Divided Council Hires City Manager
The Monticello City Council hired Lathaydra Sands to be the new City Manager during its called meeting last Thursday with a 3-2 vote. The council also voted 3-2 for Ms. Sands’ salary to be $115,000 annually along with the standard benefits package that all city employees are offered.
Several citizens spoke in favor of Ronnie Cowan, whom some expressed was the most qualified based on his resume and credentials. The council was divided with Mayor Pro Tem Doug Currie, and Councilwoman Jenny Murphy voting in favor of Mr. Cowan and councilmembers David Wease, Cynthia Miller and Larry Thurman voting for Ms. Sands.
There was much discussion amongst the council when the vote for salary was on the table. Councilwoman Miller wanted to offer Ms. Sands the top of the pay range, $125,000. She made the comment that in the new budget one of the department heads makes $90,000 and that Ms. Sands would be over the entirety of the city. Several other members of council wanted to leave some room to grow and learn. After a failed motion for $100,000 annually failed with no second, Councilman Wease made the motion for $115,000 which passed 3-2, with Mr. Currie and Mrs. Murphy dissenting.
Mayor Gail Harrell expressed her thanks to Peggy Billerman, Interim City Manager, for her time and dedication, again, to the City of Monticello. She expressed her sincere thanks for Ms. Billerman coming back to serve the city and doing a wonderful job.
The council also voted to work on developing a pilot program for solar in the City of Monticello. This comes after Robert Jordan requested to install solar panels at his business. He is going to act as the “guinea pig” of sorts during this time where the council will meet to develop a pilot program to see what benefits and if there is any cost or loss to the city. The council is scheduled to have a called meeting today, July 7 to discuss this, the Chamber of Commerce Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and other items. That meeting begins at 10:30 a.m.
During the vote for the solar panels the motion had to be restated at least three times. Joe Reitman, the city attorney had to step in and navigate the confusion of the motions as there was clarification needed as to if the council was in favor of a pilot program versus making a time to discuss one. The result was that the council was in favor and a pilot program will be discussed at the special called meeting today. The council spoke to the public in attendance in regards to water outage updates. Per Waymon Cody, a water main was hit at the old Hardee’s lot that was not on the original grid. Once the issue was located it was determined that the main was on a very old system that needed to be upgraded for both water and sewer.
In addition, there was a leak from a broken valve in front of the courthouse that was repaired, but also caused disruption to citizens in the city. A general consensus from council after these events was that there needed to be a better way to inform the public of issues and outages. There was some discussion on a software system that could be used for these notifications.
The council also voted to get a quote from Brown Pelican to advise with the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) negotiations that the city will have with the county and Shady Dale. These negotiations typically occur every 10 years and the City of Monticello currently receives 28 percent of those taxes, according to discussions at the meeting.
