If there are no unexpected problems, the Tri-City Regional Sanitary District (TRSD) will soon have offices at the county facility in Central Heights Complex, located at 5515 S. Apache Ave. in Globe.

The board voted to move forward with an agreement with the county to create a central location to store its records and allow the public access to information beyond regular monthly meetings and two websites associated with the project at trsd.org and trsdwastewater.org.

“We’re pretty close to coming to an agreement in the contract, we just have to address some statutory paragraphs,” TRSD Board President Malissa Buzan said in a subsequent interview. “As soon as it is ready, I’ll be signing it.”

According to Buzan, there was extra space in the office complex where she is director of the Community Services Division.

“We had some extra space that is very small,” she said. “The county attorney, Chuck Shire, looked [the contract] over and now all that has to happen is for the county manager to sign off on it.”

Rent for the space will be $50 per year, and it will allow the district to consolidate its records and the public to have access to them. Staffing of the office will be addressed at a later meeting.

Buzan said that Shire determined that it would not constitute a gift of government assets to TRSD and the agreement should be reached by the end of the week (May 17).

In other news, the district is still working on getting a bridge loan to get the project underway and has been in contact with the USDA. According to Lead Engineer Mike Krebbs, the first phase may be broken into “1A and 1B.”

“We’re looking at another option with USDA, that we’re hoping to be able to get together and look at,” Krebbs said. “We’re just trying to get it all together.”

The project was initially broken into three phases to secure funding more quickly and open future phases to a more collaborative effort between TRSD and the Town of Miami and the City of Globe.

Central Arizona Governments (CAG) is also in the process updating the designated management areas (DMA) of the district, Globe and Miami.

“We do have letters of support from the Town of Miami and the City of Globe,” Krebbs said. “We received comments from CAG, so we should be able to go through those and respond and get it to them as soon as we can.”

Krebbs added that the City of Globe in in the process of creating a legal description of its DMA for submission to CAG.

Once that is done, CAG will arrange a hearing with the three entities in order to complete the necessary mapping to help get the project underway.

Globe City Manager Paul Jepson was on hand at the meeting and expressed Globe’s support for the project and give the TRSD board an update on the process.

“We have contracted with a consultant to do that,” Jepson said. “It’s much cleaner if one person takes all the existing information and gets it into one modernized document.”

He explained that having one document outlining the legal descriptions of each service area might save “historical” problems later so that there are not multiple legal descriptions “that don’t quite fit together.”

“It’s gotta be bullet-proof,” he added.

Krebbs said the TRSD portion of the mapping has already been approved by the district board and he does not see any problems moving forward.

The removal of Vertical Heights from the TRSD map and relief to the taxpayers who will not receive service from the system was once again put off to the next meeting.

District Counsel Bill Clemmens said the process is “dragging out” because of issues with financing, so he had to choose which project to focus on.

“There are a number of stats I had to compile and information in order to move forward,” he said.

He said the board should be able to set a hearing date at the next TRSD meeting, scheduled for 5:15 p.m. on Monday, June 10 at the IBEW building located at 1383 N. Hwy. 188 in Globe.

Editor’s note: A previous report on the TRSD in October 2018 stated that Fred Barcón was the initial engineer on the TRSD project. The initial report was done by AMEC but, according to information provided by the district, AMEC was released due to a conflict of interest for work the company was doing for the Town of Miami. PACE Engineering was hired to replace AMEC and remains involved with the project.