Sharon Board Votes to Spend $23,500 on Well Problems

Shannon Taylor, Editor

At the January 8 Sharon board meeting, Sharon Mayor Donna Stricklin stated that the city had recently applied for a park grant and they were awarded the grant, a CDBG grant, in the amount of $373,532. “They have worked on some things like the lighting, the basketball court, and possibly pickleball,” Stricklen commented.

Stricklen also discussed the sewer project completion on Highway 45. “It has been needed for years. Rogers Solution did a very good job on that and the only thing he said that they lacked is where they had to go across the sidewalk and the bridge and they did repair that,” Stricklen said.

Stricklen then discussed changing the utility billing from paper to cards. “I did the utility billing this past month and we went with full size paper instead of the cards. Postage is going to go up to $0.68 in a few weeks. Well then you have to fold the paper, which they bought a machine to fold it for them, but you still have to stuff it in an envelope and they’re not self-stick and then put a postage stamp on each one of them and it’s about 540 water bills,” Stricklen said.

Stricklen stated that money could be saved by going back to the postage cards. The board voted unanimously to change the bills back to cards.

Stricklen made a motion to amend the agenda due to a phone call she received regarding the number one well.

The motion was passed and Stricklen said that the number one well had been down for a while. “Carl Johnson is the one that put it in. Alten Heathcoat was our engineer. They were both here last week and they have come to the conclusion that the bearings had burnt up and I need authorization to get that well repaired,” Stricklen said.

The cost would be $13, 500. Johnson stated that the well was no longer under warranty, but that there was a possibility that the engineer could negotiate with him on the cost. "We have two wells working right now, but this is our brand new well and when the engineer called me he said he feels like this is an emergency and we need to vote to get this done,” Stricklen said.

The board voted to pay for it if the engineer could get the cost down.

Fire Chief and Interim Police Chief Gary Eddings gave his monthly reports for the Fire and Police Departments. For November and December, the Fire Department closed out the year with 60 calls for the year. The Police Department had 77 calls for service in November and 71 in December. “We’re in the process of closing out the violence crimes grant. We still have a couple more purchases to make. We’ve amended the contract and we have about $2,000 leftover and they want us to spend and use all the money,” Eddings said. 

Eddings said that they have a bid for a digital portable radio to go in a vehicle with a price of approximately $1,800, which Eddings said would cover the $2,000, however with the amendment, Eddings said that they want the Department to submit a new contract and Stricklin would need to sign off on it.

The new police vehicle went into service a few weeks ago. The explorer goes in for service sometime this week or next week, according to Eddings and repairs are being made on the fender. The Police Department rooms also got cleaned up and painted according to Eddings. 

Eddings said that the dog situation has slowed down since they’ve started citing people and only one person was cited in December. 

No mention by Eddings or Stricklin of how much money was received in insurance for the police vehicles that Stricklin’s husband, Charles, crashed into on Dec.7. No mention of what plans the city has for the insurance money.

Greg Evans from the water and sewer department gave his monthly report and told the board that the wells with the new computer system are making the cycle component off too fast and he said that it would eventually end up burning the wells up. Greg said it would cost another $10,000 to complete that system. The system has been temporarily fixed and that should hold for another few weeks according to Evans. A motion was made to pay to fix the well and passed unanimously. 

Stricklen stated that they were taking applications for the city clerk position. Applications can be picked up at city hall or resumes can be emailed to Stricklen at sharontnmayor@gmail.com.

The next board meeting will be held on Monday, Feb. 12 at 6:30 p.m. at Sharon City Hall.