TOWN COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING AUG. 12
by Dixie A. Walter

    Audrey Roley, President of the Pierce County Genealogy Society and member of the South Pierce County Historical Society, extended an open invitation to attend the luncheon meeting of the Heritage League at the Van Eaton Cabin Aug. 19.
    Public Works Director Jamieson Van Eaton gave the July public works report. He said the town purchased six new picnic tables which were used at Glacier View Park during the art festival, then distributed throughout other parks.
Forty permits were issued, matching grant funds for Smallwood Park are still being compiled, and two Eatonville/Buckle Up signs were placed at the north and south town entrances. According to Van Eaton, “We painted every curb in town, straightened street signs, painted parking stripes at town hall, community center and on Center St. We placed a gravel shoulder on Center St. West and placed two tons of cold patch seal on the town streets.”
Regarding streets, Van Eaton said he had no advance schedule of AT&T activities, but they were “behind schedule in coming to town.”
   Van Eaton explained, “We had an unscheduled [power] outage at Eagle Glen Court as a result of some old underground cable. That cable is approximately twenty years old. The project to replace the cable is on our capital improvements list.”
He expressed concern “that we are going to have more outages in the area because of failing cables. I’ve identified this as a number one priority after getting power to the LDS [Latter Day Saints] Church.”
Van Eaton also reported, “The resource recovery well was completed May 31. On June 10 the council voted to test the water above the bedrock. On August 1 we conducted the tests to determine that there was water on the site worth further study.
   “This is interesting. We treated an average of 507,000 gallons per day in June. That exceeds our average water right. However, in the winter months we use far less than our water rights average. Therefore, it’s not a concern that we’ve used more water…We have adequate sand filters to serve the town’s needs.”
   With reference to the $300,000 grant project for upgrading the sewer on Washington St., Van Eaton stated, “Larson is about ready to bid and we believe that project will be completed on time this year.” He added, “I’ve reviewed the draft ordinance for the drainage plan and it should be completed this year as well.”
    Eatonville Mayor Harold Parnell asked about “a Boy Scout who was going to paint the fire hydrants, are they in the process of doing that?” Van Eaton answered, “We have set the Boy Scout and his helpers up to paint the hydrants. We’ve given them paint and brushes.”
    Melode Akervick, town treasurer, told the council, “I’m very concerned about the Community Center. They have just a little under $4,000 and it’s rapidly coming down and nothing is going in…The council is going to have to decide how you are going to support the center. It’s supposed to pay for itself and it’s not at this point. We’re going through the funds we have quite quickly.” Akervick cautioned, “This month we took in $617 and paid out $2,300. We can’t sustain that for more than a month or two. I want the council to be aware that I think this is our trouble spot. With our revenue down we’re going to have to figure out a way to support this building.”
    Fire Chief Bob Holt described the situation in his department. “We put three new firefighters on. We are looking at three new applications. That brings us up to 18 firefighters. I would like to get up to 25 by the end of the year, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. “We received part of our new extrication equipment and had a class on how to use it. It’s going to work well for us. And we are going to try to get the fire hydrants tested before the end of summer.”
Holt brought up the uncertainty surrounding emergency medical aid. “I attended a meeting last week about our ALS [Advanced Life Support] transportation situation. Central Pierce and Graham Fire and Rescue typically provide us with an ALS unit. We don’t have any paramedics at this time. “These departments are running into our territory quite a bit now with these calls and they’re kind of getting ready to cut us off. Graham Fire and Rescue had an ALS unit…They pulled that because of budget constraints. According to them it costs about $200,000 a year to run a paramedic unit. They get about sixty percent of that back from their transports.” Holt told the council “they are putting the pinch on us, South Pierce County Fire and Rescue, District 23 and District 17 to come up with some kind of solution to the situation. That may mean the four of us going together on some kind of a south county EMS system.”
He asked that at least one council member attend meetings with him. “[We will] probably have quite a few meetings to see if we can’t come to some kind of agreement or solution to the problem before the departments decide to cut us off.”
Mayor Parnell said he went to the last meeting with the fire chief and warned, “It’s very critical for us.” Holt expressed the urgency of the circumstances, “If those departments decide they don’t want to come out here anymore, we’re looking at a good 35 to 40 minutes to have an ALS unit come out here. “They say somebody who is critically injured basically has about an hour to get to the hospital. Taking up 35 minutes of that time is unacceptable I think. Helicopters can take a similar amount of time.”
    Council member Bob Schaub volunteered to attend the meetings with Holt.
    Pertaining to the Eatonville Police Department, Chief Jim Lewis informed the council, “Just a couple of things other than my report. (See Local Interest.) I arrested the kid who wrote on the wall out here [Community Center]. You will notice vandalism of the trees has stopped. I’ve got three of the kids charged with vandalism who were breaking limbs off the trees.”    Lewis explained further, “However, there are other kids involved coming forward. I was talking to about half a dozen of them. They were admitting to breaking limbs off trees we never did reports on. We are trying to weed out which ones we did reports on and which ones we didn’t. If we didn’t do a report we can’t charge people, because we don’t know which trees were broken.”
    Still on the subject of trees, Van Eaton asked the council to approve Resolution 2002–V, authorizing the mayor to sign a contract for tree trimming service. “The trimming that needs to be done is for our substation out of town, approximately in the vicinity of Ohop Extension Rd. and proceeding up into town near the high school.
“We’ve got a number of trees in very close proximity to our high voltage conductors. There are three conifers that are dead and one is leaning. They are identified as ‘danger trees’ that could come down with any high winds or soaking rains.  “All of these trees could impact the reliability of the town’s electric system since this is our primary line. Our quote of $9,102 is from Asplund. They are professional tree trimmers who do work for Ohop Mutual [Power and Light] on a regular basis.” Van Eaton explained he “didn’t get three bids because these folks are rather sole source, they do unique work…I would request the town allow us to go into emergency reserves for this project since it affects the town’s reliability. It wasn’t budgeted this year but it needs to be done.” Resolution 2002–V passed unanimously.
    Next on the agenda was Resolution 2002–W, authorizing the acceptance of a $442,000 public works trust fund loan for installation of a 275,000-gallon water reservoir in the Hilltop area.  Van Eaton pointed out that the “project is listed in the town’s Comprehensive Plan as a capital improvement project to provide fire flow to the existing Hilltop residences, and to provide storage for the system expansion to maintain the town’s population and economic growth.” As Van Eaton explained, “At this point in time the Department of Health’s water system guidelines for potable water storage indicates the town is not currently in compliance. The new Hilltop reservoir would provide fire flow and standby storage to those existing homes and allow the water system to be expanded.  “This loan is a five percent, twenty year loan, and gives us the opportunity to have additional reservoir for the town which will help in our water storage. That in turn will allow our peak source to pick up any slack, should we have a high use water day. Or should one of our pumps fail that we can’t repair in time.”  Van Eaton added, “I think it’s important we do have this loan secured and for the council to accept it. It will put us into a position to advance the project, at which time we secure the land and identify all the components to advance the project.”
    Council member Chelan Jarrett wanted to know, “Where is the money going to come from to pay for the loan?” Van Eaton said, “The money would come from development of the lots that use the water. That’s subject to speculation at this point in time.” “Doesn’t it say that within three months of accepting the loan we have to start the project?” Jarrett asked. Van Eaton responded, “That’s a real good question. The answer is ‘yes.’ But until we start the project, until we spend any money that we want to borrow, then we haven’t started the project in terms of the loan. In other words we could have some town-funded money for a capital improvements project that we could spend as a local basis. Until we can identify that we want to move forward with the loan.”
    Jarrett stated, “It doesn’t seem like very much water.” Van Eaton replied, “The amount of water is 275,000 gallons and this fits right into our projected growth on where we need to be now and five years from now.”
   Schaub suggested Bruce Rath “elaborate” on the subject. He asked Rath, who was in the audience, “Isn’t that the same reservoir you’re putting in at Hilltop? Isn’t the town contributing a bit of it and you’re contributing part of it?”
Rath told the council, “My neighbor Harrison Christian and I are going to contribute some, but we still need to work that out with Jamieson [Van Eaton] as far as the negotiation deal.” He added, “We don’t need 275,000 gallons, it’s more for fire flow down around Harold [Parnell] and Jackie’s place. The whole Hilltop area and the whole rest of the town.”
Rath continued, “My project entails bringing a ten-inch line down through my property. It will actually hook up and provide the town with another ten-inch line which will feed if there’s a problem at Dow Ridge or with the old tank.
“The tank is basically for storage for the future, and fire flow that we don’t have now on Hilltop Ridge. I have 20 lots at my place that don’t have fire flow, and Harrison Christian will have 20 to 25 lots. Above 900 feet we don’t have adequate fire flow for this town, unless we’re fed off the new tank at Dow Ridge.”
   Council member Ray Harper asked, “If we approve this tonight does it come before us again to begin the project?”
Van Eaton said, “Absolutely.”  He went on to explain, “The loan is predicated upon the town coming up with a combination of town money and developer money. Certain things have to happen before I’ll recommend that this project go forward. That has to be a working arrangement with the developers, and we’re not there yet.”
Again Jarrett wanted to know why the reservoir couldn’t be bigger and “how did we come up with 275,000?”
Van Eaton called upon Karl Johnson, “our engineer/consultant with Gray and Osborne,” to answer Jarrett.
Johnson said he had a “comment about the fire flow.” He acknowledged the fact; “I don’t know all the details by any means. But there are three factors to having fire flow. One is the transmission capacity in the water mains; another is something to move that water through the main. You might have all the storage down there, but if there’s nothing to pump it up here at 1000 gallons a minute then it doesn’t matter. The other the factor is the storage capacity to pump from.
“The simplest and most reliable way to get fire flow is to put it up on the hill. One thing that happens when you have a fire is that sometimes you lose your power. So you don’t have the ability to pump water on the hill. What we are looking for here is to put the water on top of the hill so gravity will bring it down and we have reliable fire flow capacity.”
The consultant gave more details regarding the sizing of the reservoir, “In order to provide the pressure needed for the people near the top of the hill, without having to put a separate booster system in for them, I need to make the reservoir tall enough so the people near the top will have pressure.
“If I make the reservoir shorter then I have to pump the water to the people at the top of the hill, and they don’t have fire flow. That’s largely the sizing of the reservoir…it has to do with elevation and getting the water high enough to get the right pressure at that elevation.”
For the third time Jarrett asked, “Why not make it bigger?” This time she got an answer from Johnson, “We looked at how much growth potential there was in the area that would be served by that reservoir and added to that the storage capacity that we needed…and came up with that number.  “If you went to a larger reservoir I don’t know that we would have the justification for it based on the number of lots proposed in the area.”
   The council adopted 2002–W by a vote of four to one. Jarrett voted “nay.”
Next on the table was Resolution 2002–X, proposing to give the mayor authority to enter into an interlocal agreement for Special Operation Response Team Service.   Operations Response Teams are highly trained in specialized rescue work which includes high angle rescue, confined space rescue and trench rescue.  Fire Chief Bob Holt informed the council that in the past a “kind of good ole boy system” was used. The attitude being, “Go ahead, call us and we’ll come. Now they are at $6,000 an incident for this team. They want to have an agreement. They’ve made it very clear. If we don’t have an agreement they won’t come.” Holt also said, “Swift water rescue is still a mutual aid. They will still come here for that.”  He went on to explain, “This is a discipline our fire department doesn’t do because of the costs of training and maintaining a team. So basically we need to have an agreement with them.”
    Council member Schaub wondered, “If we have an agreement with them and they come, it will cost us $6,000?”
According to Holt, “It depends on the incident. We need to come up with some way of billing that out to the person who receives the service.” He emphasized, “It’s very rare [to call them]. We’ve had them here twice in the eight years I’ve been on the department. Only one was for the town, the other was a mutual aid call with District 15.”
“The lead agency is in Gig Harbor. But we can get a team from Central Pierce or Puyallup Fire Department. They take probably 20 to 25 minutes to get here.”
   Mayor Parnell asked if there had ever been an agreement in the past and Holt said, “No.” Schaub wanted to know Holt’s recommendation. He replied, “I recommend we sign with them. If we don’t have one [agreement] obviously we’re not going to stand back and do nothing. But we can get into some pretty serious trouble if we attempt to do things we aren’t trained to do and somebody gets injured.”
    This agreement only applies to the Eatonville Fire Department. Eatonville Police has their own service. Council member Pat Hamilton wanted clarification concerning money. “We don’t have to pay unless we use them?” Holt verified Hamilton’s question and reminded the council this service is only needed on extremely rare occasions. Resolution 2002–X passed unanimously.
    Resolution 2002–Y “Declaring 9-11 a day of memory, hope and action, to honor the victims of the terrorist attacks” passed unanimously.
    Town Clerk Carrielynn Loffelmacher noted the resolution “invites the entire Town of Eatonville to Cheney Stadium on 9-11 for a memorial service for the victims of 9-11.”
    Following is a summary from the council minutes of the Production Well Drilling Plan presentation made by Mike Piechowski and Karl Johnson.
“Mike Piechowski, Hydrogeologist for Robinson & Noble, presented their recent work for the Town in analyzing water quantity and quality of Research Recovery Well No. 1 (RW1). This well is located on the boundary line of property owned by Boettcher to the north and Hamilton to the south.   “The site is approximately 3/8 mile from the Town’s current water well site. Mr. Piechowski confirmed that his analysis allowed him to state adequate quality and quantity of water existed in the monitoring well to justify a production well at the site of RW1.
    “Speaking to the issue of water rights it was stated the Town first needs to identify an additional quantity of water, in addition to existing water, before new water rights could be applied for.
Resistivity surveys were conducted in the vicinity of WR1 to determine if other wells were a possibility. The results indicated sites equally as good as results found at WR1. Mr. Piechowski believes there is potential to develop 3 wells of 150 gallons per minute each.
    “Karl Johnson, Engineer/Consultant with Gray & Osborne, agreed that all information indicated a viable project in developing a new water well field for the Town. Mr. Johnson briefed the Council on the location of future wells, location of control building with controls, chlorination, sample sink and data logging, and piping required to make a complete project. The Town would not be required to apply for permitting since the new site was in the same 1/4 – 1/4 section as the existing well field.
“The cost of the project is estimated to be $793,000. Mr. Johnson indicated that design of this project could begin when the Town so approves.”
     Ray Harper called the council’s attention to the issues of the Alder St. skateboard plans, “We need to get our act together. Does anyone not want to put the park there beside Pat Hamilton [South Pierce County Historical Society President]? We need a master plan which includes how the historical society would fit into this.”
The council then went into a half-hour Executive Session to discuss purchase of real estate.

 

"Pity the poor kids who grow up in a big city. They miss the little things that made growing up in a small town, ah, so wonderful."
~Tom Morrow