The Carmi City Council will purchase a new Dodge Ram for the Police Department despite going over budget at the Tuesday Nights meeting. Chairman Doug Hays told council members the past two trucks purchased for the PD have had minimal problems while they haven’t been so lucky with recent car purchases. $25,000 was in the budget for a new vehicle and Hays says the current price is around $28,500. The excess funds will come from the tow fund. Aside from dependability, the trucks offer the same basic miles per gallon as the Taurus and Crown Victorias. Hays also says they won’t be taking a vehicle out of commission as is normal when purchasing a new vehicle because the vehicle due to rotate out is Sergeant Buttry’s K-9 Unit.
Bob Duckworth has been re-appointed to the Police Commission for a three year term through December 31st of 2018.
The Street & Alley Department will seek bis for a new or used with full warranty mini track hoe. The trouble the city’s had with their current vehicle has caused employees to have to take it out of commission and the city has been contracting work out to Jimmy Jordan.
The council decided to table the lone roof bid for the Carmi Water Barn. Tie On Roofing was the lone company to submit a bid after the ad appeared in the Carmi Times. While council members agreed Hank Matz had generally given the lowest bid for several past projects, council unanimously voted to run the ad again in the hopes of getting at least a few bids.
City Clerk Brian Allen detailed the renewal of risk management insurance for the City. Allen says the exposures went up, but that was because the city was left unprotected in the past on certain structures. Beyond that, he says that property values were valued about 40% too low. Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Managementn Services who sells the insurance tells Allen that Carmi is an excellent risk and because of that, they’re able to keep the overall premium increase to $111,314 to a minimum.
Council also had to make a cosmetic wording change to appease the Illinois EPA in a resolution prohibiting the use of groundwater as a potable water supply by the installation or use of water wells or any other method.
Council passed Ordinance 1495 authorizing the loan agreement with the public water supply loan program for replacement of the high service pump station at the water wells and the Blue Goose Pump Station.
Finally, in reports from the mayor and committees, Mayor Pollard called on David Coston to talk about IMEA and potentially adding another meter point at the power plant. Coston said the short power outage just before 8am Tuesday morning was caused partially by the governors on the generator malfunctioning while maintenance was being performed. Coston wasn’t there to tell the council to make a decision about a multi-million dollar project, but did say council members needed to start looking at doing some things to upgrade the system, saying, “We have and will continue to lose reliability if we do nothing.”
