Unpaid pool bill to be revisited
Staff writer
A pool maintenance bill Marion city council members in November refused to pay in full will be addressed again at Monday’s city council meeting.
The invoice, for $17,221.62, was higher than the typical $14,977.51 the school district bills the city each year for pool maintenance.
Council members could not understand why the cost should be higher when the pool was closed nine weeks because of the COVID-19 epidemic. They split the difference between the current bill and a typical bill.
At the time, council member Jerry Kline didn’t hesitate to warn other council members that he didn’t think the city should pay less than the invoice.
“If we don’t go along with this, we’re going to bite it somewhere else,” Kline said.
City administrator Roger Holter, mayor David Mayfield, and school superintendent Aaron Homburg met Thursday to discuss both the invoice and a new letter of agreement regarding the city’s share of pool maintenance.
Mayfield said the reason this year’s invoice from the school was higher was also discussed.
“We’re going to talk about it at the next council meeting,” he said. “We didn’t know for sure what it was about.”
An expired letter of agreement between the city and the school district was also discussed.
“We had a letter of agreement that expired in 2010,” Mayfield said. “Both sides always honored it.”
Mayfield said Holter and Homburg will discuss a new agreement later.
“It just got kind of lost in the shuffle,” Mayfield said. “We visited about that and our situation in regard to what the additional funds were for.”