The City of Carmi will soon own a couple new utility trucks for the line department. That was decided at Tuesday night’s Council meeting. After a lengthy discussion headed up by Electrical Engineer David Coston, council decided the generator #11 insurance claim money would be better used elsewhere than to continue to work on repairs. Jason Belford was on hand to give council some information with regards to the bucket truck they’ll be replacing. Coston said he believed they could find both a bucket truck and a digger truck for less than $160,000. That discussion also included cooling needs at the power plant. It’s possible council will look at adding some evaporative coolers as well due to the radiator system at the power plant being “in sad shape”. More than 30 minutes of the 44 minute meeting was spent on the topic and it’s taken a large amount of time at several meetings going back months leading council member Steve Winkleman to opine, “
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m pretty well wore out. #11 is a money pit. It has been. We’ve talked about it. We’ve run through it. We’ve re-hashed it and hashed it and hashed it. Let’s go on and get rid of it. Let’s move on. It’s not worth fixing, guys.”
Council also discussed a new street sweeper. The current Pelican sweeper has been “nothing but trouble”. Mayor Pollard will look to acquire some pricing information to be presented at the next council meeting.
City as well as Light & Water employees, firemen and EMA members will be receiving Christmas bonuses, as voted on at Tuesday night’s meeting. $60 plus $5 per year of longevity for full time employees and a flat $60 for part timers, firemen and EMA members will be paid as was in 2018.
Mayor Pollard, in his report, mentioned a new scam that was freshly going around with regards to a robo call stating the caller has overpaid on their light and water bill and to press “1”. The information has been passed along to the police department.
Pollard thanked everyone for participating in the Trunk or Treat held last week. He said there were more than 300 participants.
Greg Brown, on behalf of the Municipal Airport, says that filming for the drag races that were taking place on location have finished. A success, Brown said they asked about participating again next year, and he said he hoped to make it more of a public event next year.
IDOT Compliance has been fulfilled, according to the Mayor and Pollard also reminded folks of the Veteran’s Day program coming up Monday at Veteran’s Memorial Park at 11am.
Councilman Jim Totten reported that the Carmi Fire Department and the White County EMA were recipients of grants of around $875 each from John Melton of Enterprise Products.
The next City Council meeting will be held on November 19th at 5:30pm.
