City Council Meeting: 11.14.23

Two meetings were held Tuesday, November 14, in City Council Chambers. The first was a special meeting for the LEAP project. LEAP intends to ask the county commissioners about a property tax exemption and present to city council the benefit this would have for Mountant home in the long run. The LEAP project wished to obtain a similar letter of support that Golf U had received, in order to present to County Commissioners. LEAP had stated that if they were exempt from property tax they would be able to establish the affordable housing units sooner and that this would benefit the city more than the property tax would. All members of the Council were in agreement that they could not offer this type of support for LEAP.

The second meeting of the evening was a routine meeting consisting of the deliberation on Mountain Home City Code 7-1A-9 Water Rights Fee, a proposed Hydrologic and Hydride Study for the Ethridge Legacy Homes, and finally, deliberation and decision on proposed Personnel Policy updates.

The deliberation of the water rights fee was pertaining to moving the location of the city code from title 7 (Health and Sanitation) to title 9 (Land use and Development), proposed by Brennen and supported by the rest of the council. There was also the altering of the language used so that water right fees for all new residential, commercial, and industrial developments are now to be collected for any amount of land not just land consisting of one or more acres.

Ms. Lynn Carrillo of Ethridge Legacy Homes (ELH) came to the council in hopes of financial assistance from the city in order to perform a hydrologic and hydride study (H&H) that has been required of ELH before they can move forward with development. ELH came to council in hopes that the city could lend them $10,000 to achieve the H&H because their investors were hesitant to do so. All city council members denied the request.

The council then moved to the deliberation and decision on proposed Personnel Policy updates. This included items such as the requirement of doctor notes for sick days as well as mental health days for city workers, probationary times for new hires for the city, and the required alcohol and drug testing for when a city worker is involved in an accident while on the clock or using city equipment.

The meeting ended with recognizing persons in the audience. Four members of the community came forward. The most notable being Mark Bryant, who brought up the February 13th meeting in which council members discussed asbestos in the water systems of the neighborhoods of College Park and Tindall. Bryant asked the council members why they were focusing on anything else why this was happening and implored them to shift their focus. He asked them to communicate if they had already done something and then to check other older subdivisions as well.

Bud Adams asked Councilmen Brennan if the conduit issue from six weeks ago was mandated by himself and the mayor. Adams is an employee of a phone company and said it seemed that this conduit appeared to be a test for the fiber project in hopes of asking the customers to be obligated in something that they didn’t want.

Ellie Meyers was the last community member to speak. She is a resident of Sunset Manor 8. She came to the meeting so that she could ask the Council if they could come help her and other residents with the current manager, who is abusing her power and not fulfilling her responsibilities of prioritizing the residents, so Ms. Ellie feels. She told the Council that she has been intimidating the residents and specifically not doing things to save money, Ms. Ellie thinks, so that she, the manage, may obtain a larger end of the year bonus, and again asked the council if they could help her and her fellow residents.

The next City Council meeting will be held at City Hall in the Council Chambers on Tuesday, November 28th at 5pm.