Published: November 20, 2008 10:45 am            

Executive session refused

Three Yale city commissioners quash mayor’s proposal to discuss city manager, clerk

YALE — Temperatures remained high during a regular city commission meeting Tuesday as an executive session was declined and city finances continued to be questioned.

Mayor Tom Mendenhall made a proposal to enter executive session to discuss City Manager Jerri Shaw and City Clerk Kim Wozniak. On the agenda under miscellaneous items was a proposed executive session for the purpose of “discussing employment, hiring, appointment, promotion, demotion, disciplining or resignation of any individual salaried public officer or employee,” per 25 Oklahoma Statute section 307-b-1.

Commissioner Mike McCullough made a motion to enter executive session, seconded by Mendenhall. The commission then voted the motion down, with Commissioners Pam Coke and Chuck Thomas and Vice Mayor Maurice Lozier declining to enter an executive session.

Approval of amended meeting minutes from the Nov. 5 special meeting met with resistance.

“I’d like to make note that the minutes do not properly reflect the fact that there was no motion, there was no second made, period, in the management report,” Mendenhall said. “The original minutes were issued for the Nov. 5 meeting, and I would like to know how these minutes got amended without commission approval.”

Commissioner Lozier said he requested the Nov. 5 minutes be corrected.

McCullough said the minutes also did not reflect that the bank has any instructions toward the mayor as to approval of claims or payments.

“The bank is not involved in the process of advising the commission on what they should and should not do,” McCullough said. “It was a statement that was supposedly made, but I never heard.”

He said to Lozier, “Sometime during the meeting, you said that the bank was supposed to have informed the mayor of whether or not he could pay claims, and it doesn’t reflect that in here.”

Mendenhall made a motion that the Nov. 5 minutes be corrected and resubmitted to the commission, with the corrections reflecting statements the commissioners made.

Lozier said Mendenhall also wanted the reference to motions Lozier made to overrule Mendenhall when he had Shaw escorted from the Nov. 5 meeting by police to be removed from the minutes.

The motion passed with Lozier as the lone “no” vote.

Mendenhall then questioned Jerri Shaw, city manager, as to the status of Nov. 10 claims that were approved for payment. Shaw said the checks are ready and waiting for commissioners’ signatures.

“All those checks are right there, waiting for your signature,” Shaw said as she motioned to her left.

“Why wait one week, one day to pay those bills that haven’t been paid yet, which included a bill to Lone Chimney (water) for $17,000, Keystone gas bill, OMPA bill, and now we have a grand total of an additional, it looks like to me, over $100,000 worth of duplicates, because you added them back in to these claims tonight to approve once more what you said you already paid,” Mendenhall said.

“We can’t run the city Encode, it is down,” Shaw said. “We are doing our very best to get you the bills you need.”

Mendenhall said his paperwork showed there was to be only $2,923.01 in claims to be approved during the city side of the meeting.

“Tom, I called you and told you we were still working on it all and you said, ‘Fine,’” Shaw said.

Mendenhall then made a motion to approve the claims as presented in the commissioner’s meeting packet of $2,923.01 and “insist that the claims from Nov. 10 meeting be paid immediately.”

The motion was seconded by McCullough and approved unanimously by the commission.

As Shaw and Wozniak continue to uncover bills and other claims left over from the previous city clerk, it was brought up at the meeting that office staff discovered three checks totaling more than $500 written to the city that were never deposited.

Following the meeting, Shaw stated $580.50 in checks had been found, as well as a check that had been approved for payment, but remained stapled to the statement and never mailed.

Shaw said most of the billing problems in the office stem from difficulty with the Encode 2000 software the city uses to track accounts.

“The whole billing process has shut down, the billing parts of it,” Shaw said during the meeting. “The (computer) we take payments on is locking up about four or five times a day and shutting down.”

Coke said the previous clerk had problems with the program as well, and it just seems to be deteriorating. She said Cushing uses Encode, but since the company will no longer provide software updates, Cushing is upgrading to Envision. Another concern with Encode is that it is not compatible with an operating system higher than Windows 98.

“I don’t think any of us are positively for sure what the situation or problem might be,” Mendenhall said. “My recommendation is we get someone who is familiar with the system come and take a look at it, right here on the spot.

“If we have problems, we will remedy the problems. If we don’t have problems, they tell us how to operate the system, but we can’t just continue to guess what it is (causing the problem).”

Shaw said there are just two individuals who are knowledgeable about the Encode 2000 program, and a visit would cost $125 per hour in addition to travel and daily expenses.

“For $125 an hour, if we have the two months (Shaw) has been here plus several months prior (worth of data) that has never been backed up, that’s four months of data we would be able to get backed up,” McCullough said. “I think $125 an hour is worth that.”

The commission passed a motion to bring in someone who is familiar with Encode 2000 and the application of the program to determine if the problems are related to the software or hardware and what needs to be done to resolve the issue.

Shaw said Wednesday she had placed a call that morning to schedule a visit by a technician who is qualified to evaluate Encode 2000.

During the Yale Water and Sewage Trust side of the meeting, Mendenhall said several of the claims listed were repeats from the Nov. 10 meeting.

Mendenhall said the commissioners were looking at an additional $70,000 in claims that were not presented until the meeting.

Shaw said because of Encode problems, all the information was not available Friday when the packets were assembled. The office staff used Quicken Monday to reconcile the city’s accounts.

“Everything you approved at the last meeting is on here, so you may see the balance,” Shaw said. “We used today’s bank balance as the starting balance and took all the checks, including the ones (the commission) approved to pay at the last meeting.”

Coke said using Quicken allowed checks to be printed rather than hand written.

“It allowed us to give you a payment register and know where we are financially,” Shaw said.

Mendenhall made a motion to approve $55,034.85 in Trust claims as presented in the packets. McCullough and Mendenhall voted “no” and Thomas abstained, causing the motion to be declined.

Commissioners and citizens in the audience showed disapproval for an Allied Waste proposal to participate in a nine-month pilot program that is operational in Stillwater. Under the program, the Allied Waste representative said trash pick-up would be reduced from twice weekly to once a week. The city would save costs and wear and tear on streets, but citizens were concerned.

Households would need to pay an extra $4 a month for a second container, which was reduced to $2 later in the meeting. One citizen said in effect that residents would be paying more for once a week than twice a week pick-up, and Allied Waste would reap the benefits of lowered costs and increased revenue.

Commissioners agreed with audience concerns unanimously approved the six percent rate hike, effectively shutting down the pilot program.

        

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