Eitelberg runs first council meeting of the year

PLAINS – Mayor Gregory Eitelberg presided over his first town hall meeting as mayor on Monday, January 6.

To start the meeting off, Mayor Eitelberg presented four council members with a certificate for being reelected. Audrey Kolbeck, Chris Allen, Dan Rowan and Carl Reeb were all voted back onto the council.

During the mayor’s report, Eitelberg said the fire department had one chargeable accident. He explained a chargeable accident was something that causes physical harm or property damage.

A firefighter broke her finger and sprained another one after a fall took place on call.

Mayor Eitelberg said any accident that occurs on city property or with a city employee will undergo a mayor’s office investigation.

The purpose is to find the root cause of a problem and hopefully ensure it does not happen again.

After both the fire chief and police chief gave updates on the last month, the council reappointed a handful of people.

Cathy Emmett was reappointed as the clerk and treasurer; Shawn Emmett was reappointed as the Plains Police Chief; City Attorney Richard Gebhart and Fire Chief Joe Sheppard were also reappointed.

Mayor Eitelberg then touched base on amending the hiring process and sick leave. Although he agreed with the hiring process, he saw a problem with sick leave.

According to Eitelberg, each employee can donate up to 40 sick hours to another employee in need.

“If the employee doesn’t use their sick leave we pay them 25 percent. So if we allow the employees to give each other sick leave, we as a city, have the potential of picking up 75 percent of that cost,” Mayor Eitelberg explained.

No solution was offered and no motion for an action was presented. The resolution died and will go back to committee to work on.

As the committees gave their monthly reports the Public Works Committee followed up on a meeting they had on December 18. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss business water charges, something that has been in the works. Currently some of the businesses in town are not following the current ordinance, which states that businesses would use a base rate of 1.79 times the dwelling base rate.

Since some businesses have a ? inch line, they are not in line with the ordinance.

“We suggest to change the ordinance. Every time we go to do something in water, we’re going against the ordinance,” Reeb explained.

He said everything should be left as it was until the ordinance could be worked on.

In order to do this, the council had to rescind a motion they made last year about an account they voted to raise to a one-inch line.

“Hopefully we’re getting back to where we were and now we have to figure out where to go,” Reeb said.

Another public water meeting is scheduled on January 16 at 7 p.m.

The Public Works Committee has also been working on setbacks.

“There’s some ambiguity in there that needs to be cleaned up,” Reeb said.

Their list of to-dos was long and the committee is currently looking into a decay ordinance to ensure the town looks nice, while also looking into the age of mobile homes allowed in town.

Rowan explained one of the proposals was to allow mobile homes within town to move somewhere else in town even if they do not meet the age requirements.

The committee continues to work on all of these issues and will most likely present the council with more updates at their next meeting on February 3.