Minutes from the Mohave County Board of Supervisors meeting Date: 5/5/2014

MOHAVE COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS MOHAVE COUNTY, KINGMAN, ARIZONA REGULAR MEETING – MAY 5, 2014

The Board of Supervisors of Mohave County met in Regular Session this 5th day of May, 2014, at 9:38 A.M., at 700 W. Beale Street, Kingman, Arizona, in the BOS Auditorium. In attendance were Hildy Angius, Chairman; Gary Watson, Supervisor District 1, Buster D. Johnson, Supervisor District 3, Steve Moss, Supervisor District 5; Michael P. Hendrix, County Administrator; William J. Ekstrom, Jr., Special Deputy County Attorney; and Ginny Anderson, Deputy Clerk of the Board. Joy Brotherton, Supervisor District 4 was not in attendance.

The meeting was called to order by Chairman Angius. The invocation was given by Supervisor Watson, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance led by Supervisor Moss.

The following Mohave County Elected Officials and Department Heads addressed specific items as noted: Nick Hont, Director of Development Services, John Timko, Director of Finance, Cindy Cox, Mohave County Treasurer, Ken Cunningham, Director of Human Resources, Carol Meier, Mohave County Recorder.

Chairman Angius said she wanted to make a few announcements. She said there were visitors here from Diamondback Elementary School to learn about the government process. She said hello and welcome. She then introduced State Senator Kelli Ward who is the audience today. Chairman Angius said that if you notice Supervisor Joy Brotherton hasn’t been here for the last several meetings. She then read a statement from the family of Supervisor Joy Brotherton. She said Supervisor Brotherton is being treated at Kingman Regional Center for a serious blood infection. She said although it is a long process we are expecting her to make a full recovery. She further said we thank everyone for their prayers and good wishes and for allowing the family privacy during this time. Chairman Angius said that we would like to wish Joy Brotherton a very speedy recovery as well.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Johnson, and unanimously carried to call for an Executive Session to be held May 19, 2014 at 9:00 A.M., for discussion and consultation with legal counsel in accordance with A.R.S. 38-431.03 (A) (3) & (4) to discuss items noticed on the agenda with an asterisk.

ITEM 1: Pending or Contemplated Litigation, Claims, and Demands: No Executive Session held.

ITEM 2: Committee and/or Legislative Reports: Supervisor Johnson reported that he was invited to attend the National Forest Symposium in Portland Oregon. It was the county forest counties and schools that got together and have come around to our way of thinking that we need to have permanent funding for PILT. They are looking for mechanisms at the federal level to push that through. He stated that Senator Widen from Oregon was there and he is trying to look for sponsors to push that ahead. Supervisor Johnson stated that he had a conference call with the EPA on the waters. It was last week and was engaged in dialog and heard comments from local stakeholders regarding waters of the U.S rule. He stated the comment period of the new rules are officially in effect for 90 days, Donna Downing with the Office of Water gave a brief presentation about the new rule and a short overview of what the process had been so far. The new rule establishes what are called “bright line categories” that define what waters are jurisdictional and what ones are not. Supervisor Johnson went on to say under the new rule, bright line categories are interstate and territorial waters, native waters that contribute to the flow of water and the definition of tributaries is expanded to include tributaries that contribute to the flow of the water of the U.S. He stated that wetlands are also included that contribute to the flow of adjacent waters. The EPA is in the process of completing a scientific assessment regarding the waters of the U.S. and that it must be completed before the final rule goes into effect because some of the new rule is based off of the new scientific definitions. He further stated that there is no set date when the new scientific assessment will be completed but they assume it will be shortly before the comment period ends or a little after. He stated throughout the call they mentioned the status of the MS4 will not change under the new rule and that permits needed to maintain ditches that are connected to the water of the U.S. are usually exempt from requiring a permit or required to have a nationwide permit number three which usually means it’s a nonreporting permit. He stated that due to the limited amount of time and the number of questions from participants, the EPA is considering setting up another call before the comment period ends.

Chairman Angius stated she wanted to do a quick update about our trout situation. She stated that people remember that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife has stopped stocking trout at the Willow Beach Fish Hatchery and then said they were going to actually end the trout stocking program altogether. She said that we have been going back and forth on that and she went to Washington and testified in front of the House Appropriations Committee and there is a lot of buzz around the whole country because ending any sport fishing stocking program is going to have devastating effects on economies everywhere. She stated that we’ve been trying to make Washington understand that and she is happy to report today that Arizona Game and Fish has stepped up to the plate and as a temporary fix, because they know how important it is to make sure that fisherman and tourist know that we will have fish in the water when they plan their vacations, they will be stocking twenty one thousand fish and it will all be below Davis Dam in the Bullhead City area. She said that when U.S. Fish and Wildlife heard about that they stepped up a little and said that those fish can be raised at the hatchery. She further said that it is a very good thing, it opens the door and we now have a commitment from them to sit down with all the stakeholders which would be Mohave County, U.S. Game and Fish and U.S. Fish and Wildlife and take a serious look at the water delivery system, the pipe that has been broken, and see exactly how much it would cost to fix and either explore other ways to deliver fish, water to the fish stocking areas in Willow Beach. She stated that it is very good and she is cautiously optimistic that we will have a fix and have a permanent solution but the short term fix will go a long way in making sure that part of our economy doesn’t suffer. She stated she wanted to thank everybody who helped on that.

ITEM 3: County Administrator’s Report: No County Administrator’s Report given.

ITEM 4: Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Johnson and unanimously carried to approve the February 18, 2014 and March 3, 2014 BOS meeting minutes.

CALL TO THE PUBLIC: John Lutenske, Kingman resident, stated that he came to speak on something he hadn’t heard that much about. He stated he has been here on a regular basis and has lived here about 30 years and in the past a lot of issues have come up and he knows that the Supervisors only have two ears a piece and have to consider a lot of items. He stated that he would like to discuss the issue of the night sky. He stated that when people are building things one of the last things people think about is the night sky. He said that the United States is getting educated to the fact that little hamlets, little towns, cities, counties, states are passing laws. He further stated that he is not the kind of person that would move next to an airport and complain about all the planes flying overhead or move next to a high school that has a baseball diamond whose lights are on until two in the morning. He stated that he wasn’t talking about that but would like the Board to consider some issues that we’ve had in the past about people’s track records and have they been good citizens of the county or the city or the neighborhood. He stated he was talking about someone who lives in a nice neighborhood and all of a sudden the Board or Zoning approves a brand new car lot without consideration to the fact that these people have been living there for twenty or twenty five years, in his case close to thirty. He further stated that all of a sudden he has mercury lamps lighting up his whole yard. He said he wasn’t a stargazer but one of the things that impressed him about Arizona was you could look up in the night sky and see stars, Mars, and the moon. He stated that he is a romantic as far as if he sees a nice moon he goes back inside the house and gets his wife to enjoy it. He stated that in the future he would like the county and Supervisors to take into consideration that if people are building or doing something in an area to look at what they have done in the past and know if it is going to affect the night sky. He said he wasn’t against progress but we don’t want to be foolish about these things to the extent that we do affect other people and other things.

Chairman Angius said that Mr. Lutenske had also signed up to speak about the water so he could go ahead and address that so he wouldn’t have to be called back up. She further stated that there were about fifteen to twenty people signed up and she was sure some of the questions would be answered during the presentation so please keep that in mind.

Mr. Lutenske stated that when he was a little boy there was an advertisement that said when you are out of Schlitz you are out of beer. He stated that when you are out of water you are out of life. He further said there are a lot of things that water does for people they don’t take into consideration until they see a neighbor down the street or a golf course, he didn’t care about the recycled water, that recycled water has to come from someplace just because they filtered it and put it on our lawns doesn’t mean it is correct to waste it. He said we have a finite amount of water in this area. He stated that he knows some of his neighbor’s wells go dry periodically. He said he listened to the Commerce Commission down in Phoenix and the lady that ran that board had said that Arizona has been giving its water away far too long and not getting anything in return. He further said when you have an atomic power plant that uses the most water and what are we doing with the electricity, Phoenix is using a lot of it now and he thinks that they are still exporting electricity to another state. He stated that electricity is being produced by water. He stated that people don’t understand the amount of water that gets used on an everyday basis. He further said you don’t miss the water until the well runs dry and know we have ecologists, tree huggers and everything but when it comes to water there is no more. He stated once your well goes dry you are hauling or your neighbor is wasting it. He stated that he would like that the water issue in Arizona and in this county in particular especially in the major drought conditions that we are having in this country are being taken into consideration and there are going to be some limits put on some people. He then stated that with that he would give up the floor.

Chairman Angius stated that a lot of these questions and concerns are going to be answered in these presentations. She stated that I was thinking, I don’t know if we want to wait but since you guys came here I’m going to go through the list and you tell me.

Ruta Fox, Golden Valley resident, stated that there were a couple of things she wanted to talk about regarding the situation with Kingman Farms. The first one is the dust being created by the denuding of the landscape there. There has been so much dust and she provided Supervisor Watson some photographs and some information that she had regarding what we were experiencing in Golden Valley. She said what she would like to see the Board do if they are able to do is direct the Health Department to do something about this dust, to monitor the particulate matter, to see what type pesticides and fertilizers will be coming into the air. She said this cannot be healthy for the community. She understands it is also happening out in the Red Lake or the Kingman area where they are plowing away the dust. She said she knows that Kingman Farms is aware of the complaints from the community and she is also aware that they don’t care. She stated it is up to you to do something about it as far as she is concerned. She further stated the second thing is about the water. She continued by saying as this gentleman just presented monetarily ago, it is a finite situation. She said that we don’t have a whole lot of water and none of us wants our wells to run dry but in the same vein considering there’s no thought in regarding the amount of dirt they put into the air is there going to be any thought into what they put into the water, is it going to remain safe for us to drink what’s left of it. She stated that all these things need regulation and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality can’t do anything for us. She stated she knew that they’ve gone and met with the farmers and said hey you know there are some ideas on what you can do to make it easier on the community but it doesn’t appear that any of those things were implemented. She said she would give up the rest of her time to the next person that wants to come up. She further stated one other thing, it may be beneficial to the community if you would offer a meeting at least once a quarter that’s in the evening for those people that are working and unable to attend. She said I can assure you that this auditorium would be completely overflowing if they were allowed to see you in the evening.

Supervisor Johnson said just for the students that are here, Call to the Public is not an agenized item so we are not allowed to respond to this so people come up and talk so if you wonder why we are just sitting here not saying anything.

Chairman Angius said this is the opportunity for the public to address their government with anything that they feel is important to them. It is a very important part of the process.

Denise Bensusan, Kingman resident, said her well is directly affected and she needed to bring up the fact that we are in a twelve year drought and if anybody can count we have no future, nothing in sight, there is no future in sight that there’s any relief at all in this twelve year drought. She said we are also dealing with a gentleman called Mr. Rhodes who actually got caught paying off politicians in Vegas so we are dealing with someone that is not necessarily a very honest person. She said the problem is we can’t fix this right now there is nothing we can do; he is not doing anything illegal. She said that there are no stipulations in the agricultural name; he can do what he wants. He can pump five million gallons a minute and we can’t do anything about it. She said what we can do about it and what we decided to do, we are going to rally together the community and we want an AMA, an active management area. She further said there is nothing else we can do. This idea that the AMA is going to take over our water is ridiculous. She said let’s just take ten of Jim Rhodes, just ten, we could figure a thousand but let’s see if anybody else is going to come in and abuse the water system the way he does to the point that everyone else’s property value is gone, you’ve got about three days without water, I don’t know you got a bunch of dead people laying around, whatever. She said the fact is our leadership needs to take control and needs to enter into the AMA, what it does it gives a slight amount of restrictions especially on agriculture which is 90 % of the usage of water in Arizona. She said she really didn’t have much else to say because there are a lot of people that are going to show some pictures that will enlighten you as to some, let’s see, let’s just put it right out, lies about what was going to be happening on these farms so we also viewed, Jack Ehrhardt and I, both also viewed Monsanto being poured on top of the ground, fertilizer and such and it was supposed to be organic, it was also supposed to be underground, you are going to see some pictures that are above ground. She said misters that they use in the Midwest, they roll across and my time is up. She said thank you very much for allowing me to speak and I hope you will do something about it.

Bob Frisby, resident of Littlefield, AZ said he is employed by Beaver Dam Water Company and have had almost thirty years of experience with Mohave County from a developer’s standpoint and from a private/public water supplier and wastewater supplier regulated by the Arizona Corporation Commission. He said when he first came here he developed a golf course and was in a developer mode and would like for everybody to understand developers can be friends not foes especially if other people are trying to take your water. He said I found out about the Clean Water Act that Supervisor Johnson discussed a little bit when I dredged the Beaver Dam Wash and had a million dollar fine from the Corp of Engineers and the EPA, just to let them know that the SBA told me I had to do it prior to my funding and that took five years of my life so my lesson that I have learned in Mohave County has always been water. He said I had to form and get a CCN and form a utility and that’s all I do, I don’t develop land anymore. He stated but he has learned a lot about it. He then said in 2005 there is a statute; it’s Hays versus Nebraska, wherein a judge allows people to take water out of your state to another state. He said that we had that happen and we formed No Nevada Water Grab. He stated that Mesquite Nevada tried to take fifty thousand acre feet of our water from our basin, pump it into Nevada and keep it in Nevada. He further stated that none of it came back to us so the fears and the concerns that I feel we had the same thing, we filled the school house several times with these kinds of meetings. He said he guessed he was going to learn about active management areas. He said he would ask the Board to consider our basin up there is a shared basin with three other states and what might be good here might not be good up there.

Bruce Hopkins, resident of Golden Valley, stated that evidently he is not alone here today discussing the issues of Kingman Farms. He said we came down here from Washington in 2006 and purchased a place and we have been working on it ever sense. He said he has never noticed a problem with dust before. He stated that since October three times I almost had to take my wife to the hospital because she can’t breathe and the dust, I’ve got pictures that I sent to the Farm Bureau of dust going ten thousand feet in the air. He said that there is a thing that they call best practices, evidentially that is the only thing that regulates this farm out there. He stated first of all he’s not farming he is grading acres and acres and acres out there and he does it continuously. He stated that I understand that he is going to give some people some jobs and he wants to do good but I think he has to be a good neighbor first and the ruckus that he has caused out there, as far as I know from researching this, has gone back quite a few years and they are not a good neighbor. He stated they need to be regulated, they need to control their dust, and they need to be regulated for water usage.

Susan Bayer, resident of Golden Valley, stated that in 1996 the Hualapai aquifer was proven to be in depletion. She stated that the City of Kingman paid for a water adequacy study and per that study the overdraft was four thousand acre feet a year. She said in 2010 I was granted intervener status using the same report and we won proving that not only the Hualapai aquifer but the Sacramento aquifer were in depletion. She said some problems with the soil, this one here is called an arid soil; it forms in hot dry climates under desert vegetation which is what we have in Mohave County. She said our soil is only good for range land and the fertility is low meaning we really have to shovel a lot to get it up there to grow anything. She stated what is most concerning is water irrigation. She said this one here is a buried pipe method; we also have a center pivot. She said for every four gallons of water used, one gallon goes into the crops, the remaining three evaporate out. She said our current water demands in Mohave County are not sustainable. She stated that per the National Resource Defense Council, it found that more than four hundred counties will face extremely high risks of water shortages, this is based on climate change and water risk. She said if we do not follow good water management and our water literally runs dry we have no property values to pay anybody including your salary. She stated that she encourages this board to consider the voting taxpayers and add Mohave County into an AMA.

Wayne Erwin, resident of Kingman, stated that he lives two miles from Red Lake. He said he has been watching this operation now for months, all the drilling that is going on out there, and Kingman Farms have put requests for permits. He stated they have thirty two well permits for that area, just in the Red Lake area. He said if you go in and look at each and every one of the permits you will also notice that some of these permits are for more than one well. He said some of them for as many as ten wells. He further stated that he watches day in and all day, trucks traveling out to Red Lake with loads of pipe after pipe after pipe and this morning on his way in there were two semi-trucks with double trailers with the big green plastic irrigation pipes. He said that just the other day he was out at Red Lake and he saw the watering system like it was just shown to you a moment ago and there’s water just sprinkling all over. He said that it doesn’t look like a GPS water system that has presented by Mr. Rhodes at the Kingman Farms, which they were going to do a responsible irrigation system using a GPS drip system. He said this is not a drip system; this is an awful lot of water and his real concern is that not just for agriculture, it is for something else. He said it is for control of the water.

Lynda Watt, resident of Golden Valley, said that most of the information that she was going to speak about this morning she obtained from the Golden Valley area plan which was done on August 14, 2002. She said one of the key goals of the water resources element in that plan states that the plan should limit water consumption to the aquifers natural rate of recharge until another source of water is found to preserve groundwater quality and to conserve groundwater resources. She said that on page 18 of the plan it states that the Arizona Department of Water Resources did a groundwater study which estimated that there is an adequate supply of groundwater of about four thousand acre feet per year available in the Golden Valley area of the basin. She further stated that this annual supply will allow development in the area for somewhat more than fifty years however the amount of available groundwater supply clearly shows the limits on future groundwater use in the area. She stated on page 19 of the plan it states that the aquifers natural recharge rate is thirty five hundred acre feet per year. She further stated that it was her understanding that Golden Valley has been in a ten plus year drought situation so it’s highly likely that the recharge rate is lower than the thirty five hundred acre feet per year that is listed in the plan. She stated that according to the Valley Pioneers Water Company for the last three years in 2011 fifty six hundred and thirty one acre feet of water were pumped. She said that in 2012 forty four hundred and sixty acre feet were pumped. She said that in 2013 fifty eight hundred and sixty four acre feet were pumped. She stated that the total acre feet in each of these three years well exceeds the thirty five hundred acre feet per year recharge that was outlined in this plan. She then stated that she felt there needs to be a complete moratorium on additional water usage in order to comply with the stipulations in the Golden Valley area plan and to ensure the continued supply of fresh drinking water to the thousands of Golden Valley residents who are dependent upon this reservoir.

John Watt, resident of Golden Valley, stated he was going to defer most of his comments until he hears from the experts in this case however he would like to make one comment. He stated it kind of supports what his wife just stated. He said the withdrawal currently exceeds the recharge of our aquifer and he thinks there needs to be some kind of a moratorium put on any further use of the water from that aquifer until we get a better handle on where we are going to get our future water from.

Glenda Erwin, resident of Kingman, stated that she and her husband, Wayne, live about two miles from Red Lake. She stated that for about the last several months, since October actually, they have watched the parade of trucks go by. She stated she had been up at two thirty in the morning and saw four tractors plowing that property and there are thousands of acres that are being plowed night and day. She said the wells, every night we see lights where they are putting wells in all day all night, they are drilling wells. She stated that one of her neighbors was told, this is second hand information, but one of our neighbors was told by an employee at that particular farm that the plan was for drilling three hundred wells. She said now this may or may not be true but this is hearsay, the fact is we see evidence that that is possibly the truth. She said they are drilling to the aquifer, anyone who knows about water knows that it is pure water and there’s a lot of water but this particular endeavor is accessing a natural aquifer that runs under the north valley. She said that we have concerns about the dust, on our way home from town you can see billowing dust clouds going up, all this plowing is doing is farming dirt. She stated the water that was noted earlier is evaporating as they are watering, I don’t understand how they can morally process this water for that purpose under those circumstances. She said that they have neighbors, friends who live across the valley in Valle Vista who have dust concerns on everything and in everything constantly for the dust that is being created. She said she would like to find out that our community government can do something about this issue and whoever controls water they have the power and as we get further into this drought that is going to be so. She said she was glad to see all the children here and she hoped they would learn something today that the voices of the community can accomplish something with you people.

Patricia Peterson, resident of Golden Valley, stated she might be repeating some of the things that people have already said. She said she moved from a farming community in California to Golden Valley. She said now the Kingman Farms is trying to turn us into a farming community. She stated it is not set up to be one. She further said the water that the farming community that I lived in was from irrigation and reservoirs. She said the town had a separate water system which was well water and the Kingman Farms is taking our well water and we are in the middle of a drought. She said common sense, where is it, there is none. She further stated that she was very concerned about chemicals and what happens to those chemicals, what are they spreading. She said it goes into the ground, it goes into the water system, it goes into the air and it stays so I am very concerned. She said also too I will stand out on the back patio and watch when they are farming and the winds come up and it reminds me of the dust bowl. She said she is very concerned, she moved to this area because she likes this area and she hopes that you are concerned as well.

Terry Conger, a resident of Golden Valley, said he isn’t too good at this but he is definitely concerned with the water situations himself. He said he hears all this talk about Rhodes being the boogey man all of a sudden. He said not to defend Rhodes, he is a builder, he is not a farmer, he’s grading. He said he might use a lot of water but anybody who builds in this country anymore should have solar wind and gray water built on any home. He stated that it is easily done. He said the thing he is worried about is that mine. He stated you can go down to Ruben Sanchez at BLM and he will tell you millions of gallons a day they are taking now, right now, not what Rhodes is going to do. He said up to about five million gallons a day is what they are taking right now, you can get that information. He stated that is enough water each day pretty much to supply all of Rhodes thirty thousand home plan, each day. He said that’s not going to last. He further said he didn’t think Rhodes was going to get a chance to take that water. He said he is almost done grading; he’s not going to, I don’t think he is going to plant much, the crops in Golden Valley are still lying there. He said he didn’t see what they picked so we definitely need to do something about this water and we need to look into what that mine is doing. He said they are gobbling up all the water before Rhodes is going to get any of it but we are still flushing our toilets for drinking water people. He further said we have a lot of work to do.

Robert Fenwick, resident of Kingman, stated he lived on Long Mountain. He said he could see Rhodes’s project from his back yard. He stated I left you folks a copy of the picture of how Mr. Rhodes is taking care of our water and a picture is worth a thousand words. He said right now there are ten wells out there and you can see they have turned on the sprinklers. He further said when we talk of watering seventy five hundred acres, that’s over eleven square miles of dirt in the desert that hasn’t had water on it for hundreds of years. He said that the law that lets Mr. Rhodes take all the water that he wants is bad law and bad law needs to be fixed. He further said the first thing that must be done is we need to join the AMA, active management area, and maybe we will get some help. He said are we going to let one man ruin the quality of life for thousands of people or are we going to do something to stop him. He stated that the people from the state are here this morning and I hope when they are through with their presentation that whatever the Board of Supervisors decides is a wise and smart decision. He said that we have to remember I don’t like what they do in a lot of other places but I’ll guarantee you go to California they would never let you suck fifty thousand acre feet of water out of the ground a year. He further said they wouldn’t let you do it in Nevada and with that I will say remember once our water is gone Mohave County and the City of Kingman will never ever get it back.

Mark Shaver, resident of Meadview which is actually Greg’s Hideout and he lives at the tail end of that aquifer said I love a good presentation but what I find lacking about these presentations is the level of public participation in it. He said a town hall meeting is what we truly need to have this discussion where I get to hear you, you get to hear me, and you ask questions, I ask questions. He said the same goes with the USGS; I’m very familiar with their method and style of presentation, Miss Truini I remember you. He further said I always find these presentations lacking because after I hear their expert opinion I don’t get to ask more questions. He said I don’t get to hear your opinion based on the information that you have because your information is not necessarily the same as mine and I want to be able to fact check it myself to see if I agree with your opinion before you guys vote on anything. He stated that is where his problem is on today’s presentation because afterwards its done we don’t get to ask questions. He said he wanted to be able to do that because he has always found it lacking that he didn’t get to hear you. He further said now every day when I drive up down there on Stockton Hill Road, I was always lead to believe this is supposed to be an underground irrigation system. He said okay he’s got a little bit in there but the rest is not that, it’s that pivot irrigation system. He said so the plans changing, every time I read in the paper, just yesterday’s paper mentioned how it is an underground GPS irrigation system, high efficiency and I go out there and I say wow well that sure doesn’t look like it, well there will be a little part here but I’m led to believe that this is supposed to be through the whole project. He said he can’t speak for Golden Valley because he doesn’t live out there. He said again his big beef is that we don’t have a true town hall meeting and that’s something we need to have for this discussion so that we can talk about policies. He said also because Proposition 207 is going to come into play against the AMA, private property rights versus community assets, you got to have it. He further said you know we don’t have those policies anymore because Ron Walker did away with all of them, how do you fix that.

Chairman Angius said that she wanted to thank everybody that came down to talk today. She said today’s presentation was set up at our regular scheduled Board of Supervisor meeting for information so we can get the facts, go through it, and whatever we decide to do for the community will be done at a different day. She said but today we are going to have two presentations and she would like to call up the Director of Development Services, Nick Hont, who is going to introduce the first presenters.

PRESENTATIONS:

Nick Hont, Director of Development Services, said there will be two presentations. The first one will be by the United States Geological Survey and they will present the science for the three major aquifers in Mohave County and they are going to provide basically the findings of their study, multiyear study, and the water budget. He then said after that the Arizona Department of Water Resources will make a presentation and would answer questions how to potentially form an AMA and what are the pros and cons.

Jim Linghouse, Director of the Arizona Water Science Center of the USGS, said he was relatively new to the position taking the job in October but has been involved in oversight of the science we have been doing in this area for a number of years. He said just a little bit on USGS, each state has a USGS office that handles water, ours is the Arizona Water Science Center. He said the USGS as an agency is the Department of Interior’s Science agency and we have a mission to develop scientific information specifically for the purpose of helping resource management decision processes. He said if I’m not mistaken this is one of those opportunities so we are actually pretty excited about that. He further said that USGS is a little unusual in federal agencies in that we really only do one thing, we do science. He stated that we don’t do policy recommendations, we don’t set policy, and we don’t do any sort of regulations. That being said we are certainly available and part of our job is to explain the science we do and although we don’t do policy recommendations, we certainly work with stakeholders and resource managers to help understand the implications of what various decisions might be. He said we are available to provide that help and that’s part of the reason that we are here this morning. He then said just a little bit of background, I’m only going to be up here for a few moments then I’m going to turn the floor over to two of our scientists that I brought along with me. He said a little bit on the origin of this work, so around 2000, if I recall correctly, the USGS and ADWR entered into a collaborative cooperative agreement called the “World Water Shed Initiative Projects”. He said the intent of those projects was to develop better knowledge of the hydrology of the water systems of rural areas in the state where information was relatively lacking. He stated one of those areas was what we call the northwest basins where we are right here. He said that although the work started with ADWR and USGS I want to make sure we note that Mohave County and Kingman also collaborated and contributed to the work. He further said there were five fundamental products that came out of this work and I believe you have paper copies of each of these reports, if you do not let us know and we will be happy to get you those reports. He advised that there is a geological map that was created, there was a report that describes the currents and movement of groundwater in these three basins, there was a report that describes a water budget for the groundwater system of these basins. He said much in the way one would analyze how money comes in and out of a bank account, this water budget analyzes how water comes in and out of the aquifers. He said there is a hydro geologic framework report and one of the problems we scientists have is we often talk in kind of terminology that is difficult to understand and we do it because it helps us understand and communicate what we are trying to say, we will try to simplify that as much as we can this morning. He further said when I say a hydro geologic framework report I am referring to an analysis, a report that describes our understanding of what is underneath our feet right here. He said what happens in an aquifer system when you withdraw water from it depends on the sediments that that water resides in, the rocks that surround it, the depths. He further said all those things are incorporated in this framework, this hydro geologic framework and it’s kind of a fundamental piece to understanding water, the flow, what happens when you develop that water resource. He then said finally the fifth product is a documentation of an initial groundwater flow model and a flow model is a piece of software in the computer that draws much of this information together in one place and helps you start to understand a bit of how one action or choice in one place may have effects in some other place. He said that this model is a preliminary model and it’s not really intended for doing detailed analysis but it is a starting point, so with that I would like to introduce two hydrology scientists that I brought from our Flagstaff office, Margot Truenie who has been here before and who was fundamental to much of the work that we’ve completed, and Jamie Masey who also has done work in completing the studies that we’ve done and Jamie will actually be doing the presentation this morning. Jamie Masey said that as Jim said I am also with the Arizona Water Science Center, a hydrologist with the United States Geological Survey, and I’m here to talk to you today about the studies that we did here in the northwest basins, in the Kingman area. He said we will be talking about groundwater conditions in Hualapai, Detrital, and Sacramento Valley basins in northwestern Arizona. He stated again reiterating that this was a cooperative effort between the USGS, Arizona Department of Water Resources, Mohave County and the City of Kingman. He then said a cooperative effort all working together to try and understand, as Jim said, what’s going on beneath our feet, what’s going on with the water beneath our feet. He said today when I talk about the study; I’ll be talking about primarily the Hualapai basin, the basin closest here to Kingman. He said if you look on the second slide of the presentation, it’s a study area, it’s looking at where we are right now, the specifics of the area that we studied in Kingman looking at the three basins. He said in the northeastern part of the study area is the Hualapai basin and we will be focused on the Hualapai basin today knowing that there is development, groundwater development, and future groundwater developments in the Hualapai basin, in the basin where the majority of groundwater development is currently occurring. He said the information that he is going to present today is focused on the Hualapai basin but we have this information for Sacramento basin and Detrital basin, this information is available for all but as I said I will focus on the Hualapai basin. He said as you can see from the cursor, Hualapai basin is this area to the northeast of Kingman, and here we are in Kingman, and just for reference, the Red Lake area is up here to the northeast and the Red Lake area is a part of the Kingman basin. He said the Detrital basin is this northwesterly basin and Sacramento basin is a large basin to the south and west of Kingman. He further said the way we were going to talk about our studies, as Jim said, there were five USGS products, I’m going to speak about four of those. He advised he was going to start with looking at the groundwater levels, where groundwater is at in the ground itself and what those levels of those waters and what we learned from a groundwater study. He said then we will talk about the hydrogeology, the hydrogeology is understanding the rocks beneath us, the geometry of these basins, and the characteristics of the basins themselves. He said then we will talk about the water budget, water coming into the system is recharge, water that is being taken out of the system is groundwater withdrawals, water that is out of the system as evapotranspiration from plants naturally evaporating off the ground. He stated then all of that information that we gained from those three studies will work into a groundwater model, an actual computer simulation of the groundwater system. He then said so we will walk through the talk talking about the groundwater levels, the groundwater basin, the geometry of those basins, the characteristics of the basins and we’ll talk about the water budget and then the groundwater model. He further said so starting off we are going to look at the groundwater levels, the groundwater map, and out of the product that came out of this study, the first of the four studies, looking at groundwater in the northwest basins is the groundwater map. He said that as you can see in the Hualapai basin area the groundwater system primarily moves from the south to the north towards Lake Mead, the same is true for Detrital basin, from south to north towards Lake Mead. He said that Sacramento basin if from north to south and then to the west towards the Colorado River system. He advised what is important to note though on the groundwater map is that near the City of Kingman there is a reversal, whereas most of the water moves from south to north, the water towards the Kingman area actually moves towards Kingman. He said so we looked at the groundwater levels within the basin. He further said that another important way that we looked at the groundwater levels is the groundwater change, the change in those groundwater levels from 1996 to 2006 and what’s represented in this plot, in the cool colors, are areas where groundwater actually increased. He then said the green dots represent areas where groundwater between 1996 and 2006 didn’t change at all, it remained relatively constant. He said that the areas with warm colors from yellows to oranges to reds represent areas where groundwater depleted from 1996 to 2006, groundwater depleted anywhere from five to fifty feet. He advised that one thing he wanted to say about these slides that he was presenting is that all of these figures in these slides are part of the reports that we have so as you look through these slides is a way to help understand the reports that we have published, the four reports that have come out as the USGS studies. He then said so looking again at groundwater changes over time from 1996 to 2006 and if you look in the Kingman area for instance you will a lot of the oranges and yellow colors showing the groundwater depleted near the Kingman area depleted from five to fifty feet below land surface. He said up towards the Red Lake area, north of the Red Lake area, a number of green dots showing that groundwater change was relatively constant between 1996 and 2006 north of Red Lake. He said just south of Red Lake in Hualapai Valley you’ll see some additional blue dots where groundwater increased in some of the wells over that time period. He said he noticed some concerns in Sacramento Valley, the Golden Valley area, and northern Sacramento Valley, and if you look at that area a number of the groundwater wells are green in that area along Route 68. He said those green values indicate little to no change in groundwater. He advised that another way we understand looking at groundwater is to look at the withdrawals, the amount of water that is coming out of the ground, and here is a depiction three grafts of the three basins. He said the top one is the Detrital Valley basin and in Detrital Valley about three hundred acre feet is withdrawn from the Detrital Valley basin, not a lot of water withdrawals compared to the other basins. He said moving on to Hualapai basin you can see that in about the mid 1960’s there was an increase in the withdrawals coming out of the Hualapai Valley basin. He further said that many of the groundwater withdrawals in the Hualapai Valley basin are associated with the city of Kingman and withdrawals with the city of Kingman. He said that in the Hualapai aquifer the entire basin system has reached a maximum right now of about ten thousand acre feet at around 2008. He stated at the Sacramento Valley aquifer in the mid 1960’s to the early 1980’s there was an increase in withdrawals due to mining, as some of that mining ceased withdrawals decreased and we find that the current levels of about four thousand acre feet or at least in 2008, about four thousand acre feet of water being withdrawn from the aquifer system. He said this is important to us as scientists because we look at the groundwater levels in these aquifers, where the groundwater levels are at, how that groundwater moves through the aquifer system and then how much water is being withdrawn out of the aquifer system. He further said these were the summaries of the first of the four USGS reports that are associated with the groundwater in the northwest basins. He advised that the next study looked at the basin geometry and the characteristics of the basin, the actual sediments and how deep the basins were, the types of sediments that were in those basins, and what the geometry of the basin was to try and understand how much water the basins held. He said for instance if we look at Hualapai basin and you look at the Hualapai sub-basin one of the important aspects of this program is not only did we learn that there are three major basins in the northwestern part of our state but there were also sub-basins within those basins, and that’s very important for understanding water. He said so the colors on this map, the colors describe the depth of those sub-basins and if you look at the Hualapai sub-basin for instance there are depths that go to four thousand almost forty five hundred feet of depth in the Hualapai sub-basin. He said in the Kingman sub-basin, for instance just to the south of the Hualapai sub-basin, depths ranged closer to around fifteen hundred feet to two thousand feet. He said we were able as scientists to then characterize how deep those basins were and what their geometries were and then also to understand that there were sub-basins within the larger basins. He then said one of the things that is also important about this are the types of sediments in those sub-basins, so for instance in the Hualapai sub-basin it is marked with a dashed line. He said that the dashed line illustrates halite and anhydrate, Halite is salt, the same kinds of salt that we often use at our table so understanding that there’s a different type of sediment in the sub-basin also tells us about how much water can be held in that sub-basin, different types of sediment hold different types of water. He then said if you have coarse spring sediments for instance it will hold much more water than fine grain sediment so we as scientists characterize the types of sediments in these basins to understand how much water these basins are going to hold and how much water potentially is going to be held in the sub-basins. He said what is also important about these characterizations is the types of sediments that they are and as I said halite for instance is salt, well it tells us a little bit about the water quality that is going to be found in these sub-basins, and knowing that salt is in a sub-basin versus coarse grain sediments in a sub-basin will tell us about the type of water quality that within those sub-basins. He said when we look as scientists into the ground we try and understand what is underneath our feet, where the water is at, and where the ground is at and what type of sediments we are looking at the way we can do that is initially through well logs. He said a driller goes out and drills a well brings those sediments to the surface and we lay those sediments out and look at those sediments, we look at those drill logs, and we can characterize what kind of sediments are there, if they are saturated or if they are unsaturated and how deep those sediments go down. He further said if you look on this plot for instance you will see a number of the barrels, the columns; each one of those represents a well and we characterize with different colors what kind of sediments were found within those wells, but as scientists we don’t have wells everywhere and we can’t look under the ground everywhere in these basins so we use tools and instruments that allow us to look under the ground without drilling a well. He said those tools are called geophysics. He further stated as a matter of fact the city of Kingman and Mohave County directly help fund this type of a study to use geophysical tools to understand what the sediments are doing underneath our feet. He said that at the top part of this plot we were able to take those raw geophysical profiles that were flown, actually flown by an airplane with some wires wrapped around it that flew over the basin, and we got the raw information and as scientists we translate that information to the bottom plot. He said the different colors, the blues and the oranges, on the bottom plot to characterize those sediments as coarse grain, fine grain, saturated with water, unsaturated, and try and figure out where the sediments are at so that we can now understand the geometry of the basin, how deep the basins are, and what kinds of sediments are inside of those basins. He said that’s important because as I said each different type of sediments will hold a different amount of water, fine grain sediments will hold far less water than coarse grain sediments, it’s that space between the grains that actually holds the water so as scientists we need to understand the geometry, how deep the basins are, and the type of sediments in those basins. He said that based on all those geophysical profiles that were shown we are able to construct a map that simplifies the types of basins, the types of sediments, and where in those basins lie, so for instance, the blue areas representing saturated coarse grain material and the finer grain material in the pink, so we can characterize overall in the basin, the types of sediments, what the sediments mean, how much water the sediments can hold, and then how big the basins are. He said all of this helps us as scientists to understand how much water can be held in these basins. He said, for instance, again he was going to focus on Hualapai Valley basin, and if we look at the estimated volume, the first column, the estimated total volume just based on the size of the basin, Hualapai basin could hold about one hundred and two million acre feet of water if there were no sediments, but when you put sediments in there knowing that there are fine grained, there are coarse grained, there are saturated sediments, there are unsaturated sediments, where the water is at, once we understand that, in the red circle there, we can see that in Hualapai basin for instance, there is about eleven point four million acre feet of water available. He said that’s the total water that is available. He further said that the columns on the right indicate some of the errors that can be associated with these types of measurements but what’s important is around the red circle there, the eleven point four million acre feet. He then said now as a part of our USGS studies the first one we understood, the water levels, where the water was at, and how the water was moving through the groundwater system. He said the second study was to understand the basin geometry and the types of sediments to determine how much water could be held within these basins. He said so we’ve gone through water levels, where the water is at, and the basin characteristics, the types of sediments and how much and how deep the basins are and also the realization that there are subbasins within these larger basins. He then said the next USGS report was to take that information and put it into a budget, as Jim said, a budget is just like our accounting budgets within a bank, how much money comes into our bank account and how much money goes out. He said so we do that with water and the way that we look at our basins here in the northwest basins near the Kingman area is a simplified model such as this, a simplified budget. He further said water is precipitation, rain is coming down in the area of the mountain front so much of the rain comes down from the mountains and works its way into the groundwater system. He said the majority of that precipitation in the Kingman area for instance is lost to evapotranspiration, that’s the water that the plants are taking up on the ground and actually using and the water that is just evaporating off of the air off of the ground. He said so much of that water in the Kingman area is lost to evapotranspiration, but the water that does make it into the system down through the mountain blocks, down through the large mountains around us works its way down into the alluvial fill and that is what fills up the basins down here in the bottom, it fills up those aquifers that we have in the alluvial basins. He then said we are going to talk about that water budget but first I wanted to show you a comparison of the Kingman area to the Verde area, so for instance each of these colored lines represent the different time period, we are looking a different time period and rain, precipitation, in the Kingman area. He said so looking at Hualapai, Detrital, and Sacramento Valley basins, the three basins have had rain anywhere from about six inches to about ten inches a year between the three basins, and if we look at the Verde system, the Verde system has had rain at about the rate of about sixteen to twenty inches a year, but the stark contrast between these two systems is looking at the recharge, the bottom part of that graft, the actual water that makes it down into the alluvial basins, the recharge to this whole system. He said it’s very very minimal in the Hualapai, Detrital, and Sacramento Valley basins versus an area like the Verde River with just slightly more precipitation, the Verde River is receiving an extremely large amount more of recharge into the aquifer system. He then said as I said it’s important to understand recharge because it all goes back to a water budget, the way that we think about water moving in and out of the system, so as I said much of the precipitation occurs in the mountain blocks and so precipitation is going down into the area and it’s evapotranspiration out of the area and the top left part of this plot precipitation was about two hundred and twenty six thousand acre feet, evapotranspiration was about two hundred and eighteen thousand acre feet. He said so only about eight thousand acre feet is actually making it into the system for recharge, but our understanding here is a whole water budget, not only do we have water coming into the system but we have water going out of the system. He then said that’s human infrastructure for instance, groundwater withdrawals, the water that is coming out of the system, and focusing on Hualapai Valley for instance, the bottom line on this plot is in the circle there, the storage changed, the minus fifty six hundred acre feet. He said so from 1940 to 2008, looking at the entire water budget, the water coming into the system, the water leaving the system, on an annual basis, Hualapai Valley is losing fifty six hundred acre feet of water per year, on an annual basis at the current status of the basin. He said that is the water budget, the current water budget for this basin. He further said so now we have talked about the water levels and where the water levels are at within the basins, we’ve talked about the characterization of those basins, how we are able to look at the sediments and understand how much water can be in those basins, and now we’ve looked at the water budget, how much water is coming into the system and leaving the system and where that net difference is at within the water budget for the system. He said those are the first three USGS studies. He went on to say that what we do with all that information then is we take all of that and we put it into a computer model, a computer simulation, all of the information about the water levels, the geometry, the basin characteristics, the type of sediments and the water budget itself, the water that is coming in as recharge, the water that is leaving the system naturally as springs and from human interface, from wells withdrawing the water and we put it into a computer model and we try and learn something about the system. He said we try to understand what’s the system doing and how is the system working because the computer allows us to do that and the USGS report that talks about this and the USGS study was to put together a very simplified model, it’s a very simple model that was used to test recharge for instance. He stated the amount of water that is being rained down on the mountain blocks and the amount of water that is getting into the system, that actual recharge, that’s recharging the aquifer system. He said that this model was designed to look at recharge, it was also used to test the connection between the larger basins; it was used to test the connection between Hualapai, Sacramento and Detrital basins and try and understand that interconnectiveness between the basins. He said now when we put together a model, for instance and this is a display of eight different wells, and what we do with the computer model is we put all the information into a computer and we try and match what’s happening on the ground today, for instance, and this computer simulation looks at a time period so each one of those little circles that you see on this computer simulation was a measured water level, where someone physically measured a water level on the ground. He further said that the red line represents the computer simulation and as scientists we best try and match that computer simulation to the real world, I want to remind you though that it is a computer simulation. He said you can’t completely model the real world but we do the best we can as scientists to mimic the real world and we use computer simulations such as this to model the real world. He said if you look at the bottom right plot for instance much of those simulations are showing groundwater levels that are rather flat but in the bottom right plot there that one particular well for instance, the computer simulation was able to simulate the groundwater as it depleted over time. He further said the red line goes down just as the groundwater levels go down over time so this is to show you that we try and mimic, we try and simulate what’s happening in the real world with these computer programs. He said so why do we need a groundwater model, well a groundwater model is an important tool to understand adequate water supply and understand the groundwater system. He said from the previous three USGS studies we were able to take all this information that we had about groundwater levels, the types of sediments, and how much water can fit in the basins and then the water budget, how much water is coming and put it into a computer program and it lets us look at the system and understand the system through a computer. He said it can be used for water management plans, it is a great tool for water managers to be able to use, to understand potential scenarios and that’s one of the things a groundwater model is very strong in doing is understanding if you were to run scenarios, some what ifs, what if you were to put a well in one area, what if you were to take out a well, what if we were to have growth in an area, what if we were to have additional groundwater developments in one area based on whatever it is. He said you can use these computer models to simulate that into the future. He then said with the model that we ran for this area, we ran the current conditions, what’s happening right now, or 2008 I should say so just about right now, and what happened before that. He stated so we ran the model to try to understand what was happening then, this model was not intended to run towards looking at future scenarios. He then said what would be needed to improve the groundwater model, as I said, this model that we have with the USGS, and this is the fourth of the four reports that I talked about today, the model was initiated to understand the current groundwater conditions and what’s happening now. He said models are very good at trying to understand scenarios and what can happen in the future but this model wasn’t exactly designed for that and would need some work to try and understand what’s going to happen in the future. He then said that more information is needed for this model and it can be done but it is a tool that can be used but additional information would be needed to add to the model to make it useful for potentially running scenarios in the basins for work that could potentially be coming up. He said in summary our World Water Shed Initiative program, there was very little information known about the basins before the USGS was involved with this study. He said today what he spoke about are changing in groundwater levels over time and how those groundwater levels, how water moves through the subsurface, effects of groundwater withdrawals within each basin and the amount of groundwater withdrawals that has occurred within each basin, the geometry of the basins and the sub-basins within those basins, the basin characteristics, the type of sediments that are there and how much water those sediments can hold, the water budget overall, how much water is coming into the system and how much water is leaving the system, and then our preliminary numeric groundwater model, which we talked about, why we would potentially use that groundwater model and what additional work would need to be done to run scenarios to understand what could happen with future developments within the groundwater system in the three basins. He further stated I presented the USGS website that we have that has a reference to all four of the reports that the USGS has published, there are pictures of all four of the reports and this link leads to all four of those reports in addition to the geologic map that has been produced and other information that is pertinent to this project is on that website.

Chairman Angius said she had a question, you keep saying now but all these slides and yourself said up to 2008, so this is all from 2008? Mr. Masey said yes 2008 and all the work, all of the data collection that we did as a part of this program ended before 2008, so 2008 was the last year of any information that went into these reports.

Supervisor Watson said he might add that it’s taken a number of years after that information was taken to put all these reports together, there is a time lapse.

Mr. Masey said yes there is a time lapse between when the data can be collected, when the data can then be taken back to the office and analyzed and understood, such as the geophysical method that was used, taking that information back to the office takes a long time to interpret that information and understand what it means and then put the information into the reports and publish those reports, so there is a time lag between when the last bit of data can be collected, when the data can be interpreted and understood, and then when that data can actually be published in a report such as these.

Supervisor Johnson said that Mohave County, besides having our expertise, we also contributed money to that and we did have an update at one time, a preliminary proposal was brought back to the public before this. Administrator Hendrix said excellent presentation, I sincerely appreciate USGS coming in and providing this to us, I think it was very valuable. He said one of the things that you all mentioned is that more modification or more information would be needed to be able to do predications on your modeling. He then said I would assume that your models, at a certain point, that predictions could be made but they would have some degree of accuracy?

Mr. Masey stated yes.

Administrator Hendrix said one of the questions I would have is if Mohave County did provide you with a future scenario so that we could possibly get the best prediction that we possibly could with the available information, would that be something that USGS could conceivably do for us?

Mr. Masey stated that as he said, this model that we have produced wasn’t intended to run scenarios and the limitation you have on any model is its intention, what was it meant to be used for, and the limitations would be so strong in this model that it is not in a place that scenarios could be run, there are too many limitations within the model itself, so the current model could not be used for running scenarios, it just doesn’t have that power to be able to run a scenario within it.

Supervisor Moss asked what would need to be done in order to improve the model so scenarios could be run.

Mr. Masey said with the original model there are a number of areas with uncertainty, for instance the Truxton Wash area and certain properties within the rock units themselves that although we understand much about the general characterization, about the types of sediments, as I said coarse grain versus fine grain, there are still very fine properties within those rocks that we would need to understand to be able to refine the model to make it useful for running the scenarios. He said it wouldn’t involve a lot of work within a year for instance we could have the model running to a point where scenarios could be put into it and we could produce another report that would show what the scenarios could do but it would still take just a little bit of extra work to make sure that the model is, the confidence within the model, to show what those scenarios are.

Supervisor Moss asked if we could ask our County Administrator Mike Hendrix to engage with the USGS to figure out exactly what would be needed to improve the models so scenarios could be run and report back to the Board at a future date with those.

Supervisor Johnson said he didn’t know if this was an agendized item for action. Attorney Ekstrom said this really wouldn’t be action, referring it to staff is not Board action.

Supervisor Moss said he just wanted to have Mike report back to us, bring us the information after he speaks to USGS so we can consider Board action at a later date. Chairman Angius asked Mr. Masey to please tell the audience where they can find this, will we be able to provide this report to people who are interested and how they can contact you or see all these reports.

Mr. Masey said yes as I said to the audience if you can flash back to the computer screen here, the website here on the bottom of the computer screen is the website that has a reference to all four of the reports and the geologic map as well as information and data from the USGS and on that USGS website is contact information to get ahold of us individually and we are a public entity, we are a public agency, so we are available for all public to call and if you have questions or needed additional information we could supply that information to you.

Nick Hont, Development Services Director, said he would like to have the representatives from the Arizona Department of Water Resources make their presentation on active management areas and INAs which are similar to AMAs and also talk about the potential of forming one, how to do it and pros and cons.

Jerri Walker, representative of Arizona Department of Water Resources, said she works primarily in statewide planning in the rural areas. She said with her today is Ken Sulenski Chief Counsel. She said she would be doing a brief introduction and then the closing and discussion about the formation of the AMAs and INAs is the legal side of things so I’m neither a hydrologist nor a lawyer, I just kind of fall somewhere here in the middle. She said we started receiving inquiries at the department probably in the March time frame from various entities asking questions about the irrigation that was going on in this area and then we were requested to come up and do a presentation regarding the possibility of formation of a subsequent INA or an AMA in this area. She said she did a more generalized map than the USGS did just to locate put this all in perspective. She said you’ll see there are some checkerboard lands up near Red Lake and a little bit below the area that says Hualapai Valley and Nugent Ranch and those were lands that were included in two analysis of adequate water supply that were obtained by Mr. Rhodes not knowing exactly where the irrigation is planned to be taking place. She said that she put that on there to give everybody a general idea of the location. She further said we added the Hualapai Indian Reservation on there because we have received some inquiries regarding this water use from entities associated with the Hualapai Tribe. She said down at the bottom around Kingman, the boxed area around Kingman, is the Kingman municipal service area, you also see the red diamonds are Kingman’s municipal service area wells. She further said you do see that some of the wells for Kingman fall in the Sacramento Valley basin and some of the wells for Kingman fall in the Hualapai Valley basin. She advised the issue of basins and sub-basins, we’re just going to call that out because legally there are requirements for subsequent AMAs and INAs based on basins and sub-basins. She stated that was about all she was going to note on that and then the dots up below the area that says Red Lake and in that other checkerboard area, those were the wells that were associated with those two analysis of adequacy, those are not the current wells, they are not intended to represent all of the wells that are currently being drilled they were just put there for a little bit of perspective on what was existing at that point in time. She then said we wanted to go back and at least give you a little bit of history of what the process has been successful or nonsuccessful for subsequent INAs or AMAs in this state. She then said so the groundwater management code was passed in 1980, that’s what created the initial AMAs and INAs and also created the Department of Water Resources, so pretty soon after that in 1981 there was a request for an evaluation for determination of the Harquahala INA and that determination was made by directors decision and if you look at the order, the reasons why that was declared to be a subsequent INA is there was steep declines in groundwater levels, small annual groundwater recharge which is similar the USGA noted in that kind of comparison slide that in these three basins there’s very small groundwater recharge on an annual basis and then extensive irrigation. She further said historically in the 1950s there was only about twenty thousand acre feet of irrigation in the Harquahala INA area, it increased in the 1960s to over two hundred thousand acres and then it kind of idled back, in 1981 when this request was made there was about one hundred and twenty five thousand acres under irrigation so it had increased about one hundred thousand acres in that thirty year time period. She said that depths to water, the USGS talked about that, and in parts of the Harquahala INA groundwater levels were very low, about seventeen feet below land surface in the 1950s and then in other areas of the INA were about two hundred and forty. She said that those had declined to a hundred and forty feet below land surface in the shallower areas and down to deeper than six hundred and fifty feet below land surface in the other areas. She said those were kinds of the criteria that were taken into consideration when that INA was formed. She further said in 1988 there was a request for the Department of Water of Resources to evaluate conditions in the upper San Pedro to determine if an AMA was needed, the determination was made in 1988 that it did not meet the statutory criteria for a directors determination but they did say they’d come back and they’d look at it again so it was reviewed again in 2001, there was about two years’ worth of work and data that was collected and work that was done in the upper San Pedro and ultimately it came out that AMA type practices were not necessary in the upper San Pedro. She said that the next one was Beaver Dam Wash, the Littlefield area and that was in 1990, there was an earlier comment regarding transportation groundwater out of the state in the 2005 -2006 time frame, there had been an original request in 1990 for a similar thing to happen and so entities in that area proposed creation of an AMA to restrict groundwater pumping and the reason for that was to prevent transportation out of state. She then said she was sorry to say that we could not find a lot of information about this, there is no one left at the agency that was here then so it’s unknown to us how far the process went but ultimately an AMA was not created in the area however they did have enough local support that they also quashed the groundwater transportation so maybe that’s why they just didn’t need it. She then said for the Sacramento Valley area in 1993 there was a request made by I believe Pioneer Valley Water Company and they requested that DWR do an investigation and see if the criteria were met or if creation of an AMA was necessary. She said there was a report that came out in 1994 by the ADWR, a staff level report, and at that point in time it was determined that creation of AMA practices were not necessary and it also noted that there was not necessarily the political desire to move forward with it. She said the Santa Cruz was actually created by Arizona Legislature in 1994, it wasn’t creation of a new AMA, it was merely kind of the carving out, it was formally part of the Tucson AMA and it had unique circumstances, there were binational implications with Mexico and the Santa Cruz river coming in and they had different management problems then they had in the more northerly part of the Tucson AMA so they split those out, so that one was created legislatively in 1994 but it wasn’t new area that was determined to be an AMA, it was just out of an already existing area. She said she was going to turn it over now to Ken Sulenski, he’s going to go through the legal things associated with creation of either a subsequent AMA or an INA, then she’ll come back and do the closing slides.

Ken Sulenski, the Chief Legal Counsel for the Department of Water Resources, said the 1980 Groundwater Management Act was passed by the legislature to address groundwater overdrafts that were occurring throughout the state and as part of that legislation, the legislature created two types of management areas. He said the first is an active management area where groundwater use is extensively regulated and most types of groundwater use within an AMA is regulated. He then said the second is an irrigation non-expansion area or INA where only irrigation use is regulated. He stated the legislature, through the passage of the 1980 Groundwater Management Act, created four AMAs and two INAs and also included in the Groundwater Management Act authorization for the creation of additional AMAs and INAs, referred to in the statutes as subsequent AMAs and subsequent INAs. He then said he would go over the nuts and bolts for creating both types of areas. He stated the first area he will talk about is a subsequent AMA; under the existing statutes a subsequent AMA may be created in one of two ways, either by an order of the director of the Department of Water Resources following a public hearing or by a vote of the registered voters residing in the area that is proposed to be an AMA. He then said he’ll describe the process for establishment of an AMA by the director first; the director may establish an area that consists of at least one groundwater basin but it could include more than one groundwater basin, the area cannot include less than a groundwater basin however for the subsequent AMA. He said in order to establish a groundwater basin or basins as a subsequent AMA the director must find one of three criteria exists; either number one; that AMA practices are needed to preserve existing groundwater supply for future needs, number two; that land subsidence in the area or fissuring is endangering property or groundwater storage, and number three; that groundwater use is causing actual or threatened water quality degradation. He said if the director believes that one of those three criteria exist then the director must call a public hearing to consider whether to declare the area as an AMA and also to consider the boundaries of the AMA and any sub-basins within the AMA. He said the director must give public notice of the hearing in a newspaper once a week for two consecutive weeks and then the public hearing must be held thirty and sixty days after the first publication. He then said at the public hearing the director must present factual data in support of creating the AMA and any person in the public can appear and submit evidence either for or against creation of the AMA. He said within thirty days after that public hearing the director must issue findings, either determining an AMA should be created or that it should not be created, if the director determines that the AMA should be created the director must issue an order designating the AMA and then publish notice of the findings and the order in a newspaper again once a week for two consecutive weeks and then the AMA would become effective on the final publication. He then said the director’s decision however is subject to request for review or a hearing subject to judicial review also. He said the second way a subsequent AMA maybe created is through a vote of the registered residents, voters that are residents, of the proposed AMA. He then said the area that can be designated as an AMA through a vote is a groundwater basin and only a groundwater basin, not more than a one basin and not less than a basin, in order to have the election a petition must be filed with the Board of Supervisors signed by at least ten percent of the registered voters in the groundwater basin that is proposed to be an AMA. He then said upon receipt of that petition, the Board of Supervisors must call an election within sixty and ninety days after receiving, I’m sorry call an election and then the election must be held within sixty to ninety days after it is called. He said during the proceedings either for an election or the public hearing process by the director, during those proceedings, no new lands may be irrigated within the area that is proposed to be an AMA. He then said if an AMA is then created either by order of the director or through an election, certain things must occur after that, the first one is that the director within thirty days after the AMA is created must establish a management goal for the AMA, and then within two years after creation of the AMA the director must adopt a management plan for the AMA that contains provisions designed to achieve the management goal for the AMA. He said the Governor must appoint what’s called a GUAC, Groundwater Users Advisory Council, consisting of five persons within the AMA that represent groundwater users in the area, to advise the director on groundwater issues and to make recommendations regarding issues, such as the management plan. He then said if a subsequent AMA is created then certain mandatory regulations would apply in the area and this slide has a list of those regulations and I’ll go over them quickly. He said the first is that no one within the AMA can use groundwater from a nonexempt well, and that’s a well that has a pump with a maximum capacity greater than thirty five gallons per minute, without either a groundwater right or groundwater withdrawal permit. He then said that any person that is using groundwater at the time of designation of the AMA is entitled to get a grandfather groundwater right that allows them to continue pumping for the use that they were making at the time of the designation of the AMA and in certain cases they can change the use if it’s for a non-irrigation use, they can change the type of use. He said they are limited to, for a non-irrigation use, the maximum amount that was used in any one year during the five years preceding the initiation of the designation proceedings, if it’s an irrigation use they can continue irrigating the lands that were irrigated during that five year period subject to conservation requirements. He then said there are restrictions on exempt wells, those wells that have a pump with the maximum capacity less than thirty five gallons a minute, only one exempt well can be used for the same use at the same location unless there were more than one being used at the time the AMA was created, also for new exempt wells there is a limit of ten acre feet per year that can be used for purpose other than domestic or stock watering. He then said that all new wells to be drilled within the AMA, nonexempt wells, must apply for a well permit from the department and must demonstrate that they will not have an unreasonable impact on other wells in the area and under the rules adopted by the department that essentially means that the person proposing to drill the well must show that withdrawals from the well during the first five years will not have more than a ten foot decline on any neighboring wells in the area also that they will not cause contaminated groundwater from a warf or circle a site to move to another well. He said all non-exempt wells within an AMA must be metered; all persons withdrawing groundwater from a non-exempt well in an AMA must file an annual report with the department listing the amounts of groundwater withdrawn from the well. He further said within an AMA there are regulations on new subdivisions, those lands that are subdivided into six or more parcels, they must demonstrate to the department that there is a one hundred year assured water supply for the subdivision and that the groundwater use, if there is groundwater use involved, will be consistent with the management goal of the AMA and for the existing active management areas that means that very little groundwater can be used to support the subdivision; but whatever the management goal that would be established for a subsequent AMA would be the goal that would be applicable. He said also there are restrictions on filling and refilling new bodies of water used for scenic landscape or recreational purposes if those bodies of water exceed twelve thousand three hundred and twenty square feet what that means is essentially effluent must be used to fill those bodies of water unless the body of water is used for recreation that’s open to the public and owned by a public entity such as the county or city. He said there is certain groundwater transportation laws that are applicable to AMAs that are not applicable areas outside the AMA, I don’t think there are any that are significant to this area. He then said groundwater users must comply with any applicable conservation requirements established by the director, for municipal providers that means that they must comply with gallons per capita per day limits or enter into what’s called the non per capita conservation program in which they would agree to implement certain specific conservation measures. He then said for irrigation uses, within an AMA, there are no new acres allowed to be irrigated and only those that were irrigated during the five years preceding the initiation of the designation of the AMA can be irrigated with any water. He said there are two important exceptions to that; one: lands can be brought into new irrigation with surface water rights that were established prior to the designation of the AMA, and number two: lands that were not actually irrigated during that five year period before the establishment of the AMA may be irrigated and are deemed to have been irrigated during that five years if substantial capital investment was made by the owner of the lands for subjugation of the land for an irrigation use and the statutes provide that could include the drilling of onsite wells, or the construction of onsite irrigation distribution facilities for the land. He then said next I’ll turn to designating a subsequent irrigation non expansion area. He said the statutes currently allow a subsequent INA to be created in only one way, and that’s by order of the director, there is no provision allowing an INA to be created by a vote of the residents of the proposed INA. He stated the director may include an area in an INA that’s not smaller than a groundwater sub-basin and may not include an area that’s smaller than a groundwater sub-basin but the area could be larger than a groundwater sub-basin. He said in order to designate an area as an INA the director must find two things; one: that insufficient groundwater to provide a reasonably safe supply for irrigation of the lands at current rates of withdrawal exist and that establishment of an AMA is not necessary. He then said the proceedings to establish an INA by the director can be initiated in one of two ways, first the director, on the directors own initiative, can determine that an INA should be established and then call for a public hearing, the second way is that the residents of the proposed INA may submit a petition to the director, and the petition must be signed by either at least twenty five irrigation users of groundwater in the proposed INA or at least a fourth of the irrigation users of groundwater in the proposed INA or least ten percent of the registered voters residing within the proposed INA. He stated if the director, on the directors own initiative, decides that an INA should be established or if the director receives a petition signed by the appropriate number of residents of the proposed INA, the director will hold a public hearing to consider whether to designate the area as a subsequent INA. He further said the director must give notice of the hearing in a newspaper and publish that notice at least once for two consecutive weeks and the hearing must be held between thirty and sixty days after the first publication, the director must at that public hearing support present factual data either in support of the INA if the director initiated the proceeding or evidence either in support of or in opposition to the INA if the director initiated the proceeding as a result of a petition being filed with the director. He said after the public hearing, the same as the hearing for the creation of an AMA, the director must issue findings and if the director determines that a subsequent INA should be established, the director must issue an order creating the INA and then publish the findings and order in a newspaper for two consecutive weeks and then the formation would be effective on the second publication. He said during the pendency of the proceeding, similar to the proceedings for an AMA, no new acres may be brought into irrigation. He said he had one more slide; the regulations that apply within an INA are much less restrictive than in an AMA, there are metering requirements for all nonexempt wells used for irrigation purposes and those nonexempt wells used to withdraw more than ten acre feet per year for non-irrigation purpose. He further said annual reports must be filed with the Department of Water Resources by all persons withdrawing groundwater from a nonexempt well and then the most significant requirement is that in an INA no new lands may be brought into irrigation, again, with the two exceptions that were applicable to AMAs; you can irrigate new lands with a surface water right that was established before creation of the INA and any person who has invested substantial capital into subjugating the lands for an irrigation purpose may irrigate those lands even though they weren’t irrigated during the five years before creation of the INA. He said the purpose of the substantial capital investment exception is that courts have held that persons who make a substantial capital investment in land using the laws that were in effect when the investment was made can continue to make the use of the land that they made the investment for, so the legislature recognized that and created that exception. He then said that concludes his portion of the presentation unless there are any questions.

Supervisor Moss said there was a list of powers that an AMA would have if one was formed, would I be correct in assuming that the county has no such powers.

Mr. Sulenski said that I think that would be a correct assumption that if the state has those powers and those are I guess I could say are delegated to the Department of Water Resources that there is probably a pretty good argument that that preempts the field.

Supervisor Moss said so for example if we thought a subdivision lacked adequate groundwater the county could do nothing except refer it the department.

Mr. Sulenski said well there is one exception and that is the exception. He further said he thought it was in 2007 the statutes were amended to allow the county Board of Supervisors of a county to put in a mandatory adequacy requirement which would require all sub dividers to show that they have a one hundred year adequate water supply, the only difference between an adequate water supply and assured water supply is there’s no management goal that has to be met and so there’s no requirement that the sub dividers show that it’s groundwater use would be consistent with a management goal, all they would have to show is that there is a physical supply available.

Supervisor Moss said right and that lone power that we have does not apply to large irrigation farms for example.

Mr. Sulenski said that was correct.

Supervisor Moss said only subdivisions where people are building houses, commercial buildings and things of that nature.

Mr. Sulenski said that was correct.

Supervisor Watson said he had one question, so where would a person pick up these petitions or identification and material needed for the petitions if they were going to put a petition out to qualify for the election.

Mr. Sulenski said that is something that the Department of Water Resources would not control or regulate that would be the county Board of Supervisors role, I believe, so it would be similar to any petition that would be brought to the county Board of Supervisors. He said I am not aware that’s ever been done so I’m not real familiar with the procedure that would be followed but it wouldn’t be something the Department of Water Resources would control.

Supervisor Watson said he was trying to think ahead of some of the questions the audience may have.

Chairman Angius said she wanted to thank the Department of Water Resources and the US Geological Survey, thank you very much for traveling here, it was very enlightening.

Mr. Sulenski said that Jerri was going to have some concluding remarks.

Ms. Walker said we did want to put forth the information to the Board of Supervisors that obviously like I said, we’ve only just recently heard about this at the department, but kind of at an initial review, based on initial review, it does not appear that the criteria for the director to designate a subsequent AMA or INA have been met. She said of course there hasn’t been extensive study into that but at first blush it doesn’t appear to, there’s really no significant changes if you look at the current uses from the 1994 report and although it was done in 1994 the values in that report fall within the values that were identified by the USGS even with regard to projecting water uses in 1994 out through 2040, they came up with about twelve thousand acre feet of use in the USGS study used about ninety eight hundred acre feet of use in the Hualapai Valley so there hasn’t been a lot of significant growth and that sort of thing that has caused a lot of change in the amount of water that people use in the area, so there hasn’t been a significant difference since 1994. She said and as I said the current USGS studies have similar supplies and demands so the slide shows some options and those are basically that AMA designation may be pursued by vote or the AMA/INA designation may be pursued legislatively but we did just want to bring up the note regarding existing irrigation use or those acres for which substantial capital investment have already been made so even if the AMA designation came in a week from now some of the things that have been on the ground would be grandfathered in.

Supervisor Moss said just to clarify when we say some of the things that are on the ground which may be grandfathered in, we are talking about Mr. Rhodes current farming activities.

Ms. Walker said right and the extent of that would not be known, looking back through paperwork when they establish initial AMAs it took years sometimes for them to work through the entities that made applications for grandfather rights on substantial capital investment so there is pretty extensive analysis so not knowing how much that may be. Supervisor Moss said so if it was determined at a later date that he has made a substantial capital investment he’d be grandfathered in anyway. Ms. Walker said for those acres for which that determination has been made. She then said that if you have any more questions, I do just want to let you know I gave this PowerPoint presentation to Christine and she was going to post it on the Board of Supervisor’s web page, we’ll also post it on the ADWR web page which is just Azwater.gov, it will be on our hot topics easy to find and I’ll make sure they put my name under that so if anybody has any additional questions, just like the USGS, we are a public agency, feel free to email or call at any time.

Chairman Angius said thank you again, thank you very much. She said that concludes our presentations for today and now we are going to move on to the consent agenda

Motion was made by Supervisor Johnson seconded by Supervisor Moss, and unanimously carried to approve the Consent Agenda minus items 16 and 25 as follows:

5. Approve an Application for Extension of Premises/Patio Permit for Bill T. Evans, d.b.a. Beaver Dam Bar, 411 N. Old Highway 91, Beaver Dam, Arizona; event dates: May 30, 2014 – June 1, 2014.

6. Adoption of BOS Resolution No. 2014-062 – RENEWAL OF A ZONING USE PERMIT on Assessor’s Parcel No. 314-41-004, for a dog kennel in an A-R/36A (AgriculturalResidential/Thirty-six Acre Minimum Lot Size) zone, in the Valentine vicinity (southeast of State Highway 66, approximately one mile south of Valentine), Mohave County, Arizona. (Commission recommended approval by unanimous vote) – Development Services

7. Adoption of BOS Resolution No. 2014-064 – ZONING USE PERMIT on Assessor’s Parcel No. 345-13-028, for a telecommunication facility with a 100-foot tower in an R-M (Multiple-Residential) zone, in the Katherine Heights vicinity (north of State Highway 68 and east of Katherine Mine Road), Mohave County, Arizona. (Commission recommended approval by unanimous vote) – Development Services

8. SITTING AS THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE MOHAVE COUNTY FLOOD CONTROL DISTRICT: Approve the purchase of Beaver Dam Resort Phase IV Tract No. 3015-D, Lot 209 for the price of $570.00 to limit future construction of a home in the Beaver Dam Wash floodplain and erosion zone and to provide right of way for potential future erosion mitigation facilities. – Development Services

9. Approve a Cooperative Intergovernmental Agreement between the Arizona State Forester and Mohave County that sets requirements for use of County resources on State Forestry managed incidents and authorizes the State Forester to provide resources at negotiated cost to the County for wild land fire suppression, pre-suppression, and unplanned all-risk emergencies for incidents that originate on County owned property; reimburse the County under an approved Federal Emergency Management Agency Fire Management Assistance Grant for 90% of eligible costs of an in-County incident; and pay the County for resources used for incident support within the State’s jurisdiction at rates established in the Cooperative Fire Rate Agreement approved by the Board on April 21, 2014. – Development Services

10. Adoption of BOS Resolution No. 2014-065 and approval of Contract Renewal for the Family Planning Title X Program between the Arizona Family Health Partnership and Mohave County Department of Health (Nursing Division funds 226-04-5111), with no revised budget. The Contract Renewal is effective through December 30, 2014 in the amount of $123,950.00. – Department of Health

11. Approve revised budget and authorize expenditures for Fund # 82650858 - FY 2014 Local Assistance Transportation Fund (LTAF) II increasing budget amount by $64.00 from $1,674.00 to $1,738.00 due to interest adjustments. – Community Services

12. Adoption of BOS Resolution No. 2014-058 approving the amended Mohave County Housing Rehabilitation Services (CDBG/CDBG-R/SSP/HOME) Program Guidelines to be used for all owner occupied housing rehabilitation programs for qualified homeowners in Mohave County as identified in various Arizona Department of Housing Contracts utilizing CDBG, CDBG-R, SSP, HOME and State Housing Trust funds as required for FY2014-15 CDBG/SSP/HOME Applications and adopt said guidelines for all existing and future housing rehabilitation programs. - Community Services

13. Adoption of BOS Resolution No. 2014-059 for FY 2014 Residential Antidisplacement and Relocation Assistance Plan, as required under Section 104(d) of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 as amended. – Community Services

14. Approve Amendment No. Four (4) to Lease Agreement No. 08-P-12 with Glendale Square, Bullhead City, Arizona for commercial office space located at 5287 Highway 95, Suites I, J, K, and L, Bullhead City, Arizona for a one (1) year renewal lease term effective July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015, with all other terms and conditions remaining the same, on behalf of the Mohave County Probation Department. – Procurement

15. Approve a multi-award for Contracts 14-PS-05 Job Order Contract (JOC) for Landscape Services Countywide to Innovative Stonework’s and Landscaping, LLC (-01), Kingman, AZ and Kingman Landscape Maintenance, LLC (-02), Kingman City, AZ for a one-year period with the County having the right, at its sole option, to renew the contracts for up to four (4) additional one-year periods on behalf of Mohave County Public Works Department - Facilities Maintenance Division. –  Procurement

17. Approve changes in the schedule of rates for election services effective July 1, 2014. – Elections Department

18. Approve the change in poll site locations for the August 26, 2014 Primary Election and use for all future elections in these voting precincts. – Elections Department

19. Acknowledge receipt of and refer to Public Works for review and recommendation a Petition Filed pursuant to Mohave County Ordinance 92-3 to have included in the Mohave County Tertiary Road Maintenance System, an approximate 0.25 mile section of Abrigo Drive from Hassayampa Road to Colorado Road, located in the Golden Valley area. – Public Works

20. Adoption of BOS Resolution No. 2014-067, authorizing the installation of a R1-1 STOP sign at the shooting range access approach to Boundary Cone Road in Mohave Valley and on the Beaver Dam Cemetery Access Road approach to Rio Virgin Road in Beaver Dam in accordance with the County adopted Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. – Public Works

21. Accept the Road Right-of-Way Dedication recorded under Book 5366 page 994 for a portion of Aztec Road measuring 35 feet wide by 330 feet long, more or less, identified by Mohave County Assessor’s Office as Assessor parcel Number 228-04-321 located in the Mohave Valley area and authorize the Clerk of the Board to sign the Acceptance Statement of the accompanying Warranty Deed and Dedication on behalf of Mohave County. – Public Works

22. Accept and approve the budget adjustment to increase the program revenue budget by $35,000 for the Crime Victim Compensation Program – ACJC Org (24410269) for FY14. – Mohave County Attorney

23. Approve the Intergovernmental Agreements between Mohave County and Lake Havasu City and Mohave County and the City of Kingman for the housing of city inmates in the Mohave County Jail as detailed in the agreements. – Mohave County Sheriff’s Office

24. Approve the Certificate of Clearance to abate taxes on uncollectible personal property. – Mohave County Treasurer

26. Approve abating the taxes on fifty-three (53) parcels for an efficient, timely, and less costly migration from the current Oasis Tax Program to the Tyler Eagle System - Mohave County Treasurer

27. Approve the report of routine County business authorized by the County Administrator for the time period of December 19, 2013 through April 22, 2014. – County Administrator

28. Approve the appointment of Don Stetson to the Mohave County Board of Adjustment, representing District 1; term to expire May 5, 2018. – Gary Watson, Mohave County Supervisor, District 1

ITEM 16: Approve transferring $300,000 from General Fund contingency to General Administration-Mental Health (10010500-43155) to cover the remainder of Fiscal Year 2014 mental health expenditures. – Financial Services

Supervisor Johnson said if he could have Mr. Timko from our Finance Department explain how much money we’ve spent so far and why we have to give another three hundred thousand dollars.

John Timko, Director of Finance, said at this point in time we began this year with a budget in that line item of six hundred thousand dollars; we crossed that threshold last week that precipitated the request for an additional three hundred thousand that we calculate to be our estimate of the balance to cover this fiscal year.

Supervisor Johnson said and this money covers what exactly.

Mr. Timko said this is general fund money that covers the folks that have to go to the Arizona State hospital for.

Supervisor Johnson asked if it was for sexually violent prisoners.

Mr. Timko said sexually violent and it’s seriously mentally ill and the mentally ill.

Supervisor Johnson said and we are covering these because this used to be covered partially by the state and now we are picking it all up.

Mr. Timko said a portion of this is covered by the state and in one instance they paid fifty percent and in the other instance we pay one hundred percent, this is also an area that in the FY 15 budget we were given the authority, the counties were given the authority, to use any source of funds under the jurisdiction of the board to cover these expenses, that only equates to about two hundred thousand of the six hundred that we have spent so far. Supervisor Johnson said that in the past these are bills that we didn’t have, correct. Mr. Timko asked for Supervisor Johnson to repeat the question.

Supervisor Johnson said these are bills in the past we didn’t totally have.

Mr. Timko said not in total, two of the three the state used to pay, one of them we are now paying one hundred percent of the other we are paying fifty percent of.

Motion was made by Supervisor Johnson, seconded by Supervisor Watson and unanimously carried to approve the transferring of $300,000 from General Fund contingency to General Administration-Mental Health (10010500-43155) to cover the remainder of Fiscal Year 2014 mental health expenditures.

Item 25: Approve the Treasurer's Returned Check Program and restore the process of handling, collecting and clearing returned checks to each individual county department and district - Mohave County Treasurer

Supervisor Johnson said the question I have, I can understand where you are coming from, I don’t know if staff has a recommendation but if your backup was saying that sometimes checks are returned and then they are collected and you’re not getting notified which throws your things off but some of these checks go back from the back up you gave, quite a few years ago. He said I didn’t know that, I guess what is staff’s recommendation on this, I would think one place would be good and if we have a check that’s not there then the Attorney’s office files the appropriate charges and we move on from there, but we shouldn’t have checks that are sitting around for years that haven’t been collected. I didn’t see a whole lot of input from our staff.

Administrator Hendrix said you know generally, it is my understanding that the Treasurer has collected these delinquencies in the past and has run into some difficulty in doing so because let’s say if Planning and Zoning has a fee, has a charge, it’s difficult for the Treasurer’s office to take up the flag, take up the cause and then justify why we would need reimbursement or try to collect that money. He said that it did make sense on the surface and I didn’t look into it in that much detail but it did make sense on the surface to refer those checks back to the department that was levying those fees for them to attempt to collect it because they would be able to provide better justification then the Treasurer would.

Supervisor Johnson said I didn’t know if the other Board members had a chance to look at the length of time that those checks were sitting there, that’s what bothers me. He said I don’t know by just saying that we are giving it back to staff that we are going to have any difference, does there need to be a policy or an overall look at how we process checks.

Cindy Cox, Treasurer, said she thinks that part of it is that as Mr. Hendrix had stated, we don’t have the clout, we don’t have the pull to be able to call the, for example, with Public Works or Development Services, they have the ability to call the person who wrote the check and say we are pulling your permit, you aren’t getting your permit, we aren’t going to do anything because they know this person, they are a builder or whoever that they can go out and say, you wrote us a bad check, we’re not taking any of your checks anymore. She said it’s not like that it’s more of if the check is bad and we send them a little note and they understand that the check is bad and they do whatever they have to do on their part and if the person comes in and goes to get another permit or the person comes in to pay another bill or whatever how does the department know other than going back and looking which I don’t know if that happens, I don’t believe that it does and that’s why we have checks sitting on the books for years.

Supervisor Johnson said I guess we have a bad check program at the County Attorney’s office so why don’t we just immediately turn these over to the County Attorney for prosecution, Mr. Ekstrom.

Attorney Ekstrom said we do have a bad check program and that’s really presented one of the problems, for example, if Public Works sends a bad check to the Treasurer’s office and the Treasurer starts processing it, in the meantime somebody comes to Public Works and pays them, takes care of the bad check, we never know. He said that at least two incidents that I can think of we have issued warrants to people on checks they have already made good with Public Works, so in terms of just communicating these things among the departments it seems to make sense for the Bad Check program.

Ms. Cox said this has led to us having the instance where a young woman who is a citizen was arrested and taken to jail for a bad check that she paid.

Supervisor Johnson said she shouldn’t have written a bad check the first time. He said that is all I had, I don’t quite agree with you.

Chairman Angius said so do you think this is going to solve all this.

Ms. Cox said she thinks it puts the onus on the department and also the power back to the department to be able to collect that money and when they do they will present to us in a way that makes sense to us, we don’t necessarily keep track of everything, we let them know, hey you have a bad check, here’s the check, here’s the information, not the check physically because we don’t get physical checks anymore, but you know here’s the check, you guys decide where it belongs, you account for it appropriately and then when it’s paid off they account back to us and we’re not keeping anything on our books separately.

Chairman Angius said was this ever done like that before because you said return to the old way, was this how it used to be.

Ms. Cox said it was.

Chairman Angius said did it work that way, I mean did it work the way she’s saying, if it goes back do you have staff, do you have a means to oversee it.

Administrator Hendrix said that he thinks conceivably the reason we’ve got such delinquent checks and it’s probably not the norm, it’s probably the exception, the reason that there was such a delinquency on a couple of the checks because there wasn’t a good process through the Treasurer’s office to redeem that check. He said like what Ms. Cox said when I was in Public Works Development Services we’d have no problem following through with that and actually going through a process and probably expediting being able to get some sort of an action on a bad check or a bad payment because they are permitting through us, if they want to continue to permit through us you know we would have the authority to call that marker in, to call that money in, and try to get those issues resolved probably in a more expedited way. He said he didn’t think it was something I would see Nick or Steve objecting to or you know I haven’t talked to Patty about environmental fees but I think that is probably where it should lay, the responsibility of the department levying those fees.

Ms. Cox said the reason she wanted to bring it to the Board is because it is something the Board had us set up in a board action agenda item years ago and I wanted to make sure that the Board had input at this point. She said she did bring it to the managers meeting and asked all the managers that were there how they felt about it and there was no pushback at all.

Chairman Angius said why would they change it in the first place, was it just the will of the Board at that time.

Ms. Cox said that’s the way it was done. Chairman Angius asked what year it was.

Ms. Cox said she had no idea, she didn’t have the paperwork, at least five years ago is my understanding.

Motion was made by Supervisor Johnson, seconded by Supervisor Watson and unanimously carried to approve the Treasurer’s Returned Check Program and restore the process of handling, collecting and clearing returned checks to each individual county department and district.

ITEM 29: Chairman Angius opened Public Hearing: Discussion and possible action RE: Adoption of BOS Resolution No. 2014-063 – AMENDMENT TO BOS RESOLUTION NO. 97-3 setting forth a Zoning Use Permit for a private landing strip and airplane hangar on Assessor’s Parcel Numbers 120-22-044 through -048, in an A-R/36A (AgriculturalResidential/Thirty-Six Acre Minimum Lot Size) zone, to amend the legal description to include Assessor’s Parcel Numbers 120-22-052 and 120-22-006, and to clarify and add to the uses allowed by the Zoning Use Permit, in the Havasu Heights vicinity, Mohave County, Arizona. (Commission recommended approval by unanimous vote)

Michael Centofant, resident of Lake Havasu, said he was formally the Havasu Judge who is now retired, resided in Havasu Heights for nineteen years and in the county forty years. He said I was reading the Planning and Zoning Commissions report, unanimous report, the applicant has met all the technical requirements of notice but I feel that notice is totally inadequate for the community members of Havasu Heights. He said at a bare minimum due process requires that the property owners that are affected by an applicant’s amendment be given notice and an opportunity to be heard before an impartial commission, affected property owners should be afforded an opportunity to present their views and positions. He said the commission can then make a knowledgeable and fair decision when they have additional facts before them. He then said he raised this issue because the activity and modifications contemplated by the applicant are not contained within his property, it involves aircraft and so these modifications are designed to accommodate more aircraft and increase ground and air activity. He said the residents of the Havasu Heights community, which I am a member of, are one half mile away and will be subjected to low flying aircraft and our peaceful and quiet enjoyment of our property will be disturbed. He further said I believe that this and I ask you to consider this, the Havasu Heights community should be given notice of this amendment to allow the commission to make a decision with all viewpoints expressed, as presently constituted, the Havasu Heights residents will have their property rights diminished without notice and an opportunity to voice their viewpoints. He said that no notice was given to Havasu Heights residents just to the three hundred foot restriction and he wasn’t arguing about that; that was done. He said so I ask the Board today to deny the amendment or to send the amendment back to the Planning commission and ask for a rehearing with proper notice to Havasu Heights residents so that they fully understand what is happening because no one knows, none of us have gotten any notice on this. He said during the twenty years, nineteen years that I’ve lived there I have witnessed acrobatic by-wing flying over my house, low flying aircraft, noisy aircraft and this is the area the Sheriff had the big drug bust and so I mean I am not in favor of going forward with this and I think in a due process matter, I ask you to send it back and re-notice everybody.

Terry Allen, representing S.B.C., Inc., a general contractor in Lake Havasu City, said I’m asking that you deny this rezone application also due to the fact that Mr. Cox never received proper grading permits or he has impeded a national, impeded a U.S. waterway by filling in a wash on the property. She said she has contacted the flood control and they in fact have gone out and determined that this has been done. She further said I was in communication with the Army Corp of Engineers as like I said he has impeded the natural flow of a U.S. waterway, he has not obtained any grading permits, he has constructed this cross wind runway, no engineering, no nothing has been brought up. She said she is asking that this go backwards. She said she was also very concerned about Planning and Zoning approving this unanimously without him even having the proper permits and procedures in place for the county or the State of Arizona for that matter.

Mr. Hont said if he may just add to these comments, that the Development Services Department received two complaints last week, one by the building division that there was grading going on without a grading plan and they inspected the site and they determined that there is some minimal grading in one of the washes, trying to level out for the runway and the property owner was notified that he will have to get a grading permit for that because it is over one hundred cubic yards and so but he will have time to comply with that and provide a grading plan if he wants to continue with the grading. He said the other complaint was received by the Flood Control District, there is an Arizona law basically that prohibits restricting the flow of washes and there is a minor wash that goes through, crosses that proposed runway that there was some filling into that wash, also the statute provides that anybody that is damaged by that activity may file a civil action against, the proper, basically the wash would flow even if it’s filled up but it would flow the same direction and it would end up on BLM land and we didn’t see any potential for damage at that time but there’s, you know anybody can file a lawsuit. He said Flood Control District typically doesn’t get involved in private property any further than that and we notified the complaining party of that.

Chairman Angius said was proper notification given to the residents.

Mr. Hont said yes, on the building permit to do grading the property owner was notified by a letter and we assume that when he receives that letter he will come back and contact us for a grading permit.

Supervisor Johnson said was there anybody that showed up in opposition of this at the P&Z hearings.

Mr. Hont said yes, there was opposition to it.

Supervisor Moss said early on in my first year as representing District Five I ran afoul of an airport subdivision and Bill Ekstrom shared with me many of my adventures in that area and so I’m going to give you my personal viewpoint of what came out of that incident so I can try to apply my reasoning to this incident. He said what happened is that a subdivision became an airpark, people owned airplanes and parked their airplanes in big garages and they took off down a privately owned runway and they flew and over time subdivisions filled in to what used to be empty desert and homes who if they came out there and looked at a nice lot, bought it, had it built on, they might not notice until they lived there twenty four seven that there are airplanes going off at five a.m. in the morning and some of these people are unhappy because they were living in a subdivision which was very close to this airpark and they didn’t know, many of them did not know until they actually started living there as opposed to just looking at the home and buying it. He said that has made me somewhat sensitive to land owners and home owners which are within a fairly close proximity to these airparks and if the Havasu Heights neighborhood didn’t know that this was going in well they are going to find out very soon when these planes start flying over their houses at five a.m. and I kind of agree with Michael Centofant that if we didn’t give the Havasu Heights neighborhood notice that this was going on so they could have some input and that maybe the Planning and Zoning Commission and this Board could look at the owner and ask the owner where is your flight patterns, where are you going to be flying at so that we can protect the home owners in that particular area from this problem and maybe we need to look at it a little more deeply because otherwise I guarantee you I will be having this exact same adventure with Mr. Ekstrom very shortly. He said he thinks it is a bullet we can dodge if we send it back to the Planning and Zoning for rehearing with notice to the Havasu Heights residents with particular emphasis as to what the flight pattern out of this air park will be.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Watson and unanimously carried to send this item back to Planning and Zoning for re-hearing with notice to the Havasu Heights residents with particular emphasis as to what the flight patterns out of this air park will be.

ITEM 30: Chairman Angius opened the Public Hearing: Discussion and possible action RE: Adoption of the 2009 FDA Model Food Code to be effective July 1, 2014, which will benefit the health and welfare of the residents of Mohave County.

There being no public input, Chairman Angius closed the Public Hearing Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Johnson and unanimously carried to approve Item 30 of the agenda.

ITEM 31A: Chairman Angius opened the Public Hearing: Public comments only RE: FY 2014 CDBG Projects.

There being no public input, Chairman Angius closed the Public Hearing.

ITEM 31B: Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Watson and was carried by a vote of 3-0 (Supervisor Johnson not seated at time of vote) to adopt BOS Resolution No. 2014-054 – authorizing the submission of applications for FY2014 State Community Development Block Grant Funds – Regional Account (RA) ($585,806) and State Special Project Account (SSP) ($300,000), and authorize the Chairman of the Board to sign applications, certifications, and forms as required by the Arizona Department of Housing.

ITEM 32: Chairman Angius opened the Public Hearing: Discussion and possible action RE: Declare California Drive, from Painted Rock Drive to 180 feet East of Mano Drive, coincident with the easterly boundary of Section 27 in Township 24 North, Range 15 West as a County Highway for the purpose of acceptance of said roadway into Mohave County’s Tertiary Road Maintenance System as an unsurfaced road.

There being no public input, Chairman Angius closed the Public Hearing.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Watson and was carried by a vote of 3-1 with Supervisor Johnson voting no to approve Item 32 of the agenda.

ITEM 33: Chairman Angius opened the Public Hearing: Discussion and possible action RE: Endorse the Arizona Department of Revenue Application for Bingo License submitted by the Golden Shores Civic Association.

There being no public input, Chairman Angius closed the Public Hearing. Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Johnson and unanimously carried to approve Item 33 of the agenda.

ITEM 34: Executive Session: Pursuant to ARS 38-431(A)(5), Presentation by Erin Collins and Associates on employee health insurance program for fiscal year 2015.

Executive session was held at 9:00 a.m. No action was taken on this item.

ITEM 35: Discussion and possible action RE: Adopt Resolution No. 2014-066 authorizing the installation of a R2-1, 25 MPH speed limit sign on eastbound Heights Boulevard immediately east of Sky View Dr. where the unsurfaced Heights Boulevard traverses a residential district and ARS§28-701.B.2 establishes such minimum speed limit and further approve modification of existing maintenance and protection of traffic across (1) Heights Boulevard immediately east of Rice Drive and (2) Rancho Vista Drive immediately south of Heights Boulevard to provide R11- 2 Road Closed sign and full-width barricade of the traveled way in accordance with the County adopted manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Johnson and unanimously carried to adopt BOS Resolution No. 2014-066.

ITEM 36: Discussion and possible action RE: Accept the Horizon Six Trail report for discussion and possible further action. (Continued by the Board at their April 7, 2014 meeting)

Supervisor Moss said at the last meeting I asked for additional time so I could go actually walk the trail unfortunately things became chaotic and I never actually walked the trail so I would like to continue it until the next meeting.

Chairman Angius said okay but before then, and she has been waiting patiently, I did it again, I’m so sorry, Mary VanRooy come on down.

Mary VanRooy, resident of Lake Havasu, said I would just like to speak one more time for the people who signed our petition, the three hundred and eighty signatures we have, and every person who signed had a copy of the map of the proposed trail and I would also, I’ve given copies to all the Supervisors. She said the other one is the newspaper wrote a very nice piece about why we should have the Horizon Six trail and the petitioners have the right idea and the Supervisors have an obligation to assure that this massive flood control project and any other county projects don’t reduce public access to public lands. She said one thing that came out of the report that Travis did was about the safety issues we have with our streets and roads. She further said on June 13th my husband and I did attend a public works traffic control meeting and they did come in and do some difference with signage and that but we were asking to have yellow stripes down the middle of the road, which had been done years ago just by my request and now it’s an issue that has to go before many different people so there are some things that we can actually do to make our neighborhood safer which has nothing to do with our trail but with our road issues, our hills and our lack of view and no shoulders, and there are a lot of things that hopefully we can work on. She said I would just like to say that we are a very horse friendly community and the use of the non-motorized trail for access to public lands for the future of our young riders, now I ride with all older ladies, we are all retired fifteen years or more, but I’m looking at the future for the children and the people who live in that community. She said we do feel it is a horse friendly community and we’ve used that wash area that now is the channel and we may not be able to get everything we want but I think we can negotiate and work with and cooperate and maybe come up with some ideas for some access that we used to have. She said she would appreciate any attention put to this and we aren’t in any big rush, summer is coming, our horses are going back to the mountains so we won’t be riding in the hot weather anyway but it would be nice if at least maybe by fall we could, at least continue the conversation, I’d really appreciate that. She said that she did talk to Mayor Nexsen and Larry Didion of the city, of Lake Havasu City, about annexation because I thought maybe that’s our solution and they are very supportive just like the newspaper, our community is very supportive of it but we are just waiting on the issues with the county.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Watson and was carried by a vote of 3-1 with Supervisor Johnson voting no to continue Item 36 until the Board of Supervisor meeting on May 19, 2014.

ITEM 37: Discussion and possible action RE: The draft Mohave County Personnel Policies and Procedures document presented to the Board at their April 7, 2014 meeting.

Chairman Angius said before we start this there seems to have been an administrative snafu on my part because I have never seen these, I’m not saying they didn’t get there, I’m saying I’ve never seen them so for the interest of time I’m going to ask that we table this until I have the time to look at it.

Motion was made by Chairman Angius, seconded by Supervisor Moss and unanimously carried to table this item until Chairman Angius has time to look at it.

ITEM 38: Discussion and possible action RE: The proposed County Morgue. Supervisor Moss said I believe the current system is working, I don’t want to change it.

Administrator Hendrix said staff recommendation is if we are going to consider a building project it probably should be considered through our capital budgeting process and not individually so what staff is recommending is that if the Board wanted to go forward with considering the construction of a morgue please direct staff to come up with a new capital building project and also identify an extended capital building project and one of the things that was discussed with capital building projects is of course looking at a new court facility. He said we need to look at two Sheriff Substations, we probably need to look at the morgue of course, we need to look at if we are going to build a courthouse, a new storage facility and even if it could extend to an animal control facility. He said obviously we know that we have a quarter cent sales tax that sunsets in 2019 any modifications to that actual quarter cent sales tax has to take a unanimous vote of the board so if we are going to be looking at new building projects we need to do it through the budgeting process to identify alternate funding methods for those buildings and what if any available funding from the quarter cent sales tax may be available for the building projects because that quarter cent sales tax as we all know has been augmented by other funds.

Supervisor Johnson said that we have gone through I don’t know how many Board meetings, we have gone out for proposals and now staff is saying maybe we ought to kick this can down the road until we have a plan. He said I don’t disagree we should have a plan in place, a capital improvements plan, but it should be with the money we have now and if this Board doesn’t address that issue we are going to find ourselves in serious problems here, I mean there should be a priority of the Board to get a list of what we want to do and come to a consensus on what we are going to build with the money we have available. He said I can tell you right now you are not ever going to get a unanimous vote of this Board extending that quarter cent sales tax; I will not do it so you have to do with the money you have now. He said that’s all that I have.

Supervisor Moss said as I understand it we have roughly fifteen million dollars of unallocated sales tax money which we will collect in the future which has to be used to provide a new courthouse and two new Sheriff Substations and will fall woefully short of what’s required to get those three projects done. He said so since we haven’t yet managed to crack the nut of how we complete those three projects I don’t think adding a fourth project which would make our task even harder very wise. He further said we have a very good medical examiner, I believe we have that medical examiner for roughly another year or so under contract and if that medical examiner, Dr. Worrell, decides that she doesn’t want to be a medical examiner anymore, I think it has been years since we’ve gone out to bid to see if someone else wants to a medical examiner because just on the yearly expenditures we would spend two to three hundred thousand dollars more a year if we brought it in house and that doesn’t include the capital building project, the building of a building. He then said so I imagine, I very firmly believe we can replace Dr. Worrell if push came to shove with the existing budget or at least less than it would cost to run a medical examiner in house.

Supervisor Johnson said I disagree with that. He said that I believe as a professionally run county we have to have a professionally run Coroner’s office not something run out of a warehouse in Havasu, I think we are leaving ourselves open for legal issues and I think as a Board maybe something we should agendize to say this is what our capital projects are that we, all five of us agree on in rank whether it be whatever it is, whether I win or lost those and have staff go ahead.

Chairman Angius said she agreed with that however she wanted to know what changed from a couple of years ago to today when old Board’s agreed that this was the way, that we didn’t have enough to have a full time medical examiner, that it went out for bid and that what happened between two years ago and today that all of a sudden it is not a professionally run office.

Supervisor Moss said that from what I could see Dr. Worrell is far better than the prior medical examiner and I haven’t had any complaints about the service that she has provided from the County Attorney, Public Defenders, anybody. He then said so really I don’t think that we can say she’s not running a professional office, she is running a very professional office, it’s just that mechanism by sending it out to contract, that we’re able to do it far cheaper than providing everyone with interoffice insurance, and all the benefits of county employment which will cost hundreds of thousands more so this is a cost effective method that we are using. He further said we have a fine medical examiner and he hopes she continues to be our medical examiner and in the event that she doesn’t want to be a medical examiner we put it out to bid. He said if no one accepted that bid my understanding is we could subcontract out to Coconino County if we had to so there is actually a plan C in place push comes to shove.

Chairman Angius said that I think what you are saying is that is not a real top priority when you are talking about those projects but I agree with Supervisor Johnson that maybe it is time that we do have this priority list because I’m with Supervisor Johnson, it’s not going to happen if it takes a unanimous vote. Administrator Hendrix said so staff recommendation is to come up with a capital, extended capital building project and potential funding; is that what?

Chairman Angius said with existing funds.

Administrator Hendrix said absolutely that’s all I was talking about.

Chairman Angius said okay, so what is the action here.

Supervisor Moss said that he would take a stab at it based on what I’m hearing.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Watson, to currently take no action on the proposed county morgue except that as part of the capital improvement projects priority list, that this be re-agendized and that staff bring it back to us so the Board of Supervisors can establish a priority list from first priority to last priority of intended capital improvements with existing finances, financial sources available to us.

Supervisor Johnson said for discussion it needs to be brought back to us before budget time because we have a capital improvement budget that goes into our budget books so we have planning for X amount of years so we have to do that before we do our budget. Supervisor Moss asked if within the next sixty days is sufficient time. Administrator Hendrix said that he thinks we could do it within the next thirty days; he already has Public Works working on a capital building improvement plan.

Supervisor Moss said he would amend his motion to have it brought back to us, to include an amendment that it be brought back to us within the next thirty days. Supervisor Watson said amended second and the amended motion carried unanimously.

ITEM 39: Discussion and possible action RE: Approve the appointment of an Interim Clerk of the Board and Interim Deputy Clerk of the Board, effective May 5, 2014.

Supervisor Moss said may I ask what County Administrator Hendrix’s recommendation is.

Administrator Hendrix said my recommendation, and thanks for asking, is to appoint Ginny as Interim Clerk of the Board at a range, at the step one of the Clerk of the Board range and then appoint the Deputy, Debbie as Deputy Clerk of the Board at the step, initial step one of that range. He said I don’t have that right in front of me, I apologize.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Watson and was carried by a vote of 3-1 with Supervisor Johnson voting no to appoint Ginny as Interim Clerk of the Board at a range, at the step one of the Clerk of the Board range and then appoint the Deputy, Debbie as Deputy Clerk of the Board at the step, initial step one of that range.

ITEM 40: Discussion and possible action RE: Establish a 2014 Mohave County Fair theme recognizing the County’s sesquicentennial birthday, designate Saturday, September 13, 2014 as Mohave County’s Official Sesquicentennial Birthday Celebration in conjunction with the Mohave County Fair at the Mohave County Fairgrounds, approve an allocation of $60,000 from General Fund Contingency to fund County-sponsored Celebration events and/or promotional items, and direct staff to coordinate with the Mohave County Fair Association on planning and executing Celebration activities as well as provide the Board with a report on County-sponsored Celebration activities coupled with estimated expenses and revenues at the Board’s July 7, 2014 meeting.

Supervisor Watson said that he was bringing this to you for your consideration, in consideration of the sesquicentennial birthday celebration of the county, the sixty thousand dollars represents not an actual expense but an authorization to prepay items that we will be selling tickets for to recoup revenue from that is essentially what those dollars represent. He said that if we were to put on say a large concert, a large laser work show, something like that where we would be selling tickets to the event, these dollars would represent the prepayment, the tickets would represent the revenue.

Chairman Angius said this is for the celebration that is going to be taking place at the fairgrounds.

Supervisor Watson said right. He said we anticipated that would be one of the largest drawings crowds for the entire county to be gathering in that period of time. He said it is nice weather, there are a number of activities that are already associated with the fair and the fair itself is a celebration of Mohave County and so we thought it would be very fitting to have the celebration in conjunction with the fair.

Chairman Angius said so there is nothing definite for the sixty thousand, it could be for t-shirts, it could be for an entertainer, you just want to give carte blanche sixty thousand bucks to.

Supervisor Watson said authorization to have prepay functions or ideas to prepay those items in lieu of then funding them through tickets sales or other revenues coming on the back end to pay for them. He asked do you follow.

Chairman Angius said who is going to handle I mean who is going to handle this, you mean all through the fairgrounds. She said she is missing something here.

Supervisor Watson said he would give her an example. He said if Mohave County were to host say a name brand entertainer with a laser show and those costs were fifty thousand dollars, and that’s an example, then we would have money assured to pay for that contracted event but then we would have other folks sell tickets for the event to then pay for the event. He then said such like the admission to any other function whether it would be admission into the fair or admission into the stadium where the event would be held or those types of things.

Chairman Angius said so just fronting the money and we are guaranteed to get it back.

Supervisor Watson said well I would hope we would get it all back, there’s going to be some cost associated with the celebration that probably won’t be refundable.

Chairman Angius said why isn’t just the fairgrounds doing it since they are hosting the event and they are making the money, why wouldn’t they just put out the money.

Supervisor Watson said if we are selling the tickets, the fairgrounds would not be sharing those dollars.

Chairman Angius asked who’s going be in charge of this.

Supervisor Watson said we could appoint the Kingsmen, we could appoint, we could make an agreement with the fairgrounds. He then said he was just looking for an avenue in which to have funds available in order to do those different.

Supervisor Moss said as I understand what Supervisor Watson is proposing is we are allocating a budget that we are going to use for our one hundred and fiftieth birthday of sixty thousand dollars and then we are going to direct staff, it’s in the motion, to engage with the fairgrounds and others in order to put together a plan as to how to best spend those funds in order to put on a celebration for our one hundred and fiftieth birthday. He asked if he was interpreting that correctly.

Supervisor Watson said that is correct and I don’t anticipate that the sixty thousand dollars is going to be spent for the celebration of the hundred and fiftieth birthday, a portion of those funds I would imagine will be, but not all the sixty thousand dollars.

Chairman Angius said I don’t know, I just can’t see with our tight budget and what’s going on for a celebration like this that is taking place in Kingman, you know it is a county thing, but you know again we are talking about Kingman so.

Administrator Hendrix said he certainly can appreciate the tight budget part, I believe we, as we all know the birthday, Mohave County’s one hundred and fiftieth birthday is November ninth and of course a hundred and fiftieth birthday, what’s a few days between friends right, so what we would envision from a staff perspective is our Parks department and our Parks Director is familiar with putting on venues. He said we would, all the advertisement would be in conjunction with the fair association, they would be responsible for paying for the advertisement and including Mohave County’s one hundred and fiftieth birthday as part of their advertisement for the fair because it would certainly be a draw for them also. He said they would be designating, and I’m trying to paint a picture for what it would be like, they would be designating the center stage and the Saturday for speeches, have dignitaries here and then at the end of that because the animals are so forth and so on, we would sponsor it like Supervisor Watson said a headline organization, a headliner entertainment which would, our staffs knowledge of that says that would probably be in the neighborhood of thirty to thirty five thousand dollars to have a name brand entertainer come and perform and a laser light show is about fifteen thousand dollars in lieu of fireworks celebration that would extend into the evening and Mohave County would be responsible and able to collect the gate fees for that activity for the name brand and not share it with the fairgrounds, but for the name brand entertainment and the light show for our people.

Chairman Angius said so we are going to run a show, the county.

Administrator Hendrix said basically yes, organize and in talking to our Parks Director and Steve Latoski our Public Works Director; that’s what Shawn does down at Davis Camp, he’s done in the past, he organizes events. He said you know I think he would be the go to person that we would call on to actually.

Chairman Angius said but it’s not down at Davis Camp, it’s up in Kingman.

Administrator Hendrix said that’s correct but he also runs Hualapais. Chairman Angius said I know that but I’m telling you this event would be up in Kingman. Administrator Hendrix said that’s what’s up to the board to decide but that’s what the proposal is right now on the table.

Supervisor Moss said I’ve seen some flyers, I don’t know if they came from Supervisor Watson months and months ago or from the city of Kingman’s Chamber when I was wandering around town, but they are doing something called the Passport to Route 66. He then said this falls right into it, where all these, they are trying to basically create a certain area where tourist come into. He said because it’s not every day that a hundred and fiftieth anniversary comes through but they are also highlighting other activities around Mohave County like Davis Camp, Oatman, Chloride, Lake Havasu’s London Bridge, etcetera so it’s part, it’s one I guess gear in an advertising machine for the entirety of our hundred and fiftieth birthday but it really is a countywide event; there is a center, there is an epicenter but it is going to echo throughout the county with this Passport to Route 66 program that’s going on.

Chairman Angius said but you are talking about putting on an event so you’re not just talking about the money we are laying out, you are talking about the work, the employee time, you know again going back to the situation, the tight budgets, is this something that we really want to get into.

Supervisor Watson said if I could ask a question of you madam Chairman, how much money would you like to spend or would you rather not have a celebration of this type.

Chairman Angius said I don’t think it is, personally, I don’t think it is time to spend money on a celebration like this, no. She then said unless, I thought I had heard things that you know that we are going to get a good return back, if the fairgrounds is doing a celebration why don’t they just do the celebration. She then said I mean why do we need to be on top of the fairgrounds, I mean who, with the fairgrounds, who is going to make that money, they are going to make that money, so why can’t they incorporate it and do it there, I don’t see why we have to be involved in it. She said that’s a lot of money, I mean.

Supervisor Moss said I have two comments or questions. He said the first is I do believe the sixty thousand, you are right, is a lot of money but if it’s handled the way I perceive it as being handled it’s going to bring a lot of people into Mohave County; when it comes to riding there is, a bunch of German tourists riding their motorcycles from Las Vegas in for this event, whatever it may be, it’s going to bring dollars in and so even though I have no studies to support this my instinct is that it’s going to generate the revenue, more than revenue, our investment is going to make a lot of money for the private sector out there which in turn pays taxes to us, that’s step number one. He then said the second component to this from my perspective in my view is that Mohave County is a growing county, we are becoming more, we are getting onto the map and that we need to do things like this when it comes to celebrating Mohave County itself and it is our hundred and fiftieth birthday, whether it is England you know celebrating the diamond centennial with the Queen of England or whether it is little ole Mohave County throwing sixty thousand dollars into a birthday celebration, which may as I understand Supervisor Watson’s comment give some of the money back to us. He then said now I can’t guarantee it because it’s business essentially, if it fails we get nothing, we might get something back from the fairgrounds committees when it comes if we sell so many tickets and some money comes back to us that’s great. He said but we don’t know if we are going to get all sixty thousand back, we won’t know till we actually do it.

Chairman Angius said don’t we give the fairgrounds money too.

Supervisor Moss said I think we gave them money to improve some rodeo stands at one point.

Supervisor Watson said no, we have not given Mohave County Fairgrounds Association any dollars for the last twenty four months. He said it has been appropriated in our budget but has not been given to that organization. He then said now I just wanted to make a couple of items clear, the passport program is a program that is designed to be a celebration for all of Mohave County and in order to get your passport filled you’ll have to go to Golden Shores, Lake Havasu City, Bullhead City, Wikieup, Grand Canyon West and those things and this was, the concept is for it to be an economic driver for all of Mohave County and we were going to pull the ticket for the winner that night of the celebration. He said but if your fear is that Mohave County cannot do this or if the sixty thousand dollars is out of the reach of your comfort level then I can certainly appreciate that.

Chairman Angius said at the very least I would like to see some kind of plan, I mean just to say sixty thousand and have no control over it, again, is not something I would like to see either. Supervisor Moss said maybe we could do it this way, if, and I’ll take a stab at it, I move that we provisionally approve item 40 of the agenda subject to staff coming back to us within a designated period of time with a plan that how this is going to be spent and what we are going to spend it on and what the prospects of recoupment, I shouldn’t say prospects no one can predict the future but the areas that we might see some recoupment of that money within thirty days, is that sufficient.

Administrator Hendrix said to see if this, if it was even feasible to utilize the fairgrounds we had to talk to the fairgrounds people and they were going to be advertising in the Kingman Daily Miner and the papers regarding their fairgrounds event and they’ve agreed to postpone that advertising until this week, until a decision is made, yet up or down, whether we are going to be able to utilize, whether we want to utilize the fairgrounds for the celebration. He then said and then they would work with a newspaper to create the advertisement so to answer your question, yes that time frame would be great for staff but it may not be great to allow the fairgrounds sufficient time for their advertisement needs.

Supervisor Moss said then I will withdraw my motion, I don’t there has been a second, and.

Supervisor Watson said I just didn’t have a chance to second your motion.

Chairman Angius said that when this whole thing first came on our radar I was lead to believe that it was just fronting money and that we were going to be guaranteed the money back, that we were just going help, and hey I’m all for a celebration, I love a good party, I think it’s a good idea but the idea of just putting the sixty thousand out there to you know do it, I need something more than that, I can’t just say yes on that.

Supervisor Moss said I think the hang up there is the guarantee of a return, because if nobody showed up there is zero dollars.

Chairman Angius said well if you are bringing in a name brand, a named singer, you’re going to get people coming to your door.

Supervisor Moss said sure maybe a thousand show up and we are five thousand dollars short so we get fifty five thousand dollars back and not sixty.

Chairman Angius said so where’s all the economic development.

Supervisor Moss said well I’m saying that’s the downside, you’re saying we need to have a guarantee and there is no such thing as a guarantee of this sort, I think it’s likely we’ll get our money back.

Chairman Angius said I don’t know, I just think that the taxpayers who are watching this and hearing everything and you know hears this, I just don’t see it but that’s my opinion.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Watson to approve Item 40 of the agenda and was not carried by a vote of 2 to 2 with Chairman Angius and Supervisor Johnson voting no.

Supervisor Moss said so with a fifty/fifty that means no action is taken on this item.

Supervisor Johnson said no it means it goes down.

Supervisor Watson said no it goes down and so thank you.

Administrator Hendrix said point of order on the one item about the M.E. building I believe we needed to reject all bids as a formal action is what I am being told by staff.

Chairman Angius said okay which one is that, 38? Administrator Hendrix said that would be 38, yes. Chairman Angius said so back to 38 which is the discussion and possible action proposed county morgue, reconsideration.

Motion was made by Supervisor Johnson, seconded by Supervisor Moss and was carried unanimously for reconsideration of Item 38.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Johnson and was carried unanimously to reject all bids associated with the proposed county morgue.

ITEM 41: Discussion and possible action RE: Filling the vacancy of the Clerk of the Board by advertising for the position. Supervisor Johnson said is that not covered in the other item.

Chairman Angius said no that was just interim. Supervisor Moss said no that was just interim, we need to find the, we need to find a permanent Clerk of the Board.

Supervisor Johnson said I put this on the agenda to see if the Board wanted to go out for advertising to fill the vacancy left by the leaving of our Clerk.

Chairman Angius said I definitely think that we should do that.

Supervisor Moss said I would agree. He then said I move that we direct county staff to advertise the vacancy for the Clerk of the Board position, the availability of the Clerk of the Board position and that the advertising go for some designated period of time such as, Supervisor Johnson?

Supervisor Johnson said probably just, do we have our HR gentleman here, it kind of depends if anyone puts in for it or not.

Supervisor Moss said he was going to say fourteen days. Supervisor Johnson asked what would you recommend, thirty days enough or do you have any idea how long it would.

Ken Cunningham, Director of Human Resources, said with our current Neogov system, Supervisor Johnson, we can post the job and the job will go out on the internet as soon as we post it and lately we have been getting twice as many applicants as we have normally so if we post it for ten business days at that time we can review how many applications that we have, bring it to the Board, and then the Board can decide whether or not to extend it from that time forward.

Supervisor Johnson said how about if is it possible that we can make a motion to advertise, a continuing advertisement, but having you bring it back in ten days, you know subject to the Board shutting it down at any time we want, can we do it that way.

Administrator Hendrix said to get qualified applicants if you’re wanting to go out to the public, I think it’s reasonable to say that somebody needs about thirty days to put some proposal, to be able to see the application that we have a vacancy and provide us with a resume and an adequate application so if you’re wanting to extend it, you know whether it be area wide or nationwide that little expense with Neogov I think a minimum amount of time. Mr. Cunningham said Neogov we’ve already paid, it’s part of our maintenance fee.

Administrator Hendrix said yes I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about getting an adequate group of applicants in a reasonable amount of time; it’s about thirty days I would think would be a minimum.

Supervisor Johnson said he would think he would have no problem with a motion that says ten days, if we don’t get them, we continue the advertisement going but if within ten days or fourteen days we review it every time.

Supervisor Moss said I’m going to withdraw my motion and I’m going to restate it.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Johnson and carried unanimously to direct county administration to advertise the vacancy of the Clerk of the Board position for a permanent filling via advertising and that at each subsequent Board meeting from now that all applicants are brought to us for review and consideration and potential further action.

ITEM 42: Discussion and possible action RE: Authorize Supervisor Moss to expend funds of approximately $1,799.00 plus tax (or other amount) from the District 5 office account to replace the refrigerator at the Mohave Valley Food Bank. (Requires unanimous consent of the Board)

Supervisor Moss said if I may, there are two food banks, kitchens, in District 5 that I’m aware of; one is in Golden Shores and the other is in Mohave Valley. He said the Mohave Valley food banks refrigerator is not working and they need a replacement. He further said they came to me asking if I could assist in that endeavor and I was informed by staff that I would have to identify a funding source and come to the Board and obtain a unanimous vote on that. He said I checked my office budget I believe I’m running a significant surplus in it because I’m not spending everything that has been allocated, I don’t buy as many paperclips as I maybe I should. He then said so I have funds available out of my office budget if the Board would approve me transferring it to what I think is a really worthy and publically necessary cause which is aiding those who can’t necessarily help themselves.

Supervisor Johnson said while I see where Supervisor Moss is coming from I believe that those issues like that and maybe your timing wasn’t right and should have gone through the CDBG grant program to fund it and your timing may not have been correct. He said my opposition to that doesn’t come from that it’s just my perennial opposition to funding nonprofits with county money.

Chairman Angius said I want to interject here, I am philosophically against giving gifts of public money to nonprofits, picking and choosing where they go but it is not unprecedented in this county because I don’t think people know that during the Christmas season the Supervisors each get an allotment of, I believe, twenty six hundred dollars to basically give away and I’ve been against it. She further said I didn’t personally take it this year and neither did Supervisor Brotherton and I believe that we at least have to be consistent so either we say yes to this or we say no to all of it, to all of the giving to the nonprofits so that’s sort of my problem with this whole debate, that I believe that you do not give gifts of public monies. She then said we are fighting a court case on behalf of Mohave County on that constitutional base so I have a whole problem with the whole thing.

Supervisor Moss said the monies which are allocated to each Supervisor was not just to nonprofits, it is more specifically it’s directed to food kitchens and food banks, it’s a very limited category and that is within our legislative, I believe, our legislative powers subject to the Board approving it when it comes to providing for the health and safety and welfare of county residents. He then said but that’s a philosophical point and I understand your philosophy, I understand that there are a lot of people who fall through the cracks in the Mohave Valley area, in the Fort Mohave area who are very, they’re destitute and that there has to be some source of aid. He said these food banks and kitchens do receive considerable assistance from the private sector but this is something which has hit hard and it’s something that they need to have fixed and replaced if they are going to continue to provide adequate service. He further said the money is available and so it’s really a difference of I guess quantity not what we have done before but how much are we willing to do and I ‘m willing to spend a lot less in my county budget in order to make sure that these people are taken care of, that’s what it comes down to.

Supervisor Watson said Supervisor Moss you should be congratulated championing this item to the Board but it’s quite obvious to me that we’re not going to get a unanimous decision on this so it’s probably a moot point.

Supervisor Moss said well it’s not a moot point until the vote is taken.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss to approve item number 42 of the agenda. The motion failed due to the lack of a second.

ITEM 43: Discussion and possible action RE: Set a Public Hearing for July 7, 2014 to consider a change in fees for Voter Registration charges.

Carol Meier, Mohave County Recorder, said this is my Supervisor of voter registration and if you have any questions she can answer them for you better than me. Supervisor Johnson said we’re just setting this for a public hearing right.

Ms. Meier said yes.

Motion was made by Supervisor Moss, seconded by Supervisor Johnson and was carried unanimously to set a public hearing for July 7, 2014 to consider a change in fees for Voter Registration charges.

There being no further business to come before the Board of Supervisors this 5th day of May, 2014, Chairman Angius adjourned the meeting at 12:50 P.M.

MOHAVE COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

Hildy Angius, Chairman

ATTEST: Ginny Anderson, Interim Clerk of the Board