Annual Membership MeetingThere was a good turn-out at this year's annual meeting and the membership present made some important, far-reaching decisions. First, you approved an amendment to the Bylaws that will protect, long into the future, the Association's irrigation water right.
Non-Use of Irrigation Water
The bottom line is that everyone needs to put a priority on getting water on their property in some way that the Department of Ecology recognizes as a beneficial use. This essentially means raising grass or another crop, grazing animals, or, as a last resort, permitting the Association to lease their allocation of water to someone else who'll put it to beneficial use, usually Aston Estates.
Getting and keeping Vista Vu green enhances all our property values and quality of life. Any board member can help you access the knowledge that we have in the neighborhood for designing irrigation systems. This doesn't have to be unreasonably expensive. We'll inventory your existing resources and make recommendations for free. Contact any board member.
Roscoe Howard elected to Board of Trustees
The membership unanimously approved a motion nominating Roscoe to fill the position vacated by outgoing Trustee Dean Harrison. Roscoe's term is for three years.
Spring Raft Installation Work Party
We will be installing the raft on Friday, April 8th, starting at 8:00 a.m. We chose a weekday to avoid overtime charges for the boom truck rental, even though this means some members will be working and unable to participate.
Also, weather permitting, we will be burning the brush that we cleared for fire prevention last August when the wildfires were jeopardizing the pump house.
This is an all hands event. There's lots of tasks that don't require physical strength or agility. Please participate if you can.
Operating Schedule for Irrigation Water
We operate our irrigation system on a 48 hours on, 36 hours off schedule. When meteorological conditions measured at Omak Airport warrant it, we will run 24/7. These conditions are:
- Air temperature 95 deg. F or more and wind under 10 mph, or
- Air temperature 90 deg. F or more and wind over 10 mph
We will shut down the system early if we have 1/4" or more of rain in a 12 hour period, and resume pumping at the start of the next 48 hour cycle.
We will make every effort to inform the membership about irrigation schedule changes using e-mail, texts and phone trees.
Domestic Pump House - Daily Inspections and Irrigation Start Up/Shut Down
The board will be providing training days this spring for any member who wants to learn the procedure for both domestic and irrigation systems. Stay tuned for more details.
Non-Participation Fee
Because we have association members who are volunteering many hours of time to keep everyone's costs low, we need to be fair about members who are unable to participate in the minimum requirement of taking two weeks for domestic pump house checks, and two weeks of irrigation startup and shutdown duty, (or more time on the domestic checks if you're uncomfortable starting up and shutting down the irrigation system). While not in our bylaws, this requirement has been Board policy for many years, but has not been consistently enforced. The Board at its March meeting adopted a $200.00 annual charge for any member who chooses not to participate in the tasks described above.
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For
further information contact: Stu Skidmore, President; Mike Stenberg, Vice President;
Gary Carlton, Secretary; or, Tracy Oestreich, Trustee;
We welcome your comments on the website.
