Montezuma Water Company Announces March 12, 2024 Annual Meeting in Dolores

Montezuma Water Company held its annual meeting on March 12, 2024 at the Dolores Community Center, the member-owned water provider that serves rural customers across parts of Montezuma, Dolores and San Miguel counties announced on its website. The company’s brief posting did not specify a start time for the session or an agenda of items such as board elections, rates or infrastructure projects.

Montezuma Water Company’s posting stated, “Our next Annual Meeting will be held on March 12th 2024, and it will be held at the Dolores Community Center. For more information, please call our office.” The notice provided no phone number or further logistics in the text available online, leaving the meeting time and contact details unspecified in that announcement.

A separate notice from Montezuma County listed a meeting at the Lewis Arriola Community Center and provided a street address and time: “The meeting will be held at the Lewis Arriola Community Center (21176 County Road S) at 1:00pm. For more information, please call the County Public Information.” That county posting did not include a date and did not explicitly identify the meeting as Montezuma Water Company’s annual meeting, creating a venue and timing discrepancy between the county and the water company notices.

The uncertainty over contact information is compounded by a third local posting from the Montezuma Land Conservancy, which uses the phone number 970-565-1664 for event RSVPs. The conservancy’s announcement for its MLC Annual Picnic lists specific contact steps and logistics: “This year’s event will take place at the conserved Redburn Ranch located at 26204 Highway 145. A complimentary lunch and a short program will be followed by an opportunity to take a walk on the property along the Dolores River. Please bring your own outdoor chair. No dogs, please. RSVP by June 8 to ensure your lunch! RSVP using the QR code or link provided, or by calling our office at 970-565-1664.” That phone number is explicit in the conservancy’s materials but is not identified as Montezuma Water Company’s office number in the company’s own posting.

The Montezuma Land Conservancy announcement also lists local sponsors and conservation accomplishments that frame regional water and land stewardship discussions: sponsors such as Dolores State Bank and WildEdge Brewing Collective appear under donor tiers, and funders including the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the Gates Family Foundation are named. The conservancy notes it “permanently protected nearly 2 miles of river on the West Fork of the Dolores” and “permanently protected 2,000 acres of land including a property bordering Mesa Verde National Park and another on the West Fork of the Dolores River.”

Because the water company posting omitted a time and phone number and the county notice omitted a date, the venue and timing for any March meetings remained unclear from the public notices. Montezuma Water Company’s posted line, “For more information, please call our office,” and the county’s instruction to “call the County Public Information” point to direct verification from the organizations to confirm whether the Lewis Arriola Community Center notice and the March 12 Dolores Community Center meeting refer to the same event.