White Hall rescinds motion on water salesman

By Editor | July 23, 2024 |

By Carmen Ensinger

Last month, the White Hall City Council voted to get rid of their water salesman. In case you are wondering what this is, it is the place where people can go and get bulk water.
With the water tower project getting ready to start, the building that houses the water salesman would have to be moved. It was decided last month that the water salesman wasn’t making the city enough money to warrant moving it.
Alderman Norman Coad was not present at the June meeting and therefore did not vote on the measure. This month, he asked the council to resend the motion on the water salesman and look into relocating it and possibly increasing the price of the water being sold.
“I know a lot of people use this service and my thoughts are that we need to keep things going on here that we already have to keep people coming into town,” Coad said. “It is something that people do need for different situations.”
Coad also said that it was mentioned that it was losing money – which is false. Last month, Treasurer Mona McMillen said the water salesman showed a profit of $3,500 in 2022 and $4,800 in 2023. This, however, did not take into account the gas and electric to operate the building it was housed in.
Alderman Ryan McMillen said he looked into what it cost to produce a gallon of water.
“We looked into what it costs to manufacture a gallon of water,” he said. “It costs a little over a nickel a gallon above and beyond the expense of the utilities we pay.”
Factoring in the cost of moving the building to a new location, McMillen said the price they would have to raise the water to to absorb this cost would probably cause those who use it now to stop using it because the price would be too high.
Coad said one issue is that the price of the water being sold through the water salesman hasn’t been raised in 24 years.
McMillen said he reached out to the Greene County Rural Water District and asked them if they would be interested in constructing a building and taking over the bulk water sales.
“They told me they would have to bring it before their board before they could give us an answer,” he said. “Their board was going to meet on July 12 and they were going to bring it up.”
Coad was unwavering in wanting to keep it in White Hall.
“We have the building and people are already coming so we need to try and figure out how to help these people out,” he said. “We can figure out what it is going to cost and price it as close as possible so we are not losing money. The goal is to keep people coming into town. I think we have plenty of options to keep it here. I think everyone made a decision that wasn’t set up with the truth of what was going on.”
Coad made the motion to rescind last month’s motion to discontinue the water salesman and Alderwoman Sue Vinyard seconded the motion. Alderman McMillen voted no as did Alderman Todd Pinkerton-Riegel. Alderwoman Pam Vanmeter voted yes so the motion passed 3-2 to rescind the motion.