City Council Meets

At the Aug. 3 regular meeting of the Glasgow City Council, city attorney Anna Rose Sullivan informed the council that an ordinance to eliminate Wards and move the city to an at-large election system would not appear on the ballot in November.

The ordinance was passed using an emergency ordinance procedure that allows the council to pass such an ordinance with only one reading at a public meeting. In order to override a second reading the ordinance must pass with a two-thirds majority of the governing body. In the case of the city council, that majority would require four votes to pass the emergency ordinance, but, with the absence of Doug Nistler and “nay” votes from Councilpersons Rod Karst and Dan Carr, only a three-fifths majority was obtained at the meeting.

After the issue was brought to the attention of the city attorney, it was too late for the ordinance to be passed in time for it to appear on the November Ballot—the time crunch was the reason an emergency ordinance was used in the first place. It is possible for the city council to have a special election to present the issue to the public—an unlikely outcome due to expenses taht would need to be paid by the city—or they can simply add the measure to the 2021 city election ballot.

“There was no legal issue with using the emergency ordinance to add at-large elections to the ballot,” said Sullivan. “But unfortunately we did not have the two-thirds majority to pass.”

A resolution to add the chicken ordinance to the ballot will still appear on the ballot in November.

The city council also took up a few other issues at the meeting. Among them was an ordinance to allow daycares under permitted use for all zoning districts. That effectively allows the business model to function legally from in-home settings in residentially-zoned areas.

The collective bargaining agreement between the city and the Teamsters Union was also approved at the Monday’s meeting. The agreement sets up and finalizes the new employee wage matrix system designed and approved by the council earlier in July. That agreement will be good for the next two years and will be renegotiated in 2021 for the 2022 city fiscal year.

The city is also discussing plans with Rocky Thompson and T&R Trucking to set up a means for residents to have large household trash items or discarded furniture picked up by the company and delivered to the landfill. A plan has not yet been developed but some ideas include a call-and-pick-up service for residents or a couple of weeks a year when residents can set out large items for pick-up on the street. Costs associated with the project or additional rates are also being discussed.

As part of the law enforcement briefing, Assistant Chief of Police, Tyler Edwards, stated that calls for service were up sharply compared to the last city council briefing.

“So we’re really up,” said Edwards. “This is one of our highest call volumes this summer.”

In the last two weeks, the Glasgow Police Department responded to 148 incidents in comparison to 99 calls for the preceding two week period. Of those calls: 10 were for animals, 68 were calls to assist; 40 were traffic violations; 37 were for criminal investigations; 31 involved alcohol; five involved drugs; 13 resulted in warnings; five ended in arrests; 23 led to citations; and eight were in response to violations of judges orders.