Nashville Council approves legal services contract

By Todd Marver

tmarver@nashnews.net

The Nashville City Council approved a legal services contract with bond counsel, Chapman and Cutler in connection with the USDA-Rural Development loan for the construction of three sewer lift stations at its Thursday, October 19 meeting.

City Attorney Bill DeMoss said Chapman and Culter is a very reputable firm and handles bond issues all the time.

“(The construction of three sewer lift stations) is the project that these bonds are going to be issued for. They handled our bond issue back when we refinanced the water line and water plant two years ago. We have a good rate on this and they are approved and one of the member firms that’s listed as being approved by Rural Development, so I would recommend approval,” said DeMoss.

Mayor Raymond Kolweier said the city has done business with Chapman and Cutler different times and they’ve always been on the ball.

“As part of Rural Development, there are procedures, so if we’re going to continue, we need to approve it to have somebody as a bond counsel. I’m with Bill. I would recommend Chapman and Cutler,” he said.

The council approved advertising for a part-time hire at City Hall.

“We’re in need of a part-time employee at City Hall. As time goes on, things change. I don’t know if there’s any part-time interest out there or not, but I would like to have permission from the council to advertise for part-time help for City Hall if nothing else to see what is available and if there’s no part-time help available, we may have to make some other arrangements,” Kolweier said.

Problems with generators were discussed at a safety committee meeting and the discussion continued at the council meeting.

Utility Supervisor Blaine Middleton said some of the deficiencies with generators when there were storms on June 30 was brought up at the safety meeting. He said City Hall houses a telephone, which controls the police station and his department, and the whole time when City Hall did not have power, his department and the police department didn’t have a telephone and fax line on that system.

“We still had an old fax line out at the water plant that would endure stable use. We were talking about it and it was a big problem. We didn’t have our emergency line for the city. Thank goodness 911 stepped up and were able to handle gas and water calls and all the police too and City Hall. The committee had talked about it and would like to not have this problem again. At the police station, they definitely need to keep their eye on the computer system,” he said.

Police Chief Brian Fletcher said it was a lengthy outage with everything the department does as far as the CAD system and reporting it all online.

“We make it through it, but pretty much we’re responding to whatever calls come in to whatever line is available. Then they’ve got to go back however many days later once the power does get back up and sitting and making those reports. It’s something we had discussed at the safety meeting and thought we should at least bring it to the council’s attention and have a discussion about it,” he said.

Middleton said they had talked about public works and the street department at the meeting. He said he had mentioned a while back to the mayor that they’re going to have some generators that are still good generators at the lift stations that will be able to be repurposed and he has one that would be guaranteed to run both buildings.

“Our booster station for the water system, that’s one we had to rent a generator to keep going because there was no power there for days also on Buhrman Street. That’s another place we can repurpose one of those generators if we keep going on with this sewer line. They’re good generators, so we won’t have any problems with them. Just moving them and setting up a concrete pad and move the generator there and hook it right up,” he said.

Middleton said the site has a transfer switch already there and it’s already set up for it.

“Logan (Gill)’s building is set up for it. Mine is not, but that would be us wiring across the street. Stuff that we can almost do ourselves down the road,” he said.

Middleton said it wasn’t easy the night of June 30 and it took awhile to get into the building and get trucks out because the doors get heavy when there’s no power and people have to manually disconnect them.

“The ones that I have at the stations now would not be suitable for being repurposed. They’re way too big. The other spots we could repurpose those. We would have to have our new stations up and running. When we lost communications, that was a huge deal and we lost our emergency lines,” he said.

Kolweier said he wanted to take this matter under advisement and check into all the funding.

“We filled out some paperwork to apply for emergency equipment beforehand, not after it’s damaged. It’s to prevent things. It’s worth checking into. Your building (Middleton’s) and Logan (Gill)’s both are probably the most needed because anytime there’s any kind of even a short outage, you’ve got to get out and the doors are all electronic and they’re big doors and you can’t hardly handle them manually,” he said.

Street Supervisor Logan Gill said he and City Clerk Terrie Kurwicki had a meeting with FEMA regarding the storm damage and getting reimbursement from the federal level.

The city property and zoning committee plans to meet with Community Center officials. Kolweier said Community Center officials are wanting to meet with city officials to propose a plan for the Community Center.

“We don’t own the property, but it has got to do with city property and zoning. Someone has talked to me about the possibility of some things going on, but I think it’d be best if we could have a committee meeting and discuss just that particular item sometime in the very near future like in the next couple weeks,” Kolweier said.

Alderman Doug Hargan said there is some possible grant money out there for the Community Center and they’re wanting to make changes and get rid of the brick part of the building.

“They want to sit down with us and discuss future possible ways this could go. I called the mayor and he said it would probably have to go to property and zoning,” he said.

Fletcher reported the new squad car was put into service. He said they had to ship back the in-car video and are waiting for the new one to come in.

“Everything should be good. It’s got a body cam,” he said.

Middleton said they’re waiting on the intrusion alarm to be wired up and they installed the transfer switch at the fine screen unit.

“That was one of the last two things on the punch list of items. Hopefully this week or next week, it’ll probably be next week, we can get that wired in. We should be able to close that out. It’s working fine,” he said.

Alderman Kelly Sheridan said on Wednesday, October 25 at 10 a.m. there is going to be a meeting to discuss new health insurance rates and they should have commercial insurance rates before the next meeting.

Hargan said the No. 2 tee was redone at the golf course and it has been an improvement.