The Henderson City Council doesn’t figure to be talking late into the night again Monday, but it will have to face some of the same issues that kept it busy past 11 p.m. this past Monday.
Samuel Smith, the Shank Street resident who is seeking more than $2,000 in refunds for sanitation fees he shouldn’t have been charged, has signed up to address the council during its public-comment period.
Smith left the Feb. 28 meeting in anger after the council voted 4-2 not to give him more than the $757 he has received to cover the past three years of sanitation fees. Smith wants an additional 15 years of repayments to cover the entire time he says he was charged the fee despite living outside the city and thus outside the coverage of the city’s Public Works Department.
Paying Smith for the extra 15 years would cost Henderson an additional $2,238.
The council majority has said it cannot pay Smith any more because of the statute of limitations, which limits the city’s liability to two years (Smith received a third year because City Attorney John Zollicoffer only recently learned that the period is shorter for a municipality than it would be under a contract between two private citizens). Ignoring the statute of limitations could open the city to a raft of old claims.
Council member Mary Emma Evans has argued that the city should ignore that legal technicalities and do what’s right: Pay Smith his money. Council member Elissa Yount joined Evans in voting against the council action Monday night because she didn’t want to close the door to a creative solution, such as giving Smith a credit on future water bills.
Mayor Clem Seifert could not vote but said he would have backed Evans. He reiterated that view in an interview Friday, saying the city should repay any money it has wrongly taken: “I think the city ought to go bankrupt (making refunds) if we’ve got hundreds of people out there” who have suffered Smith’s fate.
Smith isn’t the only person slated to make a return appearance Monday after leaving the last council meeting in frustration.
Granite Street resident Beth Gister also has signed up to speak. She has spent the past 11 months on a quest to slow down traffic on her block, between Chestnut and Garnett streets.
After traffic studies didn’t support her petition to lower the speed limit to 25 mph, the council split 3-3 on whether to follow a policy it enacted in December and reject the petition. Seifert’s tie-breaking vote gave Gister a negative answer and put her in position to submit another petition, this one seeking speed humps instead of a lower speed limit.
The council has a three-minute limit on such speakers but has not strictly enforced that rule since creating it in September.
Also returning from a week earlier are assorted discussion items from Yount, who agreed to postpone her issues by a week. Council member Mike Rainey agreed to do the same with an undisclosed item he added to the Feb. 28 agenda, but his issue is not part of the preliminary agenda released Friday afternoon.
Monday’s agenda does not appear to require much action from the council. The consent agenda is blank; City Clerk Dianne White’s illness means the council won’t even have minutes from the Feb. 28 meeting to approve.
Seifert is due to report on his meeting Tuesday morning with the state Jump Team, operating under the auspices of the Division of Community Assistance to bring various resources together in Henderson, and to talk about the lobbying trip he led to Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday. But the mayor said details might have to wait until the council’s March 21 meeting.
City Manager Eric Williams plans to present “brief updates” on the city’s soon-to-be-improved Web site; the status of city employee Ronnie Bullock, who is home from the hospital but in a wheelchair after a traffic accident in January; the local Working Group against crime, which held its second meeting Wednesday; the first draft of a five-year cable franchise agreement with Time Warner, to replace a contract that will expire in November; and discussions with the state on land-use planning.
The council could schedule a public hearing on the city’s application for a federal Justice Assistance Grant to hire a victim/witness services coordinator, or the council could approve the application without a hearing. The council must act by its next meeting, March 21.
Engineering contracts with Peirson & Whitman for work on the sewer system and the water plant also will be before the council Monday night.
The meeting starts at 7:30 in the council chambers at the Municipal Building on Beckford Drive.