08/17/2005 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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2006 VLAWMO budget discussion and footnotes The Vadnais Lake Area Water Management Organization Board of commissioners listened to the comments and concerns raised at the General JPA meeting of May 25, 2005. Budget questions appeared to remain central to the discussion. Specifically, what were the watershed priorities and how much would it cost to start working on them? The 2006 budget attempts to address more fully the identified priorities in the `Report Card' (of Goal implementation success) and the Priorities Vision sent earlier. The 2006 budget allows for increased effort in monitoring, transferring to the Ramsey County certified lab and doing some biotic assessment. It brings on additional professional consultants to allow engineering, technical, educational, and bookkeeping help. Some of this professional assistance would be sought from other public agencies on a fee for service basis. We would hire a summer intern for 2006 and budget for a website upgrade. Maintenance of the new pipe and weir at the new Lambert Lake project has been included as well as our up- stream projects. The most significant increase comes from bringing on a Water Resources technician to work on a variety of projects including monitoring, Wetland Conservation Act, source water protection and stormwater management activity. This staff person may also help with the new data logging of the automated samplers on the Lambert Creek reach and additional biotic assessment on Goose Lake, Wilkinson Lake or other sites. Increases for this position are also reflected in other line items: office (line item 4), an additional computer (line item 3.b), insurance (5 — workers comp), and training (8). The 2006 represents just over a 4 fold increase from the 2005 budget. Some one -time expense associated with the re- structuring include the Water Plan budget, some of the office, information systems (computers) and miscellaneous line items, totaling roughly $100,000. Footnotes: 1. Monitoring - Citizen's Lake volunteers program currently spends about $800 / yr. to cover our program coordinator, Leanne Lemke who collects bi- monthly samples in the summer from our volunteers, brings them to the SPRWS lab, and writes the report in the winter. Her mileage currently comes out of Miscellaneous budget line. This would allow us to enhance the program, possibly including the purchase of thermometers and chloride testing, spring and summer (ambient). 2. Monitoring - Ramsey County lab work and biotic assessment. We have entered into preliminary discussion to utilize the Ramsey Co. lab, certified for some our parameters of interest, so that our data may be entered into the national database, STORET. About $40 per round tests (P, N, Chl a), 2x per month, 5 months ($400) x 8 basins = $3200. This would allow us to add specific issue tests or assessments which are more expensive, such as plankton