White Hall Council fails to overturn veto on dispatch

By Editor | April 16, 2025 |

By Carmen Ensinger

At the February meeting of the White Hall City Council, the five sitting board members approved by a 3-2 vote to disband the city dispatch and contract with the county to do their dispatching.
However, Mayor Brad Staats used his power of the veto to overturn that vote. The council didn’t have a quorum in March so there was no meeting.
At the April 8 meeting of the city council, the only item under old business was discussion and possible action to reconsider the vote and veto.
City Attorney Todd Parish explained the process of overturning a veto.
“It is a two-step process,” he said. “The first step is for someone to make a motion to reconsider the vote. This requires a simple majority of the vote (3-2). However, to override the veto requires a super majority or 4 of the 5 council members to vote to overturn it. If there is not a motion to reconsider then the mayor’s vote will stand.”
The item on the agenda was to be brought up by Alderman Ryan McMillen, but McMillen said he was not going to bring it up for reconsideration. Chances are it would have failed for the second time as well unless the two aldermen who had voted against it in February would have changed their minds. Aldermen Norman Coad and Alderwoman Sue Vinyard voted no while Aldermen McMillan, Todd Pinkerton-Riegel and Alderwoman Pam VanMeter voted for the disbanding.
A new mayor and two new council members, including a new council member in place of Vinyard will be seated next month so anything could still happen.
Representatives from the Greene County Housing Authority were in attendance to get the council to approve an intergovernmental agreement and real estate contract purchase between the city and the housing authority for properties on Main Street in furtherance of the proposed housing project and retail development for downtown.
Eric Hanson spoke on behalf of the Housing Authority.
“We were here a year ago and gave you an overview of what we would like to do and identified some of the property the city owns and what we would like to purchase,” he said. “We have looked at a lot of empty lots downtown to create a façade that would consist of housing for veterans and maybe first floor retail space and a community center and maybe the Housing Authority could have some office and whatever else we could think of.”
Hanson said there are a couple of grant opportunities they can apply for coming up in June and October and that construction wouldn’t begin to start until next year. However, they want to know things are good with the city before they proceed.
“For the most part, we want to make sure when we go for funding we can explain to them that we have an option on the properties and we have some under contract showing we have site control,” Hanson said. “We want them to know we have something to work with and that you are backing the project.”
The board approved the intergovernmental agreement.
The city received two bids to make improvements on the city garage on Bridgeport St. One of the bids was for $21,300 and the other bid was for $47,500. Because of the disparity of those two bids, the item was tabled to go through the bids to make sure the bids were comparing apples to apples.
The council approved the hiring of Jeff Haskell as the campground host. The campground committee also agreed to give Haskell free camping plus $200 per month. Haskell asked if the council would allow his brother-in-law to help him with his duties and instead of receiving the $200 per month if they would apply it to his brother-in-law’s camping fee. The council agreed.
The council accepted the resignation, effective March 16, of officer Taylor Scott.