District bylaws

Operations and administrative standards for our community water system

The district charter gives the board of directors of the Prudence Island Water District the power to adopt, amend and rescind bylaws that regulate the way in which the district conducts its business. This web page explains the process we use to adopt bylaws and provides links to the general outline and organizational structure of our district bylaws, bylaws that have been adopted and bylaws under consideration. Although we have been working on composing bylaws since the district was formed, we have only recently begun the process of adopting them. When we have adopted a sufficient number of bylaws for it to be practical, a complete text of all bylaws will be made available here. For now, we're organizing our web site to include the following pages:

Use this link to view the outline and organizational structure of district bylaws

Use this link to read recently adopted bylaws

Use this link to read bylaws under consideration

A few words about our procedure for adopting bylaws

Our moderator, David Buffum, has been the principal researcher and architect of the draft bylaws. He has spent countless hours reading bylaws written by other water districts and has edited them to meet the needs of our district, as well as composing several draft bylaws that address specific issues for our community. At each board meeting, we discuss these drafts and David makes revisions based on feedback from board members. When the board feels that a draft is acceptable, the bylaw is forwarded to legal counsel for review.

Once the proposed bylaw has "cleared legal", the board might, at its discretion, post, publish or otherwise disseminate it for public comment. This public outreach will be performed whenever the board believes that the bylaws in question require additional input from the community at large. For example, we are presently considering resource conservation bylaws that we believe should take into account the concerns of the entire district community. These bylaws have been discussed at length during our regularly scheduled board meetings, which are open to the public. After review by legal counsel, these bylaws will be distributed either by posting or publication, or both. The board will adopt these bylaws only after a sufficient period for public comment has taken place.

On the other hand, we recently adopted bylaws covering anti-discrimination practices, which we felt did not warrant distribution or a waiting period for public comment. These bylaws simply outline the district's responsibility to serve the public in an equitable manner... a principal that we believe has the unqualified support of the community.