White Hall tables hiring company to maintain ordinances

By Editor | January 17, 2024 |

By Carmen Ensinger

The first item on the agenda for White Hall City Council at their Jan. 9 council meeting was to hire Lexipole to maintain the city ordinances and the employee handbook.
Alderman Ryan McMillen had been doing research on the company for the council and said that at the last meeting there was discussion of having the ordinances codified.
“At the last meeting, there were some issues reading through the employee manual,” he said. “It has not been updated since 2014. I’m not sure what policies have been added or changed since then and it’s the same way with the city ordinances. People come in here to look at the big book of city ordinance and there is no rhyme or reason to it.”
McMillen said he reached out to Lexipole, a company that will digitize the city ordinances and maintain the employee manual as well as keep up with the labor laws.
“We add our specific employee policies to this manual and they maintain it,” McMillen said. “They will also take all our ordinances and put them on a website to make it easier for everyone to be able to see.”
To put the ordinances on a website, there is a one-time fee of $3,500 and to do the handbook is roughly $5,000. To maintain the city handbook and the ordinances would cost roughly $5,000 a year.
“To me, it is crucial with some of the issues we are deal with,” McMillen said. “Such as not having up to date plans and procedures in our manuals. Having city ordinances available to pull up online is better than having them come up here and flip through the old book.”
One alderman asked about the company itself.
“I had a meeting with them and that is all this company does,” McMillen said. “The Sheriff’s Department uses this company for their employee manuals and policies and they come highly recommended. To deal with some of the stuff we have to deal with as alderman and not have up to date manuals is tying our hands.”
While McMillen was clearly hoping the council was ready to vote on the issue, City Attorney Bill Strang said it needed more investigation before it was voted on.
“I haven’t dealt with Lexipole before,” Strang said. “I looked at their website to find information about them and I couldn’t find where they will do city ordinances. I saw where they do policies and handbooks. That might be something they added, though.”
That was just one issue he had. The other issue was regarding the cost.
“I recommend before you agree to anything you get them to send you what all this is going to because we had trouble with some of these in the past where the indicate one cost then they leave something open ended and it ends up costing a lot of money,” Strang said. “I agree with the idea you need to do something – you just have to be careful that you get it all down in writing what they are going to do and what it is going to cost.”
Another thing that Strang brought up that he didn’t think McMillen or anyone else at the city had thought about was the amount of time and commitment on the part of the aldermen and office staff and others involved in the process in getting these two things done.
“Once they start this, they have to have help from everyone at the city,” Strang said. “This is a major project. Essentially you are rewriting all of your laws. If they are going to review and correct them, they are going to send out huge emails to look over and determine whether or not we want to make the change.”
Strang knows what he is talking about because the city of Carrollton just did this same thing in the last year or so. It took well over 18 months to be completed and a lot more than the quote that McMillen was given.
“I want to see a detailed description of what they are going to do for the prices you were quoted,” Strang said. “Because I would be super surprised if that same thing by another company wasn’t $30,000 to $40,000. I think we need to make sure we know what it covers. I recommend we table it until we see a contract from them.”
McMillen said the quote was good through March and the council voted to table the motion until at least next month.