Carrollton Council discusses summer help
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By Carmen Ensinger
A seemingly simple item on the agenda – the hiring of summer help for the city of Carrollton, turned into quite the discussion. Mainly because it wasn’t put forth by the right committee.
The hiring of part-time summer help is something which comes under the personnel committee, but when Mayor Mike Snyder brought it up for discussion and possible action he made the following comment.
“I put this on the agenda without thinking that the personnel committee hadn’t had time to discuss it,” Snyder said.
Personnel Committee Chairman Larry Gillingham said his committee would meet and talk with the Director of Public Works (Steve Rosentreter) and see what his feelings are on the subject and that the committee would make a recommendation at the April meeting.
Alderman Tim Reif, who asked to have the item put on the agenda in the first place, explained his reasoning behind it.
“I talked to the street and alley committee, two of which are on the personnel committee and they said it was okay,” Reif said. “So that is why we went ahead and put it on there. It is common practice and its what we have done for the last several years.”
Reif said the goal was to “get ahead of the game.”
“I know my son doesn’t live in town, but he has already got a job for the summer,” he said. “And if we wait, these other lawn mowing places are already hiring people.”
Reif said all he wanted to do was to basically take applications for the personnel committee to look at.
“That is what this is for – just to approve for the personnel committee to get applications and let them have a chance to go through them and maybe do interviews and not wait until the last minute,” he said.
Mayor Snyder asked if there were any who had already applied.
Rosentreter said that whenever they went looking last year he tried at the school and talked to teachers and they didn’t’ have any recommendations and no one wanted to put in an application.
Alderwoman Bernie Faul asked if the city had to pay them minimum wage because at the pool if they are under 18 years of age they are not required to pay minimum wage.
“The Public Works Department has always paid them minimum wage,” Rosentreter said.
Snyder at first asked for a consensus from the council and then changed his mind.
“I don’t want to step on the personnel committee’s toes,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking on that one. So, we will let the committee met and we will just table this tonight.”
The council approved rebuilding a pump at the sewer plant for the sand filter room.
“We had one rebuilt years ago and we just had to put it in and it worked great,” Rosentreter said. “We went ahead and got some bids on rebuilding the one that just went out and also priced a new one. There is a big difference. To get it rebuilt is right around $5,800 and a new one is right at $20,000.”
Rosentreter said they need the extra pump as a backup and while the rebuilt pumps only come with a 30 to 60 days warranty, the pump they just installed had sat for eight years before it was installed and it fired right up. The council agreed to the rebuilt pump at a cost of $5,865.70 with the money to come out of the sewer maintenance fund.
The council also approved having Brotke Well and Pump come and perform a maintenance test on the city’s wells at a cost of $3,618.
Jaime Headen with Benton and Associates was in attendance to give the council and update on the city’s projects.
On the water plant project, Headen said they will be getting bids for the water treatment plant at the end of March.
“Hopefully, at the next meeting we will have those bids to review and go over the budget and make an attempt to award the project,” Headen said. “From that point, we will submit the bid packet to the EPA and hope to get a loan agreement from the EPA in May and then really kick off construction in probably the middle of summer.”
Headen said they had a pre-bid meeting recently and a lot of people were interested.
Headen presented the council with an engineering agreement for design services for the next step of the Fry Park improvements. This $400,000 project is being funded by a $200,000 OSLAD grant with the city matching with its own $200,000 in funding.
“The design services will include field survey, design, bidding and construction,” Headen said. “Everything is included in this $62,000 and this amount was included in the $400,000 budget for the grant. Once this engineering agreement is approved, we will get going on the design.”
Headen said it will be an interactive process.
“Once we get going a little further in, you will have choices to make and we will be getting with your committees and the council on these choices,” he said. “Hopefully, we will get through the design over the summer and get into bidding and construction maybe in the fall of 2023.”
Faul gave an update on the Veteran’s Memorial stating that they are $30-40,0000 short of their goal. They have three fundraisers planned. On May 2, Dairy Queen will be giving 20 percent off total order to them from 4 to 10 p.m. and there will be fried chicken dinners at the Eldred Legion on both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day with proceeds going to the Veteran’s Memorial.
