Sep. 30—CARTHAGE, Mo. — This week's appointment by the Carthage City Council of two new members to the board of the city-owned Carthage Water and Electric Plant took place in the face of a weekslong dispute between the utility and the council over the setting of salaries.
Mayor Dan Rife on Tuesday nominated local business owners Sidney Teel and Tom Garrison to replace Pat Goff and Danny Lambeth, whose four-year terms were expiring.
Pat Goff, who had served on the board for about 10 years, said he was disappointed not to be reappointed to the board.
"I would have liked to ridden it out and seen the conclusion to this mess," Goff said. "It seemed like every once in a while we had a handle on a vehicle with which we could have solved the problems and I would rather have seen it through, but I think when this whole mess started one of the objectives was to replace the board."
Lambeth, who was first appointed to the board in 2015, said he, too, would have been willing to serve if reappointed.
Teel declined to comment on being named to the board, and a Globe effort to contact Garrison was unsuccessful.
Votes to delay
Tuesday's meeting would have been delayed and moved to Carthage's Memorial Hall if some members of the council had had their way.
Council member Alan Snow moved to adjourn Tuesday's meeting to 6:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 2, at Memorial Hall "to allow more room for citizens to come and participate in government."
Council member Terri Heckmaster made a similar motion to move the meeting to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 3, at Memorial Hall.
Snow's motion was voted down 6-3 with members Snow, Heckmaster and Tiffany Cossey voting "yes" and Robin Blair, Ed Hardesty, Mark Elliff, Chris Taylor, Trudy Blankenship and David Armstrong voting "no." Member Brandi Ensor abstained.
Heckmaster's motion was defeated on a 4-4 vote with two abstentions. Blair, Heckmaster, Snow and Cossey voted "yes," and Hardesty, Elliff, Taylor and Armstrong voted "no," and Ensor and Blankenship abstained, so Rife cast the deciding vote and the meeting continued.
Snow made a motion in the middle of Tuesday's regular meeting to table the nominations until a decision on extending the terms of board members from four years to six years and realignment of the terms so that only one member's term expires each year could be made at a future meeting. The motion was defeated by a 6-4 vote, with Snow, Blair, Heckmaster and Cossey voting "yes," and Hardesty, Elliff, Ensor, Taylor, Blankenship and Armstrong voting "no."
Vote on appointments
When the appointments came up for a vote toward the end of the meeting, Snow, Blair, Heckmaster and Cossey voted "no" on on each of the two CW&EP appointments, while Hardesty, Elliff, Ensor, Taylor, Blankenship and Armstrong voted "yes."
Cossey said her vote against the appointments was not meant as a statement on the qualifications of the people being nominated by the mayor.
"It has everything to do with the concern that we are replacing two well qualified members from the CW&EP Board," Cossey said. "The mayor made a statement back in June in closed session that he intended to replace them, and I'm a little bit concerned that that hasn't been changed. I'm concerned about the reasoning behind that. It seems a bit punitive to me, and it doesn't seem logical. But I do want to say that the people who are nominated, I am sure are fine people and I thank them for being willing to serve when asked. But I'm voting no because I believe it is not the right thing to do to replace the CW&EP Board members."
Blair said she, too, felt conflicted on replacing currently serving board members with new members at this time.
"When the board was disbanded earlier this year, that felt like an inappropriate way to manage it and I believe the Mayor does have the ability to appoint people when their terms are up, so procedurally I feel like this is a more appropriate way to manage who is on the board," Blair said. "However, I agree with what Councilwoman Cossey said about this is in no way a reflection of how I feel about the competency or the ability of the people who have been put forward as new members. My concern is more about the timing of things, the state of our city and what appointing new members would do at this point."
Rife defended the appointment of new people to the board during comments by council members during Tuesday's meeting.
"I think as far as the appointments this evening are concerned, everyone on that board knew that was an option and even said that was the way it should be done when a term ends," Rife said. "That's when you reappoint someone or not reappoint someone. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that we're appointing two new folks. New eyes don't hurt anything. It just improves the scope and capacity of the board."
Meeting proposal
Also during Tuesday's meeting, Cossey made a motion that the City Council and CW&EP Board meet as a whole in a future public forum to hash out all the differences and try to reach solutions. At issue is the longstanding approach followed by the utility board in the setting of salaries for utility workers.
Initially she suggested that the meeting happen at the council's next regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 10 at the CW&EP Community Room, but utility General Manager Chuck Bryant asked for time to make sure that the CW&EP Board members were available and suggested that a date and time for that future meeting be set at the next council meeting.
"I love your thought and during an issue like this, Springfield City Utilities and the Springfield city council, over very similar things about 20 years ago, this was their resolution and they did this a couple of times a year," Bryant said. "It makes sense that it's on a date that is either a board date or a city council date. There's more members of the council than then the board so I think it makes sense that it would be a council date. I think I would like a little time to coordinate schedules to make sure I'm here and members of the board can be here. I think we can set a date at the next council meeting."
Council Members Armstrong and Hardesty spoke out against the idea, saying a meeting with 16 people would take too much time and be unwieldy to manage.
The council voted 8-2 to hold the meeting.
Timeline of controversy
—The dispute started in mid-May when the council's budget committee asked the CW&EP Board for more information on the methods used to set proposed salaries for fiscal year 2024 for every position in the utility and a list of those salaries.
—The utility responded at the budget committee's May 31 meeting with a list of salaries for the previous fiscal year and said all employees would receive a 3% cost of living increase and up to a 3% merit pay increase. The CW&EP Board said it used salary surveys by the the American Public Power Association and the American Water Works Association to set those salaries.
—The budget committee voted in a meeting on June 12 to approve the utility's budget but delay implementation of regular salary increases until a salary study was performed.
—That decision was met with a public outcry from utility employees and supporters at the council's regular meeting on June 13, and the council reversed itself and voted to implement the raises on July 1 as scheduled while still conducting the salary study.
—Then, in an "emergency meeting" on June 15, the council met in closed session for about two and a half hours, then in a 15-minute open session voted 7-2 to oust all six members of the CW&EP Board.
—That caused another public outcry that led the council to move its June 27 meeting to Memorial Hall to accommodate an expected crowd. About 375 people attended that meeting, and speakers called for the council to reconsider the removal of the board members, but the council voted against reconsideration.
The motion to reconsider received six "yes" votes, but City Attorney Nate Dally said the vote required a two-thirds majority, or seven votes, to reopen the matter.
—On June 30, Rife announced in a press release that a meeting had been held between the city and the board that cleared the air and that the council would reinstate the board members at its July 11 meeting.
—An ad hoc committee consisting of three council and three CW&EP Board members met on Aug. 14 to discuss changes to city ordinances requested by the CW&EP Board members.
—On Aug. 24, the council held a special work session with attorney Nathan Nickolaus, a Missouri municipal law specialist from the Lauber Law Firm in Kansas City. The city hired the Lauber Law Firm to send Nickolaus to the meeting so the council could get an outside legal opinion on some of the issues surrounding the council and CW&EP Board matters.
—On Aug. 31, Rife sent a letter to council members, the CW&EP Board and shared it on the city's Facebook page saying that it was "my responsibility and the responsibility of the council to take charge and end this dispute so that we can move on with other city business."
He announced that the CW&EP Board and senior staff would take training regarding the Missouri Sunshine Law, and that all provisions of Carthage city code, the Carthage City Charter and state statutes should be followed as interpreted by City Attorney Nate Dally. He stated that the city would conduct a salary study for CW&EP, and ordered a firm hired by the CW&EP Board to stop work.
The letter also disbanded the ad hoc committee of council and CW&EP Board members.
