Council Will Not Increase Electric Rates, Schatz Honored Tuesday

The Sullivan City Council voted to not increase electric rates by 3 percent, as city ordinance allows, following their meeting Tuesday, Oct.17, and also helped recognize longtime local resident and Missouri State Senator Dave Schatz, with an award from the Missouri Public Utility Alliance.

Under City Administrator J.T. Hardy’s report to the council, Hardy reported that the 2018 Fiscal Year Budget included suspension of the 3 percent automatic operations cost adjustment for the electric department.

Hardy reported to the council that he felt current electric, rates along with the city’s fiscal conservancy, that rates would be sufficient to sustain operations costs for Fiscal Year 2018.

With that being said, council members approved unanimously the suspension of the annual 3 percent automatic electrical cost increase.

The city has not increased rates or had the automatic increase since 2012, five years ago.

Schatz was honored during the council meeting Tuesday night by Missouri Public Utility Alliance, of which the City of Sullivan is a member, by presenting Schatz with the Legislator of the Year Award.

Vice President Ewell Lawson, MPUA, presented the award to Schatz stating that Senator Schatz support of municipal utilities includes a strong commitment to voter involvement in utility making decisions, with appropriate protections of public assets.

Lawson added that Schatz shows true leadership to make sure municipal utility customers are protected.

In other council news the Board of Alderman unanimously approved a request from the Sullivan Chamber of Commerce to hold the annual Reindeer Dash and Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony in downtown Sullivan on Friday, December 1, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. along Main St.

The council approved the purchase of a new Toro Groundmaster 4000-D wide area mower for the Sullivan Parks Department in the amount of $48,500 from a National IPA bid contract, thus no advertising for bids was required.

Council members approved the upgrade of a water line in downtown Sullivan for Sullivan Fire Protection District House One renovation project. While the district will pay for eight inch lines the city will pay the difference for the line to be increased to ten inches. City Engineer Robert Schaffer will also engineer the project and submit required permit requests to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

Following review by Alderman Jason Alexander the payment of the City bills for October were approved in the amount of $1,467,262.58.

Two ordinances were approved by the council that included:

Ord. 3778, which approved the compensation for the city collector to $40,000 annually rather than $36,000 with the effective date of April 2018;

Ord. 3779, was approved to allow private monitoring water wells that may be required for purpose of conducting environmental investigations.

Under Mayor Input, Mayor Dennis Watz reported that Code Enforcement Officer has conducted some 154 nuisance compliance checks on properties that had a change in utility account ownership.

The council did have a closed session with three matters of personnel and one matter of real estate discussed.

Action was taken in personnel with B.J. Bartle being promoted to the position of semi-skilled laborer in the Sullivan Park’s Department, Craig Price being hired as a semi skilled laborer in the Parks Department and Joseph Cochran being hired to the position of patrolman with the Sullivan Police Department.

There was no action taken on the matter of real estate discussed by the council in closed session.

Sullivan Independent News

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