The City of Madison met on Monday, Aug. 17 with council members Daryl May, Tony Fankhauser, Kyle Engle, Terri King, Evan Casey and Mayor Paul Dean present. City Clerk Alice Grimm and Mark Hopkins were also present, as well as Theresa Hannigan (CPA) via Zoom.
After several complaints and conversations about minors operating golf carts/ UTVs on city streets, the council discussed the matter in detail in the past two meetings. It was left at the last meeting that residents would need to obtain permits for those types of vehicles and would need a valid driver’s license and insurance in order to be able to operate them.
Councilman May said that he would like to disallow the idea of requiring permits for golf carts and UTVs, as that would create a lot of paperwork and monitoring that he doesn’t think is necessary.
“I read the city’s ordinances, and it goes hand and hand with the state guidelines of having to be a licensed driver to operate one on city streets, so I think we just leave it alone,” said May.
Nobody on the council objected to his thoughts and indicated they were aware of a traffic stop by a deputy that included a minor driving a golf cart/UTV recently as the sheriff’s office was also aware of minors operating them. It was also noted that since the concern about minors driving them went public, traffic has slowed considerably.
In other business, City Clerk Grimm informed the council that a resident said that they paid cash in the night drop for their water bill but did not get credit for it. Grimm said staff verified everything and reviewed camera footage which noted staff hadn’t opened any envelopes with cash inside.
Mayor Paul Dean said the easiest way to keep this from happening again is to not accept cash payments in the drop box. If someone pays in cash, they will need to come inside, pay in person, and get a cash receipt.
The council agreed and signs have been placed on the drop box of the new rule.
The city’s accountant talked about the struggles they have had in reconciling bank records due to mistakes being made in inputting information and payments that were not being made after the city’s previous accountant, Mike Bartlow, passed away. They missed items because he always took care of them. They indicated there is no money missing, there were just mistakes on how things were being entered but they have since been rectified to make things easier going forward.
The council went into an executive session for five minutes about a financial affair. No action was taken.
A motion passed to have the water tower inspected and have gaskets replaced for $4,000.
They also approved to have the front doors of city hall repaired as they had been broken and a hazard for quite a while.
AAA Glass will replace them for a total of $1,485.
The council also held two five-minute executive sessions. The first was for legal consultation and the second was for security. No action was taken.
The meeting adjourned at 8:45 ap.m.
The Madison City Council also met on Tuesday, Sept. 8. Additional details pertaining to that meeting will be included in a future edition of The Eureka Herald.
