By JESSE DAVIS
Some elected officials will receive a pay raise after City Council members passed an amendment to the salary ordinance at their meeting Tuesday night.
The alteration adds a 2.25-percent raise for the mayor, the clerk-treasurer and the judge in 2009. It would have also allotted the raise for council members, but they voted to freeze their own pay at this year’s level.
Originally, the council passed a salary ordinance with no raise for elected officials so if other city employees had to go without a raise, they would do the same. Since then, employees received a 2.25 percent raise for 2009.
The new salaries will be $74,669 for the mayor, $56,886 for the clerk-treasurer, $40,905 for the judge and $12,664 for council members.
Moving money
More than $95,000 in fund transfers were approved within the parks and recreation fund to allow department superintendent Sheri Howland to pay for bridge repair and other work.
Another $30,000 was transferred to pay for Douglas and Mullet Street bridge work and $75,575 was transferred to fund 25 percent of an infrastructure project as required by FEMA in order for a grant from the organization to cover the rest.
Several appropriations, mainly concerning refunds and reimbursement from other projects, were also approved.
A reimbursement of $12,556 from Clover Trails Corporation for costs related to the Plymouth Avenue bike path project was transferred to the economic development improvement tax (EDIT) fund for contractual services.
A $6,544 insurance refund was transferred to an aviation line in the same fund. The refund is for airport runway lights destroyed by a storm in August. And $939.03 in previously unappropriated cash was moved to a line in the budget for redevelopment.
The biggest appropriation was for $33,978 to fix a major leak in the roof of the Annex Building, which houses the city’s legal, building, stormwater, planning and engineering departments as well as the office of Community Development Director Mark Brinson.
Flashover training
Council members passed a resolution to allow the Goshen Fire Department to provide flashover training to other fire departments and charge them for participation.
They already trained other departments, but were forced to come up with their own ways to recoup costs, either by sharing them with the participating department or in other ways.
Now, they will charge $132 per firefighter with a minimum class size of seven.
Flashover is when everything in a room or area becomes so hot it all bursts into flames over a few seconds.
At the meeting, Assistant Fire Chief Jim Ramer called it a “non-survivable incident.” The training teaches firefighters to recognize the precursor signs that a flashout is going to happen so they can escape.
Zoning amendment
An amendment to part of the zoning ordinance was introduced and will now go to the Planning Department for review.
The amendment would change the wording of the ordinance to match the process the city has been using.
An ordinance of annexation for a six-acre parcel was tabled indefinitely due to several factors, including issues with a previous annexation. One of the main reasons was timing, as the city cannot annex any area in 2009.
Los Galanes
Mayor Allan Kauffman brought up the former Los Galanes Supermarket property, referring to the upcoming sheriff’s sale. The city has already received bids to have the rubble on the property hauled away, although it does not include demolition and removal of the remaining partial structure.
Kauffman suggested waiting to approve the bid until after the Nov. 28. If sold, Kauffman said, city officials could take action on the new owner.
Currently their action is restricted while the property is in a state of foreclosure and has no clear owner.
Kauffman also made a plea to residents to be patient with the street department this winter, as more sand and less salt will likely be used on roads due to the exponentially increasing cost of road salt.
He also said residents can expect more intersection salting where mid-blocks will not be entirely clear.
