determined so the district’s debt limit can be set, Bishop said.That study is under way and should be completed in early November, he said. Bishop said the valuation is probably about $58 million for 2010.In a separate interview, Moultin said it’s been eight years since the developer amended the service plan, and a lot of things have changed since then.He said the 2002 amendment doubled the size of Woodmen Hills, provided for a second recreational center, set the development’s current debt limit and added a provision preventing the district from establishing any kind of taxation.If the district were authorized to have a mill levy, the residents could vote to swap the park and recreation fee for a mill levy, which would mean that residents could write that off as part of their property tax on their income tax returns, Moultin said.”To me, the big thing in amending the service plan is to give some of the decision-making back to the community members, and let them vote on whether to do things or not,” he said.
