Stan Haywood, mayor pro-tem of the city of Lanagan, told the rest of the council at its Dec. 9 meeting that the city's accounts payable is still being whittled down.
Haywood said the total of accounts payable has been reduced by about $20,000 in 2013. Total accounts payable as of the Dec. 9 meeting was about $57,000 with over $55,000 of that being owed to the Empire District Electric Co. Empire was owed over $60,000 at one time.
Haywood said he was "extremely proud" of the reduction in the debt.
Alderman Teresa Ezell presented policies on vacation and sick time for city employees. Ezell is drafting an employee policy and procedure handbook that will be discussed at the January meeting, but she said the vacation and sick time policies needed to be in effect by Jan. 1.
Ezell noted that city employees were still receiving benefits of full-time employees even though their hours had been cut back.
The council approved the policy where city employees will receive 35 hours of vacation time per year and 21 hours of sick time per year. The vacation hours would not be allowed to be carried over from year-to-year while sick time could be carried over for the following year.
The council also approved two ordinances. The first was for the vacating of the portion of Christeny Street laying south of Second Street. Haywood said the vacating of the street had been agreed to by a previous council, but had not been filed with the county.
The council also approved an ordinance enabling the city to forego an election if the number of candidates does not exceed the number seats up for election.
In other business, the council:
• noted that cases were near ready to be filed on some overdue water accounts;
• approved dropping people with overdue water accounts that cannot be located; and
• was told by David Willett that he will be burning brush at the city park during some nice days this winter.
General News on 12/18/2014