Carmi Council Tackles Salaries, Library Roof, Christmas Bonuses and More Monday Night

A year ago, Lacey Bradshaw balked on Christmas bonuses for city employees, but not because she wasn’t in favor of them.  She said on November 8, 2023 that the $60 plus $5 per year of longevity wasn’t enough.  More at https://www.wrul.com/local-news/council-balks-on-christmas-bonus-til-next-meeting.

Two weeks later, council approved those bonuses as laid out with Bradshaw continuing to vote no.  Mayor Jeff Pollard explained at the time that there wasn’t enough time to make changes for last Christmas and the wording needed to be looked at due to their union status.  He said it could be looked at after the first of the year and changes could potentially be made while getting it in the budget.  More at https://www.wrul.com/local-news/christmas-bonuses-stay-the-same-for-carmi-employees.

A year later, and nothing much has changed.  Council voted to continue the same bonus structure in place for at least the last 15 years with Bradshaw again voting no.  Part time employees will get a flat $60 bonus.

Also, Monday night, council approved invoices to pay O’Daniel Trucking for the new parking lot south of the post office amounting to $35,175.50 as well as invoices for generator installation to Marshall Electric amounting to $37,805.50.  Mayor Pollard said the new generator paid off already with the lengthy outage last Thursday.

And I will say that it was nice having the generator here.  Because we were actually able to answer the phones to where when people were calling and wanting to know and what was going on to where we could actually communicate with them.  Where if we didn’t have the generator, then you wouldn’t have been able to have communication so it was nice that we could still be open and be able to communicate with everybody and let them know what was going on.  And Holly did a good job as far as trying to throw out nixles every hour to give an update on where we were at with things.

That power outage began in the early morning hours.  Electricity was restored for about an hour at 6:15am before being lost for about 4 hours until the power plant was fired up.  City Manager Brad Atteberry was on hand as well to thank city employees and says it was his crews first ever effort at a black start for the power plant.  Now that they’ve been through it once, he says if Ameren were to have an issue in the future that would result in a long outage, he thought they could have the power plant up and running in as little as 2 hours.

There was also lengthy discussion on the Carmi Public Library roof.  The current roof was just put on in 2011 by Scott Brothers Construction, a now defunct company.  There’s been a delay with the insurance claim and the city has received just shy of $42,000.  Trico Roofing has submitted a bid for $38,300.  Following some handwringing, council accepted that bid.

The only other highlight from the Monday meeting was establishing salaries for elected officials who will assume office May 2, 2025.  The mayor’s pay will remain at $46,000.  Aldermen and women will continue to be paid $4,800 per year.  City Clerk Cynthia Atteberry did request a raise.  She cited area city clerk salaries (Fairfield and McLeansboro – $60,339 and $62,007) versus hers of $35,700 plus around $4,000 for serving as the Risk Management Coordinator.  Additionally, Atteberry says over the last 8 years, city union employees have received an 18% raise while the cost of living has increased by 20.9% in the U.S.  Following discussion, council would approve the new city clerk pay effective in May of next year as $42,000 which equates to just over 17.6%.

With no closed session, Carmi City Council adjourned 45 minutes after the initial call to order.