Last night the Cawker City Council met with Bob Medina who works for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Medina runs the department's Illegal Dump Clean-up Program. He was in Cawker City to offer his department's assistance with a local dumping problem. The location was not made public but during the conversation there were references made to trailers and an abandoned vehicle.
The next step for the city is an application for KDHE services. That will produce a contract and start the legal process necessary to get the dump site cleaned up.
A large portion of last at last night's January meeting dealt with purchase requests. The lion's share came from City Superintendent David Reling. The biggest request was for street material to do road work later in the year - the cost $19,300. Also OKed, permission to contract the Mitchel County Weed Department to spray around the city's two sewer ponds. The annual application cost will be $500. The list additionally included $500 to repair a blown breaker at one of the city's water wells. And finally Reling got a green light to spend $900 to have Newton Electric out of Concordia completely rewire the electronic notification system at the wells. The City Superintendent however cautioned the council saying, if the rewire does not take care of the problem it will cost the city about $4,300 to replace the soft start system with a variable drive.
City Police and Code Enforcement Officer Ken Moore also was the beneficiary of several purchases. Moore will get a new computer for his department at a cost of just under $900. He also got permission to purchase a new body camera which is expected to greatly improve picture quality. According to Moore, the poor quality of the current camera recordings affects court cases.
In other action, the council appointed former City Clerk Carol Weeks to sit on the city's housing board. Weeks will replace local banker Larry Conyac who is retiring.
And finally, after haggling over a building permit with the council the past several meetings, city resident Bill Brummer got an OK to put a second mobile home on his property. The green light from the city also included the OK for a variance that will allow him to tear down an old building on the same property and put up a new one there.