In order to protect the privacy of members, the list of members is considered confidential. It is board policy that we will assist in the distribution of information that is useful and beneficial to the membership, which may include opinions that the board might not agree with. OWU provides this service as a courtesy for the benefit of the overall membership, it is not an obligation. We will not assist in distributing anything we feel might be illegal or patently offensive. Any refusal to distribute information on behalf of a member would probably be accompanied by an explanation from an attorney.
The plant will be operated in accordance to the Operations and Maintenance Manual. No changes are to be made unless approved by the operator, board and the engineer. Disagreements shall be deferred to a licensed engineer by the board, or to the State Dept. of Health if required. Conference calls will be used when practical. Full policy
The board shall not discuss individual performance or compensation issues in public for obvious reasons. For some issues, such as discussions involving financial planning, disclosing the compensation rates will be required. It is preferred to discuss rates in the context of a board meeting, but sometimes it will be necessary at a general meeting. The secretary will confirm the dates and position of employees or contractors at any time, but the salary will only be disclosed outside of the OWU board with the written consent of the employee or contractor in reference. At no time shall employee performance reviews be disclosed outside the board to anyone other than to the employee or contractor in question. In general the details should not be included in the minutes, since employee performance is considered confidential, just as is a social security number.
Contractors
should be insured, bonded, and licensed for the type of work
being performed. For an ongoing engagement, it is beneficial to have
OWU listed as benefactor on their policy. Casual labor may be used for
unskilled tasks where specific licenses are not required and no excavation
is more than shoulder depth. Casual labor should not be used where
ventilation is limited such as in the the pit inside the Mountain
Lake Dam (See the Mountain Lake Dam O&M manual)
Osha
Trench Safety
Osha
Technical Manual
Loss of pressure is inconvenient for members, and also a presents a possible safety issue. When the line pressure drops below the ambient pressure there is the possibility of dirty water getting pushed into the distribution system through a leak. When possible members should be notified by phone of scheduled outages. If the outage is expected to very long, members should be advised to turn off their hot water heaters to prevent them from abnormal operation. OWU will endeavor to avoid overnight outages when possible.
All offers to sell memberships will be at the price specified in the bylaws, and subject to availability as determined by the board. Under no circumstances will memberships be sold that will result in exceeding the number of connections allowed by the State Dept. of Health (DOH), or the actual capacity to deliver. The board should anticipate inactive memberships will have buildout patterns with more than one connection per membership. The current bylaws allow for multiple connections per membership. This makes predicting the total number of connections difficult. It is better to err on the side of caution and not oversell memberships counting on uncontrollable restrictions, such as DOH approving a plan.
Each single family residence in the community counts as one connection. This is often called an "equivalent residential unit", or an ERU. Guest houses are counted as one ERU in anticipation that some day they are likely to become occupied full time. Presently all commercial connections are counted as one ERU. This may be changed at the boards discretion depending on actual use patterns. The bylaws currently allow for multiple connections on a single tax parcel on a single membership. The fee and rate schedule is "punitive" for high use, and over time it should be advantageous for an owner of two (or more) homes using the equivalent of 2 ERUs to buy an additional membership. (This has not been reviewed or approved by the board yet.)
updated 4/7/2008