EASTVIEW


The Eastview Board of Aldermen meets at 7:00 p.m. on the third Tuesday of each month at the Eastview Civic Center.


Eastview’s mayor is Charles Weeks (645-8421), whose current term expires in 2010.

Eastview has five aldermen who serve four-year terms, all of which come up for election at the same time.  The next election will be in 2010.  The current aldermen are:

    Billy W. Hunter (645-7263)
    Jessie Robbins (645-4303)
    Jeff Coln
    Lucy Martin
    Burl Sutton (645-3034)

 

Town Board Meeting

15 July 2008
 

July’s Eastview town board meeting brought some resolution to several recurring agenda items and the introduction of one new one which is likely to be around for a while.

 


The water board portion of the meeting began with the announcement by Raymond Butler that the leak on Feddie Davis Road was finally fixed. “We fixed the leak on Feddie Davis Road today.  It is fixed.  And the reason it was leaking is because somebody took, and adapted down, in the middle of the road, a four to a three [a 4” pipe to a 3” pipe].  A mess.”


“You got it fixed?” Mayor Charles Weeks asked, in a tone that combined hope and apprehension.


“Yeah,” Butler replied.


“It was in the middle of the road?” Weeks asked, and Butler replied that the leak was “about three foot out in the road.”


“Is that where you had to block off the road?” Lucy Martin asked.


“Block?” Butler responded derisively.  “Nah.  You can’t block the road.”


“Sorry,” Martin replied, after the laughter subsided, “I need to rephrase that.  You did put the barriers out; they didn’t mean anything.”


“We put the barriers out,” Butler said.  “They said ‘Road Closed.  No Through Traffic.’  And that didn’t mean a word.”


“They weren’t going all the way through,” Martin said, playfully, “they was just going four houses down.”


“No,” Butler responded, “they went all the way through.  Some of them made three and four trips.”


Butler then introduced Jimmy Halford, sales representative for G. & C. Supply Company, of Atwood, Tennessee, who described to the board various options for upgrading the town’s water meter system, including the installation of equipment for reading the meters electronically, which would reduce the time and expense of reading the meters and would also reduce the risk of injury (from passing vehicular traffic) to the meter reader.


The issue was discussed at considerable length, during which Martin did some figuring and concluded that the cost of upgrading all existing meters in the town’s system would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $150,000.


“Well,” Mayor Weeks finally concluded, “I think this is something that we need to kick around and discuss a little bit, because this is a lot of money.”


After the board unanimously approved the payment of bills, on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Sutton, Mayor Weeks turned to another familiar issue, asking Butler, “did you figure out where the fire hydrant could be installed on—”


“I’d say the only place it could probably be,” Butler promptly responded, “would be down below Ray Scott’s.  Right in there around him and that house on the left hand side of the road.”


“The closest thing to that now is up there at Synergy, right?” Weeks asked.


“No,” Butler replied, “there’s one down there at Mayflower Road.  When you turn in on it, there’s one right there.  What’s that woman’s name?  Mrs. Price?  Yeah.  Right there in her—”


“So that would pretty much split the distance between those two?” Weeks observed, and Butler agreed.


Weeks then asked, “How many households would benefit from that?”


“I don’t know, really,” Butler replied.  “Be all those over in there, Burns Road, Woodland Circle, New Hope.”


“And the cost of installing one?” Weeks asked.  “Do you know roughly what that would be?”


“The price of the fire plug, and the valve, and the pipe,” Butler replied.  “Which it would be just a four inch line we’d be putting it on.  Because that’s all that’s over in there, is four inch.”


“So,” Martin asked, “how much money is that, though?”


“Well,” Butler responded, “I’d have to get a price on the fire plug and the valve.  Pipe’s probably— I don’t know.  I’d have to get a price on all of it.”


“Are fireplugs really expensive?” Martin asked.


“Yeah,” Butler said.  “About $1600.”  


“You’ve got a lot of houses in there,” Weeks observed.


“Well,” Butler responded. “you’ve got probably fifty or sixty houses to cover.”


“Well,” Weeks asked the board, “what do y’all think.  We’re looking a probably two thousand, $2500.”


“Is it needed, Raymond?” Burl Sutton asked, skeptically.  “Is it actually needed?”


“Well,” Butler replied, “it would help, probably, if you had a fire over there.  But like I said, you got one down there on Mayflower Road, and the next one would be out here at Synergy.”


“Usually,” Sutton continued, “at one fire you would have four trucks there with water, anyway, and very seldom we ever use the hydrants.”


“You’re looking at 1800 to 2,000 gallons of water in every tanker,” Butler added, bolstering Sutton’s argument.


“What y’all think on it?” Weeks then asked the board.


“I think we ought to talk to Elvis [Butler],” Sutton replied, “he’s the fire chief, and see if it’s necessary to put it in or not.”


“How many houses on Woodland Circle?” Martin asked, at the same time that the mayor asked, “How many houses would be close enough to the fire hydrant to get a reduction in—”


“Seventeen houses, plus or minus one,” Butler responded.


“How far is it that you have to be from a fire plug to get a discount on your homeowner’s [insurance]?” Weeks asked, and the consensus among those present was that that was not a major consideration.


“Well,” Weeks observed, “like Burl says, I don’t thing getting the water to the fire is a problem no way.  And as many responders as we’ve got.  Well, do you want to just table this and let Elvis— he couldn’t make it tonight, but maybe he can be here at the next meeting and talk to us about it.”


“Well,” Martin observed, “if you’re talking about $2500, maybe, in expenses, to input one, that’s not a lot of money to have seventeen families given a little peace of mind.  And that’s kind of all they was asking for, really, is they don’t feel like the have anything there that’s going to help them save their hundred, two hundred and fifty thousand dollar homes.  And they’re in this community to help us, and now they was kind of coming to us wanting us to kind of help them.  I’m not saying, ‘Go ahead and do it,’ but I’m just saying have Elvis check it out and all that, but I think we really need to put forth a good faith effort to try to ease their mind about something.  I live real close to a fire hydrant.  I don’t know if anybody could get to my house in time to save it.  The response time, everybody’s a volunteer—


“You’ve still got to have a truck there,” Sutton argued.  “The fire hydrant ain’t going to put the fire out.”


“No,” Martin responded, “but everybody’s volunteers, and if just one truck gets there, I don’t know if one truck could put my house out.  I don’t know.”


“You now what’s the biggest problem with houses burning down?” Butler interjected.  “They don’t call you fast enough.  Some people will stand there and let them catch up real good before they even— You know, they’ll try to put them out themselves.”


Sutton agreed.  “If you don’t do something in the first ten minutes, it’s about gone.”


“A trailer is seven minutes, on a fire,” Butler continued.  “That’s what it takes to burn one down.  A house, you’ve got longer.”


“Well,” Weeks said, “let’s table this and we’ll talk to Elvis about it next month and see what his opinion is of it.  But I kind of like the idea of splitting that distance up, there.  It would make it half way between what we got.  And, like you say, when you’re talking about seventeen households, $2500 is not a lot of money.”


“Okay,” Weeks said, moving on, “in our budget meeting we talked about paying off the pumping station, and I believe we needed roughly fifty-two, fifty-three thousand dollars on that?  We’ve got the funds to do it with.  That’s something we discussed in the budget meeting.  Is that something we want to go ahead with?”


Martin asked, “How much money will it save us to pay it off?”  When Mayor Weeks and town recorder Emodene Smith replied that the town was paying less than 3% interest on the loan, Martin then asked if the town might not find some better use for that money.


“Well,” Billy Hunter asked, “what about this new system [the water meters] we just heard?  Could go with that.  Doesn’t that come out of the water department?”


“Why don’t we hold off on paying it off,” Sutton suggested.


“Well,” Weeks asked after some further discussion, “is everybody in agreement with that?  That we hold off on paying off the pumping station?  I mean, we can do that any time.”


“But a hundred meters is just $16,500,” Martin observed. “If we bought a hundred of those new meters at a hundred and sixty-five dollars a meter.  So, I mean if we’re thinking about going that route, $52,000 you know would buy you a great many—


“Would go a long way on that,” Weeks interjected.


“Uh huh” Martin agreed.  “Buy you three hundred.  That would almost give you half of your population—


“Almost half of this figure right here, $129,000,” Weeks said. “That would be the total system.”


“Like he was talking about a while ago,” Jeff Coln said, joining the discussion, “if you look at the, if you just put them down the, 57 and 45, where Raymond’s in danger of traffic coming by him at 60, 70 miles an hour, that would—”


“And,” Weeks added, “like he said, these meters are old, they’re going to have to be replaced anyway, and why spend seventy-five or eighty dollars on a meter like that, when you can spend this and get something that would work a lot better.”


“Well,” Coln continued, “like I say, you can read the meter in two hours, at $5 a gallon of gasoline, versus three days over…”


“That would make Raymond mad, wouldn’t it?” Weeks interjected, to general laughter.


Hunter also spoke in favor getting started with the new meters.


Weeks observed that the town would not have to purchase meters for the entire system at the same time: “We could get back with Jimmy and see what a smaller package would be, on this deal, here.”


Martin agreed. “Well, he said, you know, they’d cut us a deal.  And what he was quoting was $152 a meter, and I did this at $165 a meter, so—”


“And we don’t even know exactly how many meters we’re talking about on 57 and 45,” Weeks said, before bringing the discussion to a close, saying,  “We’ll talk further about that.”


After a brief discussion about printing information regarding late fees and reconnection fees on new water bills, the water meeting was adjourned on a motion by Martin, seconded by Hunter.


* * *


The town board meeting commenced with the approval of the minutes (on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Martin) and the bills (on a motion by Martin, seconded by Sutton), whereupon the mayor turned to the familiar item of insurance.


“Okay,” Weeks began, “I got y’all some things on the insurance, here.  We talked about this at the old meeting.  I’ve got an update on a quote from Chambers, where they added the, this building out here, and the concession stand.  Also giving some replacement costs on contents.  And some liability.  And that’s covering the building, $535,000, and the annual premium on that would be $2,428.  TML has come up with a quote with a thousand-dollar deductible.  Total coverage, $641,000, which is going to be the same as Chambers is; $535,000 on the building, thirty for contents, and then the other seventy-six thousand.  It’s going to add up to the same amount.  The premium on it was $2,868, but if we go with them we’ll be eligible for a full package bonus refund check of $500 in August, 2009.  So we get $500 back by placing our workers comp, our fire department, and this with them.  In addition to their coverage, they offer protection on employee dishonesty, up to $100,000, forgery, theft, disappearance and destruction, computer fraud.  They cover all that as well.  I talked to Farm Bureau, and they said there wouldn’t be any problem with them refunding our unused portion of our premium, if we decided that we wanted to go with either one of these companies.  But they’re just not willing to raise the coverage on the building.  TML said they would come down and do an audit once a year to make sure that our building coverages was up to where it needed to be.  So, you know, they might come down here next year and appraise the building at $750,000, and if they did that of course the premium’s going to go up.”


“I would, it would probably be nice—” Martin began.  “I don’t pay the bills but it would probably be nice if all of it was under one umbrella.”  Also, Martin added, “They actually give you so much more.  TML does.  It’s kind of like, everybody that works here is bonded.  We’re secured on that—”


“And they’ve got earthquake coverage on here, too,” Coln added, as he looked through some documents.


“Earthquake coverage,” Weeks agreed.  “I believe earthquake’s five hundred thousand, and flood’s six hundred and forty-one thousand.  He said it could even cover, like a backhoe and things like that, and as we moved it from place to place if we had some damage sustained to it, or our ditch witch, that they would cover that for us as well.”


Hunter and Coln indicated their support for the TML proposal, and Mayor Weeks said, “Plus, we get the $500 back in August of next year.  So that’s not a bad premium.”  Hunter and Coln also liked the idea of having a single insurance provider.


“And you get that kickback,” Martin observed.  “They’re real good about giving you those discounts.  And also, remember Ronnie Neill said they will counsel you on certain issues, they will help us out, they’ll answer all your questions, and, I mean, this is what they do, so…   It would be kind of like a centralized location—”


Sutton then moved that the town accept the insurance proposal from TML, and his motion, seconded by Coln, carried unanimously.


“Okay,” Weeks said, “I also talked to TML about the critical notice.  You remember, we mentioned that, and whether or not we’d be covered, and things like that?  As far as activities taking place here at the civic center, and at the ballpark.  If it’s something that we’re doing, in other words, the city or the park commissioner or something like that is handling this, we are covered.  They did point out to me, though, that if somebody come in and did something crazy, you know, like come in here in a car or something and run over a bunch of people, that, you know, we’ll be covered, but that act wouldn’t be necessarily covered.  And they went on to tell me that if we let somebody like, we had one of the churches that wanted to use our ballpark down here, that we get a certificate of insurance, for the additional insured.  But if it’s something we’re doing, we’re okay.”

Weeks then called on Paul Henson for a report on what he had discovered about right-of-ways questions which had been holding up improvements on Linsey Lane.


Henson had a surprise for the board.  “The right of way that was deeded to you guys is not actually a right of way, it’s a strip of land, which is a, basically a fee simple conveyance, right? [This to town attorney Craig Kennedy, who nodded affirmatively.]  It was originally a right of way that was fifty feet wide, but there were some retroactive signatures there, I believe, from the original owner, was Jones’s heirs, who conveyed this as a strip of land.  So what I’ve got shaded here is actually what the city of Eastview owns.”


After a discussion that lasted more than ten minutes, Mayor Weeks finally said, “Well, I think we need to move forward with this.”


Hunter agreed. “I don’t see nothing standing in the way now, do you?  Right, Craig?”


“I don’t see anything to keep you from doing what you want to,” Kennedy replied.


“Can we get Harvey Neal to do that for us?” Weeks asked, referring to Harvey Neal Smith of the county highway department.


“I don’t see why not,” Hunter said, and Kennedy observed, “Well, I understood that’s what they’ve been waiting on, if they were going to do it all, so I think you might talk with him.”


“Well,” Weeks asked the board, “what do we need to do?  We need to call Harvey Neal and tell him to get to work, don’t we?”  There was general agreement, and a motion by Coln, seconded by Hunter, that the town have the county pave the road passed by a unanimous vote.


“We’ll call Harvey Neal tomorrow,” Weeks said.


* * *


The mayor then turned to the two men in the audience and said, “Wayne, you and Tommy, I guess, next on the agenda, here.”


Wayne Elam, whose mattress factory on Hwy 45 was destroyed by the February 5 tornado, said a few words—”Most of you know what happened, and I’m retired, and I’m turning the business over to Tommy.  And I want to thank the city for everything you’ve done for me these past twenty-five years.”—before yielding the floor to his son.


“Well,” Tommy Elam began, “he’s turned it over to me, and he’s retired.  I’m looking to borrow some money, like twenty-five years ago when he did.  Not real sure about how much, but it’s going to cost me a half-million dollars to get a building and get going.  What I figure, plus what I’ve already got.  I’ve got about twelve thousand square feet of warehouse space, and some equipment.  I’ve got enough to start going.  Matter of fact, this month we’re starting to produce bedding.  I’ve got over a hundred thousand dollars worth of bedding I’ve got to produce this month for dorm mattresses.  But 12,000 square feet is not going to be enough.  And I told him I’d just like to do it on my own.  He done it thirty years ago.  I think I can do it.  I know I can do it.  And I don’t know how much you can loan me, but I’m looking for a lot.  And I can get more figures together for you.  I’m kind of unprepared tonight.  But I just want to lay that out there.  Y’all have been good to us, and we want to keep it here in the city, and we are going to keep it here, one way or another.  Just start, you know, grow from there.  Basically, we’re starting— I’m starting from scratch.  You know, six months with not producing, and not taking care of customers, I’m going to have to get out and work hard, and just start all over.  But I do have a foundation to start on.  Like I said, these dorm mattresses, is big kick.  And this hundred thousand could double by next month.  I’m bidding on stuff constantly, and right now like I said I’ve got a thousand beds I’ve got to make within the next month before school starts back.  So, I’d hope, I’d like to use that shovel one more time,” referring to the ceremonial, multi-handled shovel that stands in the corner in the town board’s meeting room.


“How soon do you need money?” Martin asked.  “Other than ‘Yesterday.’”


“Yeah, yesterday,” Elam replied.  “We’ve got a building picked out, what I need, and it’s six, eight weeks to get a building in.  And it’s going to take six, eight weeks to build it.  And you know, you’re talking about six, eight weeks to wire it.  I’m going to have to buy a little bit of equipment.  Not much.  I’m going to try to get by on what I’ve got, and I am able to repair a lot of what I’ve got.  Like I said, we’re rolling now.  We’re, we’ve started this week making mattresses.  By the next meeting, I could get a good figure together.  Maybe, show you what I’ve got in assets right now, and just put my name in the hat.  Give you something to think about.”


Sutton said, “I think that’s what you need to do, Tommy, is get your figures down there.  What you need to get started—”


Coln interjected, “I think we’ll be willing to help you do anything—”


“Let us know,” Sutton continued.  “We can call a special meeting, as far as that goes.  As soon as you’ve got what you actually need to get started.”


“Okay,” Elam replied.


“And see what we can come up with,” Sutton concluded.


“I can do that,” Elam said.  “Any other questions?”


Martin asked whether he “would need your money in stages?”


“More than likely,” Elam replied.  “I got my warehouse—not my warehouse, my show room, bathrooms, and, as you can see, some brick area already started, that I’m going to start working in, in the next couple of weeks.  It’s almost finished, so—  But, you know, once things start coming in—”


“He’s got his startup money already in place,” Wayne Elam said.


“I got some to get going,” Tommy Elam acknowledged, “but it’s not going to be near enough to keep me going, to pay people, and have people come in and put the building up.”


“How many employees you planning on having up there?” Hunter asked.


“I don’t know,” Tommy Elam replied.  “Twelve to fifteen is what I had, and, you know, with business the way it is now, you don’t know.  But I know what I can do.  I know I can keep twelve to twenty people busy.  I’ve got some commitments from some other customers, you know.  Nothing’s in the bank yet, but—  Twenty, twenty-five employees is what I’d like.”


“Well,” Mayor Weeks said, “we’re certainly in favor of helping you on this as much as we can.  If you’ll just get us some figures together, then we’ll see what we can do, and go from there.”


“Okay,” Elam replied.  “I just try to plan on being back next month.  That’s okay?”


The board members agreed that it was.


As he and his son prepared to leave, Wayne Elam said that the town board was a “Fine bunch of people to work with.  I’d just like to say that.  That shovel, it’s meant a lot to me.  And over the years I’ve kept in touch with the city of Eastview, and how they work together and what they done for a small community.  So, y’all certainly meant a lot to me then, you still mean a lot to me now.  And I appreciate what you’re doing.  I mean, you see a little improvement as you go along, and it won’t be long maybe we’ll have something out there besides that Dollar Store before long.  It’s doing great.”


Tommy Elam joined his father in complimenting the board. “Well, you read the paper every week about the city of Selmer, and they’re fighting and arguing and something—”


* * *


“The next one on here,” Weeks said, wrapping up the meeting, “is participation in the national flood insurance program.  I talked to this guy right before the meeting, and he wants to come down and meet with us later on.  He says this is nothing pressing, or anything like that, but I think y’all need to hear the program and how it works and how it could benefit us.”  After a few questions regarding whether Eastview was in the flood plain, Weeks said, “But, anyway, this man that’s coming next month, he’ll have all the answers, because he works right here in McNairy County.  We can ask him all the questions that we can’t answer right here.”


Finally, Weeks told the board that “Stevie [Steve Hunter, with the Parks Commission] called and said he’s getting an estimate to hook up our scoreboard.  And I think when we get that, if it’s reasonable, if it’s okay with y’all we’ll go ahead and do it.”

 

 

 

 

Town Board Meeting

17 June 2008
 

Eastview’s June town board meeting featured the return of MTAS’s Ronnie Neill for an informative update on the annexation process and as a disappoint report from Steve Hunter about the literal disappearance of the town’s application for a grant to improve the city park.


Meeting first at the water board, the board heard from Raymond Butler that the only leak that the utility department had to deal with was the pre-existing one on Feddie Davis Road.  Butler gave no indication on when the repairs, which would requite that the road be temporarily closed, would be undertaken.


After the bills were read and approved (unanimously, on a motion by Billy Hunter, seconded by Jessie Robbins), Mayor Charles Weeks addressed an issue from the previous meeting. “Last month we had a request, I believe it came from Woodlawn Circle, about installing either some fire hydrants or fills for the fire trucks over there.  And I believe you [Butler] did a little investigation on that, and what did you find out?”


Butler’s news was not good. “They’re two-inch lines, instead of four.  Wouldn’t even fill a truck.”


Jeff Coln observed that a fire truck could “almost come over here and fill it before, and get back, before you could fill it there.”


“You could,” Butler agreed.  “Well, you’ve got a fire hydrant right at Mayflower Road, I’ve forgot what it’s called.  The one that goes down by Michie.  You’ve got a fire plug there.  It’s a four-inch main, and it’s got plenty of pressure on it, so it shouldn’t take long to fill a truck up there.  Or you can come up here to Synergy, I call it, and fill up there.  So you’ve got two on each end—I mean one on each end.”


“And how far out does that two-inch line extend, do you know?” Weeks asked.


“I don’t know, to be honest with you,” Butler replied, adding that he thinks the four-inch line extends out “to the edge of the road down there, where it turns in to Woodland Circle.”  At least, he qualified, “there’s supposed to be.  I wouldn’t guarantee it.  Like I said, I’m learning as I go.”  Butler added that the available information was not very reliable. “I try to go by that map that we’ve got in there on the wall [in the utility department], and sometimes it ain’t right.  You don’t know what we’ve got until you dig it out.”


“Well,” Weeks asked, “could we do a little bit of research, background check, and find out would be involved in installing a meter there?  Or a hydrant there?  And report back to us at the next meeting?” and Butler said that he would do so.


Weeks informed the board that the new utility department software had arrived, “and Anita and I are going to tackle installing it tomorrow.  Mostly Anita’s going to tackle installing it tomorrow.”  Weeks said that the town had also received one of the hand-held electronic meter readers and that Butler would be going “over to Michie on Friday and ride with them for a little while and look at this scanner system that they’ve got over there.  I talked to the girl, and she said it cut their meter reading down from four days, to four hours.”


“Wow!” Jeff Coln exclaimed at the same time that Lucy Martin said “Oh, my goodness!”


“And I asked her about the cost,” Weeks continued, “and she said that the cost was incurred by the customers, as they had to pay $96 per meter to have this system put on them.  And I asked her was there a lot of complaining about that, and she said there wasn’t, that they had publicized it for a long time before they did it.”


“How much cost is it going to be per individual?” Hunter asked.


“It was a one-time fee of $96,” Weeks repeated.  “She said sometimes they would have to be replaced because of, you know, wrecks and things like that would run into the meter, or the highway department, but that wouldn’t be incurred by the customer.  That they would, you know, they would take care of that cost.  But, anyway, I think it’s something we can look at and at least talk about.”


“Well, one thing about it,” Butler observed, “it would be accurate.  Everwhat’s on the meter, you put in the computer would be what was on the meter.”


“And” Weeks added, “probably in the long run it would be cost-saving, too, because of all this stop-and-go driving you having to do now.”


Martin observed that “It would be $80,000 to put it on 800 meters.”


Moving on to another subject, Butler said “I talked to Selmer about the color coding of the fire hydrants.  And he said they went by the pressure on, I mean the flow on them, and said you have to have a flow gauge to check the flow on them.  And as far as I know we ain’t got one….  Stanley Smith said he would talk to Selmer and Corinth and see if we could borrow theirs, and—”


“Well,” Weeks asked, “were they not color-coded when they were installed?”


“Not that I know of,” Butler replied.  “But they’re supposed to be color coded.  Like 800-1,000 gallons would be like green and yellow, and then 400 or less would be red, or something like that.”


Weeks said that “what Raymond is talking about right now is something he and I discussed a while back.  I mentioned to him the possibility of going here and repainting the fire hydrants, and testing them, and making sure that they’re all functioning properly.  And that’s what he’s talking about on color coding of them.  So, I think it’s something that we need to do, but when we do it we need to do it right.”


“Yeah,” Butler agreed.  “If you don’t, somebody out of Selmer comes out here on a fire, and they hook it up to the wrong one, you can bust a line if you don’t know what it is.”


“So you’re going to check with them on that?” Weeks asked.


“Yeah,” Butler said.  “He’s supposed to be letting me know something, I ain’t heard nothing yet, on borrowing a gauge, and how to do it.”


There being nothing else, the water board adjorned on a motion by Martin, seconded by Robbins, and immediately reconvened at the Eastview town board.


* * *


After calling the town board to order Weeks asked Butler if he had heard anything from Harvey Neal Smith of the county highway department “on fixing these roads, and repairs—”


“No,” Butler replied, “He said he’d get to it.  But you know that was when, the budget, when he was run out of money.  If you want me to, I’ll call him again tomorrow and see what he is going to do.”


As Butler took his leave he said to Steve Hunter, who is leading the Parks Commission Program, “And your question the other night, on the score board thing?  It’s setting on the bench.  I found it, finally.  It was under it.  But it’s the old one.  It ain’t the new one.  And that thing down yonder, I wouldn’t know how to commence to wire it up, because it’s like a telephone line.  It’s got so many wires inside of it, I—”


“You’re talking about what’s running to it?” Hunter asked.


“Yeah,” Butler replied.  “You’ll have to get an electrician on that.”  And then he left.


Returning to the subject of roads, Weeks asked Coln if he had heard anything from Paul Henson regarding the survey of Linsey Lane, which was on the evening’s agenda.


“I talked to Paul this morning,” Coln responded, “and he said he’s still over at Boliver, and he’s just swamped over with stuff to do.  He’s really been blessed, he said, as far as work, and he promises he’d have it all together and be here at the July meeting.”


“Okay,” Weeks said, before dryly adding, apropos of Henson’s long delay in completing the survey, “So when we contracted with him, that just helped his business tremendously.”


“It must have,” Coln agreed, after the laughter subsided.  “He said he’s really blessed with a lot of work.”


Still on the subject of roads, Robbins reported that “Ray Scott wanted some gravel over there where you turn off to go to his house.  He said that’s getting muddy there, when it rains.  So will it be okay if we get somebody to get a load of gravel in there?”


After a short discussion Robbins put that in the form of a motion, which was seconded by Hunter and passed unanimously.



The Vanished Grant Application


“Let’s see, Steve,” Mayor Weeks said, turning to Steve Hunter, “you’re in kind of a hurry, too.  Lets go ahead and take care of the park.”


“Well,” Hunter began, “I’ve got some good news and bad news.  If y’all remember the lady, Linda Higgins, from Southwest Development, that came down, and I was working with.  Well, she was let go, because she, basically— we wasn’t the only ones, but the state didn’t get our application, all that stuff, all the surveys.  Everything is missing, gone.  I spoke to her boss, and he was just like, ‘We’ve been looking through her office.  We’ve tried to call her, get her to help find, and she wouldn’t.’  And so there’s a new lady, so I’m actually starting all over.  And I didn’t find out until last week, because she said we wouldn’t hear anything until August, so that was the timetable I was working on.  And so we’re kind of starting over again, so to speak.  And like I said, I didn’t find out until last week.  I wanted to give everybody an update—”


“You mean the grant, the application and everything has got to be redone?” Lucy Martin asked.


Hunter affirmed that was so.  “I’m talking, the application that we did, the survey, that thing we got from Griggs and Maloney, and all the stuff.  You know, we had to put together— I mean, I worked with her, she was real diligent, there in the beginning.  I had no idea that it wasn’t going according to plan.  The new lady is Doris Owens.  She’s sending me a package to, you know, go through and make sure that I get it, and so we’ll start the process again.  As he [Raymond] mentioned, we’ve got a new scoreboard down here.  We’ve got new coolers in the concession stand.  And I do plan on having probably a couple of tournaments, just fund-raising tournaments, that’s what I’m going to call them, to rebuild the park.  So I’m, you know, that’s what I’m going to call them, and just, all money that we raise will go to the city, you know, and that’s how we’ll do that.  And maybe earmark those funds as part of the match, or whatever.  The scoreboard and all that we can count toward that.  I hope, like the electrical work, I hope to get that donated.  Anything like that can go toward that, I do remember that.  So, but, like I said, that’s the good news and bad news, and all I can say is I’m sorry, because like I said, I thought everything was proceeding, and like I said Linda’s boss said that we wasn’t the only one it happened to.  There were several others that, you know.  And I actually called the state myself and had them go through and see, and there was not any application on us, so.  I got another, I got two names, I only talked to one, I thought I’d take a chance and talk I’d talk to the second person at the state and maybe see if they had missed it, but I’ll let every one know that’s where we’re at.”


“Doris is real good,” town recorder Emodene Smith observed.


“Yeah,” Hunter said.  “She, and, like I said, I was a little frustrated with them, and I told Doris, ‘I know it wasn’t you,’ and she was like, ‘It’s like you didn’t even exist.’  They couldn’t find anything on us at all, so—”


Burl Sutton interrupted with a question.  “Did the lady quit, or what?”


“No,” Hunter replied, “she was fired.  So it must have been pretty bad, for them to fire her.  So, and we just found out the hard way.  So, that’s where we are.  Once I get the package from Doris and do what I need to do, you know part of it is, we may can go back.  We had to actually have a meeting, remember, and include that in the minutes.  I may be able to use that meeting, or whatever.  If not, we may have to have a new one.  But I’ll be working with her.  That’s good to know, if you’ve worked with her before and she’s a good person to work with.  I’ll maybe try to follow it up a little more now, now that I know that it’s this way, but that’s where we’re at.”


“I think the state was cutting park grants anyway,” Smith observed, which town attorney Craig Kennedy confirmed a few minutes later.


“Really?” Hunter asked with apparent surprise.


“She was handling our grant on the sirens,” Weeks observed, “and we was pushing a deadline on it, yeah.”


“And that’s why it got lost,” Martin said.  “And that went so far as to even get on one of the meetings I was at at UT Martin.  It was on the board.  And we was as well, I mean as good as gotten it, and then all of a sudden, everything disappeared.  I mean, there was nothing on the horizon for Eastview at all.”


“Well,” Hunter continued, “I mean if we, you know, if we got an answer ‘No,’ that’s different than, you know, not even having an application in, and right now the state don’t even find one.  Like I said, I got another name and number, and I’ll try to actually talk to them, [several unintelligible words].  But, just wanted to give you a progress report.  It’s not as good as I’d like, but that’s where we’re at.”


As Hunter departed, Kennedy held up a newspaper.  “Talking about the grants for parks, this says there will be no funds available until the next scheduled grant awards in 2010.  They’ve taken that money and turned it back over to the general funds for two years.”



Insurance


After the board approved the minutes (on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Sutton) and the bills (on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Coln), Mayor Weeks said, “We have just a little bit of old business that we needed to address tonight.  On our insurance coverage on the civic center, we had some discussion about that, I don’t know if it was the last meeting or the time before.  I think we touched on it a little bit last month.  But, a little concerned about the coverage we had on the civic center, being around $250,000, replacement cost, and I thought that was low.  I went to Chambers Insurance Agency and got them to do us a coverage quote, and they said the building would insure for $535,000.  And the annual premium, to cover it for $535,000, would be $1,600.  But, now, this premium does not cover contents.  I don’t know whether the one Farm Bureau did or not, but I don’t think it would be that much more to add the content coverage if we wanted to do that.  But we’ve got over twice the coverage on the building through Chambers Insurance Agency for about $300 a year more.  About what it boils down to.  And he said that no commercial building like this would insure for less than $100 a foot.  And that’s going to be about $125 a foot.  I think Farm Bureau had it insured for $65 a foot.”


Coln asked, “They say what it would cost to add the contents to theirs?”


“No.  I—” Weeks began, only to be interrupted by the town recorder with additional information.


“Now,” Emodene Smith said, “on the Farm Bureau, also, we had the old fire department and the concession stand.  So I think the, on the civic center it’s $800.”


“So that’s about an $800 difference in coverage,” Weeks observed.


Billy Hunter then asked, “Is the new fire department covered under—”


“Bodiford-White has it,” Smith said.  “Because Farm Bureau wouldn’t insure it.  Then we asked Bodiford-White to give us an estimate on this, and they can’t insure it.”


“Why?” Martin asked.  “Is there a reason?”


“Commercial on buildings,” Smith replied, somewhat cryptically.


“This quote is through State Auto Insurance,” Weeks pointed out.  “It says it’s one of the fourteen companies to earn the A+ rating, A.M. Best, every year since 1954.  They’ve got a good reputation.”


“When is our policy come due?” Coln asked, and Smith replied that “We just paid it in April.”


Sutton asked whether the town had asked Farm Bureau about raising the coverage.


“We did,” Weeks responded, to which Martin added, “And they wouldn’t.”


 “Well,” Hunter observed, “we definitely need more coverage on this building.”


“I agree,” Weeks said.


“So, what do we do now,” Martin eventually asked, “if we don’t have that coverage and we’ve paid it for a year?”


Mayor Weeks responded by asking the board, “Do you want me to get a quote on this if we add the old fire building and the concession stand and some content coverage, see what it would run?”


“I would,” Coln replied.  “I think it would be good to have everything under one roof.”


At this point Ronnie Neill, who had come down to address the board on annexation issues, asked, “Mayor, do y’all have insurance with TML as far as the liability goes?”


“We do,” Weeks confirmed.


Neill said, “TML also provides property coverage, if you wanted to get another bid from somebody.  They would certainly cover all of it, because that’s what they do, is insure city buildings.  So if you wanted another bid, you might check with them.”


“Okay,” Weeks responded, then to the board he said, “So, do you want to just table this until we can get some comparative quotes from Chambers Insurance and TML?  And is guess we can, at that point in time, if we decide we want to opt for a higher coverage, we could cancel our policy with Farm Bureau and get a refund.”


“I would think so,” Smith said.


Martin, however was not optimistic. “You don’t get much of a refund when you cancel, though.  They don’t give you much.  But I mean, you could check into it.”



Liability Exposure


After the board unanimously approved (on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Coln) a $25 per month increase in the salary of the part-time recorder (from $3,900 per year to $4,200 per year), Mayor Weeks moved on to the next agenda item, “TML Critical Notice regarding Liability Exposure.”


Every time I go to the mailbox,” Weeks said, holding up a paper, “I’m getting one of these things here from TML, a ‘Critical Notice.’  I got one on fireworks, and it says that anyone sanctioning or having any part to do with fireworks displays will not be covered through TML’s liability, without some kind of underwriting.  And it’s my understanding we don’t sanction, or do we intend to sanction any kind of fireworks in the city, so I don’t see that—”


“In the past,” Hunter interjected, “we done had five of them here.


“—I don’t really see that as an issue,” Weeks continued.  “But I do have a question about this one right here.  I’m glad Craig’s here tonight.  But this is talking about risk exposures, in which we have events taking place that are sponsored by the city, or directed by a third party on our property, or events with multiple sponsors.  And it says that TML pool liability does not automatically cover all exposures for everything in which the city or government is involved.  It’s got a exposure checklist that we can fill out and get a, an opinion from them, I suppose.  But this is probably, I was talking to Craig, this is probably all stemming from what happened in Selmer.  But my question would be, if something happened out here at our park, are we going to be covered through TML.”


“Well,” Kennedy began, “it’s just like when Steve’s talking about doing these tournaments, and you need to run it by them and make sure you’re going to be covered.”  He then discussed liability issues in general, concluding that it was always a good idea to get specific acknowledgement of coverage from the insurance carrier, in writing, for each event.  “You just need to make sure that, I think you fill this out and send it in and say ‘This is what we’re doing.  We’re raising money for the park, this is what the funds are going for,’ my thinking they’d say ‘Okay.’  But, again, I’m not the one that writes that policy, and you need to run it by them.  Ronnie may know more about that than I do.”


“Well,” Neill said, “it’s my understanding from them that this is not really anything new, as far as what they’re excluding, but it’s a way of bringing it to the attention of the city, that so many cities never read their policies, and then when something happens they just automatically assume they’re covered, and they’ve never been covered.  They have no intentions of covering some of those things that are done.  And this is a way to say to cities, ‘Remember, we don’t cover everything.  Here’s the exclusions.  If you want to know, the simple thing to do is contact us, and we’ll tell you whether you’re covered or not.’  Because, cities have gotten into the habit of just assuming ‘I buy liability insurance, anything I do as a city, I’m covered.’  Well, that’s not true.  And it never has been.”


“And,” Kennedy added, “an extension would be, you know, if they still had the bluegrass festival here, for instance, that would be another one of those things where, again, you’ve done it for years, never had any problems out of it, but in order to make sure you had coverage for that you’d have to contact them and say, ‘This is what’s going on, this is what we’re doing, who,’ it’s a list of things.  Who’s in charge, who’s providing, you know, the insurance policy out there, you know, are we, is the city the named [unintelligible word] insured on those policies, it’s a lot of different questions you have to go through.  But again, something’s got to be done.”


After considerable additional discussion the matter was finally dropped.



Fire Department: Handicapped Volunteer


“Let’s go on to item number five,” Weeks said, “reports from departments.  Fire department, I’ve sent in the letter for our portion of the grant from the county.  They said it would be the same as last year, $3,808, and I believe that Elvis asks that we designate that, plus maybe the next couple of years, towards buying a compressor for the cascade system.  So I sent that in to Mayor Templeton, and they have that, and they said a check wouldn’t be issued until the next fiscal year, which will start in July.”


Weeks then turned to one of the agenda’s most interesting items: “Item (1) on here [the fire department report] involves a request from an individual that is wishing to be involved in the fire department activities, as a, I guess as a volunteer.  And this person has some physical handicaps.  My question is, can we safely use this individual in any capacity with the fire department?”


“What’s his handicap?” asked fire department member Benny Pratt.


Weeks replied, “This man has had, I believe he told me two heart attacks. But he said there are still some things that he could do as far as helping out.  He wants to help out.  And I tell you, if you could get him involved in some fund-raising activities, you wouldn’t find anybody any better.  But as far as getting out here fighting fires, I’d be scared to death…. But would there be any problem, do you think, with assigning some kind of duties with the fire department in that capacity?”


“As a volunteer,” Martin said, “he could volunteer to be the fund raiser, committee leader, or chair of that committee, and he himself probably knows his limitations, and he probably wouldn’t want to go fight a fire.  But he maybe could contribute—”


Coln suggested that “He could be like the equipment coordinator, something like that.  See to it that all the water hoses are rolled up.  I don’t think we could, I don’t really think we could tell him that he couldn’t,” Coln said, because that might be discriminatory.


“You’ve got the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Kennedy observed.


“Well,” Weeks said, after some further discussion, “he’s pretty active.  He goes to my church.  I’ll tell you who it is, it’s Earl Chism.”


“Earl’s a good guy,” Coln said.  “I think he would be an asset.  I mean, he knows his limitations.  I think he could be, like I say, an equipment coordinator, I mean there’s several things he could do, as far—”


Martin interjected, “And he just to be involved in the fire department activities and work as a volunteer, not necessarily be the first man at the fire with the hot suit on and all of that.  He just maybe wants to be involved in, maybe even coming to the meetings, and his input.”


After some further discussion Weeks said, “He told me if there was any issue that, you know, we felt like was too much of a risk, he’d understand, but he would like to be involved, if there was something he could do in the fire department.”


“As a volunteer,” Martin pointed out, “you know, they’re not covered under anything.  Not Worker’s Comp, not $250 or something a week….  It’s not very much at all, but as a volunteer they’re, they’re strictly a volunteer and not covered.”


“Mr. Mayor,” Sutton said, “I think the board should leave it up to the assistant chief or the chief to decide who they want working for them.  Now if we tell him, yeah, you can go down there, you can work for the city, they may not want him down there.  He’s had two heart attacks, he don’t need to be around no fires.  He could do other stuff over there for the city, he could do other stuff, but—


“Yeah,” Pratt agreed, “he could probably do other stuff, but I wouldn’t want him going in a house and then something happen, he have another heart attack right there in the midst of us, and we’d be dragging him back out.”


“ I understand what you’re saying,” Weeks said to the fireman, “but I really think Elvis [Fire Chief Elvis Butler] was going to bring that up to the board tonight. So.  I know that Earl and Elvis had had some conversations, and my understanding that Elvis said he wanted to run it by us and see what we thought.  Was that your understanding of it?”


“That’s the first I’ve heard about it,” Pratt said.



Annexation Redux


“Ronnie, I guess you’re next,” Weeks said, and Ronnie Neill rose to his feet.


“You’d called and said that y’all maybe were interested in the area of annexation,” Neill began, adding “I’m glad to hear it’s been since September since I was here, because I truly don’t remember what we discussed the last time.  [See below for the nearly verbatim coverage of his comments at the September town board meeting—where, incidentally, his name was mistakenly spelled as “Ronny Neal,” instead of “Ronnie Neill.”]  But I’ve got the map that we used, and if y’all can show me what you think that you’re interested in.  Of course, it has to be in your urban growth boundary, first.  If it is, then you can annex it by ordinance.  It is too late this year to get any state shared taxes.  Any people that you add once you do the census, you would not get any credit for them as far as state shared taxes go until July of 2009.  Because those lists are always certified on July the 1st, and it would be, there’s just not enough time to do the annexation and get them counted by July 1.  That just can’t be done.  So you wouldn’t get any people, you wouldn’t get any money for any of the new people until July 2009.  This year it looks like it’s going to be about $108 per person in state shared taxes.  That’s—We’ve actually projected that to go down a bit from last year.  But, of course it’s based on sales tax, it’s based on gas tax.  That’s the two big things that are involved, and those taxes that you share in.  And, of course, gas tax is a per gallon tax, so even though people are spending more on gasoline, if they buy fewer gallons there’s less money coming in to the state to be shared.  And I’m—”


“Our share of taxes have gone down, on the gas tax,” Smith observed.


“And sales tax has probably gone down a little bit, too,” Neill agreed.  “They actually have been, I think last month they actually collected less in sales tax this month than they did a year ago, and I forget how many years before that since that’s actually happened before.  So, don’t know what the economy is going to do, but it will be at least a year before you can collect any money off of that on state share tax.


“With that, unless y’all have some questions, I’d just like to put the map out, and if y’all will show me what you think you want to look at, then we can check it and go from there.  This is a map of the entire city.  I will have to check the urban growth boundary, but other than that, you can annex through an ordinance by your on initiative in any area that’s in the urban growth boundaries.”  


There then followed some not entirely clear discussion of the area(s) being considered for annexation.  In a typical exchange, Coln said, “You’re talking about following this creek bed, aren’t you Burl?”  When Sutton responded affirmatively, Coln continued: “Go up through here.  Come across Mayflower Road here, 57, come back around here to Gravel Hill Road, or no, I think Roy Seay Road is what you talking about, wasn’t it, Burl?  That should be it right there.  And then you go across Gravel Hill Road to McMahan Road, back over to 57.”


“Now, keep in mind,” Neill explained, “once you annex everything, we have to come up with a plan of services that will show when you’re going to provide the same services to that area as you’re currently providing the current city.”


“They already got it, really,” Sutton said.  “They’ve got the same thing that we’ve got in the city.”


Martin pointed out that “The one thing that we have to worry about, though, is the road condition, and the bridges, and that’s big bucks when you start talking about repairing and keeping up and maintaining, and right now, it seems we can’t even get our road repairs done.”


“Bridges are dangerous,” Neill agreed.  “I mean if you get a bridge, now, you could wipe out everything you wanted to spend on roads for 15 years.”


The discussion of bridges, of which the Eastview currently has few, moved on to a discussion of roads, with Kennedy observing that “you’re looking at, again, eight thousand bucks, or whatever it is a mile.”


Kennedy eventually asked Neill if there was any way to get an estimate of the number of people in the area(s) under consideration.

“We can,” Neill replied, “if you’ll tell me what areas you want, and give me a little while to do it, we can go in there and count the houses and, in the state of Tennessee it’s about 2.3 people per house, is the average.  So that’s probably close enough to do a study with.  But, we could go in there and count the houses, measure the miles, come up with some figures on what it would cost to keep up the roads, and that sort of thing.  But I would need a little while to do all that.”


“Well,” Weeks said, “I think the area of most concern was down there just off Mayflower, wasn’t it?  That sub-division down there that’s—”


“Uh huh,” Coln replied.  “That’s right here [points to spot on map].  Because there’s been several houses added in here.”


“You’ve got thirty-something houses that’s back there,” Sutton observed, “that’s just on the border line.”


“And there’s no pavement,” Smith pointed out.


“Yeah,” Robbins agreed, “there’s no pavement there.”


“None of those roads are paved,” Coln said.


“No,” Sutton agreed, “it ain’t paved.”


“Not anything,” Hunter added, glumly.


“Now,” Neill began, “are there going to be any subdivisions—”  He then started over.  “You know, one thing about, and I don’t what kind of regulations they have in the county, but one thing about having an area right next to the city, if they’re going to develop it in the city, is that you can then control, make sure that it’s built to your standards, rather than somebody go and build something right on the edge that you’re going to have to provide all the services, that is built less than your standards to start with.  Now I don’t know what the county, here, requires.  As a city, I means, if you have somebody wants to do a subdivision, I mean, you ought to require that they build the roads to certain standards, that they be paved, that they put up a bond until a certain amount of the road is built out, all of those kinds of things through subdivision regulations.  And you can do subdivision regulations without doing zoning.”


“County has a requirement about the roads,” Kennedy said.  “What it has to be, up to what standard, before they’ll take it over.”


“Now, do they allow people to put in gravel roads, or do they require it to be paved?” Neill asked.


“It was gravel,” Kennedy replied, “but I’m not so sure that they didn’t go back after they did all that paving.  I think now they may require it.”


“I think they do,” Coln agreed, before adding, I’m not positive.”


“Well,” Neill said, “that might not be a problem, then.”


“I’m not for sure,” Kennedy repeated.


“But again,” Neill continued, “you know, if it’s in the city, then you can control the water, you can control what kind of lines they have to put in, put them in to your specifications, put the roads in to your specifications, require the developer to put up the street lights, if you’re going to furnish street lights.  And basically keep all of that initial cost off of the city, and put it on the developer.  And then at least you only wind up having to take over the operation.  You don’t have to, you don’t wind up annexing something, and then everybody comes to city hall wanting everything improved.”


“This subdivision down here you’re talking about?” Robbins said. “The road commissioner’s gone down and tried to get them to sign papers so that they can gravel it.  All of them down through there did but the first man on the corner, and he wouldn’t sign the paper, so they couldn’t widen the road or anything in front of his house.  And he’s the first one right there at that little curve.  They skipped his, ever how much land he’s got there, and started gravelling below it.  That’s what we’ll run into if it ain’t, if it ain’t laid out ahead of time.”


“And,” Neill said, pointing out another benefit of annexation, “you don’t take the roads and the infrastructure until it meets your requirements, and they have to bond it for a year so that it’s used for a year and then they have to fix it before you actually take it over, is what you’d normally do.  And then when you actually take ownership it’s a good road, it’s going to last for several years before you’re going to have to worry about it.


“You know,” Weeks said, thoughfully, “if we waited long enough, the county may come in there and pave that road.  Then we could look at possibly taking it in.”


Neill then asked, “Do you all know if you’re going to have any subdivisions here next to you, or within the city?”


“No,” Weeks said, and Robbins agreed, saying, “I don’t know of any new ones.”


“I just wondered if that Toyota plant will create any growth here,” Neill said.  “I could see it, in normal times I think it probably would.  I don’t know—”


“They’ve got that on hold for two years,” Hunter said.


“Well,” Neill responded, “there was an article in the paper that said they were going to delay starting production for about six months, but that they were going ahead and build just like they were going to start, but then actually not.  Now that’s what the paper was saying about a month or so ago.”


“Well,” Mayor Weeks said finally, “what do we want to do on this.  Do you want to get that study on just that one area, or do we want to look at extending it on around here like we talked about?”


“Well,” Sutton said, “I’d go up through Gravel Hill, there.  You’ve got a blacktop road.  There’s a lot of houses in that section right over there.”


After some further discussion Martin asked, “That would take in Woodland Circle, and all that?”


“Yeah,” Coln agreed.  “You would go— You’d probably want to go across Mayflower Road, and turn up Mayflower Road here and cross 57 here at Gravel Hill Road, and take in this area right here [indicates on map].  That would include Woodland Circle and—”


“All right,” Neill said finally.  “Give me, y’all give me a couple of months, because I’ve got several things going on and, really, at this point in time, unless something were about to be developed in there, as long as you get it done by next June, or, well, by about next May, actually, it really wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference.”


The discussion of bridges flared up again briefly before Neill tried once again.  “If y’all will give me a couple of months, we’ll look at that and bring you back some figures and tell you what we think we’ve found, and y’all can go from there.”


“I’ll be back with y’all in a couple of months,” Neill repeated, as he finally took his leave.



Last Items


“All right,” Mayor Weeks said, finally.  “Anybody else that needs to address the board?”


“I do,” said Matthew Ernst, who had raised the lack of fire hydrants on Woodland Circle and the May meeting.  He apologized for being late, and then said “ you guys were going to give me some sort of an update.” 


“We discussed that tonight,” Weeks informed him.  “There’s a two-inch line there where you’re at, and it will not support a fire hydrant or one of the fill things that we talked about at the last meeting.  But we’re going to look at installing a fire hydrant at the end of that four-inch line.”  Weeks then reviewed what else had been discussed, and Ernst in turn shared with the board what he had turned up in his research since then.


“We need to amend some things on the 2007-2008 budget,” Emodene Smith pointed out, before reading out the changes: “Okay, our utilities from  11,000 to 12,500.  Tennessee Department of Revenue, 300 to 312.  The traffic light, 800 to $900.  Then on the water department, federal unemployment tax is 3,087. Salaries, 31,500 to 34,000.  Water purchases, 110,000 to 113,000. Maintenance fees, 10,000 to 12,000.  Vehicle repair, 3,000 to 5,200.  Insurance, 3,000 to 7,000.  Building and office, 3,000 to 3,500.  Electric, 1,000 to 1,200.”


The amendment was unanimously approved on a motion by Martin, seconded by Robbins, and then, after a brief discussion of the city ordinance regarding the upkeep of property in town, the June meeting of the Eastview town board was adjourned. 

 

 

 

Town Board Meeting

20 May 2008
 

Repairing a water leak on Feddie Davis Road, the lack of fire hydrants on Woodland Circle, the replacement of culverts, and the purchase of emergency sirens were the major topics of discussion at the May meeting of the Eastview town board.


The body first convened in its water department capacity and immediately heard from Raymond Butler regarding a water leak on Feddie Davis Road.  “We’re going to have to close that road down” to repair it, Butler told the board.


Asked by Mayor Charles Weeks how long the repair would take, Butler replied that he had “no idea. Because it’s going to be in the asphalt, where it’s at.  It ain’t on the edge of the road like most of them.  It’s out in the road.  So, don’t know how long it’s going to take to tear the road up, or how much busted or cracked or what.  I’d say all day at the most.  Don said it might take a day and a half to fix the road back.”


Complicating matters further, Butler explained, the leak is “in that sharp curve over there.  The sharpest that you can find.  I don’t know how the water line goes.  It must cross the road there, because down here by Jimmy Maxedon’s house it’s on the right side; when you get over there at Unity Church it’s on the left side.  So it crosses somewhere around through there.  And I bet you a dollar, what by it being out in the road as far as it is, it’s crossing right in there.” 


Weeks said “I think we need to do what has to be done to get it corrected, and go ahead and move forward with it.”


“Okay,” Butler replied.  “Do you want to go ahead and send notices, or do like we always do, just go out there and fix it?”


“We’re talking about closing that road down for at least a day,” Weeks said. “I don’t know how many people’ll be effected by that.”


“Well,” Butler responded, “you’ve got Feddie Davis, Unity Church, and Honeysuckle, I think’s the name of the other one.  It cuts off at Morris Wilson, and down below Jim Maxedon’s house.  On one end at Jim Maxedon’s, and the other end over there by Morris Wilson’s house.”


Billy Hunter asked, “Have they got any other way, you know, to get to and from—”


“Yeah,” Weeks interjected, “what would be the detour for them?”


“They’d go around Ramer-Selmer Road,” Butler responded.  “The ones that lives on it would have the right to go through where we was digging, then the other’s would have to come around Ramer-Selmer to come in at the other end, because it’s going to be too dangerous to put to put a backhoe on that road, and then have them drive around the curve on it.”


“Oh, yeah, that’s for sure,” Weeks agreed. “Why don’t you find out from Harvey Neal [Harvey Neal Smith, of the county highway department] what he would recommend?  If we need to put up signage, you know, in advance to closing that road, so that people are aware that it’s going to take place, I—  Running it in the newspaper I don’t think would do us any good at all.”


“That won’t do any good,” agreed Jessie Robbins.


“Well,” Butler said, “it ain’t going to do no good, to tell you the honest truth, to put the signs up.  Because me and Elvis [Butler], we blocked a road off, and by golly they’d move the cones and drive around and go through people’s yards to get around.”


“If you block it off with a vehicle,” Weeks suggested, “they won’t go around it.”


“That’ll be the only way,” Butler replied.  “You’d have to block it off on, or some of that road stuff that they put in the road to block.  But you have to leave a access road for the ones that lives on there.  And, I’d say, five on one end, on the west end, and I’d say about ten or fifteen on the other end.”


“It might be that we could just put out a flyer or something,” Weeks suggested, “and take to them and tell them what we’re planning to do, and when.”


“Okay,” Butler agreed.


Jeff Coln said, “You’re talking about having the road open for, closed for a day, day and a half, is that—”


“Probably a day,” Butler replied.  “It depends on if we can get the water line fixed and the road repaired back enough that they can drive on it.”


“ Is the water going to be cut off that long,” Coln asked, “or—”


“No,” Butler replied, “it will just be cut off for—”


“Just when you’re doing the repairs,” Coln finished for him.


“When we get our leak fixed,” Butler said, “we’ll have it back on that evening.”


Coln then raised another concern.  “Wonder if we need to give them some notice that there may be some dirty water after you turn it back on, or after you—”


“Well,” Butler agreed, “there’s going to be dirty water, probably, because the closest flush valve is Unity Church down at, below Terry Gardner’s house, and the other one is over there on Ashley Lane.  Luther Ingle and Matlock Lane, is where the flush valves would be.  And you’d probably have some dirty water in there.  You probably wouldn’t get it all out in a day’s time.”


“And that’s to be expected with water line repair,” Lucy Martin observed.


“It might not be a bad idea,” Coln suggested, “if we do that flyer, to let them know that, that we’re going to make a major water line repair, they might experience some water discoloration for a day or two.”


Burl Sutton suggested that the repairs “might effect the school buses through there,” but several board members pointed out that school would be out before the repairs were undertaken.


* * *


After the bills were read and unanimously approved (on a motion by Sutton, seconded by Hunter) Mayor Weeks set off the most prolonged discussion of the evening when he asked, “Do we have anyone that needs to address the board tonight?”


“Yes, sir,” said the only member of the audience.  “Let me introduce myself.  My name is Matthew Ernst.  I live over on 340 Woodland Circle.  I’ve been kind of elected by the residents in our little area to kind of speak on our behalf over there.  They had kind of a concern, it was kind of brought up initially— Years ago I used to work for Memphis Fire as a paramedic and a firefighter in the city, and I kind of noticed in our neighborhood, and all of us kind of talking that most of our houses over there are $200,000-plus, okay?  So if something would happen in our area, in our houses we’ve got, we’re looking at, you know, 3,500-plus square feet.  Unfortunately, a pumper and a tanker would not put out a house that size.  They just wouldn’t.  So, if any one of our houses would catch on fire, it would hit the ground.  Okay?  That kind of concerns some of us that live over there, that we don’t have a fire plug in our neighborhood.  We have seventeen houses, I believe, in that neighborhood, with no fire plug access, and we’re just kind of wondering, with the Eastview Water Department, that, we understand that you guys are kind of putting your budget together for next year, if you guys would keep in mind or maybe discuss the possibility of putting a fire plug access, maybe, in our neighborhood.  Or at least look at the possibility, or what are your, what are your standards or systems of establishing whether or not you place a fire plug in some of these neighborhoods, or—”


Fire Chief Elvis Butler not being present, Mayor Weeks turned to Raymond Butler and asked, “You know what he’s talking about, Raymond?”

 

“Yeah,” Butler replied, “I know what he’s talking about.  Well, the first thing is, you’ve got a 4” line over there.  It will not carry a fireplug.  You cannot pump off of it.  You can fill off of it, but that’s it.”


“But you could have a continuous fill, though,” Ernst responded.


“Yeah,” Butler replied, “but some of the fire, pumpers don’t do that.  You have to pull it.  You know what I’m saying?  Through the pumpers.  But, we can have as many as five tankers, depending on how many we need here, in about seven or eight minutes.  We got—  And each one of them carries over 1800 gallons of water.  I think Eastview’s carries 2,000, and I’m not sure if Guys’ carries 2,000, but it’s 1800.  Ours [Chewalla’s] carries 1800.  We’ve got two tankers.  Ramer’s got a tanker.  So we can have them here in just a few minutes, and we can supply enough water to put out any house over there.”


Ernst was not persuaded by Butler’s assurances.  “I mean— And I understand you’re on the fire department, I understand that.  Unfortunately, I mean, I’m kind of, I’m sorry, but I hate to disagree with you.  Because, I’m on Michie’s fire department, and I also worked, years ago, here in McNairy County with EMS.  So, saying you can get up to as many as five or six tankers and pumpers and whatever you need out there to put out a fire, saying that and having the availability to actually do that are two different stories, especially when you run a volunteer squad.  Because I’ve seen, personally, many times, houses much smaller than 2500 square feet and smaller, hit the ground in Michie, with one pumper and couldn’t get Eastview, couldn’t get Ramer, couldn’t get Guys or somebody else to respond to their area and substitute them with tankers for a refill.  And didn’t have access to anything to sump from, either, you know, I mean to be able to pop something into the pool, or something, and try to pull from that.  And even if it is a 4” line, adapting, you can still pull and refill on tanker.  I mean, you can still at least run a pull, or a draw, off that tanker.”


“Y’all’s tanker over at Michie does not have a pump on it,” Butler said.  “You have to use a dump tank on yours.”


“That’s correct,” Ernst agreed.  “But Michie is not responding to us.  Eastview responds to us.”


“All of ours has got pumps on them,” Butler said.  “We pump, I think every one of them I think is three to five hundred gallon pumps, and they can supply the water.  But if you hook a pumper to that, the way they’re set up, and have to do, you will bust the line.  Selmer told us that down at Chewalla.  We’ve got a 4” line going through Chewalla, and we’ve got a tanker down there.”


“What about one of those little ‘L’ hydrants?” Ernst asked.  “You could just put a little 4” ‘L’ hydrant in there, as well.  It just comes off, tees off the main line, and it’s four inches, and it comes up in an ‘L’ valve, and it’s just got a spin cap, and you can put, just draw another line off of it and draw straight off of it.”


“Well—” Butler began.


“See,” Ernst continued, “I mean, that’s my question with you guys, is, I mean, I’m not claiming to be, you know, the expert on it.  I’m just trying to use what knowledge I do have, and my request to the city is, that, I don’t want to just take into account, and put my faith, that the fire department is going to say that their volunteers are going to show up with pumpers and those pumpers and tankers and put my house and my neighbors houses out, if they catch.  And when I have, you know, when I spent $250,000 on my home, I would just like to know that I had some sort of a security, even though I’m pulling a line.  I mean even if it was on the city, and you’re saying, ‘Well, you would drop so hard that you would break the line.’  I mean, I would think that my city would be willing to take that risk to help me—  You know, $250,000 compared to a thousand dollars worth of a damaged line to fix, the hit, to me is more is more of a chance—”


Butler responded, “You bust a line over there, it would be like last week, or week before last.  When you bust a line, you lose your water pressure everywhere else.  So that means we can’t come up here and hook into this line and have enough water to fill the trucks.  You understand what I’m saying?”


After some crosstalk Ernst said, “Even if you use a small ‘L’ hydrant, those are very inexpensive, but they can put them on either corner, and you’re drawing, you’ve got, you know, a 200 yard pull for a pull line, and then you drop a tanker on each side and just draw or pull.  However you want to do it.  It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t, you can do either one.  But if you put two of those smaller ones onto your corner, you’ve told the community, you’re saying, ‘Look, if something happens in your neighborhood,’ it’s a closed circle, you know, and there are seventeen houses that are all, you know, most of them or a majority of them are $200,000 homes, and most of us are like, ‘No.  Surely we have a fire access or plug access somewhere in here.’  And we all started looking.  You know, we all walked the neighborhood, and sure enough, nothing, you know.  We’re like—”


“What is the closest site into your—” Weeks began.


Ernst replied, “I have no— I didn’t see one up and down 57.”


“Out here at Cynergy,” Butler supplied.  “And Gravel Hill Road.  And we’ve got one at Gravel Hill Church.  But I don’t know what size line that is at Gravel Hill Church.”


“What size line is that at Cynergy?” Weeks asked.


“Four, I think,” Butler said, then he corrected himself.  “No.  Six out to so far, then it turns into a four.  That’s right.”


Sutton said, “I think a plug would be better than counting on these outside units.  Because I used to work at fire departments.  You’ve only got ten minutes at the most to put a fire out.  If you don’t put it out in ten minutes, it’s gone.”


Ernst agreed. “It’s going to be fully involved and it’s going to hit the ground.  I mean, it doesn’t matter how many people you try to get out to a house.  I’ve just seen that happen so many times, and it just spooked me.  I’m sitting there going, all I’m going to have enough time to do is pull my family out of the house, and by that time I’m hoping that Michie, Eastview, Guys and Ramer and all those guys are hitting my subdiv—  Because I’m a firefighter at Michie.  So if I get toned out, I mean, I’m going to run anywhere and help out in Eastview, or help out Guys when I’m off and able to go out to the call.  But, I mean, I know it takes me six or seven minutes just to hit the scene, and I carry my fire gear with me, because I know that if I’m not inside that house with at least an inch-and-a-half line going, within ten minutes, ten or fifteen minutes of that house being called in, that thing will be so fully involved—   And I know another thing, too, is when you’re running an inch-and-a-half wide open off your pumper and tanker, you’ll drain that thing in about ten or fifteen minutes.  You’ll drain it.  You’ll suck it completely dry, and I’ve sat on scenes where we all, we ran out of water.  And we’re all sitting there going, ‘Well, it’s fully involved, we put as much water as was in it, and now somebody’s got to drive the tanker back and try to refill it, or maybe we can get somebody to come to us.’  And my request to you guys, if you would just look into the possibility of putting either little L, 4” L plug in, on either corner, or drop one line there where they could stretch hose, if they needed to put one of our houses out.  That’s all I’m asking, is if you guys would just look into it, research it, and see if it’s feasible for the town, or for Eastview to even do it for us, and then, I don’t know, maybe let me know to come back and you guys could kind of update me on where you guys stand with that, you know, so I can go back and tell my neighborhood and say, ‘Spoke with the board members.  They said it’s feasible, or it’s not feasible, and they’ll look into it.’  That’s all I want to be able to do.”


“I think we can do that,” Sutton said.


“Oh, yes,” Weeks agreed.  “But, you know, if this is a situation that’s involving them, there may be some other subdivisions and things like that here that have got the same need.  Yeah, I think it is something we could study and see what could be done.  Because I’m just like you, you know.  I want my home protected.  But Raymond’s right.  These other volunteers are going to respond.  My house burned, and I had three fire departments there in just a matter of a few minutes.”


“Kind of like the luck of the draw, though,” Ernst said.  “It could happen to my house, and everybody and their mother could be out at my house, you know, putting it out, and I could go, ‘Wow, that was great!’  Or it could be that guy that time that everybody just happened to be at work that day, or that night, and it hits the ground, and I’m having to tell my insurance company, well how come you guys couldn’t put it out.  Well, I don’t have fire access.  You know, we were relying on pumpers—”


“There really should be two outlets over there,” Sutton interjected.


Hunter asked. “Doesn’t that line make a circle all the way around that subdivision?”


“Yeah, it makes a circle,” Butler said.  “As far as I know.”


Weeks asked Butler if he was familiar with the ‘L’ plug Ernst had mentioned, and when Butler said he was not Weeks said “Let’s see if we can get some information on that.”


Ernst added that, “I was with Memphis Fire and we were, you know, spot checking our plugs, it was for every seven or eight houses there were supposed to be fire access plugs, and that gave you around 200 yards worth of pull line.  I do appreciate the board taking the time to listen to me, and thank you very much.  Would there be a time that I may come back and talk to you guys again, or would you like just notify us somehow?”


“Well,” Weeks replied, “if you want to come back next month, that will give us a chance to look into it, maybe answer some questions.  I’d say there may be some other needs out there that we need to address.”


* * *


The board then unanimously approved the budget, on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Hunter.  After that the board spent a full ten minutes discussing, without ever coming to a resolution, whether to start charging a fee for turning water on at recently vacated properties (mostly trailers) so that they could be cleaned up by the property owners.


Recorder Emodene Smith explained the problem succinctly: “The person moves out, they want us to cut it off.  The person that owns the trailer calls and tells us to come cut it on so that they can clean.  Then they call and tell us to come cut them off.  Then we have to go back out there when the person, someone else moves in.  So we made two unnecessary trips, really.  It’s not benefiting us.”


Before imposing a fee, Lucy Martin observed, “We’ll probably have to put that in an announcement of some sort, so that people will know it.”


“You know,” Weeks replied, “we’ve been doing a flyer that we’re sending out, too, and it’s getting to be about time to do another one of those.  We could probably decide on what we wanted to do on that and put it in our next community flyer that we do.  But I’d say it’s worth at least $20 for a service fee.”


“Yeah,” Robbins agreed, “as high as gas is, at least.  You’re going out there twice, I don’t know if $20 would cover it or not.”


After some further discussion, Weeks said, “Why don’t we do this.  Why don’t we see how many calls we’re getting on that, and just, you know, how expensive the problem is, and see how many people would be effected.  Maybe at the next meeting say we’ve got twenty-five calls like this, or something like that, and then we could have a better idea of what we need to do.”


Five minutes later the discussion of that subject finally petered out and the water department meeting was adjourned on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Sutton.


* * *


Mayor Weeks then called the city meeting to order.  The minutes were quickly approved on a motion by Martin, seconded by Robbins, and the bills were just as expeditiously approved on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Martin.


Weeks then called on Raymond Butler for a report on road repairs.  “We’ve got some pressing matters over here on Houston Cemetery Road, I know.  So, Raymond, tell us what you found out about that.”


“Well,” Butler began, “it’s the culvert, and it’s washing out on each end.  They’ve already poured asphalt in on one end, and you can’t see the culvert.  I’d say it’s too short.  And I dug down, down there the other day, with a shovel, trying to hit the culvert, and all I can find is a hole there.  There’s nothing there.”


“It’s just washed out, underneath it,” Weeks suggested.


“It must be, or something,” Butler agreed.  “I never could find the culvert.”


Sutton asked, “Where’s that located at?”


“Up here by Bill’s [Billy Hunter’s]—” Butler began.


“Just before you get to Billy Wayne’s,” Mayor Weeks added.


“Just before you get to his house,” Butler agreed.  “But what it’s going to take is a longer culvert put in there, to fix it.”


Weeks asked if the road would have to be closed to replace the culvert, and when Butler acknowledged that it would, Hunter said, “That’s like closing 45, as much traffic down that road.”


Lucy Martin asked, “It’s not going to take that long, will it, to replace the culvert?”


“Yeah,” Butler responded, “for that culvert it will.  We’ve got a telephone line we’re going to have to dig out, and a water line there, somewhere.  So we’ve got two things we’re going to have to find before we start digging on the culvert.  So it’s going to be, probably, nearly an all-day job.  But they can go through Ida McCoy Road down there.  The one’s that’s dodging it is going right over here and getting beer and going right back down through there.”


Several board members spoke at once, and then Butler resumed. “Well, I went down there and dug, and I ain’t found a culvert, and you go up at the other end and there’s a big slab of asphalt hanging down over the culvert down there and you can’t see it.  And it’s waist deep on the other side.”


“You can’t tell what size it is?” Weeks asked, and Butler responded that he could not, since he couldn’t even find the culvert. 


“How long is it?” Weeks asked.


“I’d say you’d need at least a twenty foot long to reach—” Butler began.


“I don’t think twenty will do it,” Weeks said.


“It might take a 30, then,” Butler responded.


“I’d say at least a thirty,” Weeks said.


“It needs to be a whole lot longer than the road, on both sides,” Butler pointed out, before mentioning that “the way it looks, somebody must be dumping their junk in there.  You know, leaves and stuff, because you can dig the leaves out like crazy.”


Weeks asked, “Is that the only one, now, that we’ve got?”


“We got one on Kimberly,” Butler responded, “that needs replacing, and we was going to try to do that one, and Don was supposed to get a culvert.  I don’t know if he’s got one yet or not.  Quick as he can get the culvert we’ll do that one, and I’ll tell him tomorrow to go ahead and get two of them and we’ll do both of them.”


Weeks then asked, “Have you turned this list in, on the potholes?”


“Yeah,” Butler replied.  “Yeah, and the mowing, Kevin, he mowed some of it, and he ain’t been back.”


After some further discussion, Mayor Weeks turned to Coln and said, “Jeff, if you would, fill the board in on, on Paul Henson.”  [See the report of the March 2008 meeting, below.]


“I talked Paul yesterday,” Coln replied, “and he said he’d talk to Mr. Martin, and that he was going to fill him in on some, I guess, discrepancies somewhere in the, where the line run, or the ditch is, or something.  Anyway, they’re going to meet and go out there together, and I think Mr. Martin’s going to give him all, give Paul all the information he has as far as what he’s done up to now.  And Paul said he would have everything, should have everything resolved and be at the next board meeting.  He said he’s been really busy over around Bolivar.  He said they were going to meet and get together.  But he said he should have it by the next board meeting, and be here.”


“So he is planning on attending?” Weeks asked.


“Yes, sir,” Coln replied.  “He said he’d be at the next meeting.”


* * *


Weeks then turned to the last major item of the evening.  “I’ve got some brochures that I passed out, and this is just something that we’ve talked about in the past, and I don’t know whether we want to pursue it or not.  But if we went to these emergency sirens, we’re looking at around $15,000 each, and it would take three of them to cover the community.”  Weeks explained that one could be placed in Eastview proper, one on Mayflower Road, and one on Hwy 45 near Elam Mattress.  He explained the various siren options and their effectiveness, and he said they did not all have to be installed at the same time, so the cost could be spread out by putting in one a year for the next three years.


In the discussion that followed, Sutton and Martin did not show any great enthusiasm for the idea.


“Just talk to your neighbors,” Weeks asked, “and see what they think, and see if it’s something we need to pursue.  I don’t think it’s anything we’d have to decide on right now.”


As for funding the project, Weeks said “I think we can give up on trying to get any kind of grant money for that.  We’ve tried two years in a row and they’ve turned us down, so—”


Martin asked if the town had been given any reason why those grants were turned down, and Weeks replied that it had not.


“Are there not enough people in the area?” Martin asked.


“I think what it is,” Weeks said, “is our finances are a little bit better than some of these communities that are good at getting the grants.”


“We don’t have enough blacks in this area,” Sutton said, which was greeted by laughter.


“The socio-economic conditions—” Mayor Weeks attempted to proceed.


“I’ve got two or three over on my road,” Hunter said.


“Yeah, that’s where they’re all at,” Sutton responded.  “Well, we need to, if it’s clear that you’ve got a bunch of blacks—”


After a few more embarrassing exchanges, Weeks cut that line of conversation short. “But, now, like I say, just talk to your neighbors and see how they feel about it.  You know, we’re elected to represent them.  If it’s something the community wants, I think we ought to do it.  But if it’s something we think’s going to be a waste of money—”


“See,” Martin said, “I don’t really know the benefit of a siren going off, and when a tornado’s coming it’s certainly not going to defuse the tornado, nor is it going to change it’s direction.  The only thing it’s going to tell me is, I better get in a closet and put a pillow over my head.”


“Well, you can talk to any meteorologist, and they’re going to tell you that the number one reason that the loss of lives is reduced, in storms and tornadoes, is because of the early warning systems,” Weeks insisted. “We were fortunate over here, up the road, here, in February, we didn’t have a lot of loss of life.”


Then, after quick votes approving the budget and hiring auditors (both on motions by Robbins, seconded by Martin) and approving the auditors, the meeting was adjourned. 

 

Town Board Meeting

15 April 2008
 
 Mayor Charles Weeks had some good news to report at the April meeting of Eastview's water board. "The last couple of weeks I've talked to several of our customers, and they are all very complimentary of the way things are running in the water department, and all just very happy with the way things are going.  So, I wanted to pass that on.  I know you don't hear that very often, but our customers are complimenting the way things are going here at the water department.  So, you know, I'm proud of that."

The water board meeting itself was quite short.  Payment of bills was approved on a motion by Billy Hunter, seconded by Jessie Robbins, and the water board meeting was adjourned on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Burl Sutton.

Mayor Weeks then called the town board meeting to order.  The minutes were approved on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Robbins, and the bills were approved on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Sutton.

Willard Summers was then recognized and addressed the board. "What I would like to propose," he began, "a lot of towns are, small towns, are setting up what they call 'historic districts,' and they designate a certain area in the, usually in the center of town for a historic district….  And one of the purposes for doing that is it makes you eligible for certain types of grants, once you set it up.  And, as I understand it, all you have to do is just pass it, the board pass it, and designates, tells where the historic district will be.  And what I'd like to propose is that we just designate a mile and a half in radius of the intersection over here, and if anybody else has a different preference, we'll certainly, you know, that might be a better one.  That's just what I would propose.  It seems that pretty much includes most of Eastview.  And one of the things that Charles [Mayor Charles Weeks] and I discussed early on, or we talked about a little bit, was the possibility of some sidewalks.  And I think, for example, didn't the state offer to build some sidewalks when they widened the road here?  Somebody told me they did.  Or had some sort of policy to do that?  But you had to do it then, when they were widening.  But what I'm suggesting is, I think that if we had a designated historical district, you know, that would open that possibility back up with the state.  Now, that's conjecture on my part.  I don't know that to be a fact.  I just feel like that would be true. But, anyway, I think it would add a great deal to Eastview if, you know, we started a system of sidewalks, and, naturally, that's going to cost a lot of money, and we need help with it.  So that would be one of the things that I would suggest we be looking at.  But the main is just, you know, pass the resolution designating a specific area called a historical district."

Lucy Martin asked, "What are the qualify factors to, in order to be designated that?"

"There are none," Summers replied.

"Do we have to do anything?" Martin asked.

"Not a thing," Summers said.

A surprised Martin then asked, "There are no qualifying factors?"

"No," Summers said, confidently.  "Any town can have what it calls a historic district.  And all they have to do, to my understanding, the way I've had it explained to me, is just the board passes on it, and says, puts in the minutes, you know, what the district is, the size of the district, where it's located, and that's it."

"And the benefit of that would be that we might qualify for more grants, different types of grants—" Martin began.

Summers interrupted. "Grants that we wouldn't otherwise qualify for if we didn't have a historic district.  That's one of reasons that these towns are setting these up.  And this certainly doesn't cost anything."

When pressed for specific details, Summers demurred, saying that he didn't have them, but "I would be very happy to call the state and get exactly what they say about it and report to you next time.  Or I'd be very happy if one of the board members wanted to do it, either way, to see if what I am saying here is the extent of it, or if there's forms you need to fill out, or something like that, or zoning or something like that else is required.  And I could have them send us, you know, any printed material or matter that they might have on it."

"And," Martin said, raising another point, "see if there is a fee to be registered every year, because you probably have to do something to stay in compliance—"

"Well, now," Summers said, "the way it was explained to me, all in the world you have to do is pass it, you know, and designate what it's going to be."

Sutton had a suggestion.  "I make a motion that Charlie call the state, and if they've got somebody handy, or somebody volunteer to come down and talk to us about it, before we step into this thing too deep."

"If you can get me the contacts on that," Mayor Weeks told Summers, "I'll be glad to get in touch with them and see if they could, maybe even attend one of our meetings and explain it to us."

"Okay," Summers agreed, before adding, "I really do think we should get some sidewalks started.  We all may be walking here pretty soon."

Mayor Weeks then turned to the issue of road repair. "I've asked Raymond to go out and get us a list of our roads.  We've got a lot of roads that are in need of some work.  I mean, some of it's just minor stuff, and some of it, like this one, it's major.  And I just think we need to come up with us a priority list on things and get some of this repair work done.  Because, you know, I'm getting a lot of calls on that, and I'm seeing a lot of things.  He's got a list here of several different roads.  He says Allan McCoy Road has potholes; Mayflower Road, potholes; Gravel Hill Road, potholes; Amber Lane; Roy Seay Road; Cinergy Drive; Lyndsay, need to widen and pave; Feddy Davis Road, rough, needs paving; Houston Cemetery Road; Kimberly Drive, ditch dig out and pave, and a culvert.  Got a call, Mills Circle Loop, I don't even know where that is.  Do y'all know ….  Duke Lane.  Hannah Drive.  And then we've got a lot of our roads that are, our city roads, that don't have signs."

Martin asked how much Eastview had left in the budget for road repairs, pointing out that that money needed to be spent during the current fiscal year, adding, "our year end's going to be here before you know it."

Town Recorder Emodene Smith said there was $71,703 left in the account for roadwork and repair, and Mayor Weeks said, "certainly we ought to be able to fix these roads, or potholes, and culverts and things like that.  Now as far as paving any roads, we probably want to, you know, prioritize that, and look at it.  But I'd say if we can get the county to help us on this on these potholes and things like that, we ought to do it.  Now's the time it needs to be done." 

There was general agreement, and a motion (by Hunter, seconded by Robbins) that the mayor contact the county highway department about getting the work done passed unanimously.

Mayor Weeks then brought up a somewhat less expensive matter. "I've got a request here that we need to order five tables and twenty-five chairs for the civic center.  These tables have been out here a while."

After some discussion about types of tables, Martin observed, "Well, I don't know, if you're going to buy five, I don't know how much money it is, we probably need to check into it, but maybe we need to replace all of the tables, so that they're going to be uniform, and be the same and look the same, and if that wouldn't be too much money, just replace all of them."

"That's what I was thinking," Jeff Coln remarked.

"Let's do that," Mayor Weeks said.  "Let's get a count, and get some cost estimates, and go from there.  Is that agreeable to everyone?"  Everyone signified assent.

"All right," Weeks continued.  "Last month we got our bill on the [insurance] coverage here on the civic center.  And we're covered for $250,000.  And there was some concern about that not being enough.  And Emodene has been in touch with Farm Bureau and asked them about increasing that coverage.  And did he say they could do this?"

"Yes," Smith replied.

"Okay," Weeks continued.  "They can go to $350,000 on the building at a cost of $1,035 a year, or they can go up to $400,000 on the building for a cost of $1,183 a year.  My concern was that $250,000 won't put this building back."

After some discussion Sutton made a motion that the town increase its coverage to $400,000.  Coln seconded the motion, which carried unanimously.

"I wanted to ask a question about our budget," Weeks then said.  "We're getting close to the time.  Can we set up some work sessions for that, to look at this budget, because there's a couple of things on here that I want, I want to try to at least consider in the new budget.  I want to try to get some people to come in here and give us some prices on some of these emergency sirens and see if it's something that we can do on our own without having to depend on a grant.  See if we can get some cost estimates on that.  It might be something we'd have to do in stages.  But I think with the recent events here, that just happened right up the road here, we need to at least consider making some moves to protect our people, here."

After some discussion the board agreed to meet at 5:30 in the afternoon before the next town board meeting, May 20.

Sutton asked for a report from the fire department, and Fire Chief Elvis Butler responded, "We've answered two or three first responder calls.  That's been about it."

Meeting ended with some discussion about wiring the civic center and the fire station for the internet.

 

 
Town Board Meeting

18 March 2008
 
The Eastview beer board held a special meeting Thursday, 28 February, toMayor Charles Weeks began the March meeting of the Eastview Water Board by asking the water department's Raymond Butler for a maintenance report.

 

Butler reported that "we had two leaks last week.  They are fixed.  One of them was a 6" main, busted, twenty foot split.  Don't ask me how.  I still ain't figured it out.  But it was fixed Sunday….  This last Sunday.  But anyway, it's fixed.  Took us to 1:30 to get on.  And the other was over there on Feddie Davis, and it split, too.  I don't know how it got split.  Looked like a car had run off there, but it was under the road is where it was at, so I don't know how it got split.  But we got it fixed, too.  The 6" run out a lot of water I tell you before I got there.  They called me and I left, and we cut it off as quick as we could.  And that's just about it."  

Weeks then ran through the bills, which the board voted unanimously to pay (on a motion by Billy Hunter, seconded by Burl Sutton). 

"All right," Weeks then said, "On the, this March 6 we had this annual review meeting with Raymond and Anita [Battles].  I've got you a paper in here about some of the things that we talked about, and the five points that we went over.  And I'm going to let Billy Wayne [Hunter], if he will, just give a brief report on that meeting." 

"I really thing the meeting went well," Hunter said.  "I think we just, kindly had it, we just talked to each and every one of them, you know, just like we're talking here, you know, and everything, and I think it really went well." 

Weeks said that, "One of the things that I made the statement of in the meeting was about the raise, and I told them that I did not intend to recommend a raise for this year, but at the end of this year, with the implementation of these things on this five-point action plan, that, you know, how this is carried out, we would look at making a raise recommendation at the end of this year.  So we're going to look at these things here, I think these five points pretty well covers the things that we have outlined, that we want to see in our water department, and, you know, I'm seeing progress made.  There's no doubt about it.  We're seeing progress, we're seeing improvements, and we're moving in the right direction." 

"Another thing we're going to look into," the mayor continued, "Raymond and I talked about this, is, and I don't know how much is going to be involved in this, is getting the certification.  Mr. Shaw has been doing that, and you know we're going to have to have somebody replace him when he does retire, to do that.  I don't know what's involved in it, but it's something we need to look into and see if it's something he could do." 

"If it's all right," Butler asked, "I'll ride over there and talk to him tomorrow," and the mayor agreed. 

Weeks asked Battle if she had anything to add, and she said that she had looked at the new software program.  When Weeks asked what she thought about it, she responded, "Well, it's just, got a lot of good features in it, compared to what, that I don't have on my old one.  Of course, I don't know how to do any of them." 

"Well," Weeks offered, "the girl at Middleton said it was real easy." 

"It looks, you know, it looks pretty easy," Battles acknowledged.  In response to another question from the mayor, Battles said that there would be no problem converting from the existing system to the new one.

"My understanding from previous meeting," Weeks said, "is that the board has okayed the purchase of this software, depending on what we decided from this demo.  So, Anita, we'll get together and if it's something—" 

"What I need to do though," Battles interjected, "is use up a lot of these supplies I have for bills and stuff for the old program, and not let those go to waste." 

"Right," Weeks agreed.  "So let's get together and see what kind of time table we're looking at." 

"They're not compatible with the—" Lucy Martin began. 

Battles said they were not, and that she had about a three-month supply on hand. 

When Mayor Weeks asked "do we have anybody that needs to address the water department?" one gentleman spoke up about "some issues about our water" and asked whether some improvements were in line "or do I need to be looking into investing in a water filter to put on my home.  You know, I don't know if that would alleviate all of my issues." 

Weeks responded, "Well, let me bring you up to date on a couple of things that's going on.  We're still waiting on Selmer to install filters.  And that seems to be a thing that we mention every time it comes to discussion of this nature.  I don't know how far down the line that's going to be.  A second point on there is, we went away from the routine flushing because of the audit that we had last time, and excessive shortages that we were having, or shrink, where we was having a lot of water run being through the lines there that we were not collecting for.  And we decided as a board at that time to go to the 'flush on demand.'  And other communities are doing that and, you know, we don't mind flushing the lines, we just said we wanted the customer to call in and make that request.  And, are we getting a lot of calls from that area?" 

"Not a lot," Battles responded, and Butler said they had received two so far. 

Raymond: "We've got two so far." 

"On average," Weeks asked, "how many times have we flushed Woodland Circle in the last month?" 

"I'd say two times, to three at the most, Butler replied.  "That's all that's called in." 

After more discussion about water problems, and possible causes, the water department meeting was adjourned on a motion by Martin, seconded by Jessie Robbins.

* * *  

The town board meeting was then convened and the minutes were approved on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Sutton.  After the bills were approved (on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Robbins), Mayor Weeks asked Fire Chief Elvis Butler for a report on the fire department. 

"We've had two calls," Butler reported.  "Had one back up call, and then had one fire here in the city, last Thursday night.  Had two wrecks.  We didn't have to extract anybody, it was mostly traffic control and helping clean the roads.  That's about it.  We're still un— not for sure what kind of fundraiser we're going to do, whether we're going to do a fish fry, or barbeque, or—  Still working on it." 

"And another thing I'd like to bring up about that to.  I got a letter that I meant to bring, and I forgot it.  It's from Lamar Alexander [UNINTELLIGIBLE WORD] about this FEMA grant, it's coming up again.  And if y'all want to apply for that, which you'll have to do most of the paperwork, because the mayor has to sign it, or the head of the city.  But we'd like to put in for a compressor and generator and stuff through that.  And that won't reflect on any other grants you're trying to get.  It's like a 80/20.  FEMA pays 80 and we pay 20." 

"No," Weeks responded, "it was less than that, the last one we got.  I think it was about 90/10."  The mayor said that he would "like to take advantage of that." 

Butler reminded the board that the grant had an April deadline. 

Weeks then advised the board of a letter he had received. "I've got a letter here from the comptroller, treasury, state of Tennessee.  Says they have reviewed the annual financial report with the town of Eastview for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007, as audited by Brawner and Vanstory Company, certified public accountants.  As a result, this report has been accepted and filed as a part of the public records of the state of Tennessee." 

And, speaking of FEMA, Mayor Weeks observed that, "as you know, FEMA has been set up here, to help with the tornado victims, and we agreed to let them set up here at no charge.  I don't know how long they're planning on being here—" 

"Tomorrow will be the last day," Reporter Emodene Smith offered.

"Tomorrow's the last day," Weeks repeated. 

"Unless we have a bad storm tonight," Butler observed, to uneasy laughter. 

 

Lynsey Lane 

There then ensued a prolonged discussion of an issue that had only been cryptically referred to in earlier meetings. 

"Item five," Mayor Weeks intoned, reading from the agenda before him.  "Status on the road improvement survey of Lynsey Lane.  Craig [Town Attorney Craig Kennedy], have you heard anything on that, as far as—  I believe what we're waiting on is getting this property line flagged so we can—" 

"That's the way I understand it," Kennedy replied. 

"—and widen that road," Weeks continued.  "And I understand this has been on hold for that very reason for some time.  I think it was a project that was started back before I came into office, 2006.  I think we need to do something on this. If he's not going to mark his lines, I think we need to find somebody who can and will." 

"Are we waiting on James Martin?" Lucy Martin asked.  "Is that what we're waiting on?" 

"Yes," Weeks replied, and Sutton added, "Got a long wait." 

"Who is another surveyor that can do that?" Hunter asked 

"He's sitting right there," Robbins replied, pointing across the room." 

"It's who?" Lucy Martin asked. 

"Henson Surveying," the man replied.  "My name is Paul Henson, for those of you that don't know me.  I think most of you know me." 

"I used to know you when you was a little kid," Hunter said. 

"Yeah," Henson said, "when we were playing football, and I was the fullback."  This was greeted by laughter, as Henson is quite a large man.  "Y'all will have to bring me up to speed about what's transpired.  Jeff [Coln] had contacted me yesterday and asked me to come to the meeting, and just kind of go over my services and what I can do for you.  But I just need to know where y'all are at on this, and basically what the project entails." 

Kennedy explained. "The first thing we had to do was, there was a road, well, I can't remember the name.  There was an estate that was opened by Terry Abernathy, and closed.  And there was some land involved.  But it, there was a road described in all that, but there was never a deed done about that.  And so we went back and got the heirs to execute deeds to that, for that road.  James had surveyed most of that area.  He did a survey on l Littlejohn's properties.  And then as you may know, there were some discrepancies, or Mr. Sweat went and hired Mr. Goodrum.  He came up and did a survey, and there was some conflict there, so that's sort of where it stood.  But we've got a road there.  We know we've got a road.  It's just a matter of where is that road out there." 

"So," Henson asked, "are you trying to establish the Joel Littlejohn's side of it, or the other side of it?" 

"Both," Kennedy replied. 

"Both?  Okay." 

Kennedy continued.  "We really want to know where the road is, so we don't want to go out there and make, we want to make sure we go out there to put the—" 

"Right." 

"—do the work, and create a road, that we're on our property." 

"Well," Henson asked, "who, someone developed, you know, the subdivision that goes back in there to the, all the nice houses and everything.  At that time, was there any kind of a plat or anything recorded that shows that road, or—" 

"Not that road, I don't think," Kennedy said. "I don't think so, Paul." 

"How long has the city been maintaining the road?" Henson asked.  "Do you know?" 

"No," Kennedy replied.  "I can't tell you." 

"Really," Henson said, "what you're talking about is just the maintenance of about, what, five hundred feet, up through there?" 

"No," Kennedy said, "it's about twelve hundred feet, I think, isn't it?  But we've only got twelve hundred, I think.  I think that's all we've got a deed on, because we've got to get the rest of it from Ms Opal, or somebody there has got to get so additional property for the city.  And if they get that it wouldn't be a problem.  And then the county takes over at that point." 

"I thought about this yesterday," Henson said.  "I think I can solve your problem easily, if people will agree.  I think what you need to do, no matter what's been done in the past, you know, you can give somebody a quit-claim deed for whatever you want to give it to.  I can quitclaim your property to somebody else.  It doesn't mean they own anything, but—  What I think we ought to do is survey the road and make a legitimate proposed right-of-way up through there, say fifty feet, and get all the individual property owners that touch that to sign off on it.  And that's easier said than done, but if we can find out who the, who's not willing to do that, I mean we could at least carve out around them, anyway." 

"And I think," Kennedy said, "I think you're going to have problems with one of those landowners, to be honest with you, but—" 

"I know we will," Mayor Weeks interjected. 

"—because we've approached them in times past.  But, we really don't know where the road, you know, we don't know where this, we've got a description, like I said, where they deeded the road.  I'll get that to you, and maybe you can take that and look at it and say, 'Hey, yeah, I know this is where it's at,' but we just don't know whether what we've got matches up even with what the road's out there.  And you're right, we may need to go back and say, 'You know, this is the road, we've been maintaining the road, and we're going to claim it.  It's ours, and you can sign a release, fine,' and fight with these other people if we have to." 

"Well," Henson said, "as a last resort you can always, you know, invoke imminent domain on them.  You don't want to do that, I know, but—  If you've got titles to it, you know, certainly you should be able to claim that, but—  Eastview's a small city, and you don't want a bunch of people against you." 

"Well," Kennedy replied, "you know how it's done in times past.  People would go out there and get a road, and then try another road, and nobody ever said anything about it—" 

"Right."

"—but now we try to make sure we've got a deed or dedicated to us in some way before we do anything.  And so, really, that's been the hold up on that Lynsey Lane for quite some time.  But, now, you know, we've gotten the deed signed, but now there's still the issue of, does the road and the deed match up, and, you know, flag what we've got so we know where we are.  And, again, at that point have two options, one of which is we can go back and ask the landowners to give us what we need, and if they won't, maybe carve around it as you said.  There was some place up there, and you guys know better than I do, we had some problem about a ditch, or maybe a ditch on one side or another." 

"The ditch on the north side," Elvis Butler said.  "If you go on the north side you'll have to fill it in and dig a new one." 

"So that also may be factored in to what we find out," Kennedy said. 

"Well," Henson said, "I drove up the road yesterday, and right there at the entrance to the Hope Cemetery the road's kind of narrow, until you get up there to the Hope Cemetery driveway entrance, then it kind of widens out.  It's like a chip-and-seal base, that was put in at the time all those houses were started, developed in there— 

"That was county that done that," Butler said.  "That's their part of it." 

"Well," Henson continued, "that's what I was wondering.  How much does the city actually, how far do they actually go?  Do they go past the Hope Cemetery entrance?" 

Butler replied, "The city, the city limits go 1500 feet on that side of the road, but our, the land that we good the deed on, like Craig said, wasn't that much." 

"All right."

Butler asked the others if it was 1200 feet, and they agreed that it was. 

Henson said, "It could be as simple as drawing a plat to record and put on file that has all the adjoining landowners signing off on it, saying that they dedicate their portion of it.  Getting those signatures would be the hard part.  But that would be the first step, in my opinion, is trying to do it that way, and we'll find out who the adversaries are, and you're going to have to deal with them individually.  And quite honestly, you litigate all the time, it might be easier to give them a small settlement for the property that it would be to take it, or something like that." 

Kennedy said, "I think that if the road we've got, if the description we've got, and the road match up—" 

"Then it's yours anyway," Henson interjected 

"—it's ours, and I could care less.  Again, we may need some property on the south side, as opposed to the north side, to try to avoid that ditch, but that's something we just don't know.  And the county's ready to do it, and they're going to do their end, as I understand.  At least that was the plan.  [Agreement.]  If they're going to do it all, let them do it, but—"

Henson said, "I guess I need to figure out, have you talked with James Martin to find out what the status is?  I mean, is he out of it, or—"  

"Well," Kennedy replied, "before Jason ever left, one of the last—and this has been going on for some time—before Jason left I gave him four things that he was going to do for me before he left.  That was one of them.  And so it's been, it's been going on for three years, and it's not getting—" 

"And," Butler observed, "it took us nearly three years to get the property signed, the deed signed." 

Hunter added, "And he had to go all the way to Florida, didn't he?" 

"Yeah," Kennedy replied.  "But I'll be glad to, I guess that would be the thing to fax you there, and you might to some, and I, I don't know whether I've got, I may have a copy of what James has done, because I know they started back up there, and one of the issues I think is where you start.  I think that was one of the big disputes.  They started back up there closer to the Hope Cemetery, some mark up there, somewhere up in that part." 

Mayor then said, "My personal opinion is that we need to do something and move forward with this, and I don't think James is going to do it." 

"No," Hunter agreed, "I don't think so."

"He don't get in no hurry," Sutton observed. 

"He don't appear to be interested in doing it," Weeks said. 

"Well, he's kind of retired," Henson said.  "I'm going to defend him a little bit.  He's paid his dues and worked a long time." 

Martin said, "But he has a team, doesn't he, that still—" 

"No," Henson replied. 

"Oh, he doesn't?" Martin asked. 

"When Jason left, he almost…" Henson began. 

"And really," Kennedy said, "any time you get some, anything that may be a little bit—" 

"Controversial?" Hunter suggested. 

"—controversial, James really didn't want to get in the middle of any of that, I'll be honest with you.  At least that's been my experience." 

"Well, I love it," Henson said, and the comment was greeted with laughter. 

"Would you give us some kind of cost estimate?" Weeks asked. 

"Yes, sir," Henson replied.  "I'll draw up, get you a rate schedule.  I can give you, I think in this situation it would be better to give you, like an hourly rate schedule, because you never know what's going to be entailed, and Craig's going to give you some good, I would hope, good reference" 

"Paul does good work," Kennedy said. 

Sutton said, "I make a motion that we go ahead and have him start on this."  Robbins seconded the motion, which was unanimously approved. 

"Let's get this thing moving," Mayor Weeks said. 

* * *  

The last item discussed was insurance.  "We've got an insurance renewal here," Mayor Weeks said, "for the civic center, concession stand, and volunteer fire department.  On the civic center we have a limit of insurance of $250,000.  On the personal property we have $30,000, and the buildings, $16,000.  That's the concession stand and the building up here, $60,000.  My question on that is, this estimate, or this coverage on this civic center here is a little bit low." 

In the discussion that followed, Hunter agreed that the amount was low, and Weeks offered the opinion that the civic center would cost at least $400,000 to replace.  In the end, it was agreed that the town should check to make sure that they have sufficient insurance to replace the center. 

And with that the meeting was adjourned on motion by Robbins, seconded by Hunter.


Special Town Board Meeting

28 February 2008 

The Eastview beer board held a special meeting Thursday, 28 February, to consider issuing a new beer license for the Junction.  The full board was present as owner Anwar Ahman and manager Sherry Gamblin appeared to make the request, which was necessitated by the abrupt departure of the previous tenant.  Ahman had appeared at the board's regular meeting on 19 February to ask that he be allowed to reopen using the license he had used before leasing out the business, but town attorney Craig Kennedy explained that his old license had been extinguished when the tenant obtained a license and that a new license could only be issued at a later meeting after proper notice had been given.

Hence the special meeting.

Ahman and Gamblin informed the board that they and their employees were knowledgeable of and would comply with the rules and regulations regarding beer sales, with Gamblin pointing out that sales could not be made on Sundays, election day, or after midnight, and Ahman adding that "with this computer system they cannot sell beer without checking an ID.  Whenever they scan beer, the register does not open until you check ID.  It cannot open."  Ahman said they also checked IDs before selling cigarettes, and he pointed out that the Junction is now a no-smoking establishment.

Ahman concluded his presentation by asking for support.  "Please support us.  Let's bring the business back and let's support our town, our city. 

"You know," he added, "it's the city's store.  The more we are successful, maybe it will bring some more taxes to the city, and improvement and all that stuff."

"Sounds good," Mayor Charles Weeks said.  "Can I get a motion, then, that we approve the application?"  That motion was provided by Jessie Robbins, seconded by Burl Sutton, and passed by unanimous voice vote, after which the special meeting was adjourned on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Billy Hunter.

  
 
 
Town Board Meeting

19 February 2008

After months of dithering about what to do about incorrigibly defiant employee Anita Battles, whose antics have figured largely in these reports for months, the Eastview town board at its February meeting voted to surrender unconditionally to the water department employee, who had taken it upon herself, without the knowledge or approval of the town board, to reduce her work week to thirty hours while continuing to draw full-time benefits.  Without a single "nay" vote being cast, the board formally declared thirty hours a week to be "full-time" and formally approved continuing to provide Anita Battles with all full-time benefits.

No word yet about whether the board plans to vote that the February 5 tornado never really happened, or that two plus two equals something other than four.

In a typed letter addressed "To the board of aldermen and mayor" which she didn't even bother to sign (it is reproduced in full at the end of this report), Battles: 1) expressed her mystification about why the board should care that she had taken it upon herself to alter the length of her work week without getting her employer's approval; 2) grandly gave the board permission to talk to another department employee; and 3) magnanimously conceded that the board actually had the right to make decisions about its own employees.

She also expressed her disappointment that nobody had stood up for her when mean old Guy Townsend dared to report on her conduct at an earlier board meeting.  Ms Battles, whose ignorance of or disregard for the rules of civil discourse (as evidenced by her conduct at that meeting) is apparently equaled by her ignorance of or disregard for the Constitution, imperiously informed the board that said mean old Guy Townsend "should not be allowed to" cover town board meetings, and attributed her own non-attendance at subsequent board meetings to the fact that the board did not violate the First Amendment and bar mean old Guy Townsend from those public meetings, so as not to offend Ms Battles' tender sensibilities by reporting to the public on what she actually said and did at those public meetings.

No word yet on whether Ms Battles plans to demand that the Eastview town board declare the First Amendment unconstitutional.  If she does, mean old Guy Townsend hopes that the board will stand up to her—for a change.

Water Department Meeting

The water department portion of the February meeting of the Eastview town board began briskly enough.  After the minutes were unanimously approved, on a motion by Billy Hunter, seconded by Jessie Robbins, Mayor Charles Weeks informed the board that the DSL hookup approved by the board at its January meeting should be installed by Friday.  Weeks then called on Raymond Butler for a maintenance report, and Butler advised the board that "Everything's working fine."

Mayor Weeks then opened the sealed bids for the surplus equipment which had been advertised for sale after the January meeting, and the board accepted the bids on everything except the bucket truck, on which the only bid received was for $601.  Alderman Robbins moved that the bid be rejected and the motion, seconded by Jeff Coln, passed by a unanimous voice vote.

After briefly discussing the purchase of new software for the water department (the board put off a decision until the next month's meeting) the mayor then turned to the Anita Battles portion of the program.

"Okay," Mayor Weeks began, "Item 6, Annual Review of Personnel.  This is something that we talked about in December of 2006.  That's when we voted on a raise for Raymond [Butler] and Anita [Battles] and Linda [Samples].  And we had discussed doing an annual review and performance review and that's been over a year ago and we haven't done it.  I think it's something that we need to do on a yearly basis, and, you know, I'd like the board's approval, but to do that I would also like to have someone sit in with me at that annual review, whether it be Jessie [Alderman Jessie Robbins], or Emodene [Town Recorder Emodene Smith], or whoever the board might choose to designate.  And let's go through some of the concerns that we have on, from both sides of the water department.  And then we can come back and make recommendations as far as what needs to be done in the way of, you know, making improvements.  But, again, in order to do that I'm going to ask the board to approve this annual review process, and also appoint someone to help with that procedure.  Any volunteers?"

Alderman Burl Sutton's nomination of Billy Hunter was seconded by Jessie Robbins and passed unanimously.

"We'll get together and discuss a time," Weeks said to Hunter.  "This may be a deal, too, where we're going to have to get somebody to cover, it may have to be after me and you get off work.  So, we really need to get that done in the next couple of weeks."

"We probably need to do it on her time, though," interjected Lucy Martin.  "Make sure she don't run over."

"Right," Weeks agreed.  "Or, pay her for that time.  Pay Raymond for his time.  Give us a chance to address some issues that might, you know, be of concern to them as well as us.  And then the final think I have on the agenda, and then I'll ask for responses from the visitors, we have a request here from Anita.  I made you copies of it, so, if you would, read through that and get some of the background information."

After giving the board members time to read the letter, Weeks asked, "Discussion?"

"Well," Martin responded, "I kind of wish she was here, because I don't think we ever really had a problem with her taking off on Fridays.  The problem was, we didn't know what her schedule was.  And she thinks we have a problem with her taking off.  I mean, personally, I don't have a problem with her taking off.  I don't know how the rest of the board feels."

"I think Ms Linda's filled in for her," Jeff Coln said, "and like I say, like she says in her letter, that's a way for her to make some money too, and I don't have any—"

"Keeps Linda up to date on what's going on," Robbins interjected.

"Kind of keeps her up—" Coln said.

"Yeah," Weeks said, "you never know, when something could happen, that if Linda would have to take over for a long period of time."

"I don't have a problem with that at all," Coln said.

"I don't have a problem with that," Robbins agreed.

"I'm like Ms Lucy," Coln continued.  "I wish that she had made a formal request, but that's neither here nor there, but I don't have any problem with it—"

"Well, now," Martin pointed out, "she was doing it almost a year before we knew about it."

"Yeah," Coln acknowledged.

"That's the only problem I really had with it," Weeks said.  "I don't have any, any qualms about her taking off on Friday, because I feel like the office is taken care of very well."

Both Coln and Robbins nodded their agreement.

"All right," Weeks asked, "is everyone in agreement that that won't be a problem, then, as far as her taking off on Friday?"

"It won't be a problem with me," Hunter said.

"I move that she be allowed to work part-time," Martin said, "if that's what she wants to do.  I don't have a problem with that."

"No," Weeks agreed.  "I don't think it's a problem."

"If she's going to work part time," Robbins began, "that will be—"

"Will she then be considered part-time," Weeks asked, "or will she still be full-time, and entitled to the benefits of full-time employment?"

"That I don't know," Robbins replied.

Weeks continued: "The policy handbook says that approximately thirty-two hours to be considered full-time."

"She's working thirty, now?" Coln asked.

"Well," Weeks replied, "it will be close to thirty-two, I think, probably, when you figure in trips to the bank, and everything."

"If she was to work four seven-and-a-half-hour days," Martin pointed out, "that would be thirty hours."

"That would be thirty hours," Weeks acknowledged.

"Because," Martin continued, "that's what she works with the time figured in at the bank.  Because she works eight to four-thirty."

"Me, personally," Weeks said, "I don't see any problem with continuing to treat her as full-time employment, because, you know, that's close, and there might be some times that she would put in the thirty-two hours."

"I don't have a problem with it," Coln said.

"Is everyone in agreement with that?" Weeks asked.  "Do we need that in the form of a motion?   Let's get that—"

"I think both of them," Town Attorney Craig Kennedy said.  "I think both the fact she's taking off on Fridays, plus the—"

"Being treated full-time?" Weeks said, finishing Kennedy's sentence.

"You can do it in one motion," Kennedy said, "but I think you need both of those."

"All right," Weeks began, "let's—"

 "So," Martin asked, "you want me to amend my motion by allowing her to take off on Friday, but continuing being considered as a full-time employee?"

"Employment as full-time," Weeks replied.

"I'll second that," Robbins said, and the motion passed on a voice vote with no "nays" being cast.

"Anything else on the water department?" Weeks then asked.

"Did you talk to Linda about coming back to the meeting?" Sutton asked the mayor.  "Or is she still mad at Mr. Guy over here and she won't come back—"

"Well, it wasn't Linda, I don't think, was it?" Weeks said.

"It was Anita," Coln observed.

"Anita, yes," Sutton said.

"No," Weeks admitted, "I haven't."

"I think she ought to make an appearance at meetings," Sutton said.  "Like tonight, you could tell her, you know, her problems."

Mayor Weeks ignored Sutton's suggestion, and after a moment's pause he went on. "Any thing else before we adjourn?"

Jeff Coln then asked Raymond Butler, "Any more news on the Ramer, getting connected?"

"The way they talk," Butler replied, "it will be spring, or some time in there.  He said he didn't want to start on it right now."

"Because the weather is so bad?" Coln asked.  "I don't blame him."

"Well," Butler said, "I think it's mostly boring under the highway down there.  He said Broadway wanted to wait 'til spring."

"Well," Weeks observed, "they shouldn't have a water shortage before then, any way."

"No," Butler agreed.  "They got plenty right now."

Weeks then asked, "Can I get a motion that we adjourn the water department meeting?"  The motion was made by Martin, seconded by Hunter, and passed unanimously.


City Meeting

Mayor Weeks then called to city meeting to order, and the minutes (on a motion by Martin, seconded by Robbins) and the bills (on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Robbins) were quickly approved by unanimous voice votes.

"I don't know whether you're aware of this or not," Weeks then said, "but we signed a release for Wayne Elam, Elam Mattress property, after the tornado came through.  I think he had borrowed, what was it, sixty thousand, some time back, and he had paid it down to around sixty-three hundred, I believe. [Emodene Smith corrected him: "Sixty-five."]  Sixty-five.  And he paid that and we signed the release, and this was to help facilitate him with his insurance claims.  We have taken care of that."

Weeks then asked about what progress had been made in making arrangements for the presentation of an award to the Dollar General Store for leading the district in sales.  After considerable discussion the board agreed to present the plaque on either March 8 or March 15.

"All right," Mayor Weeks finally said, moving on down the agenda.  "Item 4.  Consideration to reapply for the emergency sirens, or install on our own.  And I've got some phone numbers here, some companies that install these things.  I don't know what they would cost.  We've been turned down twice on grants, but I think we've got a legitimate concern, a legitimate opportunity to go after this again."

"Yeah," Martin said.  "Now would be a good time to apply for that grant.  They can see that we need it.  We're in tornado alley."

"And we were very fortunate not to have some loss of life," Weeks observed.

"Exactly," Martin agreed.  "And we were really, right up until the end, considered for that grant.  Because I went to several meetings and they had us up on the board and everything about the grant money.  And I don't know what happened.  I thought it was in our pocket."

"We just didn't have enough pull," Sutton said.

"I think we need to reapply," Martin said.

Mayor Weeks said, "I'll be in touch with Southwest and see if they can handle that for us."

Fire Chief Elvis Butler mention the effectiveness of including photos to illustrate the need.

"Yeah," Weeks agreed.  "I've got Wayne [Elam] getting me some pictures."

"You need to go all over the community and get pictures of houses and things that were damaged," Elvis Butler continued.  "The more you put in, the better it adds up."

Jeff Coln, whose home was only a few hundred yards from the completely destroyed mattress factory, said, "We've got a bunch of pictures of our house that you can have, too, Charles."

The next agenda item directly involved Alderman Coln.

"Okay," Weeks continued.  "Item 5, legal opinion on paving Coln Hill Lane."  He then called on Kennedy, who had been asked to prepare a legal opinion on the propriety of the town of Eastview paving or maintaining Coln Hill Lane, a private road which was sometimes used by the town to access the town's water tower.
Kennedy said that he had looked at the easement and that it contained nothing pertaining to paving or maintaining the lane.  Since the lane is on private property, Kennedy told the board, "It would be my recommendation that we not pave that road.  We also have an issue in the fact that, to be honest with you, that Jeff lives up that road, and even if he didn't live up there I'd still tell you the same thing.  But the fact that he lives up there, I think makes it even, more reason for me to say to you, I don't think you should do it now."

"Well," Sutton said, dryly, "I understand somebody else owns that right of way anyway, don't they, Jeff?"

"What," Coln asked, "are you talking about the road?  I own it."

"Yeah, I know," Sutton said, chuckling.  "He [Russell Coln] gave the easement, but you own the road, don't you."

"Yeah," Coln acknowledged.  "I've got a deed to that road from the highway."

"Well, what Russell gave you [the town of Eastview] isn't any good, then," Kennedy observed, to general laughter.

"I think," Coln explained, "the way I understood it from Russell—I said it doesn't make any difference to me—but from what I understand from Russell, is they had a, y'all had a, with the previous board, had a verbal agreement for the city to keep the road up, if it needed anything.  And I, like I say, I don't have a clue.  I don't know."

"Well," Kennedy replied, "there's nothing about that in the easement.  It just says it's an ingress, egress easement from, and it's got the description, from Hwy 45."

"I don't know," Coln said.  "I guess we need to—  I mean, y'all do whatever you want to, I mean, it's nothing to me.  Wait until he [Russell Coln] gets back?"

"It's just your road?" Martin asked.

"Russell doesn't own that road?" queried Kennedy.

"No, sir," Coln replied. "I own the road."

"Well," Martin observed, "he [Russell Coln] can't ask to get it paved anyway, then."

Sutton agreed, adding, "That easement's really no account."

Coln said, "I'm not going to stop you from going to the water tower, if you want to go to the water tower," adding, "You won't have any trouble from anybody up there, as far as, any time you want to go up there."

"If you want to deed the road to us, that would be something else," Kennedy suggested. "That's something else that's possible."

"I've got a lot of money in it so far," Coln said.  "I'm making payments to Farm Credit.  [Laughter.]  They love me."

Kennedy then raised another matter. "I was approached again about Lindsay Lane.   I just told the lady I didn't know where we were, other than the fact that I thought we were still waiting on James Martin to go out there and mark the corners.  I knew there had been some discussion with the highway, the county highway department.  They were going to do it all when it was done.  Is that where we are, still?"

"I think so," Mayor Weeks replied.  "I think that's where we are."

Kennedy continued. "I'd just like to go ahead and write James a letter, ask him a question, again, to go out there and mark those.  We've got a deed.  It doesn't take— Go down there an mark the corners by the deed, and then we'll contact the general land owners if we have to, but we've got to get that done."

"Because it's getting close to the time for people to start working on that," Weeks added.

"Going back to the water tank thing," Coln said, "when you come up my driveway, the road that goes to the water tank is going back across Russell's land there, but there's no, and that wasn't even a road, that was just an open spot in the woods."

"Well," Weeks suggested, "maybe that's the easement he—"

 "No," Kennedy said, "there's actually, there are two different things."

"Well," Coln finally said, "I'm not going to put up a toll or anything."

Mayor Weeks finally said, "I don't think we as a city can really do anything as far as" paving the lane was concerned.

Weeks then called on Fire Chief Butler. "Elvis, have you got anything you need to talk to the board about?"

"We answered," Butler began, "I don't think we had but two calls this month.  One of them was a chimney fire, and the other was the storm.  We're talking about trying to do a fund-raiser.  We haven't got all of it worked out yet.  We're looking into doing something like that.  We need a generator for our station.  We're going to try to raise the money.  It's rough trying to roll them doors up by hand."

Coln said, "I'd like to commend the fire department, too, on the storm.  You guys were all over the place for us."

"We got the roads cleaned quick," Butler agreed.

"That was another night I didn't help you," Coln said, to general laughter.

"Yeah," Butler acknowledged, "but you had a reason.  You was kind of busy."

"I had to cut three trees just to get out of my shop," Coln said.  "But y'all did do a good job.  I appreciate it."

"Yeah, they did," Mayor Weeks agreed.  "They sure did."

Mayor Weeks then called on Anwar Ahman, the owner of the Junction, who explained that he was reopening the Junction, whose previous tenant had shut the business down, and would like to have the board's permission to use the beer license he had been issued before the previous tenants had moved in.  Attorney Kennedy explained that only one beer license could be in effect for any facility, and that the replacement of one license by another had the effect of extinguishing the first license, so Ahman's license was no longer any good.  Kennedy added that an application for a new license would have to be advertised and that a public meeting would have to be held before it could be issued.  After some discussion, the board agreed to hold a special board meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 28, with the meeting to be advertised in the 27 February issue of the Independent Appeal.

"Anything else?" Mayor Weeks finally asked.

"I have one thing," Kennedy said.  "There was discussion some time back about our policy, our drug policy for the employees from the fire department.  And part of that, as I recall, was that they was wanting the random testing.  MTAS takes the position that, as a city government, we cannot do random testing.  Even if, and, you know, I explained the situation we had, and it's their position that we can do, post, once they're hired, we can test, and then we can test on reasonable suspicion, which, and I told them, I think we can probably test on reasonable suspicion anyway.  But, do you want me to go ahead—  And I've got that policy that I can prepare and bring to you, if it's what you want.  But it will not, if you go what MTAS says, it will not include any type of random testing."

"So it's only pre-employment and reasonable suspicion?" Martin asked.  "Can't even do blanket randoms, once a year?"

"Not according to MTAS," Kennedy replied.  "Now, we've got a policy for other, private employers, that, yes, obviously, it's got, you can, as you know—"

"Almost all the employers do," Martin said, and the meeting adjourned (on a motion by Sutton, seconded by Robbins) without any action being taken on the issue.



Text of Anita Battles' Letter

Jan. 21, 2008


To the board of aldermen and mayor:

I understand you have a problem with me taking off on Fridays.  I really don't understand why.  The office is covered and Linda is fully capable of taking care of anything that goes on there and I am only a phone call away.

I need to be off because of drawing my ex-husband's social security.  I can only make so much without being penalized by social security.  This is the only way I can do it without losing some of my check and Linda has a chance to make a little money for herself.  She doesn't mind, you can talk to her if you wish.

If you would please consider this situation and approve it, I would appreciate it very much.

And the other problem I have read on the internet is taking my benefits away.  If that is what you choose to do that is fine with me as long as I still get to be off even if it is without pay.  It is your right to do so if you wish.

I suppose you are well aware of the reason I do not attend the meetings now.  Mr. Guy Townsend is the reason.  If you read what he put on the computer about me back in October you will understand why.  I will not give him another chance to humiliate me like that again.  He made his own criticisms about me and derogortory [sic] remarks which he should not be allowed to do, but did anyone stand up for me! [sic]  NO, and that is why I won't give him another chance to do that to me again.

Anita
Battles


Town Board Meeting

15 January 2008

Eastview's Town Board meeting is always preceded by the meeting of its Water Board, and the January Water Board meeting was a marathon affair, lasting nearly an hour and a half.  It covered at great length the proposed hookup with Ramer, acquisition of new software and equipment to improve the department's efficiency and customer service, and how the town should dispose of its surplus equipment, before finally spending twenty minutes discussing Water Department employee Anita Battles.

In contrast to the Water Board, the business of the Town Board was disposed of in a brisk, quarter-hour meeting.


Ramer

After the payment of bills was unanimously approved (on a motion by Billy Hunter, seconded by Jessie Robbins), Mayor Charles Weeks called upon water department employee Raymond Butler to update the board regarding connecting Ramer's water lines to Eastview lines.

Butler advised the board that he had spoken with Ramer Utility Director Bobby Wardlow, who had advised him that Ramer had agreed to pay all of the expenses of reestablishing the connection, "and they was waiting on Broadway.  So that's in the plans, but when, nobody knows."

"Did you give them any specs?" Lucy Martin enquired.  "Who gave them the specs of what they're supposed to do?  Do they know?"

"I guess they know what they're supposed to do," Butler replied.  "I have no earthly idea.  All I know, we're supposed to read the meters down there if they use the water."

Jeff Coln pursued Martin's question. "Are we going to have some sort of spec sheet, however they come under the road or something.  I know Elvis [Elvis Butler, Eastview's fire chief] has said we need to make them put it in a casing, or something."

"There needs to be some kind of commitment from them," Martin agreed.  "Something in writing, maybe, or, I don't know if you would put it in writing, but if you don't have a spec sheet then you can't say, you know, five years from now, well remember now, the agreement was to do this and this.  We'll have it in the minutes, but we're not going to have it anywhere else, and they're not going to know."

"Yeah," Burl Sutton agreed.  "We need an agreement, and let them sign it.  We need something on paper.  If it come up, you know."

Raymond Butler suggested Mayor Weeks and Ramer Mayor George Armstrong "needs to get on that, and draw that up themselves," to which Weeks replied that "we'll probably need [City Attorney Craig Kennedy] to take care of that."

Mayor Weeks then said, "We need to discuss what the cost is going to be.  Are we going to charge just what we're paying, or are we going to charge something for the service, or is it going to be just, we need to make a little profit on it."

"We need to make a little profit on it," Sutton said.

"Can I butt in just a minute?" Elvis Butler asked.  "On that line, when it hooks up, you need to have a spec sheet on it somewhere, because that needs to be pressure tested, because where they're going to hook in it before the meters, and if it goes to leaking there and they don't come fix it, y'all are going to be paying for it.  Not them."

"Yeah," Coln agreed.  "That's something that Craig would look into, I guess.  Well, I guess he needs the advice of, I mean we need his advice as much as he needs ours, I guess."

"We may need to outline what we want said," Martin said, "and he will put it in legal terms for them to sign and us to sign, or probably something like that."

Coln asked Elvis Butler, "Could we put in, like a cut-off valve before the meter, you know, some way, if we do want to cut it off, and if we have a leak after the meter, there needs to be some sort of cut off on there somewhere."

Butler replied that, "before, there was a valve in the line.  Which it wouldn't shut all the way off.  That's the reason it kept leaking.  But it needs a valve where they tie into our line.  It needs to be run across, tied into their line, and then it needs to be pressure tested for at least 24 hours at about 200 pounds pressure to see what the loss is on it.  You can tell whether it's going to leak or not."

Sutton asked, "Is there a meter there, Elvis, where they're going to tie in?  We need to set a meter there and let them tie into the meter?"

Butler explained that "it's metered on the other side.  What we're talking about is just—  Our line goes down the south side of the road.  Their line comes up the north side of the road, and they go under the road and tie in.  The meters are on their side, I mean on the north side of the road.  But when they come off the meters, they come around and tie into our line.  That's what I'm saying, you want to make sure the pressure test it and all and not just slap it together.  If it holds for 24 hours, it's going to hold.  But if you don't pressure test it—"

Sutton asked why, if there are already meters there, would there need to be a new meter installed, and Butler explained that when the water systems of the two towns were connected years before, "the line started leaking and we took it loose because they wouldn't fix it.  We called them and told them we had a leak.  They wouldn't fix it.  So we took it loose and fixed our line back, disconnected it."

"Basically," Coln observed, after some further discussion, "the only thing we need, I guess, is just a new cut-off valve, is that right?  You said that other one wouldn't cut all the way off?"

"It wouldn't," Butler replied.  "Most of them, after they stay underneath and get that iron and stuff in them, they won't screw down tight enough to cut off.  You'd have to cut off two or three to get them all shut down.  But the way that is, most of the time it stays cut off all the time."

"Well, really," Coln observed, "it's going to be cut off all the time, unless they need it—"

"For back up," Mayor Weeks said, completing Coln's thought, and Sutton spoke up as well, saying, "Unless they were draining their tank and painting or something."

"Well, that's mostly what it's for," Raymond Butler agreed.  "If the wells go down, or they need to clean their tanks and stuff.  That's what he said the other day."

"Well," Mayor Weeks said, bringing the discussion back to finances, "if we do these specs, and this agreement will, one of the things we're going to need in this agreement is going to be the cost.  You know, I don't want to lose any money on this deal.  At the same time, I don't want to hold them up either."

"No," Hunter agreed.  "We can't lose no money on the water system."

"Just charge a little fraction over what we're paying Selmer," Martin suggested.  "You know, to be fair.  And they're only going to use it as an emergency backup, anyway."

Mayor Weeks returned to the subject of specifications.  "I think one of the things we mentioned when we discussed this earlier was putting that encased…. A four-inch line encased.  It would have to be a—well the state will regulate this, but it will have to be a dry bore underneath the highway.  And that will be at their expense, all of that."

"That's what they said it would be," Raymond Butler confirmed.  "At their expense.  But you need to write that down and get it, you know, to where I can give it to them, or you can give it to them, and they'd know that."

Weeks agreed. "I think it's something that, you know, Craig needs to draw up for us.  I think George and me both will need to sign that, and they'll have a copy and we will, too."

"Is this something that we need to table until the next month's meeting?" Coln asked, finally.

"I think so," Weeks replied. "I think we need to get Craig working on that and, you know, there might be some issues that we haven't thought of that Craig needs to address."


Leaks, Flushing, and Water Quality

"What else, Raymond?" Weeks asked.

"We've still got our two leaks," Butler said, "but, you know it's been bad here lately, so we ain't had time to get down there.  When we get warmer weather, we'll try to get them done."

"Anything else on maintenance?" the mayor asked.

"That's all I can think of right now.  I checked the tanks out yesterday, and they're still doing good."

"We're not losing any water out it, like we—" Weeks began, but Butler told him no.

Martin observed, "Our water purchases were $9,000 for the month.  Is that in line with what they've been being?"

"They'll probably be lower next month," Butler replied, "because that's still some the last, you know, when we was flushing.  And you did say go to call, right?"

"Go what?" Weeks asked.

"As needed," Martin explained.

"Flush when called," Butler said, and Weeks confirmed that this was to be the policy.

"What about people's water?" Hunter asked.  "Have you had any complaints, much, about muddy water?"

"Ain't a soul called," Butler replied.

Mayor Weeks observed that, "it seems like when our usage goes down, our complaints go down.  I don't know if that has anything to do with it or not, but it just seems like when we have a lower volume, we don't have as many complaints as far as the dirty water goes."

Butler agreed. "Well, I noticed that because the last time you told me not to flush, nobody ever called.  And it's just that way again.  Nobody's called."


Metering on the Fly

Jessie Robbins then brought up the subject of updating the city's method of reading meters.  "On our water meters, on the road out here.  We need to check and see how much one of them costs that you read from the computer and you don't have to stop the truck.  It'll pick it up.  Just drive down the road and it picks it up."

"I'm talking to a company now," Weeks said, "but I haven't got to that part, but I'm sure they offer it."

"Yeah," Robbins said, "that's what all the cities are going to.  Michie's got it.  John [Shaw] said theirs will pick up, running forty miles an hour he can pick up four meters at a time.  Don't have to stop the truck and get out.  He said they can read them in two hours."

Robbins pointed out that Pickwick had also acquired a similar system, and Raymond Butler said, "Everybody's going to it."

"Yeah," Robbins agreed.  "That way you wouldn't have the truck, wouldn't be setting in the road, Raymond wouldn't have to be, he'd have the meters read in just a little while.  But it picks it up and puts it right in the computer."

Mayor Weeks was skeptical. "I'd want, I'd want to see some of that, before I spent a whole lot of money on it."

"I talked to him Saturday a week ago," Robbins responded, "and he said if you need to see anything about it, or anything, come over there and they could show you.  But John said it will pick them up running forty miles an hour down the road."

"Well, now," the still skeptical mayor said, "it may be completely fault free, but I'm going to say you're going to have some sort of mechanical backup in case something happens to that diode in that thing.  So you're still, you're going to have to—"

"Well," Martin said, "it's just like your computer at the office.  You need some kind of backup, and all we have for backup is just a piece of paper.  And you have to go there if you want—  But if you want a report, or anything like that, forget it.  You can't go back and look at what happened yesterday, because you can't run a report.  But you have paperwork up to today, on, you know, phone numbers and things like that, but—"

Robbins was clearly sold on the system. "This deal over here picks up, you know, the date, the time and everything.  It puts it right there on it.  And what the reading and everything is.  So it's accurate."

"Did he tell you what one of those meters cost?" Coln asked.

"No," Robbins said.  "I didn't ask him."

"It might be something that we could go to," Weeks began, "but we might have to—"

Robbins interrupted.  "If we could get a grant to do it, you know, it could be something we might could do."

"We might want to look into that," Coln agreed.

A few minutes later, Robbins returned to the subject.  "We ought to check and see if we can get a grant on them meters.  It would be a lot safer on this highway out here with all this traffic, and Raymond having to stop and get out and go door to door."

"That's what Michie done," Elvis Butler said.  "See, they figured in the cost of a contract of putting in, of changing all the meters and putting everything in, and they got a grant for it."

"And they've got several meters," Robbins observed.  "I mean, they go all the way down to Shiloh."

"They've got a bunch of them," Elvis Butler agreed.

"Close to 2,000, I think," Raymond Butler said.

"That's lots more than we've got," Weeks said.

"Yeah," Raymond Butler agreed.  "Y'all ain't hardly got a thousand.  Well, I think there's eleven hundred and something.  But most of them ain't active."

"Yeah, about 780," Weeks said.

"Well," Robbins persisted, "we could check on a grant on that, sometime."


Surplus Equipment

"All right," Mayor Weeks said, turning to the next item on the agenda, "at our last meeting we tabled the sale of our surplus equipment.  And we talked about whether or not to do that at auction, or whether to do it as a sealed bid.  And I've talked to an auctioneer, and he didn't really want to fool with it.  It would be like 25% commission on it.  And the way he explained it, it makes sense.  At an auction and a sealed bid, you get two different kinds of buyers.  You go to an auction, you know you'll take it if the price is right.  You're not really there to buy anything, you're just there for a bargain.  Kind of like yard-sale shopping.  But with a sealed bid you've got a buyer that's, you know, interested in it and wants it.  And I think we ought to just go ahead and, if we can get sealed bids on this surplus equipment, let's take them and run in there.  We can reject any of the bids that we want to.  We need a fair price for us to go ahead and sell it.  Sell it as is."

After some further discussion the board decided to advertise for bids on the surplus equipment and open those bids at the February meeting.


Software

"All right," Mayor Weeks said, moving along, "I've looked at the software package.   Did a demo from this company, USTI, and went through there, and I've got a price from them.  The boy is out of Collierville.  They handle Middleton's water and utilities, and it's real user friendly.  I mean, I think I could go on there and do it with just a little training.  He also did the reader, which we got that right there [shows a brochure], and a conversion package which would convert the information from what we are using now, to this system.  The thing that I really liked about this program is—you know on a credited system, we just about have to have everything in before you can close out the month.  This system right here, if you've got four or five people that you're waiting on, holding you up from closing out, you can suspend them, put them in a suspension part of the system, go ahead and close out the system, and then deal with them later, without disrupting things.  It's really got a lot of good features on here.  These people have been in business, I think, for years.  Says they've been working with local governments since 1978.  They have 2,300 customers throughout North America.  The total cost, which includes training, hardware, conversions: $5,695.  Now, the boy, here, that give me the bid, said that we didn't have to go with the conversion, that if we wanted to manually enter all the information and just change it over from our system now, just key in everything, that's $695.  So you'd be looking at $5,000, and that's the readers—"

"Oh," Martin said with surprise, "you mean it's just $600 to do—"

"The conversion," Weeks finished for her.

"Why, it's worth that!" Martin said.

"This system here," Weeks said, turning to a second proposal, "I don't know if you remember, the palm reader, was $2,195, and then the software upgrade was $4,095.  So, you know, it's about $500 higher, but, you know, you're paying for some of the training here, that you're getting here."

Coln asked, "This first one was fifty-something hundred dollars, and that's the whole—"

"Fifty-six ninety-five," Weeks repeated.  "That's the whole thing."

Martin said, "Fifty-seven hundred, everything, training, and the conversion kit.  And this one is the one that reads, and you put the disk in—"

"You go through," Weeks explained, "you just punch in the readings.  You download it out of the computer, and it puts them in there in order, and then you just go through there and read the meters and punch it in.  If there's anything out of line, it warns you."

"That would be a good tool to have," Hunter observed.

"Yeah, I think so, too," Martin agreed.  "And fifty-seven hundred dollars is not that much for what you're getting.  It doesn't seem to me that it's a whole lot."

Weeks continued with his explanation.  "You bring it back in and you upload it into the computer.  And there's no manual entry at all.  I mean it's all straight out of this reader right here.  He said we didn't have to buy this.  I think the cost on that's around thirteen hundred and something dollars.  And the reader here was twenty-one hundred.  He said any palm reader that we go with would be compatible with this program.  But I don't think you're going to find anything any cheaper than that."

Martin agreed.  "I'd just stay with all the same stuff to make sure that if we had a problem with that, he would know about it.  And, so, I mean, if I was going to go that route, I'd get it all together, a package deal."

"Is this stuff up to date?" Sutton asked.  "Electronics is changing about every six months, it's obsolete, you've got to buy something else."

"Yeah, it's up to date," Weeks replied.  "In fact, they upgrade the program just about daily.  The girl at Middleton said they get, constantly get upgrades, or updates."

In response to a question from Martin, Weeks said the annual maintenance fee would be $395.

"Well, Mr. Mayor," Sutton said at last, "I think you know more about this or as much as any of the rest of us, so I think you ought to make your own decision which one you think would be better."

"Well," Weeks asked, raising another issue, "is it something that we need to do now, or is it something we need to budget for.  That was going to be my question.  We've got, you know we've got a budget coming up here in July that we need to address.  Is this something that we need to budget for, or is it something that we need to jump on and do right now

"We got the money," Robbins observed.  "I guess we do it now.  It's the same price, if you budget or not."

Sutton agreed.  "If we wait two or three months, it's going to go up, probably."

Mayor Weeks then brought up the need for a faster Internet connection than the department's present dial-up arrangement.  "But, now I did this online demo where I went on there, and the girl went through everything with me on it.  And the salesman here said that he would be glad to go through that with Anita [water department employee Anita Battles], and I talked to Anita about it, and the reason I didn't set it up with her to start with is we didn't have DSL out here.  You have to be on, you know, the Internet to do it.  And Anita said she had DSL at home, and said that she would be willing to look at the program.  She is reluctant about changing from what we've got, but you know for the money and for what this system can do—"

"Well," Martin observed, "think how much easier it will be for her.  She won't have to key in anything."

"But I mean that's going to be true with either system," Weeks said.  "But what I don't think Anita understands is, even if we upgrade to this, it's going to be so much different from what she's got now it's going to be like changing software packages anyway.  Because what she's got now is DOS; this is going to be Windows.  He said this is compatible with Vista, which is the new operating system.  It's compatible with XT, in fact they recommend it for XT, and that's what we've got in here."

After more discussion, the board decided to make a decision at the next meeting.  In the meantime, the board did decide (unanimously, on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Sutton) to upgrade the town's Internet connection from dial-up to DSL, which would provide many benefits, including off-site backup of water department records.


Anita Battles

Mayor Weeks then turned to a matter that had been unsettling Eastview's public meetings since the October meeting when a petition was presented complaining about customer service in the water department and escalated in the November meeting when Anita Battles mounted her counter offensive and presented the board with a petition of her own.  [See reports of the two meetings, below.]

"Now," Weeks said, "let's look at item number six, Water Department Policies.  I want to mention one thing here that I probably should have said to the board at the last meeting, that I'm not particularly pleased with what happened here, and that was with her petition that got circulated.  And, it's not so much the petition, as where it was being circulated from, had a very negative tone to it.  But this petition was signed right here in this building.  Right over here in this water department, and I've got a problem with that."

"Well," Sutton observed, "part of it was signed right out there [indicating the auditorium] during the meeting," referring to the November 20 meeting during which Battles circulated her petition for some last-minute signatures.

"That's true," Weeks acknowledged, "and I, you know, getting a petition together, if you want to go around and see your neighbors to get them to sign it, that's one thing.  But when you're doing it at the office that you're working for, I'm sorry, I've just got a problem with that.  And I want some direction from you guys on how to approach it and how to handle it."

"So you've not addressed that yet, with Anita?" Martin asked.

"I haven't," Weeks acknowledged.  "I haven't."

"Well," Robbins said, veering off on a tangent, "I've got an opinion, and I don't know.  Everybody's got one.  But I think we ought to turn everything back over to the city here and let the board run the stuff, instead of having somebody else outside of the city trying to take care of the water department.  And that would eliminate that, and that problem.  Because we ain't none of us going to do that."

"I don't know that I understand what you're saying," said Martin, who was confused by Robbins' having changed the subject.

"That water board," Robbins replied.  "We need to get rid of it."

"Advisory board," Coln corrected.

"Advisory board," Robbins said.  "Get rid of them and turn it back over to the people that the city, people in the community, elected to run the city."

"That's right," Coln agreed.  "I think so, too."

Robbins continued. "They elected us to run, to take care of stuff in the city, and we've got a board that most of them don't live in the city limits."

"Well," Martin said, "I thought the advisory board was just to garner comments and suggestions for implementing maybe better changes as far as customer service, stuff like that.  I didn't understand the advisory board to be running the water department."

"Well," Robbins acknowledged, "they're not exactly running it, but we got, we got this committee on it, and they come up here to the meetings and stuff, and I've had a lot of complaints about people that wasn't elected by the people living in the city, kind of advising on the thing.  They're saying that the people that was elected in the city ought to be the ones that's running it."

"I think you're right," Martin agreed, "but I still think that it's your, it's freedom of, free, free will to come up and voice your opinion, and I don't know what the advisory board is going to do for us—"

"Well," Robbins interrupted, "anybody can come to any meeting they want to in here and voice their opinion, because it's a public meeting.  I mean, like I said, everybody's got an opinion."

"Well, of course," Mayor Weeks observed, "when we were looking at that, we were looking at possible changes that we could make to our operations to deal with some of these complaints that we were having.  And one of the things that they did for us was they brought to our attention some of the issues that were out there.  As far as them having any particular power, or anything like that, I don't think we ever delegated that to them.  But at the same time they were, they did bring some things to our meeting that I think were things that should have been—"

"They had some good points," Coln acknowledged.

"They don't have no authority to do nothing, as I see it," Sutton observed.

Martin said, "I think probably one of the things that maybe, the reason that the advisory panel was asked to volunteer, or who would serve on it, was kind of to defuse what was going on that particular night, or at that particular time, to keep down, maybe, some hostility, that sort of thing, and maybe we may have created some, somewhat, by allowing that to happen, but I, my way of thinking, that particular night it was kind of done to defuse what was happening."

"Yeah," Sutton said, "I'm like Jesse, everybody's got an opinion.  But I think it's already happened.  It's done.  But the mayor should have appointed a committee, and scattered it around all over the community, all over the city, and not just that one, that was what was wrong this one group of people, and that community from everybody.  Then you'd get input from all over the area, then."

"Sort of a non-biased opinion," Coln added.

"Yeah," Sutton agreed.

Martin remarked on the difficulty of getting people to participate.  "And I don't know that anybody is really interested in serving on an advisory council, and, you know, you're only going to have one or two people on that board come.  The last time there was just two—"

"You don't have anybody tonight," Hunter then pointed out, to general agreement.

"—and nobody tonight," Martin continued.  "So, see, that's going to fizzle out, and they're, and you didn't even say how long they were going to serve on the advisory board, did, or advisory committee.  And I wish everybody would be open enough and feel free enough to come and say, 'Look, you know, I've got bad water, what can we do?'  'I don't get my bill until two days before I'm due to pay it, or maybe the day before, and I don't have time to get my check in the mail or get up there because they're closed when I get there,' or 'I dropped my check in the night depository box, or whatever,' or 'Why can't we send the bills out on the 20th,' 'Why can't we have the date the meter is read on the bill?'  People should feel free to come in and talk about that, if that's what they want."

After some further discussion, Weeks said, "I'm waiting on a recommendation on this thing I mentioned here."

"What would be the possibility," Coln asked, "of having a posted water department policy, on the wall, on the window, or that the, versus, I mean there's no need, I don't know how to word it, no need in coming up here and jumping on Raymond, or jumping on Anita—"

"We don't need that, no," Robbins interjected.

"—about your water bill, because there's nothing they can do about it anyway.   I mean, they are just here to put the numbers in and send out the bills, and, you know, if you have any questions, refer to the board meeting on the third Tuesday night of the month."

"But at the same time," Weeks said, "if they do come up here and ruffle some feathers, there doesn't need to be any retaliation from this board toward them."

"Exactly," Coln agreed.

"But not only that," Martin added, "in a customer service department, or area, which is what Raymond and Anita serve in, a customer service spot, they have to assume the responsibility of telling you, 'I'm sorry, I don't know what is, but I'll see if I can't fix it.'  Now, any mature person should be able to say that.  It don't matter how mad I may be, or upset, when I come up here and I say, 'Somebody tell me why my water bill is like this!'  Then, you know, I would say, 'Lady, you know, I read your meter and I don't really know, but let me check it out and see what I can find out and I'll get back to you.'  Now, they say that people come in here kicking, spitting, screaming and cussing.  And I don't know.  But I get phone calls like that, too, and you know what you do?  You wait until they run out of breath, and you say, 'You know, I heard what you said.  Point well taken.  I'll see what I can do to fix it.'  But, now, everybody's not made up of the same thing, and everybody's not going to listen to that."

"If you'll be calm," Sutton agreed, "that customer will calm down, too.  We run a Sears store for years, and you ain't never heard all the gripes we got.  If you'll be calm, don't get excited.  If you get excited, then the whole thing just balloons out."

"Well," Martin resumed, "and some people may not can do that.  I don't know.  It may not be their make up.  I mean, they just might not be a customer service person.  And if they're not, then they're going not react in the way that they should."

After some further discussion among board members, Martin returned to the question Mayor Weeks had raised.  "But we still haven't addressed what you [Weeks] said.  How should you handle the situation of a petition being signed and garnered support from this office."

Robbins had a simple solution: "Call [Constable] Bill Jackson, and have them removed."

"Well," Martin said, "that's Anita."

"Huh?" Robbins asked.

"That would be Anita," Martin repeated.

"I don't care who it is," Robbins replied, "they ought not to be doing it here.  Have them removed from the building."

"I don't like this having a petition," Coln said.  "If she'll go, like you say, go around house to house."

Weeks said, "I mean, she's got that right, just like anybody."

"Exactly," Coln agreed.

"Well," Martin said, raising another point, "that's probably a violation of some, something, you know—"

"They don't need to be doing it in this building," Robbins interjected.

"—you know, of government thing, that's probably one of those violations."

"Well," Sutton said, "she got an attorney to write up a, something against me.  I don't know what you'd call it.  They never did serve nothing on me, but I got a notice that she's been to a lawyer's office."  [Battles also telephoned this reporter and mentioned a "law suit" just before hanging up the phone, and a few days later I did receive a letter from a local attorney suggesting that I apologize to her for my reporting.  I responded with a letter inviting the attorney (who had admitted in his letter that he really didn't know what had transpired) to come by and view the video of Ms Battles' performance and judge the "evidence" for himself, but I never received a reply.]

"Well," Weeks said, "see, that's another that we don't need if, you know.  We're all working together here, and we're all working for the common good of the people here.  We don't need this fighting against each other, and, over petty issues such as that.  And I think either a reprimand or a warning is justified here in this particular case."

"Well," Martin suggested, "you'd have to find out exactly what it was she violated, and I would just write her up for a violation of operational policies, or whatever the word needs to be."

"Is that in, everybody in agreement with that?" Weeks asked.

There was general assent, in the form of nods and "uh huhs."

Martin continued. "You know, I think, Mr. Mayor, probably part of the problem is, I'm not sure that she has a clear understanding of what we expect of her.  Some of the discussion prior to this advisory board being named was, what do we expect of her, does she know what we expect of her, does she even know what the customers expect of her, and we talked about it, just talked about it in general, like 'Yes, I do know,' she says.  "I know I can do this, but you can't make me do this or that.'"

"Well," Weeks responded, "you know, that's something that we addressed earlier, and we didn't follow through on it, probably should have, and that's just an annual review.  Sit down and talk to, you know, sit down and talk to Raymond, sit down and talk to Anita, and, you know, whoever's working for the city, and say 'This is some of the things that we're dealing with here, some areas that we do well, and some areas that maybe we need to improve on.'  So, you know, I think that's something, it ought to be tied to their raise, their bonus raises.  I mean, we don't expect these people to continue to work at the same rate of pay for the next years.  So this is something I think that needs to be enforced here.  But, you know, if I'm going to conduct these annual reviews, I need some—"

"Input," Hunter suggested.

"Yeah," Weeks agreed.

"Well," Martin said, "I think that policies and procedures have to be followed in any kind of professional work environment.  And most people understand that.  And most people do follow the policies and procedures.  This thing that she did was just because she was hurt and angered, and she struck back real quick, and that's why that happened.  But that does need to be addressed, because the longer you let things go, the harder it is to address the issue and her recall everything that happened and what led up to it."

Weeks said, "Well, if everyone's in agreement I will talk to her about that and tell her that, you know, we need to be pulling together and not pulling apart, and we need to, you know, this kind of thing can't happen—"

"Is she still working part time?" Martin asked, bringing up another issue.

"Well, that's another issue I wanted to bring up," Weeks replied.  "She's taking off a day a week, and has been for some time, and as far as I know, this board—the previous board may have approved that, but this board has not approved that for her to be off."

"Did ya'll?" Martin asked of the other board members.  "Do you know?"

"Not that I know of," Robbins replied.

"No," Hunter said.  "We didn't."

Town Recorder Emodene Smith said, "She was told, I believe, if she was going to be out, to have Linda cover for her," referring to part-time water department employee Linda Samples.

"But that wasn't on a part-time basis," Martin said.

Sutton asked, "It's every Friday, though, isn't it?"

"Well," Martin said, "she's working part time by choice.  She chose to work part time."

"Yeah," Robbins agreed, "she's working part time, but that wasn't the way it was intended."

"But she chose," Martin continued, "she has to work part time, is what she told me, and—"

Elvis Butler interjected, "Before, on her, it was just when she was out Linda was working with her.  I mean, we didn't have that big a trouble.  She was here most of the time."

"Yeah," Robbins said.  "Most of the time she was here, but now she's changed over to part time, now."

"Now she is working part time," Martin repeated.  "She chooses to do that."

"And, you know," Weeks said, "we haven't approved that.  So, I mean, if that's some, if that part you want us to table, and look at it later, I can ask her to make that request in the form of writing to the board and give us a chance to—"

"But she has to understand," Martin said, "too, that part time, when she works part time, that she relinquishes all of her benefits.  Because she has to work thirty-two hours or more a week for benefits.  Or thirty-four, I forget what it says in the handbook."

Weeks said, "It says approximately thirty-two hours a week, is what the policy says."

"And if she works four days," Martin continued. "that's twenty-eight, thirty hours a week.  Because she works seven and a half hours a day."

"Well," Weeks replied, "I mean, you could argue that's approximately."

"You need this in favor of a motion?" Sutton asked.

"No," Weeks replied, "I think what we ought to do at this point is just table the part as far as taking off, and let's have her make a request to the board, either in person or in writing at our next meeting, and that will give us an opportunity to think about what we want to do on that."

"You want to draft a performance policy, board requirements?" Coln asked the mayor.

Sutton supported the idea.  "I think you should write up a policy for her to go by.  Lucy will help you, and Billy could be much help to you"

"Well," Martin observed, "there is already a handbook.  I mean, she, there's a personnel manual already that's written that she's to go by."

"And," Weeks added, "when you start doing something separate and apart from that, then, you know, you've got the handbook over here and the policy over there."

The water board meeting was finally adjourned without any definitive action being taken on Anita Battle's situation.


Town Board Meeting

The town board meeting, in contrast, was brief and anti-climatic.

Martin moved that the minutes be accepted and her motion, seconded by Robbins, passed unanimously.

Mayor Weeks then read the bills, payment of which was unanimously approved on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Hunter.

Weeks mentioned that a grant the town had applied for had been turned down, but the next item on the agenda "is something that I am proud, that I am proud to be able to address this right here.  It's the recognition of the Dollar General Store, right here in Eastview, leading store in sales in this district."

The board then discussed how best to recognize this achievement and settled ultimately on holding a second ribbon-cutting, complete with refreshments and the presentation of a plaque, with Lucy Martin to make the necessary arrangements and report back to the board with the date and time.

Weeks advised the board that the town had not yet received a legal opinion on paving Coln Hill Lane, so that item was tabled again.

The board also authorized the mayor, on a motion by Sutton, seconded by Robbins, to let a contract (to the lowest bidder) for the removal of two trees.

Finally, the board instructed Recorder Smith to check into prices for heaters for the fire station.



Town Board Meeting

18 December 2007

At the Eastview Water Department which preceded the regular meeting of the Eastview Town Board Tuesday evening the board members discussed ways of disposing of the department's surplus vehicles, which include a 20 horsepower Murray lawnmower, a GMC Brigadier tractor and lowboy, an F150 long wheelbase with camper, a 1984 bucket truck, a Ford F800 diesel tanker fire truck, and a box truck F800.

Fire Chief Elvis Butler, on whose property the vehicles are presently located, suggested to the board that the vehicles would probably bring more at an auction than they would bring if simply listed for sale, and after considerable discussion the matter was tabled until the next meeting to give Mayor Charles Weeks time to check with an auctioneer and the town attorney regarding how to proceed.

Mayor Weeks then asked if the advisory board would report on "how things have been going, as far as changes that were implemented," and advisory board member Peyton Allen said that "As far as I know, everything is going good.  I know we had bad water there for a while, and I understand Selmer had a major leak, and it's finally, I guess, filtered out, filtered through." Directly addressing the customer service issue—which had been the direct cause of the formation of the advisory board—Allen said, "But as far as anything negative, everything has, so far, been great."

Mayor Weeks reported on a visit from which he had just returned. "I went to the water department at Middleton today, and asked them some questions, and one of the things I was asking was about their rates, and we were very competitive with what they do.  Now, they have a dual rate system.  They charge people in the city one rate, and outside the city limits another rate, and we're very competitive with the rates that they charge outside.  It's $12 minimum, and then $3 a thousand for over the minimum.  We're in line with them.  And they're having bad water problems, too."

After some discussion of billing procedures, Allen asked the mayor, "What about the new program for the computer system?"

"I talked to them today," Weeks said.  "RVS is a company out of Arkansas that has give us a quote, and there's two parts to it.  Right now, were on the DOS system, and that's not going to be compatible with the Vista, and all the computers you are getting now is coming out with Vista.  It's not going to work with Vista.  It will still work with XP, but, if something happens to our computer and we have to change, then that system that we've got now won't upload to it.  So they're suggesting that we upgrade to what they call a Mosaic system, which is a Window-based program.  And the cost of that program, just the software, which is all the support and everything that goes with it, $4,095."

Allen expressed concern at the cost and asked if the mayor had considered contacting other companies.

"Well," Meeks replied, "that's not the only provider.  I've got another one I'm talking to.  But the second part of that program is the hand-held system, where you go in and you punch in the readings.  And what you do is you upload this into a hand-held, and it just scrolls through there.  You go and read your meters and punch it in, and if there's something that's out of kilter, if one of the readings is, you know, excessively more, excessively less than the previous month, it will warn you right there on the spot when you punch it in."

"That would make Raymond's job a lot easier," Allen said, referring to department employee Raymond Butler, who then informed the board that Michie, Savannah, and Corinth already had such a system in place.

But, the mayor, added, that feature would cost an additional $2,195.  With that new system, though, "you punch in the numbers off the meters.  And when you upload it into the system, it gives the time of the reading, the date of the reading, and it will print an exception report right on the spot, that shows you if you've got something that just doesn't look right."

When Allen persisted in asking about other vendors, Mayor Weeks said, "Well, there's another company I'm going to talk to, out of Canada, that provides Middleton's system.  But I did think it was kind of high, but it sounds like a good program.  Sounds like what we are looking for."

Board Member Lucy Martin remarked that the cost was "probably not really that high," considering the benefit to the department.

"We're going to have to change our software," the mayor said.  "And this is something that you don't have to do every year.  What you do is, you buy the program, you get lifetime support.  They'll support you, and help you with any problems that you have throughout the system.  And then the updates come annual.  Annual optional updates.  And we're doing that now.  It won't be any higher for this system than it is for what we're doing now.  I think it's three or four hundred dollars a year that we pay for that.  But the man said that he—Jason Burton is the salesman for this area—he said if we decided to go with this system he would come down and convert all our accounts over and get everything set up, go through the whole training process and train, if we do the hand-held, and train you [Raymond Butler] on that, and make sure that everything is working just like it's supposed to be.  And he said the good thing about it is the system that we've got now is compatible with this and it will convert over."

Martin asked where RVS's representative was located, and when the mayor replied that the company was located in Little Rock and covered Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee, Martin said, "those are things like that that we need to find out.  You know, he's way far away.  He's not even in Memphis.  I mean, you may have a technician or somebody in Memphis, or he may have technicians that live in Jackson, Tupelo, or somewhere like that.  Because we need to know if we had a problem—or it might be they could fix it from where they are."

"Yeah," Weeks replied, "he said that if we had the internet they could remote into it."

Martin continued: "The reason I asked that question was because we kind of thought we was going to have a representative here so we could kind of quiz them and get them to answer questions that we had about can we do this or do that, will it allow this and that."

Allen agreed: "If you're going to spend the money, looks to me like he would drive over here for that, for a presentation to everybody.  If you going to spend that kind—  I would put it to him like that.  I'd say, you know, 'Hey, we're going to spend four thousand dollars for an upgrade, we want to see what we're getting first, before we make a commitment.'"

"Well, and here's another thing," Martin said.  "If we don't like what we see, and if you don't answer the questions, it may not be a sale.  I mean, hey, when you make a presentation, you take that chance."

Mayor Weeks then remarked that the Middleton water department was using a system from a different supplier,  "but I was pretty impressed with it.  The girl said it was very user friendly, and you can go in there and generate all these reports and everything."

"What kind of system they got?" Alderman Billy Hunter asked.

"I wrote it down," Weeks said.  "I didn't bring it with me, because I want to call the salesman and talk to him.  But you can do the hand-held with it, too.  And it might be a lot cheaper than this."

"We need the hand-held," Hunter said.

"Yeah," Martin agreed.  "You need to talk to somebody else and get some other comparisons.  And that hand-held thing would be wonderful, but that would eliminate a lot of work for Anita [Battles], not having to key it in."

"Plus," Weeks added, "I like the fact that it warns you if there's something" out of the ordinary.

Martin liked the fact that the reading only had to be keyed in one time, reducing the opportunity for mistakes.  "But," she added, "I think you should check with that other, give us another option."

"I think we need at least three or four companies, to consider," Weeks agreed.

Allen returned to the question of support. "You don't want somebody that's going to bid on it from California and then you don't have any support."

"Need it where we can get in touch with them," Hunter agreed.

The mayor said that Middleton "got good support on it on their system.  They say you can call them, they get back with you—"

"Is it local?" Hunter asked.

"No," Weeks replied, "it's actually, goes into Canada, where that support is.  She said that they'll call her back just within a matter of minutes.  All right, well, if it's okay we'll just table that and I'll be contacting these companies, and if I can get some of them to come down here and put on a demonstration, I will.  But that might be tough."

Mayor Weeks then directed the board's attention to page 31 of the department's audit, which showed that the department had lost 1,484,516 gallons out of a total of 6,747,800 gallons purchased from the Selmer Water Department.  "Every dollar's worth of water that we buy, it's like running twenty-three cents of it out on the ground," he said.

In the discussion that followed, flushing the water lines and fire department usage were identified as two sources of loss, but the biggest problem appeared to have been a stuck valve on the department's water tank, which may have wasted as much as half a million gallons.

Before adjourning the water department meeting the board unanimously authorized, on a motion by Alderman Burl Sutton, seconded by Alderman Jessie Robbins, the purchase of a bed liner (for $159) and a topper ($549) for the department's new truck.

The water department meeting then adjourned on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Robbins, and moved into the regular town board meeting.

The minutes of the November meeting were read and unanimously approved on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Martin, then the bills were read and unanimously approved on a motion by Martin, seconded by Robbins.

Mayor Weeks then reported on the status of the park grant application. "I don't think Linda Higgins is working on our park grant anymore.  I got a letter from Doris Owens [of SWTDD], and she sent us a list of things that's got to be submitted for the, uh, consideration of the park grant.  I've talked to Steve [Hunter, leader of the Parks Commission Program] about that, and we're in the process of getting it all together for her, so Steve's aware of it, and we're going to get back together and see about getting this thing finalized.  It looks like there's going to be a lot of paperwork involved.  Of course, I guess there always is, for a grant.  That's just part of it, I suppose."

The mayor also had news of another possible grant. "I got a letter here from Mayor Templeton, about the TEA-21 grant that was awarded to McNairy County several years ago.  These funds are not being utilized.  Approximately 1.25 million, maybe left, it says.  And one of the things that he said he wanted to do was send it out to all the mayors and see if we'd be interested in pursuing any of that, and I told him we would.  I told him that we was interested in pursuing a grant for installing streetlights, if we could get them.  It's a eighty-twenty match.  We'd have to meet twenty percent of the cost.  He said he didn't know whether they could do it for that or not, but he would check and find out.  So that's where that is."

After some discussion of various other possible projects, Weeks conclude, "But, anyway, I told him we were interested, and I'm going to send him a letter and make that request, and he's going to check and see if that's possible."

The next two agenda items—"Status of Drug Testing Policy for City Employees and Volunteers," and "Report on Research by Attorney on Using Road Funds to Pave Coln Hill Lane"—were passed over because town attorney Craig Kennedy was out of town.

Just before the meeting adjourned, Alderman Jeff Coln asked Fire Chief Butler "How about the fire department.  Everything going okay with it?

"We had an accident," Butler responded. "We was going to the Christmas parade and hit a deer.  It wasn't much damage.  It bent the front bumper on the pumper, but I think it can be straightened up where you won't hardly notice it."  He added, "And as far as calls, I think we've answered one burned vehicle and one vehicle extraction."



Town Board Meeting

20 November 2007

Six minutes into Eastview's November Water Department meeting—after first unanimously approving the payment of bills (on a motion by Lucy Martin, seconded by Jessie Robbins) and declaring the old water department truck surplus (on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Billy Hunter)—the board launched into an interminable discussion of water department policies, punctuated regularly by the whining voice of water department employee Anita Battles* claiming that she couldn't do this, she couldn't do that, and that those who in any way dared to criticize her were wrong, were liars, or were just plain delusional.

[*As originally posted, this read "Anita Samples," rather than "Anita Battles," and I apologize to Ms Linda Samples for my mistake and for any embarrassment this may have caused her.  The whiney voice belonged to Anita Battles.]

Mayor Charles Weeks began the discussion with a review of the October 23 meeting of an advisory panel which had been formed during the board's regular October meeting to consider "some recommendations on our Water Department.  It was a very productive meeting.  We've got a list of things here, that you have before you, that was discussed at that meeting.  And we need to look through this and discuss it.  The first thing on there was that courtesy and professionalism needs to be shown to all customers conducting business with the Utility Department.  The second thing is to implement a policy requiring customer when a bill increases by 25% or more over the previous month, and that notification should be given as soon as the meter reading is posted.  An exception report listing identifying accounts exceeding that 25% should be generated and available for board review.  I believe that's something that we have done in the past, and I think we've kind of gotten away from that.  I think we need to get back to that practice, because there's some things that were brought up here.  A customer can have a leak and not know anything about it, but if we see something that looks out of line and we talk to the customer about that, go in there and find out what's going on.  That's going to involve taking the readings, and that's item C on here, the actual date of meter reading needs to be on the bills that are mailed.  Also, we need to post that reading just as soon as possible.  In other words, we don't need to do the meter readings and let them lay around for two or three weeks before we get them in the computer.  Is that going to be a problem?"

"Yes," Battles said, raising the first of many objections to making any changes whatever in the way she was doing things.  When asked to explain why she couldn't do things differently, she responded, "Well, if you'll come in some time, I'll show you.  That's all I know to do."

Throughout the ordeal Battles regularly interrupted and talked over the mayor and board members, not bothering to listen to their questions before trotting out one after another of a long string of excuses and self-justifications.  When asked to explain the billing procedure, she replied "I'd have to show you," and when pressed further she replied, "Y'all don't know how it is."

At one point, Mayor Weeks presumed to offer an opinion.  "That's not providing good customer service," in his usual, calm voice.  "I'm sorry, but if that's the best we can do we need to look at making some changes, either in the program or our method of operation.  That's just not good customer service."  Battles was having none of that.  "Well," she replied, "that's the way it's been for 13 years, that's all I know, and that's the way I've always done it."

When Lucy Martin suggested a method by which Battles could post meter readings in a timely manner, Battles claimed she could not do it because she didn't have a spreadsheet.  When the mayor pointed out that there was in fact a spreadsheet program on the water department's computer, she responded, "I don't know about that.  I just do my accounting and my billing.  The way I was told to do it."

When the mayor pointed out that the actual date that the meters were read was not being shown on the bills, that "the bills they are getting now are all showing, I believe, the first of the month," Battles went into full whine mode, petulantly saying, "That's all I can do.  You don't understand the program.  You'll have to come look at the program."

Battles later acknowledged that she had been using that program since 1993—evidently to her complete satisfaction, if not to the satisfaction of any of the department's hundreds of customers.

Mayor Weeks then mentioned another recommendation of the advisory panel, that "customers should be given at least ten days from the time they receive their bills before a late charge is imposed," and when Martin asked Battles if she ever made courtesy calls to remind customers that their bills were due, Battles responded, "Does Pickwick Electric?"

"I don't know of anybody that does that," chimed in Linda Samples, who works part-time in the water department with Battles.

Mayor Weeks suggested mailing the bills out earlier, and Battles admitted that she could "probably send them out by the 27th or so, or the 28th."

Weeks finally got to the last item on his list: "Item G, make annual training classes mandatory for utility department personnel, and there's a lot of things out there that we could do on that, in the way of continuing education.  And I think as a review, that our board needs to look at that and, you know, offer that to our people.  Because, I mean, jobs are constantly changing.  Those of you that work in plants and offices know that.  The only way you're going to stay abreast of things is to take advantage of these continuing-education opportunities.

"These are the considerations that have been requested.  Have I omitted anything from this list?  I put it together roughly from memory."

Advisory panel member Billy Brown spoke up. "I was trying to check some of the items we talked about.  I think one of the things we had suggested, and you're doing now, I think it's more in the form of a question than a suggestion, if a payment comes in, is the postmark date on the envelope used as the date the payment is received?"

"What are we doing on that now, Anita, as far as, is it when it's received—" Mayor Weeks began, only to be over ridden by Battles: "You told me when you came into office, when we get the mail here in this office is when, you know, is when it's received.  If it's after the 10th, it's late.  Now you told me that," she ended, defiantly.

"You're making your customer the victim of the postal service," Brown remarked, "if you're going to go by the date it comes in here.  If it gets lost in Jackson, or whatever, I can't do anything about that.  I mailed it on time for you to get it."

"Well, one thing, though," Lucy Martin observed, "if it's due the tenth and you mail it the tenth, it's not going to get to where it's going by the due date.  So I don't know that we would want to say that if it's postmarked the day that it's due that that's acceptable, though, because it's going to be late, if it's even—"

"Maybe the day before," Brown suggested.

"Yeah, Martin replied, "because sometimes mail does turn over in one day, so, you know, that might be okay."

Brown said, "You would think an Eastview customer surely could get to Eastview the next day.  They put it in the mail tonight, it should get here in the morning."  If it doesn't, Brown added, it’s the fault of the post office, not the customer.

Joyce Brown, also a member of the advisory panel, then joined the discussion.  "Well," she said, referring to when the bills were actually sent out, "maybe if you got them out a little earlier, you might not have that problem.  And a lot of times I think, I mean, most people get paid on the weekends, Thursday or Friday, and there are some times that people need two weeks.  I mean, some people nowadays live hand to mouth, from week to week, and if they got a bill and it was, you know, and it was late, and it's due by next week or cut off, you know.  Looks to me like you need at least two weekends."

There was then some discussion of the availability of the drop box at the water department, where people could physically deliver their payment as late as the night before they were due.  "That still doesn't address the fact that the customer mailed it on the 5th and it didn't get here until the 11th," Billy Brown remarked, to which Linda Samples snapped, "I can't help that."

Battles asserted that she did not impose a late charge when both the date on the customer's check and the post mark on the letter were well before the due date.  "And," Mayor Weeks added, "there's times that we mail the bills on time and the customer doesn't get them until a day before due date."

"That's right," Battles agreed.  Then, as though to show that her contempt was not confined to the mayor, the board, and the citizens of Eastview, she added, "the mail sucks."

Finally, after further discussion of the deficiencies of the postal service and the apparent inability of the water department's software to do anything useful, Martin made a motion that payments postmarked as late as the day before the due date be accepted as being made on time, and the motion, seconded by Jeff Coln, carried by unanimous voice vote.

"Let's backtrack just a little bit more," the mayor then said, "and go back to getting the bills out.  You said we could probably generate the bills, without any kind of changes to the system or accounting program, by the 27th?'

"Yeah," Battles acknowledged. "I'm going to have to move my cut-off up, though.  You cannot do all this, and give people five to seven days to cut-off, and mail the bills early.  It's gonna, I don't know how it's gonna work.  We'll just have to try it and see."

"So, the 25th is the cut-off date?" Martin asked.

"Usually we have the cut-off of the 25th or the 26th," Battles replied.  "And they need, I need to have my bills in before I go to start mailing these bills."

Martin then asked, "Can you mail part of the bills?  You know, like all of the bills that have been paid, can you post those and mail those?"

Battles and her sidekick Samples then engaged in a little condescending laughter among themselves, clearly indicating what they thought of Alderman Martin's foolishness.

"I'm just asking," Martin said.  "I don't know, I'm just asking."

"No, I can't do that," Battles said, tersely.

"Because," Martin continued, "those people who hadn't paid, I thought you could bill—"

"I post all the bills at one time," Battles interrupted with a tone of finality.

"All right," Mayor Weeks began, moving briefly into a matter that did not involve Anita Battles or her sidekick, Linda Samples, "the next thing on the agenda here is Mr. Armstrong, Mayor Armstrong from Ramer, asked me about hooking up to our system to have as a backup in case of an emergency.  They said they was going to have to drain their tank and do some work on it, and he was afraid that when they do that it might run into a situation where they might not have enough water for their customers.  And he would like to be able to use our system as a backup.  And I understand that's been done in the past.  Is that right?"

The mayor's question was directed to Elvis Butler who, as fire chief, had some knowledge of the city's water system.  Butler explained that the water pipe of the Ramer system "comes down the north side of the road from Ramer.  Ours is on the south side of the road.  They had a road bore under the road to tie it in, but the valves and meters are on the north side, for them.  It was leaking under the road, it was going to have to be fixed, they was going to have to do a road bore, put new pipe under it, and tie it back into the line."

"So they just discontinued, or disconnected—" Coln prompted Butler, who then continued.

"We dug, Carroll [former water department employee Carroll Martin] dug it out, he and I went down there and dug it out.  It was leaking under the road.  It was their line, not ours, and we didn't have no authority to work on it, and we called Bobby [Wardlow, Ramer's Utility Director], I know, four or five times.  It stayed open until we got afraid somebody was going to run off the road in a hole—it was about waist, near shoulder deep—and he never would come and fix it.  So Carroll took the line loose.  Put it back together, our line back together, and filled the hole up."

"So," Coln observed, "I guess it falls back in their court, if they want to make improvements."

"Well," Mayor Weeks said, "that not only could be an emergency backup for them, it could be one for us, too.  If they want to pursue it."

Coln agreed. "I think if they want to make those improvements, I don't see any problem in that."

"To do it right," Butler pointed out, "they're going to have to pull the pipe out from under the road and put another one back under it, because it's busted under 57 Highway."

"I'd be in favor of doing that if they'll do all this work you're talking about," Burl Sutton said.

"Well," Lucy Martin observed, "I don't think that we would really have to do anything.  They would have to do all the work.  All we have to do is give them permission to do that."

Butler suggested that "when they bore it, put the pipe under it, make sure they case it."

"We would have a spec list," Coln said.  "And then if they meet those requirements, meet those specifications, then go ahead and do it.  And, like you say, it would work both ways, it may benefit us, it may benefit them."

"Well," Weeks concluded, "I'll get with Mayor Armstrong, then, and tell him what's going to have to be done for that to happen."

The water board then made official, by unanimous voice vote on a motion by Martin, seconded by Jessie Robbins, an adjustment of Peyton Allen's water bill, which the board had failed to approve in the confusion of the October water board meeting.

Jerry Wilbanks, another member of the advisory panel, then raised an issue which eventually brought Anita Battles back onto center stage, this time to deflect criticism directly on to Mayor Weeks himself.

"I thought last month," Wilbanks began, "that y'all said that we would be getting a pay raise [sic] on the water bills, but it wouldn't go into effect until the first of the year because we're two months behind on our water bills.  Well, I got the letter that the water rate was going to change the first day of November.  I got my bill the same day for 9-1 through 10-1, but this rate is already on that bill."

"That was some miscommunication between Anita and I," Mayor Weeks said, characteristically taking part of the blame, "and what happened on that, the rate increase was supposed to go into effect November 1st, and we had written a message that we put on the bills, and she asked me did I want that to go on the bills, and I thought she was talking about the message, and she thought I was talking about the rate increase.  So she did the rate increase and the message, and all I was talking about was just the message.  That's what happened.  It was a miscommunication.  I apologize, but those things happen."

After some discussion about the possibility of making some adjustment, Battles made it clear that while the mayor might be willing to acknowledge some responsibility for the mistake, she was not: "This thing says right here," she said, defiantly, "will go into effect November 1st.  Water rates will increase from three seventy-four per thousand to four fourteen.  It don't say for November water.  It says it will go into effect November 1st.  That's exactly what the letter says."

"But," Wilbanks pointed out reasonably, "I got my bill before November 1st."

"That's right," Battles said, haughtily, "it says go into effect November 1st.  It don't say for November water."

"But," Wilbanks persisted, attempting to deal calmly with Battle's illogic, "I got my bill before November 1st."

"Well, I mailed it out the last day of the month," falling back on a non sequitur.

"And it wasn't the November bill," repeated Wilbanks, who must by this point have felt like Alice after she fell through the looking glass.

"Well, that's what it says," Battles said in her best Mad Hatter voice.  "It don't say for November water!"

Wilbanks tried again to speak, but Battles rode right over him: "—would go into effect January the 1st.  If he [Mayor Weeks] would have said January the 1st I would have known.  It would go into effect January 1st for the November water.  But it don't say that!"

With that triumphant display of illogic under her belt, Battles stepped aside (figuratively) to regain her breath (figuratively and literally), and signs of reason slowly reemerged in the discussion that followed.  In the end, the board decided unanimously, on a motion by Jeff Coln, seconded by Burl Sutton, that temporarily reverting back to the old rates to adjust for the minimal overcharge would be more trouble that it would be worth.

The respite was brief, however, for the next item the mayor turned to was a petition that Battles herself had produced to counteract the petition introduced at the October meeting complaining of the quality of customer service in the Eastview water department.

"Okay, I have a petition here that's been submitted," Weeks said.  "Looks like 113 names on it.  It says, 'This petition is to contradict the accusations that me, Anita Battles, that I have a bad attitude towards my customers, and that I make rude and snide remarks to them.  This is all lies, and I appreciate your cooperation in helping me prove this by signing this petition.'  We have 113 names on that.

"Really," Weeks continued, trying as usual to be a peace-maker, "and I'm not trying to speak for the board, but I think this is all a moot point, if we go in here and we work on our customer services and try to do some of the things we're implementing.  We're not here to fight amongst ourselves.  We're here to try to make things better for everyone.  And, you know, I know there's people out here that think she's doing, Anita's doing a wonderful job, and I know there's people out here that would like to see some changes.  And, hopefully, we can look at both sides of this and weight it in the balance, and make improvements for everyone concerned.  And I would like to leave it at that.  Now, we're going to continue to look at ways to improve our service, and that was the whole purpose of asking you folks to serve on this panel.  Like I say, that October 23 meeting was, I thought, very productive.  And to me, that's the whole issue, is improving customer service.  It's not to fight amongst ourselves.  You're not going to get anywhere by trying to tear one another down.  And I don't think we as a board are going to take sides, we're going to try to look at everything fairly and justly and make decisions that are called for."

"I think that's appropriate," Lucy Martin joined in, all but humming "Cum by yah."  "I think she's been very agreeable to most of the things that we've asked for tonight.  And being professional at all times is just expected, you know, that's just how I look at it, when you're serving the public you have to be professional at all times, and if, you know, there may be a time when you feel like you can't be, you might just have to bite your tongue and not say anything, if somebody comes up and wants to, you know, fuss, or whatever.  Or I don't even know what the situation may be, but just treating them with respect is about all you can do to keep down the problem."

For her part, though, Battles was having none of it.  Casting herself as the wronged maiden, she lashed out at Peyton Allen, who had gathered the signatures on the October petition, saying that "what he did the first time he came in was to make snide rude remarks to me, stuff like that."

"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute," Allen began, but Battles persisted.

"A long time ago, yes," she said.  "Not the other day."

"You disrespect me every time I come in that office, lady," Allen said.

"No.  You're wrong," Battles said, dismissively.

"While we're on the subject," a now visibly annoyed Allen said, turning to Jerry Wilbanks, "Jerry, can you tell the story about when the church was up here?  Talking about customer service.  Weren't you guys having a meeting up here?"

"There was some customers and they was fighting with these ladies," Wilbanks said, indicating Battles and Samples, "in there, you know, I don't know what was going on.  They was fighting in there [indicating the water department office]."

Battles and Samples appeared to think this was hilarious, breaking out with laughs and giggles.

"I'd like to know when that was," Battles said with more giggles, "and who it was with."

"It was mouth fighting," Wilbanks clarified.  "Let me change that.  It was mouth fighting."

"Oh, man," Battles said, all but slapping her thigh at the humor of it all.

"You know," Allen said, "the petition that I got signed, by the people of Eastview, was to improve customer service.  You know, we weren't out for a headhunt.  We can make it into a headhunt.  But all I want to see is customer service improved in that office.  Your customer is number one—"

"Well, when somebody comes in and," Battles began, speaking over Allen, as usual.  Then she started over again.  "Okay, let me tell you something about your petition."  Battles then said that two of the people who had signed the petition had "said they were very mislead, that you told them this was about water, and, uh—"

"What does it say at the top?" Allen asked, referring to the clearly stated purpose of the petition.

"Yeah," Battles said.  "He said he didn't read it.  He was tired, and he didn't even read it.  And he said I'm going to call the mayor, and he tried to call the mayor several times but he didn't get him.  He come and signed my petition."

"That's fine," Allen said.  "But did you read the top?"

"Yes, I read the top," Battles said, raising her voice, "but a lot of these people didn't."

"Why were you contacting these people?" Allen asked.

"Because, I knew these people," Battles said, "and I'd never had any problems with them.  And they say they were mislead.  And you can call them."

"Why did she get the list, in the first place?" Joyce Brown asked.

"Well, it is a public record," Mayor Weeks said, before making another stab at calming the waters.  "Again, I would like to see us put all this behind us, and start building towards a better customer service base.  And one suggestion that I want to make is that we start looking at what our customers are telling us, and maybe do a survey, maybe once a year, where we can pick out maybe ten customers and ask them to respond to how our services are doing and what we need to improve on and, you know, give them all a voice in what is taking place here, and take that survey and build on it.  Don't fight about it, build on it."

There was one last item of business before the water department meeting gave way to the regular town meeting.  Billy Brown stated that he had requested a copy of the water department audit and had been told, by a person he did not specify, that "I couldn't have it until I talked to the mayor."  Town Attorney Craig Kennedy said that the audit was public record and would be made available to anyone who wanted it, for "the cost of copying it."

Finally, at long last, the water board meeting was adjourned, Battles and Samples made their departure, and the town board meeting was called to order.


* * *

Things went much smoother in the town board meeting.  The minutes were read and approved, as were the bills (on a motion by Martin, seconded by Robbins).  The board discussed having the agenda and the minutes prepared by Thursday of the week preceding the regular town board meeting so that they aldermen could familiarize themselves with them before hand, and this was agreed to.  There was some discussion of completing the paving of Coln Hill Lane all the way up to the city water tower, and this was tabled to give Attorney Kennedy time to look into the legality of it.

Mayor Weeks then told the board, "I talked to Chad Smith the other night, and he was wondering if the board would consider appointing him as a volunteer deputy fire chief, and he said it would be a strictly volunteer basis and he would report to Elvis, the fire chief, and I was thinking he was going to be here tonight, but I don't know what come up on that."

There were several firemen in attendance, in addition to Chief Elvis Butler and Assistant Chief Benny Pratt, and one of the other firemen remarked, "I seen Chad go through a while ago."

"Well," Weeks repeated, "I was thinking he was going to be here tonight."

"Well," Elvis Butler remarked with heavy emphasis, "Chad was thinking I wasn't going to be here tonight."

"He asked me about it," Burl Sutton said.  "I said I didn't see it was necessary for him to be here, is what I told him."

[It was Sutton who, at the October board meeting, had asked Attorney Kennedy to check to see if the town board had the authority "to remove" Butler as fire chief.]

Sutton repeated what he had said at the October meeting, that the board needed to know what was going on with the fire department.  "We need somebody here," he said, "every month, to let us know what's going on.  I don't know what's going on.  Do any of the rest of you?"

Lucy Martin agreed.

"At the last meeting," Butler said, "Charles [Mayor Charles Weeks] asked me to report quarterly.  That's what I done.  If he'd of said every meeting, either myself or Benny would have been here every meeting, but he specifically said quarterly, he didn't need me at every meeting."

"I didn't know that he said that," Sutton said, "but I think we need to—"

"Is that not right, Mayor Weeks?" Butler asked.

"That's correct," Weeks replied.

"—we need contact with the fire department to let us know what y'all are doing, what's going on," Sutton concluded.

"Well, I mean, that's no problem," Butler said, agreeably.  "Either Benny or myself will be here every board meeting.  If we'd been asked, we'd been here."

"Well," Sutton persisted, "I seen you here one time in the last year that we've been on the board."

"That was the first time I'd ever been asked," Butler replied.  "But, I mean, that's no problem.  We'll be here every board meeting."

With that established, Mayor Weeks then asked Butler, "Are we utilizing Chad's capabilities in the fire department?"

To which Butler responded, "What capabilities?"

"Well," Weeks replied, "He's had quite a bit of training, is my understanding—"

"I've never saw any kind of paperwork on it or anything," Butler said.  "He has told me he's had it, at Proctor and Gamble, but, I mean, I was on the fire brigade at Caterpillar.  Caterpillar doesn't teach you much, to get out of the building when it's on fire.  That's their policy."

There was then some discussion of the level of training of the various members of the Eastview fire department, and Lucy Martin asked about the number of members, reminding Butler that he had earlier told the board "that most of your volunteers were from a different fire department, from our locale."

"We got three from the city limits of Eastview," Butler said, which prompted Sutton to say "There's something wrong there, somewhere."

"Nobody wants to get up in the middle of the night and go out in that freezing cold and snow and fight a fire," Butler said.  "Especially if they got to get up a three or four o'clock in the morning and go to work.  You just got a very few people who are dedicated enough to get up and go out and do it."

"Yeah," Sutton agreed, before adding, "we used to have a big squad, though."

"They gradually got tired of doing it," Butler said.

Martin asked, "Do we have that many, how many fire calls do you go on a month?"

Elvis: "I can give you what we've had in the last three months.  And, city-wise it's not that many.  We have had two house fires in the city limits of Eastview.  We've had five brush fires, two accidents, and backups, we have run seven backups.  That's fires, grass fires, wrecks and all.  I've combined the backups all together."

There was some discussion about increasing membership in and awareness of the department, and just before the meeting finally concluded Butler said "there is one other thing while we're on the fire department I would like to put in a request for.  I mean, we've gone the route of the driver's license numbers where they do, if we're going that route I'd like to ask the board to install a mandatory random drug screen."

The board members expressed their approval for the idea, and Mayor Weeks had asked for a motion effect when Attorney Kennedy said, "Well, I think what we need to do, is let me work up a policy and submit it to the board, because those things are real tricky, you've got to have a policy in terms of making sure that it is in fact random, has been determined to be random, and a lot of things goes into it."

Kennedy also asked, "Do you want the drug policy just to apply to the firemen, or do you want it to apply to all city employees?"

"I'd say all city employees," Mayor Weeks replied, and the other board members agreed.





Special Advisory Panel Meeting

23 October 2007

A special advisory panel, formed at the Eastview town board's regular meeting October 16, was convened at the community center at 6:00 p.m. October 23.

Mayor Charles Weeks opened the meeting by saying, "I appreciate the good turn out, and everybody going out tonight, and I believe what we decided that we were going to do is to have a general discussion of recommendations and look at some ways that we can might go about improving our system here in the water department.  And let me say, as spokesman for the board, we'll take these recommendations, and we're going to look at them, and discuss them and implement what we can of them.  But we are going to make sure that they adhere to our policies and guidelines that we have in place.  In other words, we're not going to do anything that's going to contradict something that, you know, we've got in writing that says we can't do that.  That doesn't mean we can't change that.  But, uh, we're going to take all these recommendations under advisement and go from there.  So, with that said, I'm going to turn it over to the advisory panel, and let's get started."

Billy Brown asked, "Is this a one-time meeting, or is this going to be a series of meetings to investigate recommendations or suggestions?"  After some discussion it was agreed that the advisory board should meet every month.

Brown then broached a subject which had not been specifically addressed at the October 16 meeting—the divestment, by Eastview, of its water department. "How does the mayor and the board feel about the city continuing to operate the utility department?  Is that something we feel like we absolutely have to do, or, if it's in the best interest of the utility customers, if there's an alternative to that, would you entertain that?  And I'm not saying that there is."

Weeks responded, "I think we'd be open to any suggestions along those lines.  Anything that's going to help our customers.  But we don't want to get in a situation where, if someone takes it over, you know, they could come in here and dictate some things that we don't particularly want.  So we would want to be very cautious about who we—"

Brown then informed the group of "a discussion I've had.  I've talked to the mayor of Selmer [David Robinson], and I asked him, and he didn't know off the top of his head, what does a non-city resident, what is the non-city resident water rate, and I haven't found that out yet.  And then I also asked him, I said, 'Would you entertain, if it was in the best interests of us, the rate payers, possibly buying our water system?'  And he said, 'Well, back before my time I know that there was a discussion at some point between Selmer about us possibly buying your system.  But,' he said, 'I think the problem back then was there's too much debt on your system for the size and number of customers.'  Now, I don't know if that's true.  I don't know how much debt there is on the system.  Does anybody know that number off the top of their head?"

Mayor Weeks said it was "in the neighborhood of $400,000," and town clerk Emodene Smith concurred, saying "Yeah, I think it is.  And then the pumping station is another $60,000."

After some discussion of the water rates, Brown said "I'd be willing to talk some more to him [Robinson] about [water rates] if anybody is interested in pursuing that."

Jerry Wilbanks then brought up the issue that had dominated the previous week's meeting. "Could I say something?  The rates, you know, that's not a problem.  What I hear is the attitude out of the people that work over here.  Ninety-five percent of the people that talk to me, that's what they're talking about, is the people working in here.  You know, you don't want to come up here to pay a bill, and get chewed out all at the same time, you know.  I don't, anyway.  I'd like to figure out if there's some way to send them to some kind of school, you know, to learn them how to treat people, or something, you know."

"Behavior management class, or something like that," agreed Peyton Allen.

"That's what I hear. And everybody I talk to, that's what they say. And the two months behind," Wilbanks added, referring to the delay in getting out water bills.  "I can't see that that's fair to the water department or the customer either one."

Again, Allen agreed. "'Cause if you have someone looking at their, trying to calculate their rates, and they think they've use it for the previous month, then they're mixed up.  They're actually two months behind.  And there's got to be a solution to that problem of being two months behind.  You know, she [Anita Battles] sat right in there and admitted she only works three days, really three days out of a month, and then the other lady [Linda Samples] contradicted her by saying it was an eight to ten hour a day job.  Well, if she's being paid for eight hours a day, she needs to work eight hours, and she ought to get the billing done with the amount of time she has to work, and the customer shouldn't be two months behind on their bills."

City Recording Clerk Emodene Smith then spoke up. "Could I say something on that?  That's the way it's always been set up.  From day one, in the beginning.  So, if we were to catch it up, everybody would have to be billed for two months, and I don't think anybody would like that."

The group discussed the question for some time without coming to any conclusion, then
Mayor Weeks said, "It might just be that this could be a part of this continuing education we were talking about on customer service, just to get her acclimated to that type of accounting system, where that could be done.  I do some accounting, and I don't see any, I don't see any problem with it.  Getting paid early is always a good thing.

"Something that was brought up the other night, and it's actually been mentioned in a board meeting, and maybe we drug our feet just a little bit on it, but one thing that was said was that if a meter reader goes out here and he finds an excessive bill, say you find a bill that's up 25% over last month, then there does need to be some follow up on that.  And I think that's something that we as a board need to consider, is what our policy is going to be on that type thing, and following up and making sure that the customer is aware of what's going on.  Because, like you say, you're looking at two months, here, and if a guy has got a leak, he don't need that leak to continue for two months before it's called to his attention.   What kind of number do you think would be something that could raise a flag, or something that we should consider contacting a customer over, what percentage?"

Lucy Martin said, "Well, at one time, now, she used to do that.  If a reading came in out of the ordinary, like if you've been running 5,000 gallons a month and then all of a sudden you've got one 6,500, that usually catches her eye.  She stated the other night she does that sometimes, she don't always, I don't know why, but she did at one time call somebody's attention to that, and then the water man could go back quickly and read the meter and see if there's anything, or even talk to the people to see if they've got something unusual going on."

Don Coln, himself a former water department employee, said that "Usually, most of the meters nowadays have a leak detector on them, it's a little thing that goes around like that, and if you think there's no one at home and it's spinning, then there's a leak somewhere, and when I read meters, if I couldn't find anyone at home I usually left a note."

"That was my suggestion," Brown said.  "My idea was two things.  One would be to put a note on the door that says 'We suspect you might have a leak,' or, second, when you get back to the office somebody make a phone call.  Now phone calls are not good sometimes because nobody at home until night, or whatever."

"I personally think that would be a great customer service," Brown concluded.  "I mean I went from a water bill of $13.11 to $170, and I ain't heard from anybody yet.  That's pretty extreme."

Brown's mother, Joyce, brought the discussion back to personnel problems.  "The other night, is it Ms Battles?  Well, she got kindly hostile, because she said if somebody comes in there and they unload on me, I'm going to unload on them.  Now, we make mistakes, and we know we do, and when you come up here and you remind them of that mistake, you don't want to be chewed out….  Of course, I don't know how the customer comes in, [but] usually, as a rule, if you're nice, they'll be nice."
 
Allen agreed. "They can't approach each situation with every customer based on the previous one.  If they had a bad experience with the previous customer, then they don't need to take it out on the next one that comes in the door.  That's usually what happens every time you go in there.  And I don't know if she has a bad day every day or what, but I know that every experience I've had has not been a pleasant one.  And Raymond included.  The way I see it as a customer, and I'm sure the way the community sees it as a customer, when you go in that office to discuss your bill, that's your business, between you and her.  She runs that office; she should be in charge of that office, and he should not have any say so in your personal information or your personal bill.  She should be the manager of that office, and he shouldn't have any say-so as to what your business is with her, if you're there to discuss your bill."

Regarding unusual usage, Sarah Locke said, "It looks like if her system was adequate, and if she was paying attention to the numbers that she entered in her system all the times that she would notice things like this, and she would be able to have this same conversation with customers when they came in to complain about their bill.  Instead of just saying, 'Well, that's what you owe, that's what it was read at.'  There's got to be a little bit more logic to it.  I understand that those numbers are just all she has to go by, that's what it says [inaudible word], but, you know, maybe there's a leak, try to do this and this and see.  She should be able, she should have conversations like this when you come in and complain about your bill."

Mayor Weeks offered a suggestion for increasing customer understanding. "I would like to see it get to the point where if customers come in with some concerns about their water bill that we could offer them some kind of pamphlet or something that offers suggestions about things that they can do to conserve water and reduce their bill….  I think we need something like that in place.  You know, customers have legitimate complaints and concerns about high prices of utilities, and that's something we should be, and customer service is offering ways to deal with that type thing.  I think that's something as a board we need to look at and see about implementing."

Billy Brown agreed that better communication with customers would be desirable. Another "thing I think the board should look at, and I know this is hard to do.  I've been in your position, trying to write policies that have a little wiggle room that doesn't get abused.  But I really think there should be some leeway for somebody to use a little bit of common sense occasionally to adjust a bill, rather than having to come back before the board."  He suggested that the person should report the exceptions to the mayor or the board, which could make sure her actions were appropriate.  "But I really think there are some situations where you could apply just a little bit of common sense to that, and give her a little bit of leeway, and then make her report back to you where those things happen, and then you guys could judge whether you thought that was the right thing to do."  Brown said, "She can probably extinguish some of these hard feelings if she had the ability to make some common sense adjustments, and then you guys know that it's being done."  He concluded by saying he'd be concerned about her doing favors, but "I think she can extinguish a lot of these hard feelings when people walk in if she's got a little bit of leeway."

Mayor Weeks agreed, saying "I think its an excellent suggestion, and I think it's something that we need to seriously look at—"

Sarah Locke interrupted, saying "I think at the same time she needs to have policies for denying any late fees that she does, or denying adjustments.  'Cause otherwise, I could come in here and she could deny it to me every time, and y'all would never have any account of it."

"My thoughts on that," Weeks replied, "is if you come to her and you have a problem, and you feel like this problem is not being handled professionally and fairly, then you ought to have recourse through the board.  There ought to be some kind of a review request.  And which you bring this to the board.  You work it out with her if you can.  And, you know, use common sense.  I mean if she's right, don't be so hard headed that you won't back off and let her do her job.  But, now, if she's wrong, and not treating you fairly, there ought to be some kind of review request that would come before the board."

Joyce Brown asked, "Have you had a lot of problems with her, have you had a lot of complaints?"

The mayor responded with an equivocation. "We really haven't documented that much.  We've had complaints, I'm not going to deny it, but as far as just setting down and documenting how many, and who they were from, and all that, we haven't really done that."

The group then discussed how best to determine whether a payment had been made on time, and there was general agreement that the date a payment was postmarked should be controlling.

Lucy Martin then said, "we probably need a time line, when we're going to implement something.  We've got to have some sort of regulation they can go by, because we don't have a measuring stick at all.  If we are going to implement something, we have to tell them this is what we are implementing and this is, we want the results such and such a date.  Of course, the customer service results would be immediate, but some of the other things, there needs to be some kind of a deadline, or date, when we can implement some of this.  Or they're not going to know, they're going, like most people, they're not going to do it until you say, 'November 1 you've got to be doing this.'  If you just say we're going to start doing this, it's never going to get started."

"Well," Weeks said, "there's several things on this list here that I would personally, I would like to see in place and operating by the first of the year.  I think that’s a reasonable goal.  I can't speak for the board members, but I think that's something that we need to discuss at length at our next meeting, and getting a time line in place."

Martin added, "And you know that thing we talked about earlier, performance, you know we need to do evaluations on our employees."

Weeks concurred. "And some of the things that you're mentioning on customer service, making corrections, according to our personnel policies, we have to go through the right channels with that, and some of these things have to be written, so that everyone understands what's expected of them.  I mean, if the board wants me to do that, then that's definitely the route I'm going to take, unless one of them wants to volunteer to do it.  So we're going to pursue those things."

"But our main priority," Martin said, "is to make sure that you're happy and you're serviced well and that you get the best possible service that we can provide.  And that's what we're trying to do."

Regarding training employees, Louise Wilbanks asked, "Well, is that something that y'all are planning on working on immediately, or in a year's time, or after the first of the year?"

Peyton Allen observed that "Behaviors are hard to change.  That takes time to change.  I agree with Lucy on that."

"I think we don't have to wait to the first of the year," Weeks said.  "If we decide this is what we want to do, and this is the route we want to take, that can definitely be in place after our next board meeting.  We don't have to wait until January 1 on that.  But by January 1 we should see some improvement."

"Customer service issues should start improving today," Martin said, "because we've already had that discussion.  So those things should start improving immediately, I would think.  Because they was here at the last meeting, and they know what your concerns are, they know what ours are, and I think they know what our expectations are in that aspect of it."

"Well," Joyce Brown said, "if she cares anything about her job, she will improve.  Now, we're all human, and we're all just alike, and if she wants her job, she knows the complaints she's had, you won't have—"

Sarah Locke interrupted. "But most of us don't come in complaining.  Most of us come in just to pay our bill, we want you just to take our little card, and say, 'Thank you.  Have a good day.'  And she doesn't, right now she's not even doing that.  That's not a hard thing to change."

At several times during the meeting, Mayor Weeks expressed his appreciation for the panel's input.  "I think we've had some excellent suggestions, and I think it's a lot of things that we're going to consider and look at and see if we can't implement, from customer service on down through operations.  Don't expect this thing to be fixed overnight.  It will take a little time.  But you can rest assured that we're going to take the steps that's called for to get us back on the right track."

Again, "We've had some really good suggestions out of this, and I can say for the board, we appreciate, and that's genuine, we appreciate the involvement, and the time that you guys are willing to take.  We're going to work on this."

Finally, Weeks said, "And let me ask y'all something else, if you'll do this for me.  Let us know when things are going right, not just when things are going wrong.  Say you come in up here and she just treats you like you were, you know, the best person to ever walk through that door, if you'll let us know that, that'll let us evaluate what steps we're taking, what progress we're making."

At the end of the meeting Billy Brown asked, "Are we going to meet again, or is this it?"

"Whatever y'all want to do," Weeks replied.  "If y'all want to meet monthly for a while, or if you want to meet after we get this thing in place and maybe meet back after the first of the year and see how we're progressing.  Now y'all are welcome to come to the next board meeting, if you want to come to that, you're welcome to come to that.  That's when we're going to start implementing things."

"Will we have some stuff written up by our next meeting?" Martin asked.

"Yeah, I will," Weeks replied.

Peyton Allen said, "I think us as a group, I think we all should attend the next board meeting. And kind of keep abreast of what's going on."

And with that the special meeting of the advisory panel concluded.




Town Board Meeting

16 October 2007

Water Board Meeting

"This is the biggest crowd we've had since I've been in office," Mayor Charles Weeks said as he opened the 16 October meeting of the Eastview Town Board in the community center auditorium, rather than the small board room where such meetings are normally held.

That the crowd was as disputatious as it was large became evident when Mayor Weeks, after some formalities, said to the audience, "If we've got a delegation here that wants to address the board, let's go ahead and do that at this time."

Delegation spokesman Peyton Allen rose to his feet and unleashed the first of a series of complaints which was to rage on for more than an hour.

"I'd like to thank the board for giving us the liberty and the right to speak and voice our opinions.  We thank the board and Mr. Mayor."  Allen explained that he and his wife, Susan, had lived in Eastview for a number of years.  "I moved here originally because I like the area, I like the city of Eastview, I like the people.  But, that being said, there's a sign everybody knows on the outskirts of town that everybody knows that says, 'The view of happy living.'  Well, that's false advertising."

Peyton told the board that at his place of employment, "number one to us is quality, number two is our customer satisfaction."  At his place of work they realize "that if they don't have quality and they don't have customer satisfaction, they don't have a business.

"I know how to run a business," he continued.  "I know what an efficiently ran business is, and how it should be run.  So, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to tell you tonight that Eastview Water is not ran efficiently, and I will give you examples as to why it is not being ran efficiently."

Also, Allen said, the "Eastview Water Department is, in my opinion and many other citizens' opinions in Eastview, ran unprofessionally.  The quality of product, everybody knows is lacking.  I know there are measures in place to get the standards up as far as filters, but until then, you know, we've got to see to our customer satisfaction.  The customers are not being satisfied, and I don't see how they can stay in business."

Allen then got down to specifics.  "First of all, Eastview Water Department is one of the most unprofessional offices that I have ever walked into in my life.  It's ran very inefficiently.  Ms Battles [Anita Battles], when you go in, she acts like it's an inconvenience for a customer to walk in.  Now, she greets you with snide remarks, sometimes she takes a personal phone call, sometimes she's …, or she's sitting there shelling peas.  And she treats the customers as if they are idiots.

"Well, I'm here to tell you tonight that the citizens of Eastview are tired of it, and we want something done about it.  Her favorite thing is, 'If that is what it says you used, then that is what you are going to pay for.  That is what you used.'  She doesn't try to find a solution to the problem.  You know, her solution to the problem is not to find the solution.  And she doesn't pursue 100%.  You know, she tells you 'You're wrong,' so when the customer walks in, they're wrong about their bill.  Automatically, no questions asked."

"And I ask each one of you, if you had an employee who continually treated your customers like that, and ran an office inefficiently, would you still employ that person, that individual?  Would they still be employed by you?  And I think everyone of you would say, No, they would have to go.  They'd be fired."

Continuing on with his comments about Battles, Allen said, "Her customer relations is very lacking.  She is a representative of our community.  She represents Eastview to every person that walks in that office.  And to be met by an unprofessional attitude that she greets them with, and snide remarks, is unbecoming to her position that she holds.

"Secondly, like I said, everyone knows that the water in Eastview is of poor quality, and I understand that Selmer is going to be installing filters to filter out the water.  Now that's good.  But it still won't fix the unprofessional office attitude, the inefficiency of the office.  I spoke with many people about the water quality.  They won't drink the water.  They refuse to drink it.  They buy bottled water.  They refuse to wash their white clothes in it.  I know you guys have heard this numerous times, about the complaints with yellow clothes.  And some of the customers even said that they're not going to bathe in it.  But they have to; we've got to stay clean.  But they feel just as dirty when they get out as they did with they got in, because of the poor quality of water."

"When Mr. Martin, Carrol Martin, had the position [now held by Raymond Butler], we never had a bit of trouble.  We'd call him 20/7, and he'd be more than happy to flush the lines and clean them out."

"We had good, quality service.  That's what service is about.  It's seeing to your customers' needs.  And right now the customers' needs are not being met."

Allen stated that he had personally contacted Tennessee state officials about the water quality problems, and that the state had sent down several engineers to check it out, and they had concluded that the lines were not being flushed long enough to get the sediment out of the lines.  "And you know, that's unacceptable.  If I am going to pay premium water prices, I want premium water.  Everybody can agree with that.  If you are going to pay bottled water prices, by golly we need bottled water.

"Mr. Butler is very reluctant, I feel, to do his duty and do it right," Allen said.  "He has got the same attitude and unprofessional mannerisms that is projected in this office.  To give you a couple of examples, I have been up here quite a few times, and he is sitting in the office, I come in to pay my bill or even question my bill, and I'm met with him and her both with snide remarks, and then they're hissing at me with unprofessional attitudes.  And, you know, people don't want to be treated like this.  Now you know you don't want to be met with unprofessionalism.

"First of all, I feel it's not his business to be in that office.  He has no reason to be in there, and personal business is being done by the community.  He is a meter reader, and he should be out in the field.  He should not be in that office.  I feel like that is not his position.  He does not have any say so in there, and it is the board's and the manager's position.  So he shouldn't say nothing to the customers.  That just signifies the unprofessionalism in the office.

"My wife last week came up here, just for a question about the bill, and she said he was actually standing up and shook his finger at her.  And she asked why our water bill, we used 29,000 gallons of water, and his remark was that the pool evaporated.  But it wasn't said that way; it was more forcefully and louder," Allen said.  "And I'm not putting up with that.  Not from him or anybody else."

Allen explained that he and his wife had put in a pool in April and had filled it up then.  "I don't dispute that bill.  Our pool holds 27,700 gallons, and I don't dispute the filling of that pool.  But since then our bill has been consistently high.  It's been over $100 a month, and his explanation is, 'Well, the pool evaporates.'  Well, that's not a very scientific explanation as to why we use 29,000 gallons in a month.  The explanation is, somebody's not doing his job.  We feel as a community that the bills are being estimated.  We feel that is the solution to the problem.  That's the answer to the problem.  And for being estimated, I'm not going to pay for 29,000 gallons of water when we didn't use it.

"On average—just to give you a little statistics—on average during the hot months, during the extremely hot months, you will lose one inch of water.  Now, given the size of our pool, that’s 545 gallons in a month."  Allen then provided other water usage statistics not related to pools.  "The average person uses anywhere from 50 to 75 gallons a day per person, total.  Now this includes flushing the toilet, which is six to seven gallons; showering, five to ten gallons per person per minute; tub bathing is 35 gallons; faucet usage is four gallons per minute; hand washing, twenty gallons; dishwasher, 12 to 20 gallons, of which we have a dishwasher; clothes washing, 60 to 69 gallons for a full cycle, 40 to 45 for a top-loading machine.

"Now, think of this according to the meter reader, Raymond Butler, and his assessment of why we use 29,000 gallons in a month.  Evaporation?  I don't think so.  There's no way.  You do the math.  Our bill is five times higher than the normal average person in America, and that's unacceptable.  According to statistics, two people should use 4,500 to 5,000 gallons per month.  And that's the average we used per month until we bought the pool.  Now the pool issue seems to be, it echoes through this community.  People that have pools, on average their bill runs about $100 a month, and I ask the board, are we being punished for having a pool?  Or, you know, what's going on?  Something's happening to the people that have pools.  We feel like it's estimated."

Allen referred to a photo which he had brought to the meeting, showing a meter which was unreadable.  "That is just one.  When we thought about starting to take some more pictures, I wish we would have.  We've talked to many of the people of Eastview, and as soon as their meter is read, when Raymond leaves, they go out and raise the lid, and they cannot make out the numbers.   So how could he make the numbers out?  There's no way."

At this point Susan Allen joined her husband.  "That picture was taken not five minutes after he left the house, that's my picture, the day he read the meter on the last month."

Peyton Allen resumed: "That's one example.  We've talked to many people who said theirs is a lot worse than that.  A lot of them are caked over with mud and dirt.  They can say, 'Oh, it's rain,' but everybody here knows it hasn't rained.  We do not have enough rain to fill up a hole where the meters are read.  I have a friend, he's an employee of mine that used to read meters.  He informed me today that him and another guy that used to read meters and he said nine times out of ten, he said, you can read the meter if you get down on your hands and knees and actually have to wipe it off to read the numbers.  But when you run across one that's like that, he said, you don't want to get down all day long, up and down.  You'll just estimate it and go on.  And I feel like that's happening to a lot of people that don't deserve to have their bills estimated.

"You know, what are the people that are on fixed incomes to do?  You know, if they get a bill that's triple, which we're hearing in the community, of what it should be, if they are on a fixed income, how are they going to put food in their mouths?  These are your customers, and they are not being done right.  Not by the water quality, or the service given by this office.

"So, that being said, we got a petition up in the community, and this petition was signed by citizens in the community of Eastview.  We didn't cover 100%, but I can, and I will if I have to.  This is a representative, not a majority, but it was done over a two-hour period.

"This petition [containing about thirty names] was done over approximately a two-hour period.  Mr. Mayor, I'm going to give this to you.  And that represents the amount of people we can get in two hours.  Now, if I did that for eight hours, it would be a lot more names.  A lot more names.  The petition is for the request for the removal from office of Raymond Butler and Anita Battles, due to their lack of professionalism in their office, and customer satisfaction.

"Now, this has been going on for a number of years.  I spoke with an ex-city council member the other day who did not want to sign the petition.  He said, 'I know how the office is ran, and it's very unprofessional.'  And I'm here to tell the board that that's echoed through the community.  Even the people that did not want to sign the petition because they were related or spoke to or knew the two in question, the two employees.

"This petition is being submitted, and we are requesting that either they be removed immediately or be sent to a management class for customer relations."

Allen concluded by saying, "And we're asking as a community that this be effective immediately.  Thank you."

Mayor Weeks asked if anyone else wished to address the board, and a woman rose and said "Everything that Peyton has said is the truth. Like when I went to the office.  We was having a problem with the bills" and had talked to Raymond Butler about it.  They then went to the office, "and we were talking to her [Anita Battles] and about that time he [Butler] came in and she said, 'See, I told you that she'd be up here fussing about this bill.'  Well, if it were her money, what would she be doing?  You know, we have to pay these bills, and they just get higher and higher and higher.  The water's not drinkable, it's muddy, it looks like tea, weak tea.  It looks terrible, even to take a bath.  Everybody we talk to has had the same problems with Ms Battles, about how she treats the customers that come in here."  After a few more comments, the woman summed up thusly: "The water is just terrible, and the customer service up here is awful.  It's pathetic.  I don't know what the problems is, but, you know, you don't want to be coming up here to pay your bill and have people fuss at you, hollering about, you know, just everything.  And Raymond had read my bill, and he had missed it by 1,000 gallons, he said, so I don't know what that's about."

During the ensuing discussion Alderman Lucy Martin consulted the water department records regarding the flushing of the pipes near the Allen home.  "I've got the flush book here, and on August 13 he flushed for 15 minutes.  On October 11 he flushed for 22 minutes."

Allen responded that he was told by the State of Tennessee that it would take a minimum of four hours "to adequately flush the main line."

Allen continued.  "Now I have actually contacted Ms Battles at night to tell her, 'Hey, look, the lines need to be flushed.'  And I've been told by her, 'That is not my job.  You contact Raymond Butler.'  My comment to her was, 'Well that is your job.  Why don't you call him?'  [to which Ms Battles responded] 'Well, I'm not going to call him.  Quit it.'  That's the way she treated me, and that's the way she treats everybody in the city of Eastview, and that's unacceptable.

"Now, if I could go out and do it myself, I would, and send you guys a bill for doing his job.  But that's all we are requesting, is good customer service, for good water, good quality water."

Allen then repeated, "The issue here tonight is customer service to the city of Eastview."

"All right, anybody else?" Mayor Weeks asked, and another woman rose and spoke.

"Well, we've got the same problem that Susan [Allen] and them have.  We're at the end of a line.  Our water smells so bad that you can't drink it.  Even if you run it in the bathtub it smells so bad.  And you ruin your clothes with it.  We've got two under-the-counter ice makers and we have spent nearly $700 on replacing parts, and when the serviceman comes he tells us that the reason for this is the water."

Susan Allen added, "That was one of the complaints, when we went around talking to people in the community, that was the biggest complaint, was their ice makers.  The water was ruining their icemakers."

After considerable discussion about flushing lines and the effect that the recent drought had had on the amount of flushing, Joyce Brown rose and addressed another complaint.

"I'd like to tell you what I have been hearing some people say, too, that they are displeased about.  If you forget your bill, which occasionally we are all going to do that, then they send a notice and tell you that you're past due and they're going to cut you off in three days.  Well, a lot of people are away for a week or two weeks.  Now, if you get that notice and you got your bill and you didn't pay it, and then they tell you they're going to cut you off in three days, you may have to wait until you get your check at the end of the week.  So that seems to me, and to them, it seems unfair that you'd do that.  I mean, most people as a rule don't forget their bill on purpose.  Because they live stressful lives and a busy life.  So, what they have said was that they think they need a little more time, when you send a notice to cut off, than three days."

Billy Brown amplified his mother's complaint.  "Lots of time those bills do not come in the mail until the 5th or 6th of the following month, and you've got four or five days to pay it," he said.  "There's been times when it comes almost on the 10th."  Brown argued that bills should be sent out sooner, so that people had more time to pay and "so that if there is some kind of fault in the mail system then you've got a full ten days to pay it."

Brown also complained about the size of his water bill, which showed that he had used 25,100 gallons in one month.  His conclusion was that someone was estimating usage or that there was something wrong with the system.  "There's very little common sense applied to this situation," he said, adding that his water bill for the last month was $107.

"The other thing I think would be a really good customer service," Brown added, "would be to monitor when someone's water use is out of line."  He suggested that the water department should tell people if their usage is considerably more than it normally had been.  "That's the kind of stuff that I would hope that we would be willing to do for our customers."

Sarah Locke then spoke, saying "I work at a bank, and, what he's talking about, we monitor accounts, and we've got hundreds of accounts at our bank, and if we get a transaction that isn't normal on an account" the bank notifies the customer.  "If we can do that at the bank, it would be easy to do at the water department."

Returning to the issue of mailing out bills, Mayor Weeks stated that "we have adjusted late charges when there would be problems with the mail.  And there have been problems with the mail, and the bills get sent out late.  And I've told Anita on occasion to waive the late charge, and we've done that."

When someone in the audience asked why the bills couldn't "be sent out earlier than they are now," Anita Battles responded, "I send them out the last day of each month.  That's what I was told to do when I come here.  That's what we have to do, because I have to close out each month before we start on another one.  If I sent those bills out on the 25th and money started coming in, it would be for the next month.   You can't keep it straight."

In the discussion that followed, Sarah Locke said, of the attitude with which Anita Battles had dealt with customer complaints, "She was hateful."

At last, Mayor Weeks tried to bring the discussion to a conclusion.  "Let me say this.  There's not a person in this board that doesn't want to see good customer service.  Nobody elected here, nobody sitting here at this table, that doesn't want to see good customer service and see you folks satisfied, and we're willing to do whatever it takes to get that.  The problems that you bring up, my question, though, is, are they not correctable?  Are these things that we can correct with what we have in place right here?  Now, I think there are several things that you guys have touched on tonight that we, the board, need to look at, and maybe we just need to do a whole general review of our policies and procedures, customer service operations.

"I would like to see, and I don't know whether you guys want to go along with this or not, but I would like to see an advisory panel to sit down and let's write down some of these things that we want to see corrected.  Not only corrected, but how do we go about correcting them.  And let's look at those and see if we can't get those things in motion and make some improvements here.  You know, let's set some timetables on getting this done.  You know, if we've got problems here as far as customer service, let's have some directives on what we're going to do to correct that, and what we expect and when we expect it.

"So, would any of you folks be willing to serve on an advisory panel, and lets get some of these things written down, and address some of them, and get things done?  Does the board think that would be something that we could do?'

There was general assent from the board members, then Alderman Martin said, "You know, we had talked about that before.  Setting regulations in place so that we could do performance reviews and stuff like that, which is what we should do, and we've not done that.  And that's where we as a board apologize to you, because we should have already had those things in place because we did talk about that but we never put it in place and we certainly want to.  We are servants out the people, and we want to get you good service.  We want you treated respectfully.  When you walk into this office you should be treated respectfully.  There's no reason why you shouldn't be, because I am a customer service representative, and if I don't have the right customer service to my customers then, like you, I don't have a customer.  And it's a little bit different in Anita's case because you, y'all need our water, because you don't have any other alternative right now.  But we do have the right to treat you with dignity, respect, we have the right to answer your questions.  We may not know the right answer or have a solution, but, and I know she wants to give you the right answer and give you a solution, and it may be where we have fallen short by not giving her directions in how to do that and how to go about that.  Because that's one of the things that we had talked about, Charles, and we did not get that in place.  So we're at fault for that."

"Well, we are just voicing our opinions," Peyton Allen said.  "We're wanting action taken.  And that's about as harsh as you can get right there.  But we want to wake some people up.  That's the reason the petition was signed, and that's the reason we're here tonight.  You know, like I said, nobody wants to see anybody losing their job.  We just want to see the customer service improved."

The audience members then resumed their complaints, with Susan Allen reiterating her assertion that "I don't use 29,000 gallons.  I didn't water my grass, I don't have a garden, I don’t wash my car at home.  Yes, I took a shower every day, and I probably did two or three loads in the dishwasher, and washed clothes as I needed them.   I don't waste water, but I don't conserve it, either.  I use it when I need it.  But I didn't use 29,000 gallons."

Sarah Locke's complaint was even more stark.  "I didn't use 4,100 gallons of water last month," she said.  "I live by myself.  I don't even take a bath, I take a shower.  I don't even wash clothes anymore.  I don't do nothing.  I mean, how is that possible?"

Mayor Weeks again attempted to bring the discussion to a close.  "Well, again, I think this is something that we can bring up and address with an advisory panel.  If any of you would be willing to serve on that panel, we would be more than happy to have you, and it might even be that we want to have a meter-reading course in this thing here.  I guarantee you, if my water bill is running as high as some of your guys are, I'm going to be checking behind that man and making sure that the bill is correct."

Sarah Locke then observed that they were already doing that, but to no avail.  "We're taking pictures with the date on it right after he does it, and we can come up here and she has what he read it as, what he turned in, and it's already different from what she had pictures of."

In the renewed discussion Raymond Butler insisted that he had actually read the meters in question.

"How'd you read mine?" one woman asked.  "I can't even read mine."

"WD-40," Butler responded shortly.  "Sprayed it on."

"It was fogged inside," the woman said.

"No," Butler insisted, "it ain't fogged up inside."

"It was fogged up on the inside," the woman said, her voice rising.  "You could not read that at 11:00 o'clock in the day, that's the exact time you were there."
After still more discussion, Billy and Joyce Brown, Peyton Allen, Jerry Wilbanks, and Sarah Locke all agreed to serve on the advisory panel.  When it was suggested that the panel meet at 6:00 on the evening of the November board meeting, Lucy Martin produced some laughter when she said, "We may want to meet before then so that we can get some kind of action plan in place, though.  You don't want to wait another month if y'all are having a lot of these complaints.  Because I don't want to have to face this kind of crowd again."  It was then agreed that the advisory panel would meet at 6:00 p.m. the following Tuesday, October 23.

But even this did not end the discussion, which turned back to the subject of when bills were being sent out.  Battles continued to insist that mailing out bills any earlier would create impossible bookkeeping problems for her.  "If I mail them before, like, if I mail them like the 27th or the 28th, by the 29th they'd go to paying, and the 30th, and I'd have to hold that money then because it can't be posted."  This assertion drew expressions of incredulity from several audience members, then on-call employee Linda Samples, who fills in when Battles is absent, made an attempt to defend her fellow employees.

"I've been up here," she began, "I've seen what comes in the door, heard it on the phone.  If a mad dog comes at you, you're going to defend yourself.  And we have got people that call and threaten.  They come into the door with a growl, and they don't shut up growling until they go walk out the door.  I've not seen any of them up here tonight, but there are people that come in that office, that one back there, asking questions, that all they have to do is stop and look at the bill and ask a question, not jump on either one of us or Raymond, or whoever happens to be in that office.  And what goes on in the office is an eight-hour, nine-hour, ten-hour job every day.  It's not something that you sit there and file your fingernails or paint your toenails—"

Susan Allen interjected, "I'm not disputing what she said, but the day that I came up here he stood there and shook his finger in my face.  I was sitting in a chair, she was dealing with another customer.  I had not opened my mouth or said a word—"

Samples  continued, as though Allen had not spoken.  "—that people will come in there, with an attitude.  It's our fault the water is dirty.  It's our fault that you've used that much.  It's our fault 'cause you're not paying your bill on time."

After considerably more conversation, Peyton Allen remarked, "but when the next person walks in the door, you can't take your aggression out on that customer.  You've got to forget about what has already happened previously."

Samples, however, was having none of that.  "I still say that, until somebody walks in your shoes, my shoes, or whatever, they're saying it's not done right, they don't know whether it's right or wrong."

Finally, an hour and thirty-five minutes after it started, Mayor Weeks brought the meeting back to the agenda.  "All right," he said, after knocking on the table several times to calm down the considerable crosstalk, "We've got a rate increase we need to go over and talk about here."  He said that the board had agreed at its previous meeting "to maintain the minimum bill at $12 and increase the rate forty cents per thousand."  He then asked for a motion to approve the second reading of that proposal.  The motion was made by Burl Sutton and seconded by Jeff Coln and passed unanimously.  "All right," Weeks said, "that will go into effect November 1."

That was the last of the business for the water department meeting, but it was a full five minutes before the crowd had cleared out and calmed down enough for Weeks to say, "I call the city meeting to order."


Town Board Meeting

After the minutes of the October board meeting were read and approved unanimously, Mayor Weeks reported on the situation regarding concessions at the city park.  "I have been in touch with the Coke Company out of Corinth, and we have completed an application where we can sell drinks through the concession stand.  However, we're going to have to sign a contract with Coke that gives them exclusive rights to selling their product down there in order for them to provide us with a scoreboard and that sort of thing.  And I told them that I didn't have any problem submitting the credit application where we could get set up on that, but the contract, I wanted to the board to approve that before we did it.  I think it's just a formality, we could get it out at any time we wanted to if, you know, if we had problems, but it's got a clause in here, 'Parties have a right to cancel the agreement with a 30 days written notice."  The mayor then asked city attorney Craig Kennedy to review it.

As Kennedy was doing so, Weeks spoke to one of the few people who had not departed at the end of the water department meeting.  "Sir, did you want to—"

"I was just wondering," the man began, "you said something about a grant to put in a well?"

"Yes, sir," Weeks responded.

"And can we get one from the government?"

"We can apply for one," the mayor replied.  "We were turned down a couple of years ago.  A couple years ago we applied for one and were turned down.  The problem with that is that it's just going to pay, like, $500,000 of the cost, and the city would have to pick up the rest of it.  And I think the estimated cost for putting down a well at that time was in excess of 1 1/2 million dollars.  So, we didn't feel that we were financially able to do that at the time.  It would be, probably, even higher than that.  That's just the cost of putting the well in.  You have to also look at maintaining it, and you're going to have to hire more people to take care of it and that sort of thing."
 Kennedy, having looked over the concession agreement, then said, "You can terminate on 30 days notice.  It doesn't say it in here, but typically if you do that they have the right to come back and get the scoreboard, but, I don't know if they ever would come back and get a scoreboard and their equipment, and I don't know about a scoreboard, I guess it depends on how quick you did it.  It does provide in here about the 20 ounce drinks, and I don't know whether they're implying by that that you have to buy the 20 oz. drinks.  That may be what you want to do, I don't know.  Because it talks about that in Coke products, but then it turns around and talks specifically.  Maybe that's just something extra that's going to lock in that price."

Kennedy also pointed out that "it says if we leased the ballpark to somebody, or somebody is going to have a tournament, they've got to use Coke products as well.  This is for the park itself, it's gotta have Coke products there."  The mayor then said, "I need you guys to let me know if you want me to sign this contract," and a motion to that effect was made, seconded, and passed unanimously, as was a motion to pay the bills.

Alderman Burl Sutton then addressed the personnel problem which had dominated the water department meeting earlier that evening.  "I think we need to put both of them [Anita Battles and Raymond Butler] on probation for two weeks.  Let's straighten up, or move out.  I was in business for forty-something years, and the customer is right.  You know, you don't cut a customer off.  It's aggravating.  I think they should be put on probation for a couple of weeks.  If they don't get better, then we need to get somebody else."

Mayor Weeks said he thought that the town should wait until it had heard from the newly appointed advisory panel, and Kennedy pointed out that any decision about water department personnel would need to be made by the water board, rather than by the town board.  "You just closed the water meeting.  When you close the water meeting and open the regular meeting, you can't go back into water business at that point.  And what you're trying to do is the water department business.  This board can't take action on that at a regular meeting."

One of the aldermen then asked, "Do we have the authority to reappoint our fire chief?" [The fire chief is Elvis Butler, brother of Raymond Butler.]

"Do we have a fire board now?" Kennedy asked.  When told there was no fire board, Kennedy said, "Well, I'll have to go back and look to make sure that nothing has changed in the meantime, but I would think that if this board had that authority then, they would have that authority now, unless something has changed."

The same alderman continued, "—because I've asked him to come, and he refuses to come to the meetings.  We need to know, we should know, what's going on each month, and we don't know.  I have no idea what's going on."

"You want me to check and see if this board has the authority to—" Kennedy began.

"—to remove him," the alderman said, completing Kennedy's sentence for him.

There was some discussion of problems in the fire department during Elvis Butler's tenure as chief, and then the meeting was adjourned.



Town Board Meeting

18 September 2007

Water Rates

Eastview water customers are facing a hike in rates which may come as early as November.

Mayor Charles Weeks informed the town board at its September meeting that "We've got a rate increase, from Selmer.  We've gone from $1.61 per thousand to $1.85 per thousand, and we're going to have to look at doing some rate adjustment, cost cutting, or a combination of the two, to break even, to stay where we are."  Eastview is one of several communities in McNairy County which have no water system of their own and purchase water from Selmer.

"All right," the Mayor said.  "Selmer went up 24 cents.  We've got to figure out how we're going to recoup this."  He told the board that he had "run the numbers to see what we can do," and he had come up with a couple of proposals for dealing with the problem.  The first option, which he called Plan A, calls for increasing the water rate by 40 cents per thousand gallons.  This would allow the town to leave the minimum bill (for customers who use 2,000 gallons or less in a month) unchanged and would produce enough revenue to cover Selmer's rate increase as well as the water loss the town experiences every month from leaks and flushing the water lines. "So that's one option.  What would it do to our customers?  The average water bill would go from $26.54 to $28.12, with a 40 cents per thousand increase."

Weeks then explained "Plan B," which entailed increasing the rate by ten cents per thousand and making up the difference by decreasing town services, primarily by cutting back on the hours worked by town employees.  "One of the things we can look at," he explained, would be to "cut our office hours to 1:00 to 5:00."  As a part of this, "we could have call forwarding to Raymond [the water department's Raymond Butler], where the calls coming in would go to his cell phone up until one o'clock.  And any emergencies and things like that could be handled in that way."  Altogether, Plan B "would save us about $1,200 a month in salaries and payroll taxes and workman's compensation."

When Alderman Lucy Martin and other board members voiced doubts that the town's employees would take kindly to having their jobs (and salaries) reduced to part-time, Mayor Weeks explained his reasoning. "Well, what you're going to run into when you go up on these rates," he said, is that some customers will be asking "did we look at ways that we could save expenses?"

Martin then asked, "Do we have to go up right away?"

"They've already gone up on us," Weeks replied.  "They [Selmer] went up on us and didn't even notify us."  Weeks said that he went to talk to Selmer Mayor David Robinson  about the lack of notice, "but as soon as I got up there he pulled this agreement and I read it.  They don't have to tell us anything.  Any time they raise their rates in Selmer they can raise our rates without notifying us.  And I told him I didn't like that part."

Alderman Burl Sutton observed that "if we go with this Plan A, here, you're only going to raise it [the average bill] $2 a month."

"That's not going to raise the minimum customer any," Weeks replied. "Out of 787 customers, we have 172 that use 2,000 gallons or less.  So the majority of them are going to be getting hit with an increase.  This is if the average increase is based on what our average, it says right here, average customer use is 5,956 gallons a month, and average customer charge is $26.54.  By adding that 40 cents to it, it's going to take the average bill up to $28.12, plus tax."

Martin raised the possibility of implementing the increase gradually.  "Is there any way you can get around not raising it that much to begin with, and then, you know, maybe in six months raise it up a little bit more?"  Alderman Bobby Hunter expressed the view that it would be better to raise the rate one time and get it over with.

Sutton asked, "Have they started charging us immediately?"

"Oh, yeah," Weeks replied, "they've already charged us.  Two months."

"We need to start [charging] in October ourselves, then," Sutton said.

"I don't think we can," the mayor said.  "I believe we've got to have two readings.  It will be November, will be our earliest we can start."

Hunter asked if Selmer's new rate "is subject to go up every year?"

"It can go up every year," Weeks replied.

"We can't operate in the red," Hunter observed.  "No way."

Alderman Jeff Coln said he thought Plan A was the town's best bet, and Mayor Weeks asked if there was a motion to adopt Plan A, which he summarized thusly: "That's an increase of 40 cents per thousand without reduction of services and keeping the minimum bill as it is."  The motion was made by Burl Sutton and seconded by Lucy Martin and passed unanimously.

To this point the town board had been meeting in its capacity as the town water board.  The water board meeting was then adjourned and the town board meeting was called to order.



Water Department Truck

Mayor Weeks informed the board that the settlement of the town's insurance claim on the water department vehicle which had been totaled in an accident August 8 had yet to be finalized, owing in part to some confusion regarding which of two different insurance companies had responsibility for covering the loss.  In the meantime, the mayor said, "we're still without a truck."
"We went ahead and ordered us a truck, didn't we?" asked Burl Sutton.

"Well, I wanted to run that by you," the mayor replied.  He explained that the town had gotten a good offer "directly from Ford.  It's for a 2008, for a price of $13,990.  Again, it's a fleet number price, a contract price.  We get V-8, automatic transmission, and a towing package."

That price, the mayor added, is about $3,000 cheaper than any of the other bids the town received.  But there was a down side to the deal: the vehicle would be coming directly from Ford Motor Company, and "we're looking at six to eight weeks delivery."

That is a problem, Bobby Hunter said, because Raymond Butler has said he would no longer use his personal vehicle to read meters.  After the accident, Butler had agreed to use his own vehicle until the water department truck was replaced, and he had been receiving mileage payment at the rate of  48.5 cents a mile. "We paid Raymond his first installment for his mileage, it was $442.71," Mayor Weeks said.  That payment was for "about three weeks, and he's probably got close to that much more."

Jeff Coln asked if the town could "go back to the insurance company and see if they will rent us a vehicle?"

Town attorney Craig Kennedy said "If the vehicle is totaled, they don't have to pay any rental."

Since Butler had said that he would no longer use his personal vehicle, several board members jokingly suggested that he take the next couple of months off until the new vehicle arrived.

The mayor brought the discussion back to purchasing the truck from Ford Motor Company. "Is everyone in agreement that we go this route?" he asked.  Sutton made a motion to do so, which was seconded by Hunter and passed unanimously.

The board members then briefly discussed the possibility of renting or leasing a truck until the new one is received before moving on to other matters.



Annexation

The board next heard from Ronny Neal, from the state's Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS), who spoke to the group for more than half an hour about the process and procedures of annexation. 

"I don't know how many of you were in office in 1998," he began.  "In 1998 the Tennessee legislature passed a bill that you'll hear people talk about as 1101.  And what that was, that was Public Chapter 1101 under the Public Acts of 1998.  The legislature had gotten tired of refereeing between the cities and counties, so they came up with a plan to require, and they did, it worked, there's been very few city county fights since this passed.  In 1998 every county and city in Tennessee had to adopt urban growth boundaries, and you can annex within your urban growth boundaries by ordinance.  Which means that this board comes up with a plan of services, comes up with the area that they want to annex, and you do it by ordinance.  Now, a citizen that's in that annex area can file a law suit if they file it within thirty days of the passage of the ordinance, and that stops it until it's heard in court.  But one of the big changes they made was that citizen has the burden of proof, of proving that the annexation was unreasonable.  Now the lawyers tell me that who has the burden of proof, that that makes a big difference in a law suit.  So they have to prove, when you annex that way they have to prove that you are being unreasonable, instead of you having to prove that your annexation is reasonable.
   
"I went over to the state planning office today and I was hoping I could get a better plan than this, but this is your portion of the urban growth boundaries," Neal said, displaying a drawing to the group.  "So that is the only area that you can annex in by ordinance.  The only way that anything can be annexed outside that area would be through referendum, without reconvening the coordinating committee, which means a group in McNairy County of about twenty people.  It's outlined under the law, the mayor of each county, the county mayor, the county mayor appoints about four people, somebody from the school board, somebody from the largest utility, somebody from the Chamber of Commerce.  Because of the number of cities y'all have, it's a committee of about twenty people.  And you have to submit plans to increase your urban growth boundaries over this [waving at the map], if you wanted to annex something up here, you can't do that because it's not in your urban growth boundary, unless you do it by referendum or unless you go back through the whole process of reconvening the coordinating committee, they call it, and then that opens it up for every city in the county to do that.

"Under this law, every bit of land in a county had to be put in a, it was either already in a city, it had to be put in an urban growth boundary, it could be put in a planned growth area, which was an area that somebody thinks might be a city some day, or it had to be put in a rural area.  Now a lot of people talked about this being a smart planning thing for Tennessee, and they compared it to some places like Oregon and Washington, where they've had what they call smart planning, which is basically trying to control sprawl and growth.  This really wasn't that kind of a plan.  I've told some people, looks like to me it was a divide up the county law, is what it actually became.  But, anyway, that is the short of annexation.

"So in your case, without reconvening the coordinating committee, you can only annex in these dark gray areas that surround your city."

Neal next produced a much larger map, which he spread out on the table before the town board.  "Now, this is a property tax map of the city, now, and this shows every parcel of land in the city and, hopefully, around the city.

"What you were supposed to do when you came up with this urban growth boundary, is you were supposed to come up with a plan that you could see twenty years in the future and project that that would be an area that would need your city services and need to be a part of the city over the next twenty years.

"Now, let me say this, too.  There was a change in the law, used to be when a city annexed an area where there was beer tax or sales tax coming in, as soon as the annexation was final the city started getting that revenue and the county lost it.  Under this 1101, the county would continue to receive any beer tax or any sales tax, local sales tax, for fifteen years.  Now, hopefully there would be growth, but what happens is, is that you basically guarantee that.  If you annexed an area that had a, say, a convenience store in it that had been paying the county $200 a month in sales tax, then what the state department of revenue is going to do is, they're going to do is they will send you the sales tax that is collected from that account, but then you're going to have to pay the county $200 a month, and they would get that for fifteen years.  The same thing with beer tax.  Now the good part about that is, you do get the growth.  I mean, if that business continues to grow, if they suddenly start generating $300 a month in sales tax, you're going to get the $300, but you're going to have to pay the county $200.  And that happens if any business opens within four months of the annexation.  The one thing we tell cities is, if you've got somebody that's going to put in a commercial area out here somewhere, and you're going to provide them with services, then you ought to think seriously about annexing that area before it is opened, so that you don't lose the sales tax in the future."

Mayor Weeks observed that that would not be a problem with the annexation Eastview was contemplating. "In the areas we're talking about there aren't any businesses at all."

Neal continued. "Once you look at the areas, normally what you'd want to do is an annexation study, which looks at roughly how many people you're going to bring in.  Do y'all have a property tax?  [Several board members said it did not.]  Well, that's not a consideration, but you look at what you're going to have to provide them in services, because you're going to have to come up with a plan of services, which talks about what you're going to do about zoning, and police protection, and solid waste collection, and fire protection, and all of those kinds of services a city provides its citizens.  You have to lay out in writing how you're going to do that in the annexed area.  If you've got, and you probably don't, but if you've got an area that doesn't have water services now, you would have to put in the plan of services how soon you anticipate getting out there with water, and when you would provide that.  Now under the law today, under 1101, we've always had to do a plan of services.  Used to, you could do a plan of services, and if you didn't do what you said nobody could do anything about it.  Today, if you say in a plan of services, 'We'll provide water within two years to that area,' and you don't do it, then they can go to court and sue you and the judge can order you to put in the water.  So you have to be careful about providing these services, and how you're going to do it, and what you're going to do.  And you ought to do whatever you say you're going to do."

Alderman Sutton observed that "this area that we're talking about has already got water, it has sewers, it's got fire protection."

Neal continued.  "Well, you're supposed to provide the newly annexed areas with comparable services to what you already provide the city.  And you get a certain amount of time to do that.  If they're already getting all of that, you know one of the things that we look at lot of the times is that cities, when they extend their fire protection out to an annexed area, maybe they go from an I.S.O. rating of 9 down to a 6 or a 7.  Well, what we see in a lot of cities is that a lot of people wind up saving as much on their, they'll save more on their insurance on their homes than they'll pay in city taxes.  But if they've already got water, and they've already got your fire department, you know that's probably not going to change.  But that may be something they're already getting that justifies you going out there, because you're already providing that service and they're not participating.

"Of course, once you do the annexation then you'll do a special census on that area, and if you get it done by May 15, then starting on July 1 you would get the state-shared taxes on that number of people, which last year was about $108 per person.  So that would be to your advantage if you're going to take in several people certainly to get that done by May 15 so you can do that census."
Alderman Coln said, "What we're taking in is houses.  No businesses, no additional income to the city.  So what would that do to us as far as keeping the roads up?"

Mayor Weeks responded, "It would be additional income because of the increase in population, it's my understanding—"

Neal continued the mayor's thought: "It's about $108 per person this past year.  Of course, to do this we'll need to nail down, there should be a better map over at the county that shows exactly where this line is.  If this line is to the inside right of way of this road, then what you would do, is you would be taking in to that road, but not taking in that road, so you would have the people and the property, but the county would still own the road.  But any roads that you take in that are now county roads, they automatically become city streets."

Alderman Robbins then observed, "There would be bridges on those roads," which the city would have to maintain.

"Bridges are a real problem for a city your size," Neal acknowledged.

"One thing you'd want to do," Neal said, "and I can help you with this, and do it real quick.  We can come out here, we can measure the roads, we can see what kind of shape they're in.  We can have an engineer in our office prepare a projection of what it would cost."

"I would think that's what we need to do," Alderman Coln said.

Town attorney Kennedy asked Neal what else MTAS's study would provide.

Neal replied, "we come out and look at the area, and count the houses, and normally see how much property tax that area would bring in, but since y'all don't have a property tax that's not, of course, a part of it.  We can measure the roads, and see how many roads y'all are going to wind up taking in in an area."

Neal then asked, "Do y'all have a planning commission?"

Alderman Hunter replied, "No.  We tried that one time, and people didn't want to get rid of their pigs and cows, and stuff like that."

Neal said, "They don't have to.  You know, a lot of people .…"

"They thought they did," Hunter interjected.

"Well, sure," Neal replied.  "But, you know, one of the things you might want to think about is, at the very least, subdivision regulations.  And then you don't let people put in subdivisions on gravel roads.  You make them, if they want to put in a subdivision and don't want to build the roads, then they have to pay to build the proper roads to start with."

Neal explained that "with subdivision regulations you make the developer do that, and when you take it over you're taking over a street that's in good shape that you've got to worry about maintaining ten or twelve years from now, hopefully.  Otherwise, you're making everybody else who's already been here pay for somebody to develop property and then sell it.  Now, if you want a lot of people to do that, then there certainly is a way to do that, too, if you can afford it."

Lucy Martin said, "I think what we need to do is get the engineer down here and see what we're looking at and then we'll see costs versus profits, and see if it actually pays for us."

Sutton ventured a guess about the numbers the annexation would involve. "Just driving over and estimating, some of the people, it'd be about three times what we've got in the city, population wise."

Neal said, "Well, we can count some of those houses, certainly, and I think in Tennessee it's an average of about 2.3 people per house, we could say that, which should be close."

Because of other commitments, Neal said "it will be a couple of months, probably, before I could actually get down here and actually look at it.  If you're in a big hurry we can try and do it quicker, but if you're not in a real big hurry, especially if you think the county is about to blacktop some of those roads—"

"I don't see any rush on any of it," Mayor Weeks said.

Alderman Sutton agreed: "City's been here forty-three years and hasn't done nothing, so another month or two …"

Mayor Weeks then asked, "Is there a lot of opposition when you start to do something like this?  You mentioned the law suits that are filed in thirty days."

"It just depends," Neal replied.  "You know, we could do the study, we could prepare the ordinance, we could have it all ready to go, and then under the law you'd have to have a public hearing.  I've been to some places where the people weren't so mad that they were going to be annexed, they were mad that they didn't know anything about it.  So, once we actually get down here and start, once we start looking around there, then certainly I would encourage y'all as board members to talk to some of those people in those areas and see what they think about it.  And let them know that you're looking at it, that they're already getting your fire protection, they're already getting your water, they're already using the park here, they're already using the community center, that they've got all the benefits of the city and they're not a part of it.  So, usually you see it, I see lots of opposition when cities that have zoning want to take in areas that don't have zoning.  When cities have high property tax rates.  You know, if I'm sitting over here just outside the city limits and I've already got your fire protection and I've got your water, and I can come over here and use the park, why would I want to pay a dollar tax rate, or something, if that's what you had over here, if I'm already getting it all.  So we see opposition there.  And then, you never know, you never know.  I've been to some that it's got real hot."

Sutton said, regarding the people who would be annexed, "I can't see it's going to cost them anything."

Neal then said, "Mayor, let me ask you this.  Do you charge an outside person more for water than you do an insider?"

"No," Weeks said.

Neal said, "You see, most cities do."

"Selmer's supposed to be doing that," Hunter observed.

"They are," Neal confirmed.  I mean, I know that they have a rate like that.  And I know that they've been looking at their rates.  I don't know whether they've actually raised them or not.  I do know that we helped them with a rate study over there.  It really was a matter of when and how much, not if.  So I don't know if they've actually done it yet or not, but I assume they have.

"But," he said, drawing the discussion back to Eastview's situation, "that's an advantage, that's something to look at.  You can charge a higher rate outside the city than inside the city.  Another thing, I don't know what y'all charge someone to hook on to your water, but I still go to a lot of cities where they're not even charging what it really costs."

Several board members said they charge about $300, but Neal said that the actual cost to the town was probably twice that amount.

"So that's something to certainly look at.  But, again, a higher rate outside the city, but I mean if I'm living in some of these areas I'm getting all the benefits of the city, and the city's really not getting anything from me."

Robbins asked, "Are there still a lot of cities that don't have a property tax?"

"It's probably about the same as it's always been," Neal replied.  "From time to time in the legislature there has been a move to make cities" collect property taxes, since "some of the legislators think, 'Why should we send $108 to a city that's not taxing itself?'  And so, in fact, in 1101, if you started a city tomorrow, you would have to charge as much in property taxes as you get from the state, or you would not get your state money.  And there's been talk from time to time about extending that to cities, but I don't know that that will ever happen.  Because, while it sounds bad, I think the total figure is maybe $1.8 million that they're sending to cities that don't have property taxes.  So, while it's quite a few cities, it's not a whole lot of money in the whole scheme of things."

And on that note Neal made his departure, promising to come back in a couple of months to help the town with its survey.



Other Business

In other business the board unanimously approved payment of water department bills (on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Robbins) unanimously approved the reading of the minutes from the last board meeting (on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Robbins), and unanimously approved the payment of bills (on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Coln).

The mayor reported that the fire department had still not received quotes for all the equipment and repairs that it had requested last month, though fire chief Elvis Butler had told the mayor that he would be able to get the pipe poles the department needed for about $300.  Money for these purchases would come, at least in part, from Eastview's portion of the county's fire department grant, which this year will amount to $3,808.  Weeks said that he had written to County Mayor Jai Templeton requesting the money, but it had not yet been received.

The board also discussed at some length the problem of "raw sewage" on the ground and in the ditch near the city park.  "What are we going to do about this sewer stench?" Alderman Sutton asked, saying that it was coming from the Junction.  At length the board instructed town attorney Kennedy to write letters to the owners of businesses on both sides of the highway advising them to clean up the problem.




Town Board Meeting

21 August 2007

Like everyone else in McNairy County, Eastview’s town board members were thinking about the drought when they met at the civic center Tuesday evening.

Mayor Charles Weeks raised the issue by asking the aldermen what they thought could be done when people were seen watering their yards.  He said that he thought the town had taken steps to cut down on usage when the water department put a note on last month’s bills asking people to conserve. “But we had record sales the following month,” he said to general laughter.  He then jokingly suggested that the town put a note on the next month’s bills saying “Just use all you want to.”

Right now, the mayor said, it’s left up to individuals to cut back on water usage, “but is there some kind of directive that we need to put out there, and steps that we need to take to try to deal with this problem?  And legally, how do we enforce it?  That’s my question.  If somebody just flat out refuses?”

The mayor added that “We’ve got people complaining about their water bills, and you drive by their houses and they’ve got the greenest yards in town.  You know why their water bills are high.  Is there any way we can enforce a policy on somebody like that?”

Town Attorney Craig Kennedy said that Selmer was facing similar problems, and about all that was being done there was to ask people not to use water for non-essential purposes and hope that they comply.  “We’re going to have a real problem here, as far as enforcement, because what are you going to do with them?  You don’t have a city court to cite them in.”  He concluded that, “as a practical matter, you just need to ask them not to do it.”

The mayor then asked what the members thought about sending out a letter asking for conservation.  Alderman Lucy Martin replied, “I don’t know that you need to put it in a letter.  Anybody that’s got any sense knows that you shouldn’t water your yard, and no gardens are left.”  Besides, she said, observing that Eastview has more than 800 water customers, “think about how much it would cost to mail out letters at 41 cents apiece.”

In the end, Alderman Burl Sutton suggested just leaving things as they were, and the board took further action to curb water usage.

The board then approved, in each instance by unanimous voice votes, the water report, the minutes of the July board meeting (with the correction of the spelling of the name Philpot), and the payment of bills, all on motions by Alderman Billy Hunter, and all seconded by Alderman Jessie Robbins.

The board also heard from Water Department employee Raymond Butler regarding the accident he was involved in several weeks earlier which resulted in extensive damage to the water department’s truck.  Butler said that he was turning into a driveway to set a water meter when the accident happened.  “I started to turn in.  All I heard was tires squalling, and the next thing I knew I was spun around in the driveway.”  He was unhurt, but he told the board that the woman driving the other vehicle was injured in the crash.  “It busted her nose and bruised her shoulder,” Butler said.

“I’ve got a witness that seen everything,” Butler said, adding that the witness “says she run over me.”  He said that he had “sent out the stuff we’re supposed to send, and we’re waiting on the [police] report to get back.  We’re waiting on her insurance to see what they want to do.”

Mayor Weeks told the board that “We only have liability insurance, so if she’s not at fault we’re just lost on that,” but if she is at fault her insurance will pay for the damages to the truck.   “Regardless of that,” the mayor said, “we got to make a decision on what route we’re going to take as far as replacing the truck or fixing that one.  Right now Raymond is having to drive his own vehicle,” and the town is paying him mileage.

Jessie Robbins said he had looked at the truck and the damages were such that “if it was me I’d total it out.  I don’t know what the rest of this board would do.  I’d buy another truck, myself,” he added, pointing out that the truck was ten years old and had more than 100,000 miles on it.  Alderman Jeff Coln agreed.

Alderman Billy Hunter asked what needed to be done to replace the truck, and the mayor said that the town needed to advertise in the paper and take bids.  “I don’t think we need anything fancy,” he said.

“Where do we get the money to buy a truck?” Alderman Lucy Martin asked.  “We didn’t budget for that, and it’s kind of expensive, you know.”

Town Attorney Craig Kennedy answered, “It has to be out of the water department.”

The mayor suggested that the town hold a special called meeting in two weeks to make a decision, and the board voted unanimously, on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Hunter, to advertise in the paper for bids on a new truck.

Mayor Weeks informed the board that the town needed to adopt a new driver’s license policy showing that the town “is using due diligence” to ensure that everyone who drives a town-owned vehicle has a valid driver’s license and does not have excessive traffic violations.  This has been requested by the town’s insurance carrier, TML, and the proposal is that the town keep on file a record of all traffic citations for the past 36 months, as well as driver’s license and social security numbers.

Fire Chief Elvis Butler said that there might be some difficulty getting his firemen to release their social security numbers because of fear of identity theft.  All of them are “evac trained,” and Butler said he didn’t understand why TML would push for driver’s license and social security numbers for his firemen because TML knows that his people have to have good driving records in order to be evac certified.

Asked how many volunteer firemen the town had, Butler said there were 14 altogether, “but only about seven you can depend on.  We’ve got some that haven’t been to a call for over two years.”   Butler said “Most of my firemen are from other fire departments.  We don’t have anybody in Eastview that wants to be a fireman.  They want to, ‘til they go to a fire.  And then after they go to a fire, after one or two times, it’s too cold, too wet, too late at night.  And, they want their equipment, but they don’t want to come.  They want the gear, but they don’t want to come.”

When asked by Mayor Weeks whether he had any needs that he needed to bring before the board, Butler replied “Yes.  We have need for some pipe poles.   I need two 12’ pipe poles.  I need a gauge for one of the trucks.  I’ve got a hydraulic cylinder that needs to be repaired.  I need some work done on our air compressor to fill up our bottles.”

The mayor asked him to get back with the board when he had prices on the items.

Eastview has applied for a grant for a 50% matching grant to fund $50,000 worth of improvements to the town’s recreational facilities.  Besides raising half of that amount, the city is also required to submit a five-year plan detailing the proposed improvements.

Steve Hunter, leader of the Parks Commission Program, presented a proposed five-year plan to the board.  The plan calls for the acquisition of 14 acres of land “behind civic center and adjoining City Park” and an additional acre “at Hwy. 57 for entrance to park.”  Also called for are improvements to the tennis courts, the playground area, the ball fields, walking trails, and improvements to the bathrooms and the concession stand, as well as the development of additional park facilities on the 14 new acres, “including a stage for festivals,” and the development of an entrance, a mini-park, and a nature trail on the additional acre on Hwy. 57.  Beyond 2013, the plan recommends that the board “consider employing a Recreation Director/Coordinator to guide programs and to coordinate the recreation facilities to ensure recreational opportunities for citizens of all ages.”

Hunter told the board he hopes to organize soft ball tournaments to raise money, which will come mostly from concessions sales, and that as a result they will need to make the concession stand secure, to which end he has gotten estimates from Hollingsworth Locksmith Service for security equipment for the park. The board discussed the options and adopted one of them by unanimous voice vote on a motion by Burl Sutton, seconded by Billy Hunter.

“Let’s get moving on it,” Mayor Weeks said.

Finally, Mayor Weeks said MTAS (Municipal Technical Advisory Service), a state agency which offers training for municipal board members, was prepared to offer “level one” training on a Friday and Saturday of the members’ choosing, and after some discussion the members agreed to hold the training on November 2-3 at the UTMB’s McNairy County facility.
to that effect when Attorney Kennedy said, "Well, I think what we need to do, is let me work up a policy and submit it to the board, because those things are real tricky, you've got to have a policy in terms of making sure that it is in fact random, has been determined to be random, and a lot of things goes into it."

Kennedy also asked, "Do you want the drug policy just to apply to the firemen, or do you want it to apply to all city employees?"

"I'd say all city employees," Mayor Weeks replied, and the other board members agreed.





Special Advisory Panel Meeting

23 October 2007

A special advisory panel, formed at the Eastview town board's regular meeting October 16, was convened at the community center at 6:00 p.m. October 23.

Mayor Charles Weeks opened the meeting by saying, "I appreciate the good turn out, and everybody going out tonight, and I believe what we decided that we were going to do is to have a general discussion of recommendations and look at some ways that we can might go about improving our system here in the water department.  And let me say, as spokesman for the board, we'll take these recommendations, and we're going to look at them, and discuss them and implement what we can of them.  But we are going to make sure that they adhere to our policies and guidelines that we have in place.  In other words, we're not going to do anything that's going to contradict something that, you know, we've got in writing that says we can't do that.  That doesn't mean we can't change that.  But, uh, we're going to take all these recommendations under advisement and go from there.  So, with that said, I'm going to turn it over to the advisory panel, and let's get started."

Billy Brown asked, "Is this a one-time meeting, or is this going to be a series of meetings to investigate recommendations or suggestions?"  After some discussion it was agreed that the advisory board should meet every month.

Brown then broached a subject which had not been specifically addressed at the October 16 meeting—the divestment, by Eastview, of its water department. "How does the mayor and the board feel about the city continuing to operate the utility department?  Is that something we feel like we absolutely have to do, or, if it's in the best interest of the utility customers, if there's an alternative to that, would you entertain that?  And I'm not saying that there is."

Weeks responded, "I think we'd be open to any suggestions along those lines.  Anything that's going to help our customers.  But we don't want to get in a situation where, if someone takes it over, you know, they could come in here and dictate some things that we don't particularly want.  So we would want to be very cautious about who we—"

Brown then informed the group of "a discussion I've had.  I've talked to the mayor of Selmer [David Robinson], and I asked him, and he didn't know off the top of his head, what does a non-city resident, what is the non-city resident water rate, and I haven't found that out yet.  And then I also asked him, I said, 'Would you entertain, if it was in the best interests of us, the rate payers, possibly buying our water system?'  And he said, 'Well, back before my time I know that there was a discussion at some point between Selmer about us possibly buying your system.  But,' he said, 'I think the problem back then was there's too much debt on your system for the size and number of customers.'  Now, I don't know if that's true.  I don't know how much debt there is on the system.  Does anybody know that number off the top of their head?"

Mayor Weeks said it was "in the neighborhood of $400,000," and town clerk Emodene Smith concurred, saying "Yeah, I think it is.  And then the pumping station is another $60,000."

After some discussion of the water rates, Brown said "I'd be willing to talk some more to him [Robinson] about [water rates] if anybody is interested in pursuing that."

Jerry Wilbanks then brought up the issue that had dominated the previous week's meeting. "Could I say something?  The rates, you know, that's not a problem.  What I hear is the attitude out of the people that work over here.  Ninety-five percent of the people that talk to me, that's what they're talking about, is the people working in here.  You know, you don't want to come up here to pay a bill, and get chewed out all at the same time, you know.  I don't, anyway.  I'd like to figure out if there's some way to send them to some kind of school, you know, to learn them how to treat people, or something, you know."

"Behavior management class, or something like that," agreed Peyton Allen.

"That's what I hear. And everybody I talk to, that's what they say. And the two months behind," Wilbanks added, referring to the delay in getting out water bills.  "I can't see that that's fair to the water department or the customer either one."

Again, Allen agreed. "'Cause if you have someone looking at their, trying to calculate their rates, and they think they've use it for the previous month, then they're mixed up.  They're actually two months behind.  And there's got to be a solution to that problem of being two months behind.  You know, she [Anita Battles] sat right in there and admitted she only works three days, really three days out of a month, and then the other lady [Linda Samples] contradicted her by saying it was an eight to ten hour a day job.  Well, if she's being paid for eight hours a day, she needs to work eight hours, and she ought to get the billing done with the amount of time she has to work, and the customer shouldn't be two months behind on their bills."

City Recording Clerk Emodene Smith then spoke up. "Could I say something on that?  That's the way it's always been set up.  From day one, in the beginning.  So, if we were to catch it up, everybody would have to be billed for two months, and I don't think anybody would like that."

The group discussed the question for some time without coming to any conclusion, then
Mayor Weeks said, "It might just be that this could be a part of this continuing education we were talking about on customer service, just to get her acclimated to that type of accounting system, where that could be done.  I do some accounting, and I don't see any, I don't see any problem with it.  Getting paid early is always a good thing.

"Something that was brought up the other night, and it's actually been mentioned in a board meeting, and maybe we drug our feet just a little bit on it, but one thing that was said was that if a meter reader goes out here and he finds an excessive bill, say you find a bill that's up 25% over last month, then there does need to be some follow up on that.  And I think that's something that we as a board need to consider, is what our policy is going to be on that type thing, and following up and making sure that the customer is aware of what's going on.  Because, like you say, you're looking at two months, here, and if a guy has got a leak, he don't need that leak to continue for two months before it's called to his attention.   What kind of number do you think would be something that could raise a flag, or something that we should consider contacting a customer over, what percentage?"

Lucy Martin said, "Well, at one time, now, she used to do that.  If a reading came in out of the ordinary, like if you've been running 5,000 gallons a month and then all of a sudden you've got one 6,500, that usually catches her eye.  She stated the other night she does that sometimes, she don't always, I don't know why, but she did at one time call somebody's attention to that, and then the water man could go back quickly and read the meter and see if there's anything, or even talk to the people to see if they've got something unusual going on."

Don Coln, himself a former water department employee, said that "Usually, most of the meters nowadays have a leak detector on them, it's a little thing that goes around like that, and if you think there's no one at home and it's spinning, then there's a leak somewhere, and when I read meters, if I couldn't find anyone at home I usually left a note."

"That was my suggestion," Brown said.  "My idea was two things.  One would be to put a note on the door that says 'We suspect you might have a leak,' or, second, when you get back to the office somebody make a phone call.  Now phone calls are not good sometimes because nobody at home until night, or whatever."

"I personally think that would be a great customer service," Brown concluded.  "I mean I went from a water bill of $13.11 to $170, and I ain't heard from anybody yet.  That's pretty extreme."

Brown's mother, Joyce, brought the discussion back to personnel problems.  "The other night, is it Ms Battles?  Well, she got kindly hostile, because she said if somebody comes in there and they unload on me, I'm going to unload on them.  Now, we make mistakes, and we know we do, and when you come up here and you remind them of that mistake, you don't want to be chewed out….  Of course, I don't know how the customer comes in, [but] usually, as a rule, if you're nice, they'll be nice."
 
Allen agreed. "They can't approach each situation with every customer based on the previous one.  If they had a bad experience with the previous customer, then they don't need to take it out on the next one that comes in the door.  That's usually what happens every time you go in there.  And I don't know if she has a bad day every day or what, but I know that every experience I've had has not been a pleasant one.  And Raymond included.  The way I see it as a customer, and I'm sure the way the community sees it as a customer, when you go in that office to discuss your bill, that's your business, between you and her.  She runs that office; she should be in charge of that office, and he should not have any say so in your personal information or your personal bill.  She should be the manager of that office, and he shouldn't have any say-so as to what your business is with her, if you're there to discuss your bill."

Regarding unusual usage, Sarah Locke said, "It looks like if her system was adequate, and if she was paying attention to the numbers that she entered in her system all the times that she would notice things like this, and she would be able to have this same conversation with customers when they came in to complain about their bill.  Instead of just saying, 'Well, that's what you owe, that's what it was read at.'  There's got to be a little bit more logic to it.  I understand that those numbers are just all she has to go by, that's what it says [inaudible word], but, you know, maybe there's a leak, try to do this and this and see.  She should be able, she should have conversations like this when you come in and complain about your bill."

Mayor Weeks offered a suggestion for increasing customer understanding. "I would like to see it get to the point where if customers come in with some concerns about their water bill that we could offer them some kind of pamphlet or something that offers suggestions about things that they can do to conserve water and reduce their bill….  I think we need something like that in place.  You know, customers have legitimate complaints and concerns about high prices of utilities, and that's something we should be, and customer service is offering ways to deal with that type thing.  I think that's something as a board we need to look at and see about implementing."

Billy Brown agreed that better communication with customers would be desirable. Another "thing I think the board should look at, and I know this is hard to do.  I've been in your position, trying to write policies that have a little wiggle room that doesn't get abused.  But I really think there should be some leeway for somebody to use a little bit of common sense occasionally to adjust a bill, rather than having to come back before the board."  He suggested that the person should report the exceptions to the mayor or the board, which could make sure her actions were appropriate.  "But I really think there are some situations where you could apply just a little bit of common sense to that, and give her a little bit of leeway, and then make her report back to you where those things happen, and then you guys could judge whether you thought that was the right thing to do."  Brown said, "She can probably extinguish some of these hard feelings if she had the ability to make some common sense adjustments, and then you guys know that it's being done."  He concluded by saying he'd be concerned about her doing favors, but "I think she can extinguish a lot of these hard feelings when people walk in if she's got a little bit of leeway."

Mayor Weeks agreed, saying "I think its an excellent suggestion, and I think it's something that we need to seriously look at—"

Sarah Locke interrupted, saying "I think at the same time she needs to have policies for denying any late fees that she does, or denying adjustments.  'Cause otherwise, I could come in here and she could deny it to me every time, and y'all would never have any account of it."

"My thoughts on that," Weeks replied, "is if you come to her and you have a problem, and you feel like this problem is not being handled professionally and fairly, then you ought to have recourse through the board.  There ought to be some kind of a review request.  And which you bring this to the board.  You work it out with her if you can.  And, you know, use common sense.  I mean if she's right, don't be so hard headed that you won't back off and let her do her job.  But, now, if she's wrong, and not treating you fairly, there ought to be some kind of review request that would come before the board."

Joyce Brown asked, "Have you had a lot of problems with her, have you had a lot of complaints?"

The mayor responded with an equivocation. "We really haven't documented that much.  We've had complaints, I'm not going to deny it, but as far as just setting down and documenting how many, and who they were from, and all that, we haven't really done that."

The group then discussed how best to determine whether a payment had been made on time, and there was general agreement that the date a payment was postmarked should be controlling.

Lucy Martin then said, "we probably need a time line, when we're going to implement something.  We've got to have some sort of regulation they can go by, because we don't have a measuring stick at all.  If we are going to implement something, we have to tell them this is what we are implementing and this is, we want the results such and such a date.  Of course, the customer service results would be immediate, but some of the other things, there needs to be some kind of a deadline, or date, when we can implement some of this.  Or they're not going to know, they're going, like most people, they're not going to do it until you say, 'November 1 you've got to be doing this.'  If you just say we're going to start doing this, it's never going to get started."

"Well," Weeks said, "there's several things on this list here that I would personally, I would like to see in place and operating by the first of the year.  I think that’s a reasonable goal.  I can't speak for the board members, but I think that's something that we need to discuss at length at our next meeting, and getting a time line in place."

Martin added, "And you know that thing we talked about earlier, performance, you know we need to do evaluations on our employees."

Weeks concurred. "And some of the things that you're mentioning on customer service, making corrections, according to our personnel policies, we have to go through the right channels with that, and some of these things have to be written, so that everyone understands what's expected of them.  I mean, if the board wants me to do that, then that's definitely the route I'm going to take, unless one of them wants to volunteer to do it.  So we're going to pursue those things."

"But our main priority," Martin said, "is to make sure that you're happy and you're serviced well and that you get the best possible service that we can provide.  And that's what we're trying to do."

Regarding training employees, Louise Wilbanks asked, "Well, is that something that y'all are planning on working on immediately, or in a year's time, or after the first of the year?"

Peyton Allen observed that "Behaviors are hard to change.  That takes time to change.  I agree with Lucy on that."

"I think we don't have to wait to the first of the year," Weeks said.  "If we decide this is what we want to do, and this is the route we want to take, that can definitely be in place after our next board meeting.  We don't have to wait until January 1 on that.  But by January 1 we should see some improvement."

"Customer service issues should start improving today," Martin said, "because we've already had that discussion.  So those things should start improving immediately, I would think.  Because they was here at the last meeting, and they know what your concerns are, they know what ours are, and I think they know what our expectations are in that aspect of it."

"Well," Joyce Brown said, "if she cares anything about her job, she will improve.  Now, we're all human, and we're all just alike, and if she wants her job, she knows the complaints she's had, you won't have—"

Sarah Locke interrupted. "But most of us don't come in complaining.  Most of us come in just to pay our bill, we want you just to take our little card, and say, 'Thank you.  Have a good day.'  And she doesn't, right now she's not even doing that.  That's not a hard thing to change."

At several times during the meeting, Mayor Weeks expressed his appreciation for the panel's input.  "I think we've had some excellent suggestions, and I think it's a lot of things that we're going to consider and look at and see if we can't implement, from customer service on down through operations.  Don't expect this thing to be fixed overnight.  It will take a little time.  But you can rest assured that we're going to take the steps that's called for to get us back on the right track."

Again, "We've had some really good suggestions out of this, and I can say for the board, we appreciate, and that's genuine, we appreciate the involvement, and the time that you guys are willing to take.  We're going to work on this."

Finally, Weeks said, "And let me ask y'all something else, if you'll do this for me.  Let us know when things are going right, not just when things are going wrong.  Say you come in up here and she just treats you like you were, you know, the best person to ever walk through that door, if you'll let us know that, that'll let us evaluate what steps we're taking, what progress we're making."

At the end of the meeting Billy Brown asked, "Are we going to meet again, or is this it?"

"Whatever y'all want to do," Weeks replied.  "If y'all want to meet monthly for a while, or if you want to meet after we get this thing in place and maybe meet back after the first of the year and see how we're progressing.  Now y'all are welcome to come to the next board meeting, if you want to come to that, you're welcome to come to that.  That's when we're going to start implementing things."

"Will we have some stuff written up by our next meeting?" Martin asked.

"Yeah, I will," Weeks replied.

Peyton Allen said, "I think us as a group, I think we all should attend the next board meeting. And kind of keep abreast of what's going on."

And with that the special meeting of the advisory panel concluded.




Town Board Meeting

16 October 2007

Water Board Meeting

"This is the biggest crowd we've had since I've been in office," Mayor Charles Weeks said as he opened the 16 October meeting of the Eastview Town Board in the community center auditorium, rather than the small board room where such meetings are normally held.

That the crowd was as disputatious as it was large became evident when Mayor Weeks, after some formalities, said to the audience, "If we've got a delegation here that wants to address the board, let's go ahead and do that at this time."

Delegation spokesman Peyton Allen rose to his feet and unleashed the first of a series of complaints which was to rage on for more than an hour.

"I'd like to thank the board for giving us the liberty and the right to speak and voice our opinions.  We thank the board and Mr. Mayor."  Allen explained that he and his wife, Susan, had lived in Eastview for a number of years.  "I moved here originally because I like the area, I like the city of Eastview, I like the people.  But, that being said, there's a sign everybody knows on the outskirts of town that everybody knows that says, 'The view of happy living.'  Well, that's false advertising."

Peyton told the board that at his place of employment, "number one to us is quality, number two is our customer satisfaction."  At his place of work they realize "that if they don't have quality and they don't have customer satisfaction, they don't have a business.

"I know how to run a business," he continued.  "I know what an efficiently ran business is, and how it should be run.  So, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to tell you tonight that Eastview Water is not ran efficiently, and I will give you examples as to why it is not being ran efficiently."

Also, Allen said, the "Eastview Water Department is, in my opinion and many other citizens' opinions in Eastview, ran unprofessionally.  The quality of product, everybody knows is lacking.  I know there are measures in place to get the standards up as far as filters, but until then, you know, we've got to see to our customer satisfaction.  The customers are not being satisfied, and I don't see how they can stay in business."

Allen then got down to specifics.  "First of all, Eastview Water Department is one of the most unprofessional offices that I have ever walked into in my life.  It's ran very inefficiently.  Ms Battles [Anita Battles], when you go in, she acts like it's an inconvenience for a customer to walk in.  Now, she greets you with snide remarks, sometimes she takes a personal phone call, sometimes she's …, or she's sitting there shelling peas.  And she treats the customers as if they are idiots.

"Well, I'm here to tell you tonight that the citizens of Eastview are tired of it, and we want something done about it.  Her favorite thing is, 'If that is what it says you used, then that is what you are going to pay for.  That is what you used.'  She doesn't try to find a solution to the problem.  You know, her solution to the problem is not to find the solution.  And she doesn't pursue 100%.  You know, she tells you 'You're wrong,' so when the customer walks in, they're wrong about their bill.  Automatically, no questions asked."

"And I ask each one of you, if you had an employee who continually treated your customers like that, and ran an office inefficiently, would you still employ that person, that individual?  Would they still be employed by you?  And I think everyone of you would say, No, they would have to go.  They'd be fired."

Continuing on with his comments about Battles, Allen said, "Her customer relations is very lacking.  She is a representative of our community.  She represents Eastview to every person that walks in that office.  And to be met by an unprofessional attitude that she greets them with, and snide remarks, is unbecoming to her position that she holds.

"Secondly, like I said, everyone knows that the water in Eastview is of poor quality, and I understand that Selmer is going to be installing filters to filter out the water.  Now that's good.  But it still won't fix the unprofessional office attitude, the inefficiency of the office.  I spoke with many people about the water quality.  They won't drink the water.  They refuse to drink it.  They buy bottled water.  They refuse to wash their white clothes in it.  I know you guys have heard this numerous times, about the complaints with yellow clothes.  And some of the customers even said that they're not going to bathe in it.  But they have to; we've got to stay clean.  But they feel just as dirty when they get out as they did with they got in, because of the poor quality of water."

"When Mr. Martin, Carrol Martin, had the position [now held by Raymond Butler], we never had a bit of trouble.  We'd call him 20/7, and he'd be more than happy to flush the lines and clean them out."

"We had good, quality service.  That's what service is about.  It's seeing to your customers' needs.  And right now the customers' needs are not being met."

Allen stated that he had personally contacted Tennessee state officials about the water quality problems, and that the state had sent down several engineers to check it out, and they had concluded that the lines were not being flushed long enough to get the sediment out of the lines.  "And you know, that's unacceptable.  If I am going to pay premium water prices, I want premium water.  Everybody can agree with that.  If you are going to pay bottled water prices, by golly we need bottled water.

"Mr. Butler is very reluctant, I feel, to do his duty and do it right," Allen said.  "He has got the same attitude and unprofessional mannerisms that is projected in this office.  To give you a couple of examples, I have been up here quite a few times, and he is sitting in the office, I come in to pay my bill or even question my bill, and I'm met with him and her both with snide remarks, and then they're hissing at me with unprofessional attitudes.  And, you know, people don't want to be treated like this.  Now you know you don't want to be met with unprofessionalism.

"First of all, I feel it's not his business to be in that office.  He has no reason to be in there, and personal business is being done by the community.  He is a meter reader, and he should be out in the field.  He should not be in that office.  I feel like that is not his position.  He does not have any say so in there, and it is the board's and the manager's position.  So he shouldn't say nothing to the customers.  That just signifies the unprofessionalism in the office.

"My wife last week came up here, just for a question about the bill, and she said he was actually standing up and shook his finger at her.  And she asked why our water bill, we used 29,000 gallons of water, and his remark was that the pool evaporated.  But it wasn't said that way; it was more forcefully and louder," Allen said.  "And I'm not putting up with that.  Not from him or anybody else."

Allen explained that he and his wife had put in a pool in April and had filled it up then.  "I don't dispute that bill.  Our pool holds 27,700 gallons, and I don't dispute the filling of that pool.  But since then our bill has been consistently high.  It's been over $100 a month, and his explanation is, 'Well, the pool evaporates.'  Well, that's not a very scientific explanation as to why we use 29,000 gallons in a month.  The explanation is, somebody's not doing his job.  We feel as a community that the bills are being estimated.  We feel that is the solution to the problem.  That's the answer to the problem.  And for being estimated, I'm not going to pay for 29,000 gallons of water when we didn't use it.

"On average—just to give you a little statistics—on average during the hot months, during the extremely hot months, you will lose one inch of water.  Now, given the size of our pool, that’s 545 gallons in a month."  Allen then provided other water usage statistics not related to pools.  "The average person uses anywhere from 50 to 75 gallons a day per person, total.  Now this includes flushing the toilet, which is six to seven gallons; showering, five to ten gallons per person per minute; tub bathing is 35 gallons; faucet usage is four gallons per minute; hand washing, twenty gallons; dishwasher, 12 to 20 gallons, of which we have a dishwasher; clothes washing, 60 to 69 gallons for a full cycle, 40 to 45 for a top-loading machine.

"Now, think of this according to the meter reader, Raymond Butler, and his assessment of why we use 29,000 gallons in a month.  Evaporation?  I don't think so.  There's no way.  You do the math.  Our bill is five times higher than the normal average person in America, and that's unacceptable.  According to statistics, two people should use 4,500 to 5,000 gallons per month.  And that's the average we used per month until we bought the pool.  Now the pool issue seems to be, it echoes through this community.  People that have pools, on average their bill runs about $100 a month, and I ask the board, are we being punished for having a pool?  Or, you know, what's going on?  Something's happening to the people that have pools.  We feel like it's estimated."

Allen referred to a photo which he had brought to the meeting, showing a meter which was unreadable.  "That is just one.  When we thought about starting to take some more pictures, I wish we would have.  We've talked to many of the people of Eastview, and as soon as their meter is read, when Raymond leaves, they go out and raise the lid, and they cannot make out the numbers.   So how could he make the numbers out?  There's no way."

At this point Susan Allen joined her husband.  "That picture was taken not five minutes after he left the house, that's my picture, the day he read the meter on the last month."

Peyton Allen resumed: "That's one example.  We've talked to many people who said theirs is a lot worse than that.  A lot of them are caked over with mud and dirt.  They can say, 'Oh, it's rain,' but everybody here knows it hasn't rained.  We do not have enough rain to fill up a hole where the meters are read.  I have a friend, he's an employee of mine that used to read meters.  He informed me today that him and another guy that used to read meters and he said nine times out of ten, he said, you can read the meter if you get down on your hands and knees and actually have to wipe it off to read the numbers.  But when you run across one that's like that, he said, you don't want to get down all day long, up and down.  You'll just estimate it and go on.  And I feel like that's happening to a lot of people that don't deserve to have their bills estimated.

"You know, what are the people that are on fixed incomes to do?  You know, if they get a bill that's triple, which we're hearing in the community, of what it should be, if they are on a fixed income, how are they going to put food in their mouths?  These are your customers, and they are not being done right.  Not by the water quality, or the service given by this office.

"So, that being said, we got a petition up in the community, and this petition was signed by citizens in the community of Eastview.  We didn't cover 100%, but I can, and I will if I have to.  This is a representative, not a majority, but it was done over a two-hour period.

"This petition [containing about thirty names] was done over approximately a two-hour period.  Mr. Mayor, I'm going to give this to you.  And that represents the amount of people we can get in two hours.  Now, if I did that for eight hours, it would be a lot more names.  A lot more names.  The petition is for the request for the removal from office of Raymond Butler and Anita Battles, due to their lack of professionalism in their office, and customer satisfaction.

"Now, this has been going on for a number of years.  I spoke with an ex-city council member the other day who did not want to sign the petition.  He said, 'I know how the office is ran, and it's very unprofessional.'  And I'm here to tell the board that that's echoed through the community.  Even the people that did not want to sign the petition because they were related or spoke to or knew the two in question, the two employees.

"This petition is being submitted, and we are requesting that either they be removed immediately or be sent to a management class for customer relations."

Allen concluded by saying, "And we're asking as a community that this be effective immediately.  Thank you."

Mayor Weeks asked if anyone else wished to address the board, and a woman rose and said "Everything that Peyton has said is the truth. Like when I went to the office.  We was having a problem with the bills" and had talked to Raymond Butler about it.  They then went to the office, "and we were talking to her [Anita Battles] and about that time he [Butler] came in and she said, 'See, I told you that she'd be up here fussing about this bill.'  Well, if it were her money, what would she be doing?  You know, we have to pay these bills, and they just get higher and higher and higher.  The water's not drinkable, it's muddy, it looks like tea, weak tea.  It looks terrible, even to take a bath.  Everybody we talk to has had the same problems with Ms Battles, about how she treats the customers that come in here."  After a few more comments, the woman summed up thusly: "The water is just terrible, and the customer service up here is awful.  It's pathetic.  I don't know what the problems is, but, you know, you don't want to be coming up here to pay your bill and have people fuss at you, hollering about, you know, just everything.  And Raymond had read my bill, and he had missed it by 1,000 gallons, he said, so I don't know what that's about."

During the ensuing discussion Alderman Lucy Martin consulted the water department records regarding the flushing of the pipes near the Allen home.  "I've got the flush book here, and on August 13 he flushed for 15 minutes.  On October 11 he flushed for 22 minutes."

Allen responded that he was told by the State of Tennessee that it would take a minimum of four hours "to adequately flush the main line."

Allen continued.  "Now I have actually contacted Ms Battles at night to tell her, 'Hey, look, the lines need to be flushed.'  And I've been told by her, 'That is not my job.  You contact Raymond Butler.'  My comment to her was, 'Well that is your job.  Why don't you call him?'  [to which Ms Battles responded] 'Well, I'm not going to call him.  Quit it.'  That's the way she treated me, and that's the way she treats everybody in the city of Eastview, and that's unacceptable.

"Now, if I could go out and do it myself, I would, and send you guys a bill for doing his job.  But that's all we are requesting, is good customer service, for good water, good quality water."

Allen then repeated, "The issue here tonight is customer service to the city of Eastview."

"All right, anybody else?" Mayor Weeks asked, and another woman rose and spoke.

"Well, we've got the same problem that Susan [Allen] and them have.  We're at the end of a line.  Our water smells so bad that you can't drink it.  Even if you run it in the bathtub it smells so bad.  And you ruin your clothes with it.  We've got two under-the-counter ice makers and we have spent nearly $700 on replacing parts, and when the serviceman comes he tells us that the reason for this is the water."

Susan Allen added, "That was one of the complaints, when we went around talking to people in the community, that was the biggest complaint, was their ice makers.  The water was ruining their icemakers."

After considerable discussion about flushing lines and the effect that the recent drought had had on the amount of flushing, Joyce Brown rose and addressed another complaint.

"I'd like to tell you what I have been hearing some people say, too, that they are displeased about.  If you forget your bill, which occasionally we are all going to do that, then they send a notice and tell you that you're past due and they're going to cut you off in three days.  Well, a lot of people are away for a week or two weeks.  Now, if you get that notice and you got your bill and you didn't pay it, and then they tell you they're going to cut you off in three days, you may have to wait until you get your check at the end of the week.  So that seems to me, and to them, it seems unfair that you'd do that.  I mean, most people as a rule don't forget their bill on purpose.  Because they live stressful lives and a busy life.  So, what they have said was that they think they need a little more time, when you send a notice to cut off, than three days."

Billy Brown amplified his mother's complaint.  "Lots of time those bills do not come in the mail until the 5th or 6th of the following month, and you've got four or five days to pay it," he said.  "There's been times when it comes almost on the 10th."  Brown argued that bills should be sent out sooner, so that people had more time to pay and "so that if there is some kind of fault in the mail system then you've got a full ten days to pay it."

Brown also complained about the size of his water bill, which showed that he had used 25,100 gallons in one month.  His conclusion was that someone was estimating usage or that there was something wrong with the system.  "There's very little common sense applied to this situation," he said, adding that his water bill for the last month was $107.

"The other thing I think would be a really good customer service," Brown added, "would be to monitor when someone's water use is out of line."  He suggested that the water department should tell people if their usage is considerably more than it normally had been.  "That's the kind of stuff that I would hope that we would be willing to do for our customers."

Sarah Locke then spoke, saying "I work at a bank, and, what he's talking about, we monitor accounts, and we've got hundreds of accounts at our bank, and if we get a transaction that isn't normal on an account" the bank notifies the customer.  "If we can do that at the bank, it would be easy to do at the water department."

Returning to the issue of mailing out bills, Mayor Weeks stated that "we have adjusted late charges when there would be problems with the mail.  And there have been problems with the mail, and the bills get sent out late.  And I've told Anita on occasion to waive the late charge, and we've done that."

When someone in the audience asked why the bills couldn't "be sent out earlier than they are now," Anita Battles responded, "I send them out the last day of each month.  That's what I was told to do when I come here.  That's what we have to do, because I have to close out each month before we start on another one.  If I sent those bills out on the 25th and money started coming in, it would be for the next month.   You can't keep it straight."

In the discussion that followed, Sarah Locke said, of the attitude with which Anita Battles had dealt with customer complaints, "She was hateful."

At last, Mayor Weeks tried to bring the discussion to a conclusion.  "Let me say this.  There's not a person in this board that doesn't want to see good customer service.  Nobody elected here, nobody sitting here at this table, that doesn't want to see good customer service and see you folks satisfied, and we're willing to do whatever it takes to get that.  The problems that you bring up, my question, though, is, are they not correctable?  Are these things that we can correct with what we have in place right here?  Now, I think there are several things that you guys have touched on tonight that we, the board, need to look at, and maybe we just need to do a whole general review of our policies and procedures, customer service operations.

"I would like to see, and I don't know whether you guys want to go along with this or not, but I would like to see an advisory panel to sit down and let's write down some of these things that we want to see corrected.  Not only corrected, but how do we go about correcting them.  And let's look at those and see if we can't get those things in motion and make some improvements here.  You know, let's set some timetables on getting this done.  You know, if we've got problems here as far as customer service, let's have some directives on what we're going to do to correct that, and what we expect and when we expect it.

"So, would any of you folks be willing to serve on an advisory panel, and lets get some of these things written down, and address some of them, and get things done?  Does the board think that would be something that we could do?'

There was general assent from the board members, then Alderman Martin said, "You know, we had talked about that before.  Setting regulations in place so that we could do performance reviews and stuff like that, which is what we should do, and we've not done that.  And that's where we as a board apologize to you, because we should have already had those things in place because we did talk about that but we never put it in place and we certainly want to.  We are servants out the people, and we want to get you good service.  We want you treated respectfully.  When you walk into this office you should be treated respectfully.  There's no reason why you shouldn't be, because I am a customer service representative, and if I don't have the right customer service to my customers then, like you, I don't have a customer.  And it's a little bit different in Anita's case because you, y'all need our water, because you don't have any other alternative right now.  But we do have the right to treat you with dignity, respect, we have the right to answer your questions.  We may not know the right answer or have a solution, but, and I know she wants to give you the right answer and give you a solution, and it may be where we have fallen short by not giving her directions in how to do that and how to go about that.  Because that's one of the things that we had talked about, Charles, and we did not get that in place.  So we're at fault for that."

"Well, we are just voicing our opinions," Peyton Allen said.  "We're wanting action taken.  And that's about as harsh as you can get right there.  But we want to wake some people up.  That's the reason the petition was signed, and that's the reason we're here tonight.  You know, like I said, nobody wants to see anybody losing their job.  We just want to see the customer service improved."

The audience members then resumed their complaints, with Susan Allen reiterating her assertion that "I don't use 29,000 gallons.  I didn't water my grass, I don't have a garden, I don’t wash my car at home.  Yes, I took a shower every day, and I probably did two or three loads in the dishwasher, and washed clothes as I needed them.   I don't waste water, but I don't conserve it, either.  I use it when I need it.  But I didn't use 29,000 gallons."

Sarah Locke's complaint was even more stark.  "I didn't use 4,100 gallons of water last month," she said.  "I live by myself.  I don't even take a bath, I take a shower.  I don't even wash clothes anymore.  I don't do nothing.  I mean, how is that possible?"

Mayor Weeks again attempted to bring the discussion to a close.  "Well, again, I think this is something that we can bring up and address with an advisory panel.  If any of you would be willing to serve on that panel, we would be more than happy to have you, and it might even be that we want to have a meter-reading course in this thing here.  I guarantee you, if my water bill is running as high as some of your guys are, I'm going to be checking behind that man and making sure that the bill is correct."

Sarah Locke then observed that they were already doing that, but to no avail.  "We're taking pictures with the date on it right after he does it, and we can come up here and she has what he read it as, what he turned in, and it's already different from what she had pictures of."

In the renewed discussion Raymond Butler insisted that he had actually read the meters in question.

"How'd you read mine?" one woman asked.  "I can't even read mine."

"WD-40," Butler responded shortly.  "Sprayed it on."

"It was fogged inside," the woman said.

"No," Butler insisted, "it ain't fogged up inside."

"It was fogged up on the inside," the woman said, her voice rising.  "You could not read that at 11:00 o'clock in the day, that's the exact time you were there."
After still more discussion, Billy and Joyce Brown, Peyton Allen, Jerry Wilbanks, and Sarah Locke all agreed to serve on the advisory panel.  When it was suggested that the panel meet at 6:00 on the evening of the November board meeting, Lucy Martin produced some laughter when she said, "We may want to meet before then so that we can get some kind of action plan in place, though.  You don't want to wait another month if y'all are having a lot of these complaints.  Because I don't want to have to face this kind of crowd again."  It was then agreed that the advisory panel would meet at 6:00 p.m. the following Tuesday, October 23.

But even this did not end the discussion, which turned back to the subject of when bills were being sent out.  Battles continued to insist that mailing out bills any earlier would create impossible bookkeeping problems for her.  "If I mail them before, like, if I mail them like the 27th or the 28th, by the 29th they'd go to paying, and the 30th, and I'd have to hold that money then because it can't be posted."  This assertion drew expressions of incredulity from several audience members, then on-call employee Linda Samples, who fills in when Battles is absent, made an attempt to defend her fellow employees.

"I've been up here," she began, "I've seen what comes in the door, heard it on the phone.  If a mad dog comes at you, you're going to defend yourself.  And we have got people that call and threaten.  They come into the door with a growl, and they don't shut up growling until they go walk out the door.  I've not seen any of them up here tonight, but there are people that come in that office, that one back there, asking questions, that all they have to do is stop and look at the bill and ask a question, not jump on either one of us or Raymond, or whoever happens to be in that office.  And what goes on in the office is an eight-hour, nine-hour, ten-hour job every day.  It's not something that you sit there and file your fingernails or paint your toenails—"

Susan Allen interjected, "I'm not disputing what she said, but the day that I came up here he stood there and shook his finger in my face.  I was sitting in a chair, she was dealing with another customer.  I had not opened my mouth or said a word—"

Samples  continued, as though Allen had not spoken.  "—that people will come in there, with an attitude.  It's our fault the water is dirty.  It's our fault that you've used that much.  It's our fault 'cause you're not paying your bill on time."

After considerably more conversation, Peyton Allen remarked, "but when the next person walks in the door, you can't take your aggression out on that customer.  You've got to forget about what has already happened previously."

Samples, however, was having none of that.  "I still say that, until somebody walks in your shoes, my shoes, or whatever, they're saying it's not done right, they don't know whether it's right or wrong."

Finally, an hour and thirty-five minutes after it started, Mayor Weeks brought the meeting back to the agenda.  "All right," he said, after knocking on the table several times to calm down the considerable crosstalk, "We've got a rate increase we need to go over and talk about here."  He said that the board had agreed at its previous meeting "to maintain the minimum bill at $12 and increase the rate forty cents per thousand."  He then asked for a motion to approve the second reading of that proposal.  The motion was made by Burl Sutton and seconded by Jeff Coln and passed unanimously.  "All right," Weeks said, "that will go into effect November 1."

That was the last of the business for the water department meeting, but it was a full five minutes before the crowd had cleared out and calmed down enough for Weeks to say, "I call the city meeting to order."


Town Board Meeting

After the minutes of the October board meeting were read and approved unanimously, Mayor Weeks reported on the situation regarding concessions at the city park.  "I have been in touch with the Coke Company out of Corinth, and we have completed an application where we can sell drinks through the concession stand.  However, we're going to have to sign a contract with Coke that gives them exclusive rights to selling their product down there in order for them to provide us with a scoreboard and that sort of thing.  And I told them that I didn't have any problem submitting the credit application where we could get set up on that, but the contract, I wanted to the board to approve that before we did it.  I think it's just a formality, we could get it out at any time we wanted to if, you know, if we had problems, but it's got a clause in here, 'Parties have a right to cancel the agreement with a 30 days written notice."  The mayor then asked city attorney Craig Kennedy to review it.

As Kennedy was doing so, Weeks spoke to one of the few people who had not departed at the end of the water department meeting.  "Sir, did you want to—"

"I was just wondering," the man began, "you said something about a grant to put in a well?"

"Yes, sir," Weeks responded.

"And can we get one from the government?"

"We can apply for one," the mayor replied.  "We were turned down a couple of years ago.  A couple years ago we applied for one and were turned down.  The problem with that is that it's just going to pay, like, $500,000 of the cost, and the city would have to pick up the rest of it.  And I think the estimated cost for putting down a well at that time was in excess of 1 1/2 million dollars.  So, we didn't feel that we were financially able to do that at the time.  It would be, probably, even higher than that.  That's just the cost of putting the well in.  You have to also look at maintaining it, and you're going to have to hire more people to take care of it and that sort of thing."
 Kennedy, having looked over the concession agreement, then said, "You can terminate on 30 days notice.  It doesn't say it in here, but typically if you do that they have the right to come back and get the scoreboard, but, I don't know if they ever would come back and get a scoreboard and their equipment, and I don't know about a scoreboard, I guess it depends on how quick you did it.  It does provide in here about the 20 ounce drinks, and I don't know whether they're implying by that that you have to buy the 20 oz. drinks.  That may be what you want to do, I don't know.  Because it talks about that in Coke products, but then it turns around and talks specifically.  Maybe that's just something extra that's going to lock in that price."

Kennedy also pointed out that "it says if we leased the ballpark to somebody, or somebody is going to have a tournament, they've got to use Coke products as well.  This is for the park itself, it's gotta have Coke products there."  The mayor then said, "I need you guys to let me know if you want me to sign this contract," and a motion to that effect was made, seconded, and passed unanimously, as was a motion to pay the bills.

Alderman Burl Sutton then addressed the personnel problem which had dominated the water department meeting earlier that evening.  "I think we need to put both of them [Anita Battles and Raymond Butler] on probation for two weeks.  Let's straighten up, or move out.  I was in business for forty-something years, and the customer is right.  You know, you don't cut a customer off.  It's aggravating.  I think they should be put on probation for a couple of weeks.  If they don't get better, then we need to get somebody else."

Mayor Weeks said he thought that the town should wait until it had heard from the newly appointed advisory panel, and Kennedy pointed out that any decision about water department personnel would need to be made by the water board, rather than by the town board.  "You just closed the water meeting.  When you close the water meeting and open the regular meeting, you can't go back into water business at that point.  And what you're trying to do is the water department business.  This board can't take action on that at a regular meeting."

One of the aldermen then asked, "Do we have the authority to reappoint our fire chief?" [The fire chief is Elvis Butler, brother of Raymond Butler.]

"Do we have a fire board now?" Kennedy asked.  When told there was no fire board, Kennedy said, "Well, I'll have to go back and look to make sure that nothing has changed in the meantime, but I would think that if this board had that authority then, they would have that authority now, unless something has changed."

The same alderman continued, "—because I've asked him to come, and he refuses to come to the meetings.  We need to know, we should know, what's going on each month, and we don't know.  I have no idea what's going on."

"You want me to check and see if this board has the authority to—" Kennedy began.

"—to remove him," the alderman said, completing Kennedy's sentence for him.

There was some discussion of problems in the fire department during Elvis Butler's tenure as chief, and then the meeting was adjourned.



Town Board Meeting

18 September 2007

Water Rates

Eastview water customers are facing a hike in rates which may come as early as November.

Mayor Charles Weeks informed the town board at its September meeting that "We've got a rate increase, from Selmer.  We've gone from $1.61 per thousand to $1.85 per thousand, and we're going to have to look at doing some rate adjustment, cost cutting, or a combination of the two, to break even, to stay where we are."  Eastview is one of several communities in McNairy County which have no water system of their own and purchase water from Selmer.

"All right," the Mayor said.  "Selmer went up 24 cents.  We've got to figure out how we're going to recoup this."  He told the board that he had "run the numbers to see what we can do," and he had come up with a couple of proposals for dealing with the problem.  The first option, which he called Plan A, calls for increasing the water rate by 40 cents per thousand gallons.  This would allow the town to leave the minimum bill (for customers who use 2,000 gallons or less in a month) unchanged and would produce enough revenue to cover Selmer's rate increase as well as the water loss the town experiences every month from leaks and flushing the water lines. "So that's one option.  What would it do to our customers?  The average water bill would go from $26.54 to $28.12, with a 40 cents per thousand increase."

Weeks then explained "Plan B," which entailed increasing the rate by ten cents per thousand and making up the difference by decreasing town services, primarily by cutting back on the hours worked by town employees.  "One of the things we can look at," he explained, would be to "cut our office hours to 1:00 to 5:00."  As a part of this, "we could have call forwarding to Raymond [the water department's Raymond Butler], where the calls coming in would go to his cell phone up until one o'clock.  And any emergencies and things like that could be handled in that way."  Altogether, Plan B "would save us about $1,200 a month in salaries and payroll taxes and workman's compensation."

When Alderman Lucy Martin and other board members voiced doubts that the town's employees would take kindly to having their jobs (and salaries) reduced to part-time, Mayor Weeks explained his reasoning. "Well, what you're going to run into when you go up on these rates," he said, is that some customers will be asking "did we look at ways that we could save expenses?"

Martin then asked, "Do we have to go up right away?"

"They've already gone up on us," Weeks replied.  "They [Selmer] went up on us and didn't even notify us."  Weeks said that he went to talk to Selmer Mayor David Robinson  about the lack of notice, "but as soon as I got up there he pulled this agreement and I read it.  They don't have to tell us anything.  Any time they raise their rates in Selmer they can raise our rates without notifying us.  And I told him I didn't like that part."

Alderman Burl Sutton observed that "if we go with this Plan A, here, you're only going to raise it [the average bill] $2 a month."

"That's not going to raise the minimum customer any," Weeks replied. "Out of 787 customers, we have 172 that use 2,000 gallons or less.  So the majority of them are going to be getting hit with an increase.  This is if the average increase is based on what our average, it says right here, average customer use is 5,956 gallons a month, and average customer charge is $26.54.  By adding that 40 cents to it, it's going to take the average bill up to $28.12, plus tax."

Martin raised the possibility of implementing the increase gradually.  "Is there any way you can get around not raising it that much to begin with, and then, you know, maybe in six months raise it up a little bit more?"  Alderman Bobby Hunter expressed the view that it would be better to raise the rate one time and get it over with.

Sutton asked, "Have they started charging us immediately?"

"Oh, yeah," Weeks replied, "they've already charged us.  Two months."

"We need to start [charging] in October ourselves, then," Sutton said.

"I don't think we can," the mayor said.  "I believe we've got to have two readings.  It will be November, will be our earliest we can start."

Hunter asked if Selmer's new rate "is subject to go up every year?"

"It can go up every year," Weeks replied.

"We can't operate in the red," Hunter observed.  "No way."

Alderman Jeff Coln said he thought Plan A was the town's best bet, and Mayor Weeks asked if there was a motion to adopt Plan A, which he summarized thusly: "That's an increase of 40 cents per thousand without reduction of services and keeping the minimum bill as it is."  The motion was made by Burl Sutton and seconded by Lucy Martin and passed unanimously.

To this point the town board had been meeting in its capacity as the town water board.  The water board meeting was then adjourned and the town board meeting was called to order.



Water Department Truck

Mayor Weeks informed the board that the settlement of the town's insurance claim on the water department vehicle which had been totaled in an accident August 8 had yet to be finalized, owing in part to some confusion regarding which of two different insurance companies had responsibility for covering the loss.  In the meantime, the mayor said, "we're still without a truck."
"We went ahead and ordered us a truck, didn't we?" asked Burl Sutton.

"Well, I wanted to run that by you," the mayor replied.  He explained that the town had gotten a good offer "directly from Ford.  It's for a 2008, for a price of $13,990.  Again, it's a fleet number price, a contract price.  We get V-8, automatic transmission, and a towing package."

That price, the mayor added, is about $3,000 cheaper than any of the other bids the town received.  But there was a down side to the deal: the vehicle would be coming directly from Ford Motor Company, and "we're looking at six to eight weeks delivery."

That is a problem, Bobby Hunter said, because Raymond Butler has said he would no longer use his personal vehicle to read meters.  After the accident, Butler had agreed to use his own vehicle until the water department truck was replaced, and he had been receiving mileage payment at the rate of  48.5 cents a mile. "We paid Raymond his first installment for his mileage, it was $442.71," Mayor Weeks said.  That payment was for "about three weeks, and he's probably got close to that much more."

Jeff Coln asked if the town could "go back to the insurance company and see if they will rent us a vehicle?"

Town attorney Craig Kennedy said "If the vehicle is totaled, they don't have to pay any rental."

Since Butler had said that he would no longer use his personal vehicle, several board members jokingly suggested that he take the next couple of months off until the new vehicle arrived.

The mayor brought the discussion back to purchasing the truck from Ford Motor Company. "Is everyone in agreement that we go this route?" he asked.  Sutton made a motion to do so, which was seconded by Hunter and passed unanimously.

The board members then briefly discussed the possibility of renting or leasing a truck until the new one is received before moving on to other matters.



Annexation

The board next heard from Ronny Neal, from the state's Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS), who spoke to the group for more than half an hour about the process and procedures of annexation. 

"I don't know how many of you were in office in 1998," he began.  "In 1998 the Tennessee legislature passed a bill that you'll hear people talk about as 1101.  And what that was, that was Public Chapter 1101 under the Public Acts of 1998.  The legislature had gotten tired of refereeing between the cities and counties, so they came up with a plan to require, and they did, it worked, there's been very few city county fights since this passed.  In 1998 every county and city in Tennessee had to adopt urban growth boundaries, and you can annex within your urban growth boundaries by ordinance.  Which means that this board comes up with a plan of services, comes up with the area that they want to annex, and you do it by ordinance.  Now, a citizen that's in that annex area can file a law suit if they file it within thirty days of the passage of the ordinance, and that stops it until it's heard in court.  But one of the big changes they made was that citizen has the burden of proof, of proving that the annexation was unreasonable.  Now the lawyers tell me that who has the burden of proof, that that makes a big difference in a law suit.  So they have to prove, when you annex that way they have to prove that you are being unreasonable, instead of you having to prove that your annexation is reasonable.
   
"I went over to the state planning office today and I was hoping I could get a better plan than this, but this is your portion of the urban growth boundaries," Neal said, displaying a drawing to the group.  "So that is the only area that you can annex in by ordinance.  The only way that anything can be annexed outside that area would be through referendum, without reconvening the coordinating committee, which means a group in McNairy County of about twenty people.  It's outlined under the law, the mayor of each county, the county mayor, the county mayor appoints about four people, somebody from the school board, somebody from the largest utility, somebody from the Chamber of Commerce.  Because of the number of cities y'all have, it's a committee of about twenty people.  And you have to submit plans to increase your urban growth boundaries over this [waving at the map], if you wanted to annex something up here, you can't do that because it's not in your urban growth boundary, unless you do it by referendum or unless you go back through the whole process of reconvening the coordinating committee, they call it, and then that opens it up for every city in the county to do that.

"Under this law, every bit of land in a county had to be put in a, it was either already in a city, it had to be put in an urban growth boundary, it could be put in a planned growth area, which was an area that somebody thinks might be a city some day, or it had to be put in a rural area.  Now a lot of people talked about this being a smart planning thing for Tennessee, and they compared it to some places like Oregon and Washington, where they've had what they call smart planning, which is basically trying to control sprawl and growth.  This really wasn't that kind of a plan.  I've told some people, looks like to me it was a divide up the county law, is what it actually became.  But, anyway, that is the short of annexation.

"So in your case, without reconvening the coordinating committee, you can only annex in these dark gray areas that surround your city."

Neal next produced a much larger map, which he spread out on the table before the town board.  "Now, this is a property tax map of the city, now, and this shows every parcel of land in the city and, hopefully, around the city.

"What you were supposed to do when you came up with this urban growth boundary, is you were supposed to come up with a plan that you could see twenty years in the future and project that that would be an area that would need your city services and need to be a part of the city over the next twenty years.

"Now, let me say this, too.  There was a change in the law, used to be when a city annexed an area where there was beer tax or sales tax coming in, as soon as the annexation was final the city started getting that revenue and the county lost it.  Under this 1101, the county would continue to receive any beer tax or any sales tax, local sales tax, for fifteen years.  Now, hopefully there would be growth, but what happens is, is that you basically guarantee that.  If you annexed an area that had a, say, a convenience store in it that had been paying the county $200 a month in sales tax, then what the state department of revenue is going to do is, they're going to do is they will send you the sales tax that is collected from that account, but then you're going to have to pay the county $200 a month, and they would get that for fifteen years.  The same thing with beer tax.  Now the good part about that is, you do get the growth.  I mean, if that business continues to grow, if they suddenly start generating $300 a month in sales tax, you're going to get the $300, but you're going to have to pay the county $200.  And that happens if any business opens within four months of the annexation.  The one thing we tell cities is, if you've got somebody that's going to put in a commercial area out here somewhere, and you're going to provide them with services, then you ought to think seriously about annexing that area before it is opened, so that you don't lose the sales tax in the future."

Mayor Weeks observed that that would not be a problem with the annexation Eastview was contemplating. "In the areas we're talking about there aren't any businesses at all."

Neal continued. "Once you look at the areas, normally what you'd want to do is an annexation study, which looks at roughly how many people you're going to bring in.  Do y'all have a property tax?  [Several board members said it did not.]  Well, that's not a consideration, but you look at what you're going to have to provide them in services, because you're going to have to come up with a plan of services, which talks about what you're going to do about zoning, and police protection, and solid waste collection, and fire protection, and all of those kinds of services a city provides its citizens.  You have to lay out in writing how you're going to do that in the annexed area.  If you've got, and you probably don't, but if you've got an area that doesn't have water services now, you would have to put in the plan of services how soon you anticipate getting out there with water, and when you would provide that.  Now under the law today, under 1101, we've always had to do a plan of services.  Used to, you could do a plan of services, and if you didn't do what you said nobody could do anything about it.  Today, if you say in a plan of services, 'We'll provide water within two years to that area,' and you don't do it, then they can go to court and sue you and the judge can order you to put in the water.  So you have to be careful about providing these services, and how you're going to do it, and what you're going to do.  And you ought to do whatever you say you're going to do."

Alderman Sutton observed that "this area that we're talking about has already got water, it has sewers, it's got fire protection."

Neal continued.  "Well, you're supposed to provide the newly annexed areas with comparable services to what you already provide the city.  And you get a certain amount of time to do that.  If they're already getting all of that, you know one of the things that we look at lot of the times is that cities, when they extend their fire protection out to an annexed area, maybe they go from an I.S.O. rating of 9 down to a 6 or a 7.  Well, what we see in a lot of cities is that a lot of people wind up saving as much on their, they'll save more on their insurance on their homes than they'll pay in city taxes.  But if they've already got water, and they've already got your fire department, you know that's probably not going to change.  But that may be something they're already getting that justifies you going out there, because you're already providing that service and they're not participating.

"Of course, once you do the annexation then you'll do a special census on that area, and if you get it done by May 15, then starting on July 1 you would get the state-shared taxes on that number of people, which last year was about $108 per person.  So that would be to your advantage if you're going to take in several people certainly to get that done by May 15 so you can do that census."
Alderman Coln said, "What we're taking in is houses.  No businesses, no additional income to the city.  So what would that do to us as far as keeping the roads up?"

Mayor Weeks responded, "It would be additional income because of the increase in population, it's my understanding—"

Neal continued the mayor's thought: "It's about $108 per person this past year.  Of course, to do this we'll need to nail down, there should be a better map over at the county that shows exactly where this line is.  If this line is to the inside right of way of this road, then what you would do, is you would be taking in to that road, but not taking in that road, so you would have the people and the property, but the county would still own the road.  But any roads that you take in that are now county roads, they automatically become city streets."

Alderman Robbins then observed, "There would be bridges on those roads," which the city would have to maintain.

"Bridges are a real problem for a city your size," Neal acknowledged.

"One thing you'd want to do," Neal said, "and I can help you with this, and do it real quick.  We can come out here, we can measure the roads, we can see what kind of shape they're in.  We can have an engineer in our office prepare a projection of what it would cost."

"I would think that's what we need to do," Alderman Coln said.

Town attorney Kennedy asked Neal what else MTAS's study would provide.

Neal replied, "we come out and look at the area, and count the houses, and normally see how much property tax that area would bring in, but since y'all don't have a property tax that's not, of course, a part of it.  We can measure the roads, and see how many roads y'all are going to wind up taking in in an area."

Neal then asked, "Do y'all have a planning commission?"

Alderman Hunter replied, "No.  We tried that one time, and people didn't want to get rid of their pigs and cows, and stuff like that."

Neal said, "They don't have to.  You know, a lot of people .…"

"They thought they did," Hunter interjected.

"Well, sure," Neal replied.  "But, you know, one of the things you might want to think about is, at the very least, subdivision regulations.  And then you don't let people put in subdivisions on gravel roads.  You make them, if they want to put in a subdivision and don't want to build the roads, then they have to pay to build the proper roads to start with."

Neal explained that "with subdivision regulations you make the developer do that, and when you take it over you're taking over a street that's in good shape that you've got to worry about maintaining ten or twelve years from now, hopefully.  Otherwise, you're making everybody else who's already been here pay for somebody to develop property and then sell it.  Now, if you want a lot of people to do that, then there certainly is a way to do that, too, if you can afford it."

Lucy Martin said, "I think what we need to do is get the engineer down here and see what we're looking at and then we'll see costs versus profits, and see if it actually pays for us."

Sutton ventured a guess about the numbers the annexation would involve. "Just driving over and estimating, some of the people, it'd be about three times what we've got in the city, population wise."

Neal said, "Well, we can count some of those houses, certainly, and I think in Tennessee it's an average of about 2.3 people per house, we could say that, which should be close."

Because of other commitments, Neal said "it will be a couple of months, probably, before I could actually get down here and actually look at it.  If you're in a big hurry we can try and do it quicker, but if you're not in a real big hurry, especially if you think the county is about to blacktop some of those roads—"

"I don't see any rush on any of it," Mayor Weeks said.

Alderman Sutton agreed: "City's been here forty-three years and hasn't done nothing, so another month or two …"

Mayor Weeks then asked, "Is there a lot of opposition when you start to do something like this?  You mentioned the law suits that are filed in thirty days."

"It just depends," Neal replied.  "You know, we could do the study, we could prepare the ordinance, we could have it all ready to go, and then under the law you'd have to have a public hearing.  I've been to some places where the people weren't so mad that they were going to be annexed, they were mad that they didn't know anything about it.  So, once we actually get down here and start, once we start looking around there, then certainly I would encourage y'all as board members to talk to some of those people in those areas and see what they think about it.  And let them know that you're looking at it, that they're already getting your fire protection, they're already getting your water, they're already using the park here, they're already using the community center, that they've got all the benefits of the city and they're not a part of it.  So, usually you see it, I see lots of opposition when cities that have zoning want to take in areas that don't have zoning.  When cities have high property tax rates.  You know, if I'm sitting over here just outside the city limits and I've already got your fire protection and I've got your water, and I can come over here and use the park, why would I want to pay a dollar tax rate, or something, if that's what you had over here, if I'm already getting it all.  So we see opposition there.  And then, you never know, you never know.  I've been to some that it's got real hot."

Sutton said, regarding the people who would be annexed, "I can't see it's going to cost them anything."

Neal then said, "Mayor, let me ask you this.  Do you charge an outside person more for water than you do an insider?"

"No," Weeks said.

Neal said, "You see, most cities do."

"Selmer's supposed to be doing that," Hunter observed.

"They are," Neal confirmed.  I mean, I know that they have a rate like that.  And I know that they've been looking at their rates.  I don't know whether they've actually raised them or not.  I do know that we helped them with a rate study over there.  It really was a matter of when and how much, not if.  So I don't know if they've actually done it yet or not, but I assume they have.

"But," he said, drawing the discussion back to Eastview's situation, "that's an advantage, that's something to look at.  You can charge a higher rate outside the city than inside the city.  Another thing, I don't know what y'all charge someone to hook on to your water, but I still go to a lot of cities where they're not even charging what it really costs."

Several board members said they charge about $300, but Neal said that the actual cost to the town was probably twice that amount.

"So that's something to certainly look at.  But, again, a higher rate outside the city, but I mean if I'm living in some of these areas I'm getting all the benefits of the city, and the city's really not getting anything from me."

Robbins asked, "Are there still a lot of cities that don't have a property tax?"

"It's probably about the same as it's always been," Neal replied.  "From time to time in the legislature there has been a move to make cities" collect property taxes, since "some of the legislators think, 'Why should we send $108 to a city that's not taxing itself?'  And so, in fact, in 1101, if you started a city tomorrow, you would have to charge as much in property taxes as you get from the state, or you would not get your state money.  And there's been talk from time to time about extending that to cities, but I don't know that that will ever happen.  Because, while it sounds bad, I think the total figure is maybe $1.8 million that they're sending to cities that don't have property taxes.  So, while it's quite a few cities, it's not a whole lot of money in the whole scheme of things."

And on that note Neal made his departure, promising to come back in a couple of months to help the town with its survey.



Other Business

In other business the board unanimously approved payment of water department bills (on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Robbins) unanimously approved the reading of the minutes from the last board meeting (on a motion by Hunter, seconded by Robbins), and unanimously approved the payment of bills (on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Coln).

The mayor reported that the fire department had still not received quotes for all the equipment and repairs that it had requested last month, though fire chief Elvis Butler had told the mayor that he would be able to get the pipe poles the department needed for about $300.  Money for these purchases would come, at least in part, from Eastview's portion of the county's fire department grant, which this year will amount to $3,808.  Weeks said that he had written to County Mayor Jai Templeton requesting the money, but it had not yet been received.

The board also discussed at some length the problem of "raw sewage" on the ground and in the ditch near the city park.  "What are we going to do about this sewer stench?" Alderman Sutton asked, saying that it was coming from the Junction.  At length the board instructed town attorney Kennedy to write letters to the owners of businesses on both sides of the highway advising them to clean up the problem.




Town Board Meeting

21 August 2007

Like everyone else in McNairy County, Eastview’s town board members were thinking about the drought when they met at the civic center Tuesday evening.

Mayor Charles Weeks raised the issue by asking the aldermen what they thought could be done when people were seen watering their yards.  He said that he thought the town had taken steps to cut down on usage when the water department put a note on last month’s bills asking people to conserve. “But we had record sales the following month,” he said to general laughter.  He then jokingly suggested that the town put a note on the next month’s bills saying “Just use all you want to.”

Right now, the mayor said, it’s left up to individuals to cut back on water usage, “but is there some kind of directive that we need to put out there, and steps that we need to take to try to deal with this problem?  And legally, how do we enforce it?  That’s my question.  If somebody just flat out refuses?”

The mayor added that “We’ve got people complaining about their water bills, and you drive by their houses and they’ve got the greenest yards in town.  You know why their water bills are high.  Is there any way we can enforce a policy on somebody like that?”

Town Attorney Craig Kennedy said that Selmer was facing similar problems, and about all that was being done there was to ask people not to use water for non-essential purposes and hope that they comply.  “We’re going to have a real problem here, as far as enforcement, because what are you going to do with them?  You don’t have a city court to cite them in.”  He concluded that, “as a practical matter, you just need to ask them not to do it.”

The mayor then asked what the members thought about sending out a letter asking for conservation.  Alderman Lucy Martin replied, “I don’t know that you need to put it in a letter.  Anybody that’s got any sense knows that you shouldn’t water your yard, and no gardens are left.”  Besides, she said, observing that Eastview has more than 800 water customers, “think about how much it would cost to mail out letters at 41 cents apiece.”

In the end, Alderman Burl Sutton suggested just leaving things as they were, and the board took further action to curb water usage.

The board then approved, in each instance by unanimous voice votes, the water report, the minutes of the July board meeting (with the correction of the spelling of the name Philpot), and the payment of bills, all on motions by Alderman Billy Hunter, and all seconded by Alderman Jessie Robbins.

The board also heard from Water Department employee Raymond Butler regarding the accident he was involved in several weeks earlier which resulted in extensive damage to the water department’s truck.  Butler said that he was turning into a driveway to set a water meter when the accident happened.  “I started to turn in.  All I heard was tires squalling, and the next thing I knew I was spun around in the driveway.”  He was unhurt, but he told the board that the woman driving the other vehicle was injured in the crash.  “It busted her nose and bruised her shoulder,” Butler said.

“I’ve got a witness that seen everything,” Butler said, adding that the witness “says she run over me.”  He said that he had “sent out the stuff we’re supposed to send, and we’re waiting on the [police] report to get back.  We’re waiting on her insurance to see what they want to do.”

Mayor Weeks told the board that “We only have liability insurance, so if she’s not at fault we’re just lost on that,” but if she is at fault her insurance will pay for the damages to the truck.   “Regardless of that,” the mayor said, “we got to make a decision on what route we’re going to take as far as replacing the truck or fixing that one.  Right now Raymond is having to drive his own vehicle,” and the town is paying him mileage.

Jessie Robbins said he had looked at the truck and the damages were such that “if it was me I’d total it out.  I don’t know what the rest of this board would do.  I’d buy another truck, myself,” he added, pointing out that the truck was ten years old and had more than 100,000 miles on it.  Alderman Jeff Coln agreed.

Alderman Billy Hunter asked what needed to be done to replace the truck, and the mayor said that the town needed to advertise in the paper and take bids.  “I don’t think we need anything fancy,” he said.

“Where do we get the money to buy a truck?” Alderman Lucy Martin asked.  “We didn’t budget for that, and it’s kind of expensive, you know.”

Town Attorney Craig Kennedy answered, “It has to be out of the water department.”

The mayor suggested that the town hold a special called meeting in two weeks to make a decision, and the board voted unanimously, on a motion by Robbins, seconded by Hunter, to advertise in the paper for bids on a new truck.

Mayor Weeks informed the board that the town needed to adopt a new driver’s license policy showing that the town “is using due diligence” to ensure that everyone who drives a town-owned vehicle has a valid driver’s license and does not have excessive traffic violations.  This has been requested by the town’s insurance carrier, TML, and the proposal is that the town keep on file a record of all traffic citations for the past 36 months, as well as driver’s license and social security numbers.

Fire Chief Elvis Butler said that there might be some difficulty getting his firemen to release their social security numbers because of fear of identity theft.  All of them are “evac trained,” and Butler said he didn’t understand why TML would push for driver’s license and social security numbers for his firemen because TML knows that his people have to have good driving records in order to be evac certified.

Asked how many volunteer firemen the town had, Butler said there were 14 altogether, “but only about seven you can depend on.  We’ve got some that haven’t been to a call for over two years.”   Butler said “Most of my firemen are from other fire departments.  We don’t have anybody in Eastview that wants to be a fireman.  They want to, ‘til they go to a fire.  And then after they go to a fire, after one or two times, it’s too cold, too wet, too late at night.  And, they want their equipment, but they don’t want to come.  They want the gear, but they don’t want to come.”

When asked by Mayor Weeks whether he had any needs that he needed to bring before the board, Butler replied “Yes.  We have need for some pipe poles.   I need two 12’ pipe poles.  I need a gauge for one of the trucks.  I’ve got a hydraulic cylinder that needs to be repaired.  I need some work done on our air compressor to fill up our bottles.”

The mayor asked him to get back with the board when he had prices on the items.

Eastview has applied for a grant for a 50% matching grant to fund $50,000 worth of improvements to the town’s recreational facilities.  Besides raising half of that amount, the city is also required to submit a five-year plan detailing the proposed improvements.

Steve Hunter, leader of the Parks Commission Program, presented a proposed five-year plan to the board.  The plan calls for the acquisition of 14 acres of land “behind civic center and adjoining City Park” and an additional acre “at Hwy. 57 for entrance to park.”  Also called for are improvements to the tennis courts, the playground area, the ball fields, walking trails, and improvements to the bathrooms and the concession stand, as well as the development of additional park facilities on the 14 new acres, “including a stage for festivals,” and the development of an entrance, a mini-park, and a nature trail on the additional acre on Hwy. 57.  Beyond 2013, the plan recommends that the board “consider employing a Recreation Director/Coordinator to guide programs and to coordinate the recreation facilities to ensure recreational opportunities for citizens of all ages.”

Hunter told the board he hopes to organize soft ball tournaments to raise money, which will come mostly from concessions sales, and that as a result they will need to make the concession stand secure, to which end he has gotten estimates from Hollingsworth Locksmith Service for security equipment for the park. The board discussed the options and adopted one of them by unanimous voice vote on a motion by Burl Sutton, seconded by Billy Hunter.

“Let’s get moving on it,” Mayor Weeks said.

Finally, Mayor Weeks said MTAS (Municipal Technical Advisory Service), a state agency which offers training for municipal board members, was prepared to offer “level one” training on a Friday and Saturday of the members’ choosing, and after some discussion the members agreed to hold the training on November 2-3 at the UTMB’s McNairy County facility.