Nashville City Council Approves Carbon Purchase

By Alex Haglund

The Nashville City Council approved purchases of activated carbon for the water department, a new squad car radio for the police department, and desk furniture for the water plant at their second meeting for the month, held on the evening of Thursday, February 15, at City Hall.
The activated carbon is annual purchase for use in the city’s sewer lagoons. While the price of the carbon varies based on demand and other factors, city utilities superintendent Blaine Middleton said that there is a bit of a volume discount if it is purchased in bulk.
This bulk purchase is bought annually by the 44,000 pound truck load. The cost for this is $33,660. Council member Doug Hargan told the rest of the council that they save about $3,000 purchasing it this way, rather than as individual pallet loads.
While work continues on the installation of the SCADA computer control system at the water plant, the council approved the purchase of new desk and workstation furniture for that water plant operations station. The cost for this furniture will be $1,444.
On the matter of the SCADA system changeover, Mayor Erik Rolf asked Middleton if the city would require a boil order for water customers while the actual changeover was occurring.
“Oh no,” said Middleton. He did state that there might need to be some manual control taken of the system, but said that he already had the personnel at the plant ready to handle that.
For the police department, the council approved the purchase of a new squad car radio for Police Chief Brian Fletcher’s vehicle.
The cost for the purchase is $2,049.73, or $2,254.73 installed, from Roy Walker Communications.

Street Department Personnel

“Here soon, we are going to have to look at hiring a couple guys in the street department,” Rolf told the council.
Rolf said that he had received word that four long-time street department employees had announced their plans to retire in 2019, “three of them almost within the same month.” The fourth employee will be retiring a short time before the other three.
Due to the loss of the large amount of collective experience from these four employees, Rolf said he would like the council to consider hiring replacements sooner rather than later, perhaps hiring a new employee or two during 2018, to allow the retiring employees to transfer some of their knowledge while they are still with the city.
No action was taken at this time on the matter, the city will revisit it in the future, probably during the summer months of this year.

Sewer Pump Stations

Sewer and Water Committee Chairman Doug Hargan told the council that with certain federal stimulus packages possible in the relatively near future, the city ought to be taking a look at infrastructure projects that could benefit from that funding – like the upgrade and replacement of 1970s -era cam pump stations at the northwest of town and in Kirkland Heights.
For stimulus funds, Hargan told the council the extra consideration and higher priority “would be given to projects that are truly ‘shovel ready’,” meaning that all right-of-ways, zoning and permitting were already in place.
To this end, the council approved authorization for city engineers Curry and Associates to proceed with planning, permitting and if necessary, to make offers on adjacent property which the city would need in order to move forward with the project.

Other

The city heard from Charlie and Carolyn Detering who requested the city’s assistance with the annual “Walk With The Dogs” for Pancreatic Cancer. The event will take place on June 2. In addition to approving the event, the council also asked Carolyn to bring them a sponsorship application which they said they will take a look at during their next meeting.
There will be more on “the Walk With The Dogs” in a later edition of The Nashville News.
The council also approved of a donation of $250 to the NCHS Post Prom.