02/03/2010 Special Meeting

Special Meeting of City Officials

This was an early 8 a.m. meeting. It really played havoc on my normal morning routine to get to this meeting. I especially wanted to hear the discussion on the weed/grass ordinance proposal.

Here were the 3 items on the agenda, Little League Baseball Program Bids, Take Home Fleet Policy, and weed/grass ordinance.

The Little League Baseball program had 2 bids for the council to consider. Commissioner Brooks excused himself from voting because one of the bids was from a family member of his. It was stated that the bids were very close and after a short discussion the contract was awarded to Mr. Rodney Roe. The Mayor, Commissioner Fryman, and Horn voted yes. Commissioner Galbraith voted no.

Another item was the Police cruiser, Take Home Fleet Policy. This policy describes the do’s and don’ts to the police officers of Paris. Each officer will have to sign the policy in order to participate. At first there was slight confusion among the council about the contents of the policy.
They then decided because Chief Sutton had just been hired to go ahead with what was presented so all voted yes for the new policy. It was stated, come budget time this issue would be re-opened again.

The next item drug-out for over an hour discussing the high weed/grass ordinance. After sitting and listening to there discussions it became very apparent to me they hadn’t read the present ordinance. The questions they were asking each other about adding in the ordinance were already in the old ordinance. Here are some examples of things they wanted to add in the ordinance, send a letter to property owner, post a notice on the property, put the property owners name in the paper, etc.

They knew ahead of time this was going to be discussed in this special meeting, why didn’t each one of them take the time to know what was in the old ordinance before coming to a meeting to make changes in it??
One good thing they decided to add was a specific height because the old ordinance just said a reasonable height and that leaves it to an individual discretion.

I will say that the mayor was very vocal about saying, “ the city was very slow about responding to issues and this needed addressed as an internal issue.”

I also thank the mayor for allowing me to speak when I held my hand up. He allowed me to enter my thoughts about the city just enforcing the ordinance instead of letting it drag on the whole mowing season.

Until next time,