Local News – Thursday, February 9th, 2023

The Phelps County Sheriff's Department has formally charged 19-year old Samuel Ralph James Karlinski of St. James, with second-degree murder and armed criminal action felonies for the Monday, February 6th shooting death of his father at a residence near St. James. According to the Phelps County Sheriff’s Office, they received a 911 call at Monday morning at 8:51 about a shooting at a residence near St. James. Upon arriving at the scene, deputies found Ralph Leon Karlinski Jr. was dead from apparent gunshot wounds. According to court documents, the person who contacted the police reported that Samuel Karlinski had shot his father three times with a .22-caliber pistol. After a subsequent investigation by the Phelps County Sheriff's Department, Samuel Karlinski was arrested and taken to the Phelps County Jail and held without bond. Samuel Karlinski in the probable cause statement indicated he shot his father twice in the chest and once in the head in self-defense, but during the investigation, Samuel Karlinski showed no signs of injuries.

The City of Salem Utility Committee met Wednesday night at the Salem Community Center@The Armory. City Administrator Sally Burbridge explained to the committee and crowd about the city budget and the 34 funds the city has. She said many of the funds are encumbered such as the Cemetery Endowment Fund and the Landfill Fund that can only be used for explicit purposes, not general purposes. Funds in those accounts cannot be used by the city for any reason except for the purpose they were initially set up for. So when people see the balance sheet the city has to publish every six-months in the newspaper, people think they have funds available at their disposal which simply is not true. She went on to say each city utility has three funds: one for operations, one for the replacement of vehicles and equipment, and the third for infrastructure upgrades or replacements. From there she discussed why the city is looking to pass a 1% General Revenue Sales tax in April. The General Revenue Fund is responsible for the Salem Police Department with 39% of its funds going there, with 25% allocated for administration and another 24% for public works. Ten percent of the General Revenue Funds are transferred to other funds like Fireworks, Cemetery, Economic Development and more. Currently, the 1% sales tax in the city does not generate enough money to totally provide for those funds, so the General Revenue Fund gets transfers from the Electric, Water and Sewer funds to keep it in the black. Burbridge said the last two years, the city has used their ARPA Funds of $500,000 each year to pay the shortfall in General Revenue, but those monies are now gone. The current fiscal year budget shows the general revenue fund without transfers on June 30th could end up 1.4 million dollars in the red. Even with transfers in from the other departments, the city will still end up about $491,000 short which could mean the trimming back or elimination of some services. Should the public pass the sales tax, revenues would increase by almost $1.25 million dollars that would take the pressure off having to make the transfers and help to stabilize the utility funds by being able to bolster their reserves. She also said there will be a sewer bond question in April on whether the city should issue revenue bonds to finance 4.6 million dollars for federally mandated improvements to the sewer system that would have to paid for directly by sewer system rates. If the measure passes, the city may be able to reduce the amount financed to $1.8 million by using a State Revolving Fund grant and CDBG grant. Either way, sewer rates will go up, but if the issue doesn’t pass, residents may be paying $14 to $15 more per month versus $3 to $6 by passing the bond issue. The election will be on April 4th. After reviewing the city financials, Burbridge talked about the Exceleron Pre-Pay System and it is not working yet. They can’t get the accounts to reconcile correctly. Burbridge talked about payment assistance programs with the use of the pre-pay system as Exceleron says they have a solution, but the city hasn’t seen that yet. The committee opted not to recommend using the Moneygram Service to pay on the pre-pay service as it could end up costing the city money. The committee agreed to keep the Winter Weather Rule in effect where if the temperature falls below 32 degrees as predicted by the National Weather Service in Springfield, disconnects will not be done. This rule would NOT apply to pre-pay customers once it goes on line and there was some discussion on that by the committee with no definitive answer being derived. The committee made no decision on allowing accounts currently on a payback contract with the city to switch to pre-pay when it become available, and the committee would need more clarification on automatically converting accounts to prepay after a specified number of disconnects. They will look for legal guidance on that before making any final decision. Public Works Director Mark Nash gave his report on the electric line loss to the committee but said he didn’t believe the figures were accurate and wanted to check them again before giving actual numbers. He said he would be checking out the numbers on the electric again and then do some hard investigating if the results don’t change much. He did say the water loss figures went from 38% to 8.32% in the city with the new leak detector the city has. Anything under ten percent loss from water lines is excellent. Committee member John Hambacker talked about meter size fees and how, in some cases, multiple units are on the same meter where the city loses out on the meter fees. A motion was made for the staff to report on looking into meter charges based on the size of the meter and any associated fees for discussion at the next meeting. The meeting was then adjourned.