Three are candidates for city council position
During its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, the city council heard from three potential candidates for the seat vacated in January by Nelson Patton. Jon Gard, Nancy McCleod, and Steve Rose all spoke to the council about their desire to serve. There were no written applications received.
The council will decide at the Feb. 18 meeting who will fill the vacancy and that person will be sworn in and seated at the Feb. 25 meeting.
The Peabody city council has held three meetings in the last two weeks in an attempt to give some in-depth consideration to the agreement to sell water to Rural Water #5 and the question of hiring a third maintenance person, as well as its regularly scheduled business.
Council members met Feb. 4, with the board of the water district and Al Reiss, engineer for the Peabody water project to review the contract between Peabody and the water district.
After discussion of the contract, both parties agreed to re-submit it to their respective attorneys for further work. An addendum to the contract will protect each entity in the event there is a failure on the part of any entity to meet its performance demands.
The group will meet again on Feb. 22.
In a second special meeting, hiring a third maintenance person for the city was discussed. No action was taken as the council chose to wait until after a budget discussion with the chief of police to see if additional funds would be available to pay a third full-time employee.
The council will look at budgeting for a supervisory maintenance salary when it considers the city budget for 2003.
Raises for city employees were approved retroactive to the first of the year.
The council heard from property owners about nuisance properties at 211 S. Olive, 310 N. Walnut, and 412 N. Maple. Satisfactory progress had taken place on Maple and the owners will be doing more work to make the house more habitable. The owner of the property on South Olive will be cleaning up that area and removing some of the structures on the lots. He has purchased three lots from former owner Andy Shank.
The council approved an extension for painting and porch repair on the house at 310 N. Walnut, owned by Steve Smith. Smith will appear before the council March 11 with a time line for additional improvements. At that time he must show progress on house repairs and prep work for painting. A camper and trailer also must be moved.
