All Aldermen were in attendance at these committee meetings.
Parks, Playgrounds and Recreation & streets, Sidewalks, Drainage and Public Works (Joint Committee Meeting)
• Presentation of Veterans Memorial
Floyd Crowder presented the Oerter Foundation’s plan for the new veteran memorial that will be located on Parkview near the elementary school. He presented a plan for five granite benches memorializing the five branches of the US military circling a center granite pedestal that is topped with an original bronze cast sculpture of an “American Freedom Fighter with a Palestinian Girl”. Construction should begin soon and everything should be completed in time for an unveiling on Veterans Day in November.
If any trees in the area are removed in the construction of the memorial Floyd said the Foundation will replace them.
License, Insurance, CEMA and Contracts
• Alert Now Emergency Notification System
A presentation was made by an AlertNow representative. This is the same system in use by the school district right now to automatically call parents when snow days occur. It can be used to send messages via email, text message or phone message. The city will pay $1 per a household to use it for emergencies only. Each household can have a combination of 15 phone numbers or emails associated with it. The system can process 1000 numbers every ten seconds. So it could alert 9000 residents in thirty seconds.
Chief Edwards would like to use this system as an alert for tornado warnings or boil orders and to narrowly alert a portion of a neighborhood of recent burglaries or other similar things.
The primary source of the phone numbers to begin such a list would come from the sewer and water billing database and others could be entered as they elect to be.
The council liked the idea but it was decided a policy would need to be developed before such a system would be purchased or implemented. This is a cheaper alternative to expanding the current tornado siren system to cover the entire city and it would allow for many other uses as well.
I personally could see how these messages could get way out of hand if too many people had access to sending messages so I am glad a policy is going to be developed first.
Refuse Collection and Recycling
• Contract Discussion
Hejna led a discussion on renegotiating the services provided by Reliable Sanitation. The city would like to have more businesses involved in recycling have more recycling containers in the parks. It was decided that Al Hudzik will talk with other communities about what services and fees they pay for their refuse collection. Reliable’s fees have always gone up based on the CPI and Reliable would like to have their contract based on a dollar amount increase and not this index.
The city may go out for bid on the refuse collection. They will wait to see what Mr. Hudzik finds out.
Municipal Buildings, Property and Capital Improvements
•Police Station Roof Repairs
The roof repairs began on August 21 and should be completed by the 28th. In the process or replacing the roof it has come to everyone’s attention that the duct work on the roof of the building needs to be replaced as it will let water into the building. The ducts were removed to replace the roof and their poor condition coupled with the disassembling and reassembling will only cause them to be in a poorer condition after the fact. An early estimate from the HVAC rep helping with the roof replacement was $12,000. Chief Edwards is going to get more replacement bids ASAP.
$12,000 will buy a lot of ductwork. I have to wonder what everything looks like up on that roof and how much ductwork there is.
• Library Roof Update
The library roof also needs to be replaced before this winter. Ron Williams will write a general spec along with the help of Alderman Oberkfell and have this project go out for bid. A few different companies have provided estimates, each company bid different items and roof systems. Ron estimates this replacement to be somewhere around $90,000.
Personnel
•Pre-Employment Screening
Chief Edwards would like to have all of his pre-employment screenings done at one location. Currently applicants see a local physician for a physical and then have their drug tests done somewhere else. It was not mentioned how much this currently costs the city.
His ideal list of pre-employment tests includes your standard drug tests, physical and more involved tests such as an EKG. He said St. Elisabeth’s can provide his requested tests for around $1000 all at one facility.
It was noted that an hires the city makes in the police department go on to the police academy and they will have similar tests done there. Most of the information gathered in the tests would not be available to the city as it would be personal info but the applicant would then have knowledge of issues facing them if any. The tests would also be a good basis for fighting any workers compensation claims down the line.
The city will continue to look at the tests for the police department and for all of their departments. No action was taken at the meeting.
•Collective Bargaining
Executive Session.
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