The Sheep Creek Water Company Board of Directors meeting on October 19 was relatively short. The main news item from the meeting regarded some preliminary discussion about the 2024 budget. There was no news regarding the committee planning Sheep Creek’s appeal to the State Water Resource Control Board regarding an extension on the compliance order, because the committee did not meet.
One interesting question that was answered at the meeting – so far this year, Sheep Creek Water Company has not purchased any shares through the Share Buyback program. They were budgeting $55,000 for 2023 to purchase 55 shares, but that hasn’t happened as of yet. Personally, I don’t think any company money should be going to this program, so I consider this a good thing.
The new well is not yet complete. They are still test-pumping. Supposedly the more they test, the higher the flow rate they are finding. Hopefully this means they are opening the aquifer and water is reliably flowing into the well. That said, with this being such a deep well, it will be very expensive to pump water, and this well will probably only be used as a backup in extreme water shortages.
The board approved two new meters. They also allowed a family with a water leak during their vacation to have their overage chared at Tier 2 rates rather than Tier 3 because of the leak.
As mentioned earlier, the main news at the meeting was the budget for next year. Well 13 loan payments are going to cost $160,000 per year. They also announced new rates – Tier 1 will be $0.65 per hcf, Tier 2 will be $5.27 per hcf, and Tier 3 will be $11 per hcf, and they are raising the monthly service charge to $70 per month until July when Well 11 is paid off and the monthly rate will go back down to $65 per month. They are also budgeting $80,000 for legal fees in 2024. They are also planning on increasing meter costs by 15%.
My only comment on the budget is that there are still no discussions about how the company is working to keep costs down while they increase rates for customers. There has been much discussion nationally about what has caused rampant inflation, with accusations of “greedflation” from companies increasing customer costs just because they can. From where I sit, that’s exactly what’s happening with Sheep Creek Water Company, and it’s sad to see.
Thank you for your continued informative posts. Sadly I agree with you on the GREED and have been vocal for a couple of years about this. When concerns are raised we always hear “it was voted on and this is what the people voted for”. The majority of the people are small share holders and will never compete with the large share holders in having their vote count.