Perry Davis

After years-long disconnection, memorial ground again has water

By Rob Ruth

Wallowa County Chieftain

One of its faces is changing, but the Enterprise Cemetery District’s board of directors continues to grapple with the one major challenge — how to restore irrigation on a permanent, affordable basis — that has dominating its agenda for three years.

Enterprise resident Perry Davis was appointed to the board on Friday, March 13, filling a position resigned by Lee Bollman in February.

Board chair Susan Roberts said she and fellow director George Hill concurred on Davis’ appointment.

March 19 is the deadline for candidates to file for the district’s May 19 election.

Davis’ appointment is through June 30, the remainder of the current fiscal year. He has filed as a candidate in the May 19 election, however. If elected, he’ll serve the remaining two years of Bollman’s unexpired term, through June 2017.

The ballot also includes a second position on the three-member board, that held by Hill, whose term expires this year. Hill has filed for re-election to the four-year post.

Thursday evening, March 12, the board resumed a public meeting it began Feb. 5 to discuss options for restoring irrigation to the cemetery. Like the gathering in February, Thursday’s was well-attended, drawing around 60 people.

Ronnie Neil, public works director for the City of Enterprise, informed the March 12 gathering that city crews had recently completed installation of a new water meter and backflow device at the cemetery. As well, he said, stand pipes with risers and hand pipes “are back in. … So you have water up there as it is now,” Neil said.

In February the cemetery board voted to go ahead with purchase and installation of a backflow device and associated items that would restore water service. Previously, service at the cemetery was unmetered, an issue that came to a head in 2011 when city crews replaced the city’s old wooden pipe that fed the property. To tie back into the system, the cemetery would be required to install at least one backflow device along with the meter. Although the cemetery district possessed enough funds to pay for the upgraded tie-in, board members didn’t want to proceed without first knowing the district could continue to foot the entire bill for irrigation and the more frequent lawn maintenance that goes with it.

Last November, the district’s voters rejected a proposed six-fold hike in the district’s tax levy. As conceived, the measure was supposed to cover the cost of installing a new above-ground irrigation system and pay for regularly scheduled landscape maintenance services. Sometime before election day, though, district officials learned the measure was legally flawed and couldn’t be implemented even if it were to win at the polls.

At the board’s February meeting, local landscape professional Dale Worden briefly presented his ideas for installing an underground system, which he thought could be achieved at a cost below $60,000. For a more detailed presentation at last week’s meeting, however, he had to up his estimate to approximately $84,000, partly due to more accurate information he now had about the main line, which has only a three-inch diameter instead of the previously assumed four inches.

Despite the cost increase, support seemed strong among Thursday’s attendees for the idea of installing a system this year. One of them was Enterprise resident Larry Christman, who urged the board to be flexible in its approach to financing the project. “There are three banks in town and I think they’re all willing to loan money,” he said, and later added: “It doesn’t have to be (exclusively) tax dollars to pay it back.” Christman suggested that a loan could be repaid using a combination of tax dollars and donations.

Also on Thursday, the board and audience discussed the rapidly evolving relationship between the district and Friends of the Enterprise Cemetery, a group which plans to solicit donations for irrigation and possibly other projects at the cemetery.

On Friday, board chair Susan Roberts indicated she intends to be cautious and not necessarily quick in reaching decisions concerning the irrigation project the public wants. She said the district should hire an engineer to furnish a more detailed plan than the one Worden outlined. Anything short of that, she said, wouldn’t be good enough to present to a bank for a loan.

In the meantime, since manual irrigation is once again viable at the cemetery, Roberts plans to enlist the unpaid labor of the work crew supervised by the county’s Parole & Probation Department.