Judy Mooney doesn’t mind helping out some in her retirement, and that makes members of the Mattapoisett River Valley Water Supply Protection Advisory Committee and Water District Commission very happy.
The recently retired Town of Marion finance director agreed on Tuesday to serve both arms of the MRV as treasurer, a part-time job that the MRV is happy to compensate at the standard $34 per hour it pays out to contractors.
Mooney’s assistance will take a load off the minds of Henri Renauld and Jeff Furtado, who mainly in name remain respective commission and committee member treasurers in compliance with established protocols.
The Town of Fairhaven is the hometown of the MRV for the purposes of financial management, and staff additions and the division of information streams had rendered fact-finding a more cumbersome duty of late. Having worked with the personnel involved, Mooney indicated confidence she can do the job.
September 10 was also the occasion for the reorganization of both the commission and committee, and the membership voted to keep everyone in their current roles, both arms retaining Vinnie Furtado as chairman and Renauld as vice chairman. Marion Department of Public Works engineer Meghan Davis will continue to serve the committee as clerk.
In seeking the commission’s approval of $67,064.09 in paid invoices for the month of August, Renauld’s report included $15,240 in invoices related to capital projects from engineering firm Tata & Howard, over $10,000 from Borden & Remington and a compressor costing approximately $8,000.
Renauld told Mooney he would like to upgrade the monthly treasurer’s report to cross-reference with the Town of Fairhaven.
“A spreadsheet wouldn’t be bad if we could have one,” said Renauld, who had just completed a transfer of a little over $300,000 from Unibank to Rockland Trust. The funds, set aside for emergency situations, will now be in one account, making them easier to follow and easier to reconcile.
Mooney indicated that she will review all angles of the MRV’s financial mechanics.
Member David Pierce asked if Mooney’s review could reveal, “What funds we still have that we’re not seeing in the monthly reports,” relative to the annual budget. Mooney said she can handle that as well.
During the committee meeting that preceded the commission’s, Jeff Furtado reported a total ending balance of $192,210.09.
Where it concerns the Water Treatment Plant filter-upgrade project, Tata & Howard engineer Jon Gregory sought guidance as to how the commission wishes to pull together the firm’s Engineering Construction Services Agreement now that the bidding season is upon the MRV.
Gregory reported that the general bidding opens on October 3, after which Tata & Howard will be pushing to get contracts approved by the state Department of Environmental Protection and then start construction as soon as possible.
Gregory said he needed a district-commission vote to authorize Vinnie Furtado to sign and execute the agreement. Citing the next regular meeting on October 8, Vinnie Furtado said if necessary, the MRV could call a meeting before that date so as to not hold up Tata & Howard’s timetable.
Legal counsel Blair Bailey said, while the MRV does not want to miss a beat, it needs to have to have a definitive number or a not-to-exceed figure in the agreement. He also hinted at scenarios where the agreement could either phase in parts or acknowledge multiple contingencies. “I do think we need more information,” he said.
Gregory anticipates knowing more before the October 8 meeting and would share that information with Bailey.
Mattapoisett Town Administrator Mike Lorenco, a commission member, suggested the possibility of dividing the construction services for the filtering project from the construction services for the ultra-violet light system, but Vinnie Furtado wanted to be certain the UV services don’t get left behind, especially after he sold Fairhaven Town Meeting voters on that segment of the project before they voted to appropriate $4,300,000 toward the project.
Gregory explained that the intention has never been to consider dropping the UV portion of the project, only segmenting the funding to guarantee certain successes in sequence. “It’s set up so it can be added in the future,” he said.
Gregory didn’t think it beneficial to set up an October 1 meeting.
“It’s a little too early to tell if we need to do that … maybe in a couple of weeks (we’ll know),” he said.
A conference was scheduled at the plant on Wednesday morning to welcome potential bidders. The deadlines to file subcontractor bids such as electrical is September 19 at 2:00 pm. General contracting bids open on Thursday, October 3, at 2:00 pm.
At last count, Gregory estimated 15 bid sets had been out to general contractors or electrical subbidders. “There’s been some good interest in the project,” he said.
In his Treatment Plant Operations update, Renauld said they had to replace a compressor after a seal let go on a low-lift, circulation pump, resulting in a significant leak. Weston & Sampson, he said, is looking at it with an interest in making the fix. Renauld is also looking to get bids on cleaning the plant’s backwash tanks.
Renauld told member Nick Nicholson that the $91,000 in tornado damage to the transfer switch at the plant was not covered by the insurance company, which determined that the malfunction is age and not storm-related. Nonetheless, Mattapoisett appropriated funds the town received for tornado relief to pay that bill. Lorenco said any tornado money remaining would help offset the $6,800 effort to clean up a section of the property by the sand-bed fencing along Tinkham Lane. Renauld was authorized to spend maintenance funds to get that work completed.
Gregory anticipates having the 2023 hydrologic river-monitoring report ready for the committee’s consumption at its next meeting.
Emergency Response Preparation training will be held on November 7 at the Marion Music Hall.
The next public meetings of the MRV Water District Commission and Water Supply Protection Advisory Committee are scheduled for Tuesday, October 8, at 3:30 and 4:00 pm.
MRV Water District Commission/Water Supply Protection Advisory Committee
By Mick Colageo