Schatz Award, Reindeer Dash, Two Ordinances Top Council Meeting

The Sullivan City Council was scheduled to meet for the second time in October on Tuesday, with two items under requests and petitions that included an award for Senator David Schatz, a request for a Reindeer Dash/Treelighting event by the Sullivan Chamber of Commerce, two proposed bills for approval as ordinances and payment of the monthly bills totaling $1,467,262.58.

The Missouri Public Utility Alliance, an organization in which the City of Sullivan is a member, will present their Missouri Public Utility Alliance, Legislator of the Year Award to Schatz on Tuesday during the council meeting.

Sullivan Chamber of Commerce is seeking permission to hold its annual reindeer dash/tree lighting event on Friday, Dec. 1, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. in downtown Sullivan. The event concludes with the tree lighting ceremony and arrival of Santa Claus.

Under City Administrator J.T. Hardy’s report, Hardy will seek permission from the council to purchase a Toro Groundsmaster 4000-D rotary mower in the amount of $55,000 with a trade in of a similar model of $7,000, bringing the city expense to $48,500.

The council is allowed to purchase the mower through of National IPA contract without bidding the item formally.

The new mower purchase was budgeted at $60,000 in the Fiscal Year 2018 budget, approved in September.

Hardy is also seeking approval from the council for a water line upgrade improvement in conjunction with the Sullivan Fire Protection District House One Renovation project.

The downtown firehouse will receive a renovation in November that will include a sprinkler system installation, per fire and city codes, thus the waterline in downtown Sullivan from North Clark Street to North Church Street would have to be increased to an eight inch line.

Due to future city expansion and water line improvements, city staff would like to seek council approval to pay the difference in increasing this line size from eight to ten inches.

The city staff is proposing to pay the difference in the water line from eight to 10 inches as well as assist the fire district in the engineering for the project and Missouri Department of Natural Resources permit approval.

The fire district would contract the project out to contractors rather than through the use of city crews due to work load in the city along with traffic congestion issues in the downtown area.

Hardy estimated the city cost impact would be less than $12,000.

Payment of the monthly bills was expected in the amount of $1,467,262.58 that includes: payment 115 to UMB Bank for the wastewater treatment plant, $46,491.93, $25,842.85 to Swinger Sanitation for water hauling services, $36,023.22 to Missouri LAGERS employee retirement fund and $18,253.06 to Oak Grove Village for their portion of the Was-Mart Sales Tax revenue.

Two bills were to be presented for approval as ordinances that included:

Bill 3778, which would change the city collector’s annual compensation from $35,000 per year to $40,000 effective April 3, 2018;

Bill 3779, which would allow private monitoring water wells that may be required for purposes of conducting environmental investigations.

The council did have closed session posted for real estate, litigation and personnel.