Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat. I All right.

6:00. Uh, let's call this public hearing to order. We have a public hearing for Terry and Shirley Perkins request for annexation. Is there anyone here to speak on behalf of that? No one. I guess then we'll close the public hearing and we'll move on to our regular meeting and call it to order and ask everyone to please rise for pledge of allegiance and prayer. I pledge algiance 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.

John, if you lead us in a prayer, please bow your head, please. Heavenly Father, we come to you tonight, Lord, and as always, we just ask that everything we say and do tonight would bring honor and glory to you. Lord, we just also thank you. We thank you for your son Jesus Christ. We thank you for this time that we recognize his importance. And it's in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen. Sit down. Me kicking down the hall. We almost need the scotch. All right. Roll call. I am present. Alderwoman Denn present. Alderman Kenzie here. Alderman Whan here. Alderman Lewart here. City Administrator Burbridge present. City clerk present. City attorney Weber

present. Public works director Payne present. Chief of police chase. Stacy's absent. Other city staff we got Brent from the street department. Got Mr. Chris McGurt from the water department. And we also have economic development director Carrie Sutterfield. She's present. Present. I'm trying to get a roll call here, ma'am. I'm trying to be professional about this. Okay. All right. Next up is the approval of tonight's agenda. I make a motion to approve tonight's agenda. Do I have a second? I'll second. I will call for the vote. Alderman Whan, yes. Alderman McKenzie,

yes. Alderwoman Dent, yes. And Alderman Lechworth, yes. Next up is the consent agenda. Do I have approval for the consent agenda? I make a motion to approve the consent agenda for tonight. And do I have a second? I'll second. I will call for the vote. Alderman Whan, yes. Alderman McKenzie, yes. Alderman Leworth, yes. Older woman, yes.

I see we don't have anybody. We don't have anybody for public comment. Uh so moving right along, next up we have board and committee appointments. Uh Richard Lebrash from Salem Housing Authority. His term is up and he has agreed to serve another term with their approval from this board. I make a motion to approve Richard Labra uh appointment to the new term. I second the motion. We'll call for the vote. Alderman Whan, yes. Woman Dent, yes. Mackenzie, yes. Lechworth, yes.

Next up's the lime stock uh limestone rock bed approval.

Good evening.

Good evening. Uh yeah, here to request uh 11,000 for uh limestone rock. Uh had three different uh price list. Capital Quarries, which is located in southeastern D County, K&D Crushing over in Iron County, and HCH Quarry below Houston. And uh the rock is just like $2 a ton higher for the capital quaries, but the we get about six trips a day from the quarry down here versus the others three to four loads, you know. So manh hours, fuel, safety definitely plays into it, you know. then on little more unfamiliar roads going to other quaries. So yeah, that's and it uh this will come out of the street maintenance line 100-515-46,530 uh 35,000 was budgeted. So uh yeah, I just moved to purchase uh spend 11,000 in rock from the local quarry.

Okay. from Capital. Yes. Okay. Yes. I don't It makes sense to me to buy from Capital just because it's local close. So, I mean, they are a large company all over the state, but it's here in the county, you know. Yeah. Regardless of ownership, closer makes more sense for the price difference. So, yeah. Yeah. I'm in favor of that. It's like $20. I'm sorry. It's like $20 a load higher from some of the other quaries, but again, fuel, manh hours, you know, it adds up. Don't take long. It does. Yeah. That's six loads a day. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. This time, do I have a motion? I make a motion to approve the limestone rock bid approval, capital core. Do I have a second? I'll second. This time I'll call for the vote. Alderman Whan, yes. Alderman McKenzie, yes. Alderwoman Dent, yes. Alderman Lechwood, yes. All right. Thank you, Bren. Thank you all. Have a good evening. You too. You too.

Moving right along. Next up be resolution number 29-2025. Resolution number 29-2025, a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a memorandum of understanding between the city of Salem, Missouri and the Salem R80 School District for the provision of a school resource officer. All right, this time I'll open it up for questions. I have none at this time. Me neither. I have none. Do

I have a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the resolution number 29-2025. Do I have a second? I second the motion. This time I will call for the vote. Alderman Mckenzie, yes. Alderwoman Dent, yes. Alderman Ledgeworth, yes. And Alderman Whan, yes.

Next up is resolution number 30-2025. Resolution number 30-2025, a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a memorandum of understanding regarding the dual commissioning of a school resource officer between the city correction, the Salem Police Department, the Dent County Sheriff's Office, and the Salem R80 School District. Thank you. This time I open up for any questions from the board. I have none. No questions. All right. Do I have a motion? I make a motion to approve resolution 30 20225. Do I have a second? I'll second that motion.

This time I'll call for the vote. Alderman Willing, yes. Alderman Lechworth, yes. Alderman Kinsey, yes. Alderwoman Dent, yes. Moving right along. Next up, first and second reading for bill number 3694. Bill number 3694, an ordinance authorizing approval of change order number six to the downtown transportation alternatives program tap project contract with Magi Construction Company providing for an increase in contract amount and a time extension and authorizing the mayor to execute all necessary documents. Permission to read bill number 3694. Second reading only by caption.

Yes, please. Bill number 3694, an ordinance authorizing approval of change order number six to the downtown transportation alternatives program tap project contract with Magi Construction Company providing for an increase in contract amount and a time extension and authorizing the mayor to execute all necessary documents. Thank you. All right, you're opening it up for questions.

Yeah, I I need to understand the increase in contract amount. Is that due to materials going up or delays the for an increase in contract amount and time extension? Right. For this item, so this this increase change order number six. Mhm. Um, back I I can't even tell you exactly when, but prior to doing construction, prior to the actual construction project beginning, um, the Bank of Salem was advised by both city staff at that time and by Archer Elgen, okay,

that they would be better off to go with just the the patch, so to speak, not to tear out all the sidewalk and do like the rest of the project. So, they're advised to go that route. So, we've tried that route and we've tried multiple patch material and all of it cracks out. Nothing is going as it should. Um, and so this change order is to go back and tear it all out and do it like we did the rest of the project. Okay? And replace all the sidewalk, the heating pads that are under the sidewalk. Um, as I laid out, the Bank of Salem has agreed, right, to pitch in the 5,000 to make sure this the heating elements go all the way up to the building front. Okay.

The other sections of the project where we put heat pads or pads or mat in, we didn't go all the way to the building front except at the doorways. Yeah. Um, so the bank is pitching in that amount and then Archer Elgen has agreed to split the remainder with the city. So this should fix the problem. It should. Yeah. Like I said, um their glasses wouldn't bond. Well, they would not even just not bonding. They were just cracking out just not even where it was supposed to bond with the other. Not what they used to pull the existing with. Yeah. And they've tried two or three different materials and nothing is holding up like it needs to. Okay. So, just want to make sure that was it. Yeah. I appreciate it, Sally. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions? Any I have none.

Okay. All right. It's time. Do I have a motion? I'm making a motion to approve bill number 3694. Do I have a second? Uh, I think we need to make a correction on this. On on the bill down towards the bottom, it says time extension of 183 days from 81 2025 to 2125. We need to change that to 2126. So, not as written. So just uh make a motion to

So I'll make a motion to approve a bill number 3694 with the modification of time extension of 183 days from 812025 to 2126. All right. You have a second I'll second motion. Yeah. Go right here. I'll second that motion. All right. It's a lot. All right. I'll call for the vote. Alderman Whale or not? Alderman Wh. Let me scratch that one out. Alderman McKenzie, yes. Alderman Ledgeworth, yes. Alderwoman Debt,

yes. And Alderman Whan, yes. All right. All right. Next up is uh reports from all of us. Uh, Sally, I'll let you go first. Okay. So, the only thing I have really to report on tonight um on the table somewhere, unless the mayor's hoarding them. I am. I don't want to share because they might see the mustard yellow color for the water tower.

Okay. So, I'm going to defend the gold option. Okay. So, I've got it up here on the screen also. Um, so first of all, it's taken us a while to get to the point where we're all happy with the logo size. Um, it was about 50. Well, that was an increase of about 50% from what it was before. So, we finally have the logo where staff is at a point where we like the size of the logo. We did talk to the company about eliminating they were going to put it on two sides of the tower and we opted to eliminate one side and make this larger and preferably have it kind of the north north facing as folks are coming into Salem. Um so in that whole packet of stuff that I believe Alderman Whan has there are four different color options that we have discussed as staff. There's the gold. There is the green that goes with our branding. Now, I'm going to point out this up here on the screen. These four color blocks on the bottom. Those are our branded colors that go with our branding. And so, that's why the gold background because it was designed to go with the logo. Um, if we try to put this logo on our blue towers, the kayaker and wave are a blue green and it will not show as well. So, what we're quickly needing a decision on by the company is what color do we want the tower? So, in front of you there,

Absolutely. There is our our light green that's part of our branded colors. Yes. There's the gold, there's a tan, and then there's our standard blue. Where's the tan? I also ran this by Katherine Wyn at the Chamber of Commerce because she takes care of now marketing for the community. Katherine's input was go with the gold because that's our branded color. I think stands out the best of all of them.

I I like the gold. And again, I come back to if we talk about marketing our community, we talk about making an impression. I feel like the gold gives us that best option. But that's that's my input. I know we've talked about it among staff. There are several staff who like it. There are several staff who don't. So, it's there's several mayors. I mean, a mayor. If we tie, do Hey, John, do you want to do you mind sharing those images with the other guys on the other

He's trying to follow my footsteps by hoarding the paperwork. So, give us that nice some colors. And our colors, our branded colors are supposed to reflect outdoors. The red is like a rust red, a soft green, yellow fall colors. So

that's Yeah, that looks better. Yeah. All right. Green up here. So, the other the other thing that I I'll put in here, unless you guys decide otherwise, as we repaint our other water towers, ideally we're going to have them in the same color scheme. I mean, because those are soon as we get the new one up and operational, we'll be draining the Industrial Park water tower to rehab it. Okay. So,

you need us to pick a color. I do need you to pick a color. All right. I already told you the mayor doesn't count till we tie. What's the east side of town think? I like the gold one. Yeah. I'm I'm Come on. Come, come with us one time. You do 99%. Go. 99% of the time I do. You do. Go. Go. Catherine bottom. It's Christmas. It's Christmas. I'm sorry. I can't I can't go with the goat. That's ugly. Well, in the interest of getting home, I say let's vote on it. All right. Say what? In the interest of going home. Let's vote. What did you Say in the interest in the interest of going home in a timely manner.

Does this really need to be done or can they sit on I still can't hear cuz folks are talking over you. Do what? Alderman waiting. She's talking about you. Raise your hand. I didn't see any fingers this direction. Okay. I said in the interest of going home in a timely manner tonight, let's vote on the color. That's up I mean it's not something you can officially vote on because it's not on the agenda, but I do need your input. Oh, can they sit on it on the holiday weekend? So, I have some time to work on them, you know. Oh, right now I'm hearing it's it's 32 gold. That's kind of what I'm hearing. Also, Christmas I can convince you. Okay. Okay. All right. Yeah. All right.

Okay. So, what is the board choice? I think it's the gold. Gold. I think it pops the best out of all the colors other than the white color, but I don't think the white water I know staff is not a big fan of the white. I don't think that that would Yeah. Yeah, the white I don't think the weather would hold up very well against white. I think you'd have to I don't Well, they mildew badly. I think you'd have issues with that. That nice green a little bit blending with the landscape and the trees and all that. You want it to stand out. We want people to see things. I I have to say something about the gold color. Okay. I think if we I think that if we put gold out there

that it's kind of obnoxious. It makes us feel like we're royalty. And I don't want us to think that we're better than anybody else. So learn to say agree. If I had a vote, you don't. I don't know. It's not tied. Okay. I think I have enough input for now. If anyone has other thoughts, please let me know. Please don't rush this. I mean, you know, a different color scheme. Huh? Can you get a different color scheme other than what's offered? I mean, I You got a You've got a color card there that might have something better on it. Maybe we get the guy depending on your Those four were staff's top recommendations.

Can we call a special meeting? No, please. Let's not. It's colors. Okay, that's what I had. Thank you. You're welcome. Let me have the word crayons. Where are we at now? All right. All right. So, let's move right along. Carrie, do you have anything to report on tonight? Okay. So, I see that I noticed Stacy has something for finances. She has a staff summary report. Does anybody want to review that or you just want to wait on her to? Well, I figure you all can read it unless you have questions. I don't.

Well, I just make sure that I covered everything in the agenda. If not, I get the eyebrows. So, just check. Okay. All right. Steve, you want to come do your report and I'll finish mine after you're done? Good evening, mayor. Alderman, I'm going to run through this pretty quick. Uh, wastewater treatment plants healthy. The water department has uh repaired several line repair uh leaks as well as four main breaks in the past two weeks. Uh, the hard freeze and then the fast thaw caused us some upheavalss and problems in the lines. uh the electric department, the new superintendent has began uh training with our guys and kind of uh helping them with newer uh things that he learned while he was over at Inner County and acquiring more parts for emergencies uh for the city of Salem. Replaced and removed several poles over the past two weeks as well. So, that's kicking up a notch for sure. Construction crew began building a set of stairs over at the city park. uh finished dirt work and seating and strawing off of Bergman. Street department trimmed limbs out of streets citywide as well as assisted tree trimming crew with dead tree removals in the cemetery. Worked on city street signs, filled in digouts and swept city streets uh across the city. Um I did get a call. I got an interesting call. I take a I take a lot of different interesting calls. Um, someone called and was very upset that he witnessed uh the tree trimmer dropping tree branches directly down into the bucket of a dump truck. And that's pretty standard uh procedure. He was uh the resident didn't leave a phone number. He was upset that uh he videoed it and that we were going to knock a windshield out. And our our tree

trimmer does that on a regular and does not damage the truck. So that's just procedure and uh it takes less manpower to you engineer out the hazard of repetitive motion of picking this stuff up off the ground if you can dump it right into the truck. So enough said. Uh street departments also keeping up on the street sweeping citywide. So the mechanic has been really busy. Uh kudos to John Ruse for keeping up with all the equipment repairs and such. We've had a lot of stuff u just having problems. So John's really good with our equipment. Cemetery crew dug one grave assisted with setup. We hired Paul. I don't know if I've ever mentioned Paul. Uh what's Paul's?

Yeah, Paul that we hired over at the cemetery. Yeah. No one knows how to pronounce his last name. And uh my apologies, Paul. Uh Paul is a real go-getter. We got him over there and that dude is he stays so busy. Um he's constantly letting Brent know at streets like, "Hey, I'm taking this on and cleaning this up and uh uh takes care of the equipment really well. Um just a real good ad to the team." So, I just wanted to give him a shout out. Um multiple cleanup projects he's knocked out. So, that's the quick down and dirty. Um did you have any questions for me? No. Nope. No thanks, Steve. Appreciate it.

Okay. Oh, I wanted to thank uh Superintendent McGurt for coming in from the water department just in case we had any intricate water questions tonight. And Chris has a birthday coming up. Happy birthday, Chris. Happy birthday. Happy birthday, Chris. You 22 or you 23 now? 23. 23. That that reminded me um would you be able to speak to any of the water loss issues like approximately how much we may be losing due to water main breakage? Any numeric for that? Okay. Yeah. I uh actually I would like to refer to let Chris talk about water loss because he runs around takes care of that and calculates water loss for the city. Perfect. Thank you.

Thanks. What we use to uh calculate water loss is Missouri Rural Water Association has got a a what they call a tool online that we use and it it's determined on the size of the line and what type of brake it actually is in the line, how much pressure that your your system normally runs at and everything. And then the hardest part about it is calculating the time when this thing actually broke. And this this tool is a is a great thing. And what we try to do is try to determine how long this thing has been broke or how long it's been leaking. And then I plug all them those numbers in. And then uh it automatically tells me how many gallons a day or even to the hour or a minute that we've lost through that break.

Oh wow. Okay. So it's it's Yeah, it's a a pretty neat tool. All right. I appreciate it. Thank you. Any more questions on water loss?

Uh would there be any other reasons you can think of for uh us losing additional water or not accounted for water? Well, so and I don't like the term unaccounted for water because we try to account for all of our water. There's several factors that go in when I do a water loss statement. Like our wells have analyzing systems on them and every year and well throughout the year we take a measurement of how much because water runs through those 247 and right now those are running to a gallon to a gallon and a half a minute. And you figure that's every minute 1440 minutes 365 days. And then when we run a hydrant or flush a hydrant, there's a formula that goes you measure the size of the nozzle, the height from the ground up to that nozzle and how far out the water is hitting, and that'll tell you how many gallons a minute that you're putting through that. We have factors like the back truck that is the water is not metered. We know how much water that back truck holds. So we can go by the level in it before we start filling it. The street sweeper, the sewer jeter. We just we the city has got multiple things that that take water to operate and we just have to keep a track and calculate how much water the fire department I have to get with the fire department and it's just an estimate of how much water that uh they've actually used and how much the uh outside fire departments that come in and actually get water out of our system. We try if if ahead of time if we've got a company that needs water for a project and uh we set up an account up at the utility office with them if we have a hydrome meter available and we can measure that water and bill for that water. But there's just a lot of water that you just you

can't account for those exact gallons. So it's it's a best estimate deal. The biggest issue was is we like to see lines get replaced with newer lines. In DNR regulations and in lines and streets, the DNR regulations, you got to have 4 in of bedding underneath them, 6 in on top. But if you're in a street, you got to top that all the way to the top with gravel. Do you know what a creek bed is or a river bed? Y

it's gravel. So you can actually have a water mane break or a leak that may not show itself for a long time because it's traveling through an underground creek basically a waterway. So we do our best though to try to determine I watch the ska system religiously and stuff because if you have a big main break your skate system will do that. I like to I'm big on running trends. I was taught when I was real young running equipment to know the characteristics of that equipment and a lot of it is pressure gauges and you see the slightest change you know something's occurring and to start looking for that and that's what I do with our skater system. I like to run trends on it and we've got our water system in such good shape right now that we can almost set our watch by the times that the wells are running. We know when our whales are going to be running and when they're not going to be running almost. And a few years ago, our wells, all four wells run 24/7. And now we see a trend. When I get to work in the morning, 99% of the time, no wells are running. They'll come on a little bit after, right before 7 when people are getting ready for work. Then we'll drop down to usually about one well right before noon time. And this is our wells are running less and less all the time. And thank thanks to our team at the water department. These guys we got now really care about this system and they feel just like I do. It's their name that's on it. They're the ones people see out there maintaining it and keeping it and we're we're proud of what we're doing with it in the shape we've got it in right now.

Awesome. Thank you. All right, there's no further questions. I'll give my short report. Uh 2025 is coming to a wrap. I mean, our next meeting won't be until next month, but uh I wanted to take the time to thank all of our city employees for another year of your hard work, your dedication that you give. Uh you're there when no one else is, and we appreciate everything that you do for our city. Um, I'd also want to wish everybody a merry Christmas and a happy new year and ask everybody in our community to keep those who have lost loved ones and your thoughts and prayers because the holidays are usually the hardest time to deal with stuff like that. So, that's all I have for my notes. We'll move it right along to the alderman. We'll start with all lunch. I just let everybody know I just want to say merry Christmas, a happy new year and hope everybody has safe holidays with their travels and uh just well wishes.

So I want to go ahead and thank the community uh for the shop with a cop benefit everybody that took d or brought donations in for that. Um, and doing so what was published out was about 40 kids were helped in that endeavor to include uh five additional with the uh the angel tree that they had at Walmart as well. So I want to personally thank everybody in the community that contributed to that and I appreciate you guys. Um, the other thing I wanted to ask about if I could is, uh, Chief Chase, did we have an incident a little bit ago where an officer got hurt while on a call?

Okay.

Okay. I thought I had heard that one of our officers may have gotten hurt. I didn't know if that there was any validity to that or not.

Chief, can we get you to come up to the podium, please? See, it's correct for you.

So, this would have been on the 13th.

Okay. Uh, our officers got a call about 4:30 in the afternoon about well a little 4:20 4:30 that there was a vehicle that slid off the road on County Road 6150. There were no highway patrol available. There were no sheriff's deputies available. They were on their way, but they weren't close. And so our officer responded to that because it was just 200 yards down 6150. So it was visible from the highway. and Officer Love Day uh carries dual commission because he works with the sheriff's office when he was doing the K9 work. Uh he gets down there, there's a vehicle that is slid off the road. The driver is staggering down the ditch. So, he's not aware if she was injured or you know what was going on. So, he stops, makes contact with her. Uh she immediately became uh verbally combative, then physically combative. She struck him in the face and then in the shoulder required her to be restrained. And so uh ultimately then it turned out she was also armed with a 357 Magnum that she had just randomly cracked all the shots off into the ditch or into the woods somewhere. We know this because the gun was like hot to the touch and had been freshly fired. Uh she had that on her person. Uh he was actually he had to take her to the ground to restrain her and put her in handcuffs. Uh she remained verbally abusive and resistive the entire time. Was ultimately charged charged that I'm aware of with a DWI. Uh I don't know if there was anything pursued. Uh there was a special victim's fourth degree assault because law enforcement uh but I don't know if there was anything came from the firearms yet. I haven't seen anything on it yet.

Okay. So, I appreciate you giving us the inside on that. And Okay. Thank you. And your body cam if you guys would want to review it. You're welcome to that as well. I have that I can get that in a thumb drive or whatever whatever works best for you, CD. Okay. And but he's doing well. Yep. No, he's fine. He's fine. Uh they're used to getting knocked around a little bit. So, all righty. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. And thank your team for me, please. That's all I have. Alderman Wheelen. No report. Alderwoman Dent.

I'd like to thank the community for the support for the community choir. Um it was very well attended and very well supported. We're going to plan on doing another number for the 4th of July and hopefully have that here and hopefully it'll be bigger and better than last year. And I'd also like to wish the staff and all of the people of the city of Salem a merry Christmas and have a happy happy new year. Be safe. Thank you. All right. Well, with that, we'll finish off with I'll need a motion to go into close session for real estate and personnel. I move that we go into close session for real estate and personnel. Do I have a second?

I'll second. I will call for the vote. Alderman Ment? Yes. Mackenzie? Yes. Alderman Whale. Yes. And Alderman Lechworth. Yes. Thank you all for attending tonight.