One hour or less

The Saratoga Town Council just barely had a quorum as it met on February 17. With Councilmember Bob Keel and Mayor Creed James both absent and Councilmember D’Ron Campbell joining by phone, the meeting lasted less than 45 minutes.

With Mayor Pro-Tem Ben Spaulding chairing the meeting, the governing body covered a variety of subjects in a short amount of time compared to past meetings.

Town Hall

Since the first meeting in January, the subject of town hall has taken up a fair amount of discussion in the council chambers. Most recently, the town council has discussed the advertising for the vacant town clerk position. 

According to Spaulding, after advertising through the Wyoming Association of Municipalities Clerks and Treasurers (WAMCAT), the Town of Saratoga had received at least two applicants. He added that the municipality was waiting for the advertisement to run its course before the governing body scheduled interviews with the applicants.

On a similar subject, the town council discussed the ongoing contract with Pam Paulson, former Town of Hanna treasurer. As was reported previously (see “Then there were five” on page 3 of the January 27 Saratoga Sun), Paulson had been contracted by the Town of Saratoga at a rate of $50 per hour for 10 hours a week to aid Treasurer Sammy Flohr and Assistant Clerk/Treasurer Brenda Mistilske. Recently, however, Paulson has, with the knowledge of the governing body, exceeded the 10 hour weekly minimum dictated by her contract.

“My thoughts on it is allowing Pam to continue to work and solve those issues and then once those issues start to level themselves out … go from having kind of an open contract to a closed contract where we have a little bit more regulation on her hours,” said Spaulding. “To me, she’s not abusing the hours, she’s staying there doing what she needs to get done and leaving.”

Nelson agreed, stating that Paulson was “doing some really important stuff that needs to get done.”

According to Flohr, Paulson had been finding issues with Caselle, the accounting software used by the Town of Saratoga. During the February 2 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council, Campbell had stated that the payroll module in the program had not been set-up properly. Flohr backed up Campbell, stating that for every issue Paulson had found, there were two more to fix.

Department of Public Works

Under the Department of Public Works, Director Jon Winter had a number of updates for the council that began with the two pickup trucks purchased for the streets department. On January 19, the Saratoga Town Council approved two payments of $25,900 to Bob Ruwart Motors in Wheatland for the vehicles.

“One of them is in Wheatland at Bob Ruwart, the second one is still at the factory and I talked to them this morning and Bob Ruwart is investigating why it’s still at the factory. It shouldn’t be, they have a stipulation requirement that it has to be delivered to them within the next nine days,” said Winter. “They said that they would ‘do us right’ with whatever the situation would be.”

According to Winter, he had been informed by a representative from Bob Ruwart Motors that if the second truck did not arrive in time they would provide the Town of Saratoga with a similar truck that was currently on their lot.

In addition to the pickup trucks, Winter informed the council that advertising had been done for bids for a combination dump truck/plow. During the January 19 meeting, Winter had informed the governing body of one that had been found in Iowa with approximately 17,000 miles on it. After that meeting, however, the municipality had been advised that they were still required to bid out the vehicle.

While the bids requests had been published, Winter told the town council that the vehicle he had originally looked at was still available.

“My thought would be, since we did budget it to come out of impact funds and it is appropriated for this year, that we go ahead and buy it outright rather than do a lease-purchase,” said Nelson.

Finally, Winter told the council that the mystery of the high biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) in the lagoon effluent was still a mystery for the water and sewer department. According to the director of public works, both he and Chuck McVeigh had talked to HDR Consulting about the issue.

“This is now the third professional that we’ve contacted,” Winter said.

While previous samples of both the BOD and the carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand had been sent to a state laboratory, more samples would be sent to Energy Labs. According to Winter, while the lagoon effluent remains high in BOD, all other statistics remain at normal levels.

The next meeting of the Saratoga Town Council will be at 6 p.m. on March 2 at Saratoga Town Hall.