Local News – Friday, March 15th, 2024

The Dent County Commission Thursday morning met at the courthouse where they heard two road concerns. The first was on county road 5190 where at one time a gate blocked access to the road years ago. The county receives CART tax to maintain just over a half mile and 1st District Commissioner Wes Mobray will need to see where that comes to on the road. There is also a culvert and drainage problem on county road 4170 in the Adams Subdivision. Commissioner Mobray will check that out as well. In the road report, Mobray said rock would be added and grading done on Dent County Road 6590 with grading only on county roads 6580 and 5615. He said brush would be cut on county road 6580 and new blades were being put on Grader #39. District 2 Commissioner Gary Polk said new brakes were being installed on county truck #122, road signs were being installed on county road 3355, workers were repairing the side of county road 6150 next to a culvert, and a culvert pipe is being opened up on county road 3200. Presiding Commissioner Gary Larson said seven commissioners from the South Central County Commissioners Assn were in Jefferson City Wednesday and discussed Senate Bill 190 and unfunded mandates with representatives. Dent County Clerk Angie Curley said the last day for county office filing would be March 26th for the August Primary. The commissioners approved a petition for setting a speed limit of 25 MPH on county road 2210, approved putting out a notice to receive bids for a single year financial audit for fiscal year 2024 that would be done in 2025. Bids will be due by 10:00 on April 22nd in the clerk’s office. They also approved putting out a notice to receive chip and seal bids that will be due by 10:00 on April 15th in the county clerk’s office. They also approved the sale of a spreader box for a pickup from the Road and Bridge Department. Bids will be due on April 15th and they will be opened at 10:30. Commissioner Larson says the lights on the courthouse are now working properly and they have been programmed to be green this weekend for the 100-Acre in the Woods Road Rally and St. Patrick’s Day. The next meeting of the commission will be Monday at 9:00 and the meeting will be open to the public.

The Salem Utility Committee met Wednesday evening at the Salem Community Center@The Armory. Stacey Houston presented the financials for all the utility funds. Most of the funds were at or near budget numbers with the exception of a collection of back pay from Brightspeed for the use of city’s utility poles in the electric fund. Houston mentioned that the sewer improvements 2A and 2B are being done simultaneously, but the grant funds for the second part will not be forthcoming until late 2024 or early 2025. Houston has sent out requests for terms for the city to get around a $400,000 short term loan that would be paid off once the city is reimbursed. City Administrator Sally Burbridge said the city was finally able to successfully send bills by e-mail and are ready to incorporate that into their system. The committee did recommend that an amendment be made to Ordinance 700.010 that would allow monthly utility bills be e-mailed or sent electronically as well as mailed. Burbridge also said the automated phone bill paying system is close to being ready to accept payments, and currently about 300 people pay their bills online. Burbridge said the city is looking for a lead utility billing clerk and members of the staff are currently being trained by an employee of Encode showing them new features they did not know existed. Burbridge said she has reached out to BHMG that will be doing the electric rate study, but they have not gotten back to her yet. She went over some amendments that need to be made to the Power Supply & Administration Agreement among the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission and the MMMPEP. These changes will help strengthen the City of Salem credit rating and reduce their debt service to help lower their rates. The committee approved recommending the amendments to the agreement be approved by the Salem Board of Aldermen. Interim Public Works Director Joe Chase said a number of workers from the electric department are working on the Gateway Antennas repairing the Cat5 connectors and reinstalling the antennas. City workers are also replacing the metal tops on water meters with the poly tops as they seem to be able to get better signal strength. Burbridge explained that she has been able to “true up” the avoided fuel costs for the three solar power customers in Salem so they are now up to date. There was a suggestion in a previous meeting to make the avoided fuel cost rate a flat rate, but the committee elected to use the actual avoided fuel cost as the impact to the city would be only about $15 or so. A discussion on the new utility deposit ordinance was brought up as numerous concerned real estate brokers were in attendance. The problem was that a person buying a house didn’t know what their utility deposit would be based upon usage from the previous owners until signing up for services. A couple of instances with new home buyers brought the problem to light and the brokers wanted to know what could be done. A comparison of a number of other communities was presented and after some discussion, the committee agreed to recommend to the Board to change the ordinance and set the utility deposit at $300, and if the new tenant or purchaser could provide a Letter of Good Standing, the deposit would be reduced to $200 for all four utilities including trash, electric, water and sewer. They also rescinded their recommendation to use a soft credit check to determine if the deposit should be higher. The committee then thanked Chairman Kyle Williams for his work as Chairman of the Utility Committee as he is not running for re-election. The meeting was then adjourned.