[0:02] all right i'll call the special city council

[0:05] meeting today's friday april 30th 2021 at 6 30 p.m

[0:10] i'm gonna call to order we'll start with the pledge of allegiance

[0:19] in the united states of america and to the republic

[0:22] for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice

[0:35] all right we'll start with the roll call alderman johnson

[0:40] alderman here

[0:46] [Music]

[0:57] here

[1:01] i'm here [Music]

[1:04] so i'll open up the meeting with um [Music]

[1:08] just housekeeping i'm employing montana welsh as the city attorney as a

[1:12] temporary appointment until ratification at our next regular meeting

[1:18] for housekeeping purposes i know some aldermen have already deposited their

[1:22] oaths of office with the clerk's office the remaining

[1:26] elected officials have also taken their oaths of office the

[1:30] city-wide officers have procured and executed the necessary

[1:35] bonds i'm going to provide them to the clerk

[1:38] right now all right thank you

[1:43] thank you is there any public comment i recognize i see dexter johnson

[1:48] alderman dexter johnson is right any public comment

[1:56] [Music] all right hearing none we'll move on to

[1:59] the action items first we have an approval of payroll for april 16

[2:03] 2021 for the amount of five dollars and 393 six cents is there

[2:08] a motion motions made by alderman rita seconded

[2:13] by alderman fehrenwald on the question clerk please do a roll

[2:18] call alderman johnson no aldrin montoya

[2:23] yes ultimate renault yes alderman fahrenwalk i alderman mcgee

[2:31] yes alderman carr hi

[2:37] [Music]

[2:42] next we have item b approval of accounts payable for april 28

[2:45] 2021 in the amount of 409 61 582.61 is there a motion

[2:52] i'll make a motion alderman car seconded by alderman role

[2:56] on the question uh i have a couple questions and

[3:00] a question fair and well it's my first opportunity

[3:04] to address you as new mayor of public congratulations and

[3:07] welcome to the diocese thank you you're welcome um

[3:10] i just wanted to check on the payables that we have here uh

[3:13] when we talk tonight i believe that you said that some of these had already been

[3:17] approved for payment uh can you tell me what those were one

[3:20] but we since we had the meeting i don't think

[3:22] it was actually issued was a contractual payroll clerk

[3:25] she's under the accounts payable because she's not an employee

[3:28] okay i see all right so why is she you know why she's not under the payroll we

[3:32] discussed this before and it's one of those issues where

[3:34] we walked into a lot of vacancies today and we need to address that all right

[3:37] all right um okay any other questions uh

[3:42] i mean i have questions and concerns but um again

[3:46] i i know that services have been rendered and they need to get paid so

[3:51] i will stay okay thank you any other question

[3:55] if not clerk please do a roll call alderman johnson

[3:59] no alderman montoya yes alderman rita

[4:06] aye alderman fearing law aye alderman mcgee hi

[4:13] i'll join a car you can call me mccarr i alderman roll

[4:20] all right

[4:25] all right motion carries we have item c adoption of resolution 2021-10

[4:31] a resolution approving and authorizing a contract with gotham insurance company

[4:35] and a service agreement for administration of claims with scheduled

[4:37] claims management services incorporated for general liability insurance and

[4:41] claims administration with respect to the metro parking lots

[4:44] liability i see attorney orbath the

[4:48] actual agreement should be the actual resolution should be the one with

[4:53] scottsdale insurance company got them withdrew its uh

[5:00] his willingness to contract with the city

[5:03] so i sent you all a revised resolution yesterday evening all right i'll amend

[5:09] my reading to the scottsdale is there a motion

[5:15] motion by alderman fahrenwell seconded by alderman johnson on the question

[5:19] hi hey um alderman mcgee yes um i i think that i mean

[5:26] we should technically have multiple bids uh but i know that we are currently

[5:33] uninsured so and this is imperative that we have

[5:38] this insurance so um yeah i uh but for the future for the

[5:43] next contract if if we can come together on this a little

[5:46] bit sooner that would be great um that's my comment thank you alderman

[5:50] farrell yeah so mr mayor i do have a concern about how this is played out

[5:53] um you know we were scheduled to have met with the last city council being

[5:57] last tuesday and no members of your faction showed up

[6:00] so we didn't weren't able to have a meeting

[6:02] uh as a result of that uh this policy now has

[6:06] gone up and cost about a little over three thousand dollars

[6:10] also we've had to pay a change endorsement of 950 bucks and i'm sure

[6:13] there were additional legal fees so this is now costing the city an extra

[6:18] five thousand dollars which if we had just filed normal procedure

[6:20] it would not have uh so it's a disappointment

[6:23] uh i wish that you had all been here on tuesday so we wouldn't have to do this

[6:27] tonight um i do agree with uh alderman

[6:32] with gate that uh we do need to proceed uh and go with the scottsdale insurance

[6:38] uh i would hope that this you know just

[6:40] would not be something that would happen again

[6:41] i think we share the belief that hopefully this doesn't happen again and

[6:44] i think we both can agree that we've been dealt these cards multiple

[6:47] times in our joint administration as aldermen

[6:50] and hopefully i agree go out to bid and we have plenty of time to renew it

[6:54] before it expires well and i had my reasons from the other

[6:56] night and i think we're approving it now and hopefully

[7:00] water under the bridge well i don't agree that not showing up for city

[7:03] council meeting is acceptable i think we need to get past that we're

[7:06] all blue islanders now we're all in the same party

[7:09] i still stand by my objection to i appreciate it thank you

[7:13] alderman rita um i just wanted to say that nobody uh

[7:16] the communication wasn't there from the mayor

[7:20] the past mayor or from any department heads nobody communicated that

[7:26] the importance of this i had no idea that

[7:29] this insurance was going to lapse the other thing is

[7:33] i do know with my personal like my homeowner's insurance

[7:36] i get a notice months in advance that it's coming to the end so i don't

[7:41] understand how it got to this point where it just

[7:45] expired i'm wondering if it was sitting on

[7:48] somebody's desk or something you know what i mean

[7:51] they let us know

[7:55] we negotiated things of that nature but then it came back

[7:59] the reason why they didn't want to renew it because this is the second round

[8:03] and this wrote i did read this you know

[8:08] but they were but they were both april dates that's why i was

[8:12] yeah i think uh if you address the chair you mentioned your concerns and

[8:19] taking your consideration i think we all can agree this shouldn't happen again

[8:23] so thank you any other comments i'd ask the clerk for roll call

[8:28] ottoman johnson yes alderman montoya yes alderman rita

[8:35] aye alderman farenwell aye

[8:50] aldermanic announcements any automatic announcements i'll give a little update

[8:55] of my day today but i'll let the alderman speak first

[9:00] alvin rita uh i would just like to congratulate um

[9:04] all the new aldermen and the um remaining alderman and um you mayer and

[9:11] uh clerk contello and uh treasurer frasto so thank you and uh

[9:18] it's nice to be be up here with the new board thank you

[9:23] okay so um i was able to kind of tour today

[9:27] i visited the police station and i visited

[9:31] uh public works as well uh city hall um you know i i'm starting to get a

[9:37] grasp on on you know what can be bettered in in the city

[9:44] i i know that some equipment can can be upgraded and then

[9:50] we have some standing equipment that that needs to be

[9:53] uh disposed of so i uh at least i had the

[10:00] the privilege of kind of getting a first glimpse at things

[10:04] but i encour i encourage uh the of the other new um

[10:10] aldermen to uh go and uh you know check out public works check out um the

[10:16] police department and and you know uh get uh get a handle on on what what

[10:20] the the city needs because um you know it does i mean we we

[10:25] we we're working with the best that we can

[10:28] you know but i think that we can we can do better the violet can do much

[10:31] better so and we we need to uh support our staff that supports us

[10:38] so thank you any other aldermen i've got a couple of comments holmen

[10:43] farewell um so again i am appreciative of the fact that

[10:47] we have a new administration and an opportunity to

[10:50] move ahead uh and that's that's a good thing and i

[10:53] look forward to working cooperatively as we can and uh mr mayor i appreciate

[10:57] your sending out the early advanced copy of the proposed

[11:01] ordinance about staffing and so forth i didn't get a

[11:04] chance to look at any detail and uh many of the structural things i i

[11:07] think are you know things that that are workable i am uh

[11:10] frankly very concerned about how the staffing is going to be

[11:14] placed and that i don't think is going to be a slam dunk frankly

[11:18] we i want to work as cooperatively as i can with you i have some pretty strong

[11:22] feelings about it and you know i just hope we can deal

[11:25] openly and objectively about those issues i think

[11:29] we like we mentioned we discussed we need to work out through

[11:33] a lot of things and there's a level of trust has to be

[11:35] built and i openly mean what i said to the ones i had a privilege meeting with

[11:39] so far i want us to compromise with almost

[11:42] everything we do as much as possible um there's some things that i see the

[11:45] vision for the city that i i don't want to budge on we might see different

[11:48] avenues of getting there but i think we all want to go to the

[11:51] same place so i look forward to working with everybody i'll give an update of

[11:54] what happened today also with audrey mcgee we kind of had the same tour for

[11:57] most part um i'm familiar with some of the

[11:59] department heads um we all know there's been a lot of

[12:02] deferred maintenance it's been very apparent

[12:05] uh just in the mayor's office alone first of all i walked in there was no

[12:09] staff the hr director i was informed today resigned last week

[12:12] the mayor secretary resigned last week or was fired no she was terminated last

[12:16] week not to mention all the other openings

[12:19] that we already knew existed we didn't have any real central

[12:22] administration for since one of the directors uh resigned six

[12:26] months ago or so the city clerk has stepped up take a lot

[12:29] of roles my father city treasurer has taken up a lot of roles

[12:32] so we've been definitely a lack of administration and leadership at city

[12:35] hall to run the day-to-day that's very apparent i think to

[12:38] everybody and so i showed up and and i brought tom logan with me

[12:42] and attorney was on call and uh treasurer frausto and we came to an

[12:47] office that was was absent of anybody nobody nobody'd give me keys nobody to

[12:53] introduce me to anybody else but i already knew most of the people anyway

[12:56] tony the the maintenance guy was very friendly to what we needed

[12:59] but it was um no easy transition and there's buckets in almost every

[13:04] office of collecting rainwater the air conditioning at the

[13:07] police station i was notified the other day is completely

[13:10] gone at a 65 000 replacement fee so i had to run and get a contractor to see

[13:14] if we can get up and running temporarily right now until we address that

[13:17] there's buckets in every office there's carpeting held together by duct tape in

[13:20] most offices there's a room full to about halfway

[13:23] point not exaggerating of garbage bags full of

[13:26] blueprints there's cassette tapes from the 70s

[13:29] probably 25 percent of that room there's more stuff that's on the walls from the

[13:32] previous administration meaning the local prairie administration that

[13:36] was never removed most places haven't been painted in 20 years

[13:39] and it's just multiple maintenance issues

[13:42] and there's good parts too we have a lot of dedicated staff that are here

[13:47] we have um employees that have been here for a long time and some that haven't

[13:51] but they're they're here and they were very welcoming

[13:54] but we have a lot of vacancies and we'll get past that and we're going to have to

[13:58] rebuild the city so may i just make one additional

[14:01] comment mr mayor yes thank you i do i certainly appreciate the concerns

[14:05] you have about the current condition of things and i understand

[14:08] that they're tired but i do also see a maybe a bright side to that in that we

[14:13] do have the opportunity to kind of build a new city administration

[14:16] and i guess my uh overriding concern and the thing that i will press

[14:21] on with this is that we need to find the best people we can

[14:25] for every single position and that doesn't mean

[14:28] hiring the people we know necessarily it means going out

[14:31] getting together the resumes interviewing the candidates

[14:34] developing job descriptions and hiring the

[14:37] best person and i i'm not opposed to anyone

[14:40] and i'm not in favor of anyone but i took some of your suggestions

[14:44] if you notice and your reviews that there's job descriptions already being

[14:46] built and what i sent you which we never had before so um please

[14:50] take a look at all the aldermen and please let me know

[14:53] of suggestions but that's really really it on my end it was just a

[14:57] hit the ground running and i've already met with multiple community members i've

[15:01] reached out to some community members that were planning on pulling their

[15:03] businesses out of town to see if there's anything we could do

[15:06] and as we meet and get along i'll let the council know where we're at but

[15:10] it's just a lot of people are anxious to meet with the executive office because

[15:14] no one's been responding for so long and it's been

[15:16] very apparent today especially when people found out the word got out that i

[15:20] was in so it's gonna be a lot of work i

[15:24] expect it to be a lot of work everything i've ever done in my life i've worked

[15:26] very hard on and i want to work with the city council

[15:28] like i've been telling you guys so i appreciate the comments any other

[15:31] ultimate concerns or i'll treasure do you have anything

[15:35] no comments at this time here alderman johnson

[15:38] yes um affordable housing um said they tried to get in contact with

[15:44] some people and they wanted to i guess reach out with the uh first

[15:49] aid giving up the olive branch for the ladies building uh that's on

[15:54] western and wanted to try to make it a taxable

[15:58] income uh by trying to send out having to sit down with you

[16:02] and uh maybe attorney quarterback or uh

[16:15] as we discuss aldermen very interested in also meeting with them

[16:19] thank you is it i think there's a lot of fires but i

[16:25] think it could be very well done within the month of may

[16:30] so who are we going with as far as i mentioned at the beginning the meeting

[16:36] i've appointed montana welsh as temporary city attorney

[16:39] pending final approval at the next regular board

[17:04] thank you any alderman comments if not treasure do you have anything

[17:09] no comments mayor city attorney no city clerk

[17:14] all right so we need a motion for a german making motion we did public time

[17:18] at the beginning make a motion alderman rita is there a

[17:21] second alderman roll all in favor aye aye any opposed nay

[17:30] the city clerk wants to talk to all the aldermen and elected officials on the

[17:33] way out we have a gift and we look forward to swearing in on

[17:36] may 10th which will still happen at 6 30 i will get invitations to you very soon

[17:40] and we want to make it a good affair a good swearing in

CITY COUNCIL: April 30th, 2021 (Special Meeting)

Transcript