Sunny Meadows Missoula County Water and Sewer District
Meeting Minutes
April 23rd, 2026 06:00 PM at East Missoula Fire Department
Roll Call: Dusty Deschamps, Cyndie Winchell, Meggan Quigley, Paula Niccum
Approval of Minutes: Dusty made a motion to approve the draft minutes posted on the site. Motion passed, minutes approved.
Financial Information: No reports from the county. Robbie’s reports were reviewed. She has been hard to contact and Cyndie has processed some payments that had been delayed. Some of this may be caused by the system upgrade with the County, since she has to work with the County for the school, the fire district and the water district, in addition to working with ARPA. The financials she sent looked good, no one is too far behind on their bill. She has written up a request to modify the late fee language when we review the ordinances.
The system upgrade at the county has been a problem for over a year. If we decided to have someone other than the county be the treasurer for our funds, we would have to pay an accountant. The County provides the service for free. Cyndie is still working to get someone from the County and a county commissioner to sit down with her and hopefully Meggan and Robbie and go through all of the finances for the last year. Board members will be reaching out to people they know to see what it would cost to hire an accountant.
Public Input: None.
Old Business: Well house issues- ARPA postponed a site walk through planned for 4/24 because the weather was sloppy. They planned on checking out and taking pictures of the entire system. They are probably going to reschedule it for next week, still working on a date that works for them. Cyndie asked what was going on with the wells, only one of the pumps we bought is in the ground and we continue to have issues with the well pumps. How will that be remedied? Amy replied that she had a long conversation with Mike Neeley and he was positive that it was because we did not get the VFDs. He believes if we correct that, it will fix the problem. Amy said she had applied for an emergency grant for this kind of situation. Cyndie asked how much that would cost us and Amy said it would be 100% paid for. She said there was a very good chance that we would get the grant. It should be their (Great West’s) responsibility to make it right.
Dusty made a motion to approve the replacement of the pressure tank at the booster station. The board had previously discussed the matter over email and agreed to approve at the meeting for the public record. Meggan seconded and motion was approved.
Tom Carrol has agreed to stay on for another season to do lawn care at the well lot. The booster station still needs lot maintenance- Cyndie and Michael discussed doing it together unless we can find someone else to take care of it for us. No watering, the lot requires weed mowing and trimming at the fence. They would each get a 1 month bill credit for doing the work. Jacob Quigley is planning on removing the Russian olive.
Sewer video project completion and manhole repair- Sam, our water operator contacted Brian Reigard about his manhole cover repair. He also called Cliff Fletcher to see about completing the sewer line video inspection we had paused in November 2020. Cliff has retired. Cyndie is going to call Chris Rate to see if they have ever done manhole repair, and we will continue to look for contractors that can do the manhole work and/or sewer line inspection.
Website management- We have a possible replacement for Mike Lilley, our website manager. Mike has agreed to meet with her to go over the responsibilities of the job.
New Business:
Ordinance, By-law and Policy review- Each member received hard copies of all of the documents we need to review pertaining to the water and sewer systems and members will begin reading through them and preparing to work on them. Meggan suggested that we need a meeting dedicated only to the documents review and members agreed.
Water leak and repair quote on Marshall Grade- Dusty took Cyndie up the hill to look at the curb stops on the hill so she could identify them if he was not around. The ground around the two affected curb stops had sunk, and there was water around them. Cyndie called Chris Rate, he met Cyndie at the curb stops to see what could be done. He submitted a bid and called in locates prior to working on the project. Dusty wanted to know whether the bid was for repair or just for determining the problem and asked for more clarification. Cyndie said she would ask him to clarify the bid.
Board elections- The County notified the board that they are not holding an election for Cyndie and Dusty and that their positions on the board were renewed for another 4 years.
Adjournment: A motion to adjourn was made seconded and passed and meeting was adjourned.
- District Website: http://www.sunnymeadowswater.com/
- Respectfully submitted by Paula Niccum
