Meeting Notes
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Regular Council Meeting
Tonight's meeting began at 5:30pm with all Council Members present except for Julie Woodall in addition to City Manager Jay Parrish and City Attorney David Martinek. The meeting was scheduled for an early start due to a presentation by Sue Buske regarding the cable franchise agreement. The meeting started off with this presentation with the other items on the Agenda following later. Ms. Buske gave an overview of the 8 year franchise agreement and the transfer of the agreement from Cox Cable to Cebridge. She spoke of a community media center for public access television as well as the equipment for live feed broadcasts from Rio Dell City Hall. There is money provided for equipment upgrades for the live feed capabilities. There will be a $500,000 collaborative grant for the community media center that would be available to community members/groups to use. The franchise agreement passed unanimously as other Cities have recently approved the same thing as well as the fact that there is virtually no competition around here for cable providers. Council Member Marc Barsanti had a question about the fee's that the City receives from Cox and whether or not those fee's are accessed on cable internet services or just on the cable television. Ms. Buske explained that currently they are not allowed to collect fee's on internet or phone access due to federal restrictions. The community media center will be given a yearly grant of $200,000 for ongoing support and those costs to the cable company can be passed through to the customers by way of additional fee's. A citizen asked a question about what the possible Scotia annexation would mean to the franchise agreement. Ms. Buske stated that if annexed, the Scotia area would be covered by the same agreement and Rio Dell would receive their franchise fee's. If you are interested in the details of the franchise agreement, talk to City Hall and I am sure they can provide you access to the same packet of information given to the Council Members. The presentation wound up around 6:00 and the Council recessed into a closed door session until the regularly scheduled meeting time of 6:30pm.
The meeting resumed at 6:30 and the Council was led in the Pledge of Allegiance by local Girl Scouts. After the Pledge, Mayor Bud Leonard read a proclamation recognizing Girl Scout Week (March 12-18) and their contributions to the community. The proclamation was then received by two of the Girl Scouts on behalf of their group. Then Mayor Leonard read a proclamation recognizing April 22nd as Earth Day.
The consent calendar was next on the agenda and Mayor Leonard read each of the items to be approved as a block. The reading out loud of the items is something that hasn't been done in the Council Meetings for quite awhile and I am glad to see it return for the benefit of all in attendance who may not have access to the agenda. The items included the standard extension of the water emergency through to the next Council meeting and the consent calendar was passed unanimously.
The special presentations and the ordinances/special resolution items were taken care of earlier with the presentation by Ms. Buske and the Council passed unanimously the accompanying resolutions. The special call items were next with only one item cited. SJ&B Group had submitted their 8th pay request in the amount of $380,221.20 for the water infrastructure rehabilitation project. This was a pretty standard pay request and it also passed unanimously.
Public presentations followed with only one speaker. Kathleen Kemp asked about the pending litigation listed on the agenda for the closed door session and said that as a taxpayer in Rio Dell she wanted to know who the "concerned citizens" were, whether there was one person or fifty, etc. City Attorney David Martinek responded that the information would be known in 30 days and it would be public information. There was no question or comment as to what the pending litigation was concerning, only who was involved.
Staff updates were relatively brief as only the City Manager was in attendance. The Chief of Police was attending a community meth awareness workshop and Jim Hale from Public Works was unable to attend due to exhaustion. Parrish stated that Eel River Disposal (ERD) had refused the Cities request for a one year extension and the current contract will expire on the 31st of this month. The contract will automatically roll over with two changes proposed by ERD, a five year extension added to the 10 year contract for a total 15 year contract and a rate increase primarily for the recycling. Rio Dell is able to propose two items as well but they have not decided what those two items would be. There will be a public meeting on Monday the 27th at 6:00pm for a study session on the ERD contract.
On behalf of Public Works, Parrish updated the Council on recent problems with the water system. It seems that recent power surges blew the PFC (?) electronics which must have something to do with the intake of water from the Eel River or something like that. He said that Rio Dell has been on well water for a few weeks now but had just gotten back up and running as of noon that day. That might explain some recent problems we have noticed with the water (see article). Parrish also spoke of the patches in the asphalt recently where the new water lines were installed. These patches are just loose asphalt right now but Parrish stated that at the end of the project they will be patched with the more permanent hot roll asphalt. Barsanti had a question regarding the sales tax/property tax percentages that Rio Dell receives versus what other Cities are receiving and asked Parrish to look into this.
The closed door session items were then announced (see agenda) and the meeting adjourned.
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