The Carmi City Council met Tuesday, May 16, 2017, at 5:30 p.m. in the Council Room of the Municipal Building, 225 East Main Street.
Prior to opening the council meeting, Mayor Pollard asked Alderman Winkleman to give the invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.
Mayor Pollard presided with the following Aldermen present: Steve Winkleman, Mark W. Blake, Tracy Nelson, Lance Yearby, Sheila Jo Headlee, Jack Lamont, Doug Hays and Mike Knight.
Minutes from the May 2, 2017, council meeting were presented. Motion made by Alderman Hays and seconded by Alderman Knight to approve the minutes as presented. The motion carried on roll call by each Alderman present answering “yes.”
April 2017 Financial Reports for the City of Carmi and Light & Water Departments were presented for approval. Motion made by Alderman Headlee and seconded by Alderman Knight. The motion carried on roll call by each Alderman present answering “yes.”
May 2017 vendor invoices for the City of Carmi and Light & Water Departments were presented for approval. Motion made by Alderman Winkleman and seconded by Alderman Headlee. The motion carried on roll call by each Alderman present answering “yes.”
Resolution 05-16-17, a resolution to appoint Cynthia J. Attebury as the Authorized Agent for the IMRF (Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund) was presented. Motion made by Alderman Knight and seconded by Alderman Lamont. The motion carried on roll call by each Alderman present answering “yes.”
Ordinance #1525, an ordinance approving TIF#1 Redevelopment Agreement #7 between the City of Carmi, White County, Illinois and Bentley Enterprise was presented for approval. Motion made by Alderman Headlee and seconded by Alderman Blake. The motion carried on roll call by each Alderman present answering “yes.”
Carroll Dozier, Burnt Prairie Village President asked the council to approve an Amendment to the Water Purchase Contract. Contract was originally for 1,000,000 gallons per month, having been increased to 1,200,000 gallons per month on April 21, 1994. The Amendment to the contract requests 2,000,000 gallons per month. Motion made by Alderman Hays and seconded by Alderman Headlee. The motion carried on roll call by each Alderman present answering “yes.”
David Coston, City Electrical Engineer, gave an update on the upgrades at the Light Plant and electrical system. Switchgear upgrades are nearly complete. Upper bus testing has been accomplished per Duke Energy One contract. Lower bus testing is scheduled to be completed the week of 05/22/17. Installation was completed before the IMEA deadline and no credits were lost. Mr. Bradshaw and his crew were very instrumental in helping meet the deadline. Billing from Duke Energy One for the service contract should begin in June. Upper and lower bus generators were successfully ran last week to power the town during an all-day outage when the new transformer was off-loaded at the Bradshaw Substation. The new transformer off-loading was accomplished in spite of the rain. The commissioning/testing crew was unable to complete the radiator installation and acceptance testing due to weather last week and they plan to be here on 05/31/2017, to finish the process. The light plant will be powering the City during this outage. The next step in the transformer process is to connect the unit into the electrical system so it can provide power to the City in the event that the main transformer is out of service. Those plans will be discussed at a future meeting. The design for new street lighting on West Sycamore Street is nearly complete. While the City will own/maintain the new lights, some new poles will need to be set and some fixtures will be attached to existing Ameren poles. The City has a joint-use agreement with Ameren to allow this to take place. IMEA energy efficiency funds will be utilized to help fund this project. A recent outage involving a raccoon highlighted the fact that the City distribution system needs to undergo a coordination study to make sure the substation circuit breakers are set properly which should eliminate most nuisance tripping issues. The cost for this study is approximately $10,000.00 and could be spread out over several billing periods. Several inquiries have been made regarding customer-installed (behind-the-meter) solar panels and natural gas powered generators. The City has a policy to accommodate these requests and they are working with those customers to assist them as needed. The results of the recent Cost of Service Study were presented at the February 21st council meeting. The conclusion from this study was that the electric rates need to be revised to allow the City to accommodate other operating cost increases in addition to energy cost fluctuations. They are not recommending changes in the base rates…only the cost adjustment factors which will be calculated and applied monthly based on a 12-month rolling average. This should eliminate wide swings in monthly electric bills. Generator Rice-Neshap testing will be conducted on July 18 and July 19, 2017. The cost for this testing is $22,900.00. This test is a mandatory requirement by the EPA which must be completed every 5 years for the City to continue to utilize its generators. A motion was made by Alderman Hays to pay $22,900.00 for the Rice-Neshap testing. Seconded by Alderman Headlee. Motion carried on roll call by each Alderman present answering “yes.”
Reports and/or updates from Mayor Pollard
I would like to thank Amy McCarty and her 4-H group for landscaping around the Elks walking trail sign last night. They did a great job.
Starting this week, we are going to be doing some mosquito spraying just in the areas with high water and through the ball park. Later we will start our regular hours of spraying.
Reports from Standing Committees
Alderman Knight: Reported things are going good with the Summer Recreation League. Several out of town guests were very complimentary of our park.
Alderman Headlee: Reported receiving a letter from a concerned citizen, residing in Sunnybrook Meadows, regarding some of the problems we have been having there with the installation of the sewer lines. The letter stated a lot of the time the residents are not notified when there is a boil order etc. and stated basically they do not know whether to drink their water or not. I contacted Jason Carter who has set Van Scott up as an administrator to be able to send out notifications on Nixle, which is the Police Department’s notification either by email or by phone which will notify if there is a boil order etc. I have talked to Mayor Pollard and we are going to try to get the information on our website as well. WRUL, WROY, The Carmi Times, and the Chronicle do make notifications already regarding boil orders etc. For anyone wanting to sign up for Nixle, text the zip code 62821 to 888777 and they will be automatically enrolled. If you would like to be notified via email, go to the Carmi PD Website, carmipd.com, and sign up as well. This system not only will do road closures, boil orders, etc., but will also notify you of the weather conditions and storm warnings. Also, the City of Carmi’s website does not have updated information. We will evaluate who can post information on the website.
Alderman Yearby reported he will not be at the next meeting in June due to being at Portland
Business or Comments from Visitors
None.
Closed Session to discuss personnel and property issues with no action to follow:
None.
Motion made by Alderman Lamont and seconded by Alderman Winkleman to adjourn.
At 6:20 p.m. the council adjourned.
Cynthia J. Attebury, City Clerk
Jeff Pollard, Mayor
