Town Council - Regular Meeting

I allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you everyone. Uh on the agenda is approval minute from the February 18th council meeting. Any questions or comments on motion to approve by Mr. D? Second.

Second. Mr. Chad, all in favor motion carry 5. Mr. Morgan, any public comments? I've had no request to speak tonight. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Uh first item on the agenda is introduction of new employee superintendent duel.

How's everybody doing? still one of our sponsor

pretty closeadelcome.

You're welcome. Did you have anything to say? Here we go. One, two, three.

Perfect. Thank you. Resolution 5 2026 plan.

That was quick. I'm sorry. It was his fault. But anyway, of course. Yes. Um so resolution five is the uh fiscal plan for the book Walter U annexation ordinance. You've received everything. We held public hearing. Uh if you have any questions about the fiscal plan be happy to answer any questions. Question comment motion motion to approve resolution 5 2026. Motion by Mr. Gerald.

Second Mr. Herby. All in favor I opposed. Motion carries 50. Thank you. Ordinance 1226. Uh Mr. May. Yes. This is the ordinance that actually adopts the the adoption of manic station. Question comment there. Motion move to approve ordinance number 1226 by second. Second by Mr. Chadam. All in favor? I motion carries 5. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Uh ordinance 22026 Lacy.

I am happy to answer any questions. This is the same one we looked at. Yeah. Right. Exactly the same. Yeah. A lot of in there. Motion to approve ordinance 2 2026. Motion by Mr. Chadam. Second. Second by Mr. Gerald. All in favor? All opposed. Motion carries 5. Thank you. Thank you. Uh annual fiscal financial summary. Welcome.

Yes. This is this shows the beginning balances for 2025, the receipts, the dispersements, and the ending cash and investment balances for all the funds that has. It's a requirement that is due to the DLGF by March 1st and this is what gets published in the paper. Yes, I know. Any comments sir? Nothing. Thank you. Uh sweeping contract Mr. Mark

come before you tonight to present the sweeping contract between the town of Danville and uh waste management the actual facility itself and uh there's no changes in this contract. It's the same as we had last year. Um, we've had some conversation with waste management and uh, I think between the two parties, we believe right now the best interest is to just go ahead and leave it as is. Maybe we start working on tweaking it maybe in September or October this year uh, to give each party more time to look at possibilities.

Any questions there? I mean, I guess I would say I'm in agreeance. U nothing's going to change. I would just like to to reiterate like our our costs have gone up on our end, hourly rates, benefits, etc. There's benefits to being able to dump the spoils, etc. Um, and so trying to keep that in mind. But as we move forward, if it stays the same next year, I'd like to see this dollar amount increase if if nothing else um to help cover the the portion of the employees benefits time. And we're looking at roughly a quarter, you know, two hours a day of of some employee down at the street department plus trying to factor in, you know, long-term the replacement of our streets, which is not cheap nowadays. Um, so I'm on board. I just want to say next year I would be in favor of a of an increase in cost here. Thank you for the backend discussion.

Any comments? Motion to approve. I'll move to approve the agreement between the town of Danville and waste management. Motion by Mr. Irby. Second. Second by Mr. D. All in favor. All motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh wish to be heard code enforcement for

good evening. Uh so our first event is evenings in Danville. It's sponsored by downtown Anvil Partnership and Danville Parks and Recck. Um request street closure on Marian Street between South Jefferson and South Washington Street for 5:15 and 9:18. Set up time 3 pm event time 7 to 10 and tear down to 4 a.m. Question time. This is standard what we do every year, right? Same thing. Yes. A motion. Motion to approve special event street closure. Motion Mr. Chadam. Second.

Second by Mr. Do. All in favor? I all opposed. Motion car 5. Thank you. uh this record for first Friday cruise in. So the event is Friday night cruisin sponsored by Downtown Danville Partnership and Street Machines Limited. Um the event dates are 516573 87 and 94. There are no actual street closures. Um but the setup time will be 400 p.m. Event times 5 to 9 and tear down 10 p.m. Again, this is standard that we do every year. Yes.

What's the town doing for them in terms of set up? Um just setting up uh we'll be setting up cones um on certain partners like downtown partnership will be um contacting businesses setting up cones in certain parking spaces with the businesses would like to keep touched off and um Tara with the partnership she'll be contacting the police for extra security if needed people out of the handicap spots Anything else? I'll move to approve the special application for the Friday night cruise. Mr. Second, Mr. Chadam. All in favor?

I motion carries 5. Thank you, Mr. Ford. Thank you. Uh expenditure request many excavator.

Good evening, council. I come before you for request to purchase a 2023 mini excavator. Um, we have the paperwork. Uh, I wanted to add this is about 27% savings compared to a new one. Uh, this excavator has 144 hours and we're were well acclimated to this excavator because the water department had it and they returned it. The uh, Edwards Equipment gave them a brand new excavator because they had they had some issues with it. They found a recall and it's a injector pump that was faulty and now there's a recall for those. So, they found the problem. They put $10,000 worth of work into this excavator since that time. Um, I think it's a great deal, and I apologize that I didn't get other prices, but I do have a price for a new excavator. It's just hard to get an exact apples to apples comparison because 144 hours and the equipment that comes with it.

And what's the price on the new one? The new one is $57,879. The one that we're requesting is 425

question motion move to approve capital expenditure request motion by Mr. Job second by Mr. Irby. All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries 5 Z. Small storm structure repair.

So if you recall, we discuss some small structures that we inherited from the county. This one was of particular interest because it had a pretty big failure in the pipe when we inherited. It was already scheduled to be repaired. That repair was then pulled once it was turned over to the town. Um, and since that time it it's failed more so. Um, we're getting a road failure. Um, this is not a repair that I would typically come before you and do, but I think at this point, uh, the contractor has assured me they will do annual inspections on their repair. Um, and he's given it a 20-year warranty. Um, I think it's what we need to do right now because the cost is low. Plus, it's a main artery to the hospital. Um, and this will prevent any kind of road repair on the surface. Once we get sealed, there'll be a small repair, but we won't have to close the road, tear it up, because when we do that, this is going to be a big project. I think it buys us time till we figure out what we're going to do with these structures financially. Question. I Gary, as you know, I went I went by and looked at it certainly looking at it naturally came off on side. What troubled me about this and I talked to you about it is that when this hit the agenda, I went back and looked at what we got in January from all these and I looked at that particular one. uh and uh when I went through them all back in January, I I kind of tried to put some cost to it and looked at remaining use remaining life and projected out time and this one said 10 year remaining life but seeing this come up for repair now made me question how reliable were all these estimates all the other 35 of them or however many there are and I know we've talked about it but I think just for

public consumption kind of go through that with us again. Yeah, I think it's important to realize in these inspections, these are approximate timelines. It's stated that right up front, so it doesn't put them in a spot that they don't want to be, but also it's rated as a four, which is poor. Um, so when they say 10 year life expectancy, they they are assuming that in 10 years that there's a complete failure of that pipe. Um, this is just one portion of it uh that could create a total failure. So I think you know and it's opinion based you know when you do inspections one person might have this view another one might there's no exact science to rate these pipes they are metal they do fail they rust over time so I think it I think the intent there was to say you know when I asked them to do that I said we want your opinion I don't want to steer you in any direction or one way or the other to shine a light on it any brighter than anything else but I think that the key here is it's an approximate timeline. And since they did that, we've had more road failure. So, I think it actually moves that up to one year, 2026. I think we need to repair it because I'm afraid we're going to lose that road if we continue to let it go. At this point, um it's just really important that it's structural and that goes back to National Gunite. They are a structural repair company. Um it's Portland based cement. they will inject it into the void and then they will put a cage on the inside of the pipe and then they will spray gunite over that. They also bypass water from one end to the other. So, it's a pretty interesting thing that they do. Um, this will be the first one that we've done here that I'm aware of. Uh, the others were done by the county. The county uses the same company. MNDOT uses this company. Speedway uses this company. There's a lot of there's a lot of history with this company and everything. uh goes back to timeline, you know, goes

back to the three, you know, typically I'll get three quotes, but we again it's hard to compare these different ways aligning this pipe. And I think this one is important because it's structural. Um plus they look at it, it'll speed up this process. That's the idea. Did we get three quotes, Barry, or you said typically you do. Did you get them here? No, we did not get three quotes at this price point. That's that's something we need to be doing unless it's an emergency. I would consider this as a complete road, but there is a road failure. So, it is an emergency repair. Um, I would consider an emergency. Okay. Well, we should declare emergency if you're take action at night.

It's not like declaring bankruptcy. You just I declare. So, what would be the process for that? I think there would need to be a motion that you're declaring an emergency for this particular project and um before you approve the contract for the proposal. Mr. President, I'd like to ask the council to move that uh storm structure 022 uh the repairs are emergency and need to be uh voted on tonight. Thank you. Anyone wish to make a motion?

I would move to approve the capital expenditure request to to repair the storm structure 02. Motion from the emergency. Sorry. Move to declare the storm structure repair and emergency. Second.

Motion. Second by Mr. Kirby. All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. 5 I'll move to approve the capital expenditure request for the small storm structure second all in favor salary ordinance miss I'm just wanting to know what you want me to do about proceeding if I need to make amendments to the uh salary ordinance for the um certification pay and for the crew leader position. question, you know, you said uh I think you and I talked to about doing a review of all our salaries across the board and um do you know what that cost is that?

No, I haven't asked I haven't reached out for anything. I just know at the county when we did it, it was approximately $40,000 because I I really think that kind of needs to be done before actually decide which way we're going to go. Certification

coms assuming everybody else is on the board still with certification pay. Uh my suggestion would be that we create a small committee. My recommendation would be Mark, Carrie, myself being utility leaison. As I dug in myself, the other communities, I think there's some real good examples. I would like to change some of the wording um and tighten things up before we officially vote to approve something on our end and just really make sure that we clarify whether that entails a oneh hour meeting, we can hammer it all out, you know, whatever that looks like. But I think there's a couple of us that can probably sit down and hammer this out. As far as dollar amounts go from what I've seen across the board, everybody else seems to be an hourly rates. Uh when you start to factor in benefits, overtime, everything like that. I don't think that $67,000 is really out of the realm by by any stretch. Um but I would like to change some of the the titles for the certification specifically on the the water side. um instead of just calling it one, two, three, four, I think we should break it down into DSM and DSL and really kind of get back in line with with everybody else. But that's my hot take as far as the crew leader position goes. My personal opinion at this point is that we I say pumped, but kick that down towards budget discussions looking for next year and decide if that's something we're interested in at this point. Although I'm open to discussion on it.

Another comment.

I don't necessarily disagree with that. I had thought of that before, but in terms of budget season is when we usually make the big changes and increase salaries and do all that stuff. So to do it in the middle, we're opening up the can of worms, right? If we can do it in this department, I'll let every department come back and discuss raises and and changing and stuff like that. So that is a good point that I had not thought of yet. Um, the one question I had, I love the idea of a committee. Let's get to the bottom of this. Figure out the best way to go for your recommendation here. Uh the piece of it that I'm concerned about is a couple things that I noticed was I think with the uh some of the salaries and the increases and stuff. One concern I'm aware of is that if we stuck to the current method and it wasn't department heads and some people that weren't department heads would be getting paid more than non- department heads. So I agree there is a an issue that needs to address. I don't know the answer but I love the idea in all reality there depending on the amount of overtime that you know an individual could get. You know heaven forbid I know the utilities help out with snow removal etc. Heaven forbid we have you know a lot of snow that year. There is an off chance and I've seen it happen in my time with the town where the assistant was actually the pole more than the department head you go on a couple years in in certain situations like that. But as far as trying to keep that gap I mean that is something that you know are we able to um back pay this. That's another concern. I think we agreed

yes last year that we were going to pay it out for the full year but then we just never really agreed what we were going to pay it to do. So I just want to make sure we can back pay that. We can and it's currently in the salary limit. So it's the money is there. It's budgeted and it's for the whole year. So yes, we can back pay it.

I think some of those salary where their salaries land comes in with that ranking system because then that'll tell us where that is where the certification is, whether we're overpaying, not paying enough, figuring out where a person's going to land. Even if we do crew leader wise where that fits into the whole system but without knowing that we're still just going down the same road and set salary and moving on to that where we're actually sitting. If I may um on this committee so that there's an odd number in case there is a tie. I would like to also recommend that the assistant town manager be appointed to the committee as well. think it'd be a good resource in this future.

I think it's a good idea. Absolutely. Thank you.

And I'm in agreement with that. What I think would come out of some of that discussion is what are the right amounts associated with it? Are these uh are these stacked? Are they separate individual ones? Do the department heads are the department heads recipients of it as well? all those requests that need to be answered. So, I'm I'm certainly okay with that approach. Uh, one other thing I want to raise that I I've raised a little bit two weeks ago uh that's on the same uh ordinance is the cell phone site in for the fire administrative people. I I although it's not a large dollar amount, I'm troubled by the fire administrative people getting roughly double of cell phone site of all employees. I think they all should be consistent. different view. Do you think we want to attempt to change it in the middle of the year or remove it at the budget time? Because I don't necessarily disagree that I get it. I don't know if that's the time to change the budget that was presented months ago and we gave we approved that. So, Mr. President, I'm not really sure what the hangup is. This is all we did was revert back to what we had before. We gave everybody the cell phone snipment and only the three major networks used the the wireless priority service which gives public safety priority, public safety and government officials priority. Um I think I proved my point when uh when I couldn't get a hold of you and you dropped about four or five calls trying to get to me on your $30 a month plan. It's just not reasonable. I can't afford to do that in time of emergency. I need my chiefs to be able to get a hold of whoever they need to get a hold of at any time. And that's it. I just I stand by what what I've done. It's 16 months ago that we agreed to this budget and I I'm flabbergasted that we're even talking about it.

I guess I stand by the position that if if having a cell phone is a condition of employment that all personnel should get the same result. Now maybe maybe if your needs are different perhaps if fire can be included under the same program as chief has for police you just have a separate phone. I don't like that in small dollars. I I think it just looks bad personally. So if I don't understand why it looks bad because all the heads got that amount before.

So it's not like we just out of the blue, you know, threw a number at that. All we did was restore to what was the year before we gave every single person a cell phone stipen. My people that work for me don't need that. There are cell phones in the apparatus for them to use if they need to do business uh on the clock. Um again, we had this talk and you can give everybody a cell phone if you want. I don't see somebody that works behind a desk on normal in another department that needs to go out in the middle of the night or make phone calls in the middle of night or receive phone calls in the middle of a a storm or a disaster or any of this other stuff that goes on when other people go down on the list on priority. It's it's not the same as sitting up there doing water bills. It's just not the same. We forever this town has looked at public safety as the same as every other department. It's simply not. There are certain things that we do or required to do or have to do that are outside of what everybody else does. I don't plow snow, but we expect the streets department to get called out in the middle of the night to plow snow, right? So, they have a different system. We don't expect somebody who uh who sits behind a desk in Mark's office. We don't expect those two girls up there to come out in the middle of the night or be able to make sure that their that their phone is on 24/7, take phone calls in the middle of the night, but god forbid something happened to one of our public safety employees that nobody could get a hold of us.

We're different. We are okay. I I just think I think it looks bad and I think it's not fair, but I'll never if we do revisit that, I'd like to go back and state for the record that public or fire department got a 5% raise and everyone else in town got a five and a half% raise. So we do re revisit the cell phone. I think we need to revisit that race as well.

Take any questions. I'm open to discussing later.

Okay, we are down to com. I couldn't even follow that if I wanted. I don't I have nothing. Mr. Lacy, we have the St. Patty's Day event coming up, too. So, make sure you attend fountain dying at noon and then the race starts at 5. Mr. Jones, anything from your perspective? No, sir. Mr. Nope.

Yeah, be sure to come out for the St. Daddy's Day and the Poke Chrome. Check out social districts. Cool things happening at DDP. I'm kind of keeping on wraps right now, but excited about that. Appreciate it, man. St. Patty's Day and thank you all for everything you do. Appreciate it. Uh all I have is at the last meeting I indicated I'd sent a note to uh our senator and our local representatives regarding House Bill 101 and had gotten comments back from Senator Clark and and uh Representative Stwall about heard from Mr. Tom. I have subsequently received two calls from him on it and he was on board with in supportive of some of the changes that uh that we thought were harmful to us. So I did I did get a response from him in fact twice. Claim do move to approve the claim docket in the amount of $244,927.65.

Motion by Mr. Irby. Second. Second, Mr. Chadam. All in favor? Opposed. Motion carry 5. Payroll docket. Move to approve payroll docket. Motion by Mr. Irby. Second. Second by Mr. Gerald. All in favor? I. All opposed. Motion carry 5. Motion to adjourn. So move second. Mr. Gerald, all in favor is a journ. Thank you everyone.