PRESIDENT’S MONTHLY NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2012
Dear Sunburst Farms residents,
As most of you know, we had a catastrophic failure of the motor at the 43rd Avenue well site on Monday, October 1st. If you were due to get water that week from the 43rd avenue pump, your water was delayed by several days as we had to irrigate all of the homes due to receive water with just one pump. The 39th Avenue pump ran continuously until Saturday night. The motor that drives the 43rd Avenue pump has been rewound several times. Each time we rewind it, the motor fails after a progressively shorter period of time in service. This time it lasted just 13 months. At an Emergency Meeting of the Board of Directors on Wednesday evening, we decided to purchase a new motor. By Thursday afternoon, at one o’clock, the well was up and running. A big thank you to The Pump Company and Keller Electric for working together to get the failed motor off and the new motor on with such short notice; to Bob Bustoz who, as a former electrician, documented all of the work that was done and sat in on numerous meetings; to Richard Mitten for resetting the schedule and getting everybody water as well as making contact with the well companies; and the other Board members for attending a hastily called Emergency Meeting.
Sunburst Farms has been required to submit our Notice, Agenda and Meeting minutes to the Attorney General’s office for the past year. This was due to Open Meeting Law violations that occurred a couple of years ago. The requirement has been extended for five months due to the minor violations that occurred recently, however this time no legal funds were expended. After January 12th, the District will no longer be required to send our Notice, Agenda and Minutes to the AG.
The packet for inclusion of Sunburst Farms Irrigation District into Electric District 7 has been completed by the attorney. One-third of the property owners must sign a petition supporting the move. If approved, we will no longer purchase power from APS; our power to run the two well pumps will be purchased through ED7. Our annual savings will be approximately $75,000.00. In next month’s mailing of the statements, you will receive an information sheet that outlines some of the benefits of being a part of ED7 and a petition to fill out. To complete the petition, you will need your parcel number which can be found through theMaricopaCountywebsite, and your lot number which you can get by calling Brenda at the District office. There is also some information on the District website. In the monthly HOA newsletter, Sherry Kimmel wrote a good article outlining some of the requirements necessary for the move. She did make one mistake that has caused some confusion in that she stated there would be an assessment on your property tax bill of $1.04 per $100.00 of assessed valuation. That is incorrect. The correct amount is $0.0104 per $100.00 of assessed valuation. If, on your tax bill, your house was valued at $150,000.00, your annual tax bill would increase by $1.56. The $75,000.00 savings per year will be realized only by those who take irrigation. The monthly membership rate will not decrease. If you take no water, you will see no change in your bill. The hourly rate to deliver water, which currently is at $27.00, will decrease significantly.
If you wish to receive online statements as opposed to paper statements, send me an e-mail and I will get you on the list. Hopefully we can start sending them out with November’s statement. Any additional information that you currently receive in your envelope will be sent electronically as attachments.
For those of you who registered to vote, ballots will be mailed out later this month!
Victor Armendariz, Board President varmendariz@hotmail.com 623.934.6457