MINUTES OF MEETING AND PUBLIC HEARING OF THE

THATCHER TOWN COUNCIL

March 9, 2010

 

Present: Mayor Rivera, Vice Mayor, Councilman Don Innes, Ken Larson, Eric Merriman, Charles Morris, Wayne Griffin

 

Absent: Vice Mayor Bill Mulleneaux

 

Staff Present: Terry Hinton, Manger, Heath Brown Engineer, Dudley Welker Attorney, Chief Mike Payne Fire Department, Lona Duncan Town Clerk

 

Visitors: Gary Allred Aimee Staten, Jerry Hoopes, Mark Vinning & son, Brandon Lunt, Erin Motes, Kenny Goodman, Alan Perkins, Dustin Welker, Jeremy Green,

 

                                                                          AGENDA

 

Welcome and Call Meeting to Order. Welcomed the Boy Scouts and ask them to stand and introduce themselves. Chase Layton, Kurtis Thatcher, Gabe Clonts, Parker Hatch, Dallin Perkins, Marco Mayor Rivera said God Bless our Troops Family and America.

 

Pledge of Allegiance lead by Jorden Merriman

 

Roll Call.

 

PUBLIC HEARING:

 

A.        Kenny Goodman Use Permit to allow a parent to live in separate quarters at his home.

 

Kenny Goodman stood and said he was for it and has gone thro the proper channels and P&Z has unanimous approved it.

 

OPEN CALL TO THE PUBLIC:

 

            Erin Motes stood and said he had two questions he wanted in public record one is has each of Councilman been properly  trained on Open Meeting Laws and it procedures has each member be trained on the laws regulating conflict of interests and those proceedings and  have all those disclosures been addressed. Councilman Morris started by saying yes the others included Councilman Merriman, Mayor Rivera, Councilman Larson and Councilman Griffin all said yes. Councilman Innes was not present at the time of question.

 

PUBLIC APPEARANCES:

 

CONSENT AGENDA:                   

 

A.           Approve minutes of the February 10, 2010 Regular Council Meeting and Board of Adjustment.

 

B.           Planning and Zoning Monthly Report.

 

C.           Police Monthly Report.

 

D.           Approval of Invoices.

 

E.        Financial Reports.

 

Councilman Morris made motion to approve minutes and reports. Councilman Merriman seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous Motion passed

 

OLD BUSINESS:   

 

NEW BUSINESS:   

 

A.        RESOLUTION NO. 564-2010:      A RESOLUTION GRANTING A RENEWAL OF THE LICENSE HEREFORE GRANTED TO VALLEY CONNECTIONS, L.L.C., AS ORIGINALLY SET FORTH IN RESOLUTION NO. 463-2004, A COPY WHICH IS HERETO ANNEXED AND BY THIS REFERENCE INCORPORATED, UPON THE SAME TERMS AND CONDITIONS HERETO PROVIDED, FOR AN ADDITIONAL PERIOD OF FIVE YEARS, BEGINNING ON SEPTEMBER 14, 2009.

Terry said you have a copy of the original resolution passed in September of 99 and Dudley Welker has reviewed the agreement and agrees that we should renew it. The terms are the same they are current on their franchise payment and pole rental we have not had any problem with the agreement type of agreement. We have two others that have the same agreement Valley Telecom and Cable One. 

 

Councilman Griffin made motion to approve Resolution No 564-2010 and Councilman Morris seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous- Motion passed

 

B.        Decision on Kenny Goodman Use Permit.

           

Terry you have that information in package and staff concurs with the recommendation from P&Z to accept Use Permit. Councilman Griffin asked is there a separate kitchen in it answer was yes. Terry said our code says only one resident per lot but Council has in the past made the prevision for taking care of parents. The stipulation on the Use Permit it says six months after the parent is on longer living there if it is a trailer it has to be moved and in this case they can use it as a quest house if someone comes to visit. On the permit it’s self it says you can not rent out as an apartment. Councilman Griffin asked what is temporary most of us have children that go to school and we won’t charge them rent they can live there under the code there is no rent but it is not temporary. Terry said that could be a problem and we really don’t police that. When I neighbor says something then we check it. In this case we put the stipulation in that it can not be rented out and it should be used for temporary situations.

 

Councilman Merriman made motion to approve the Use Permit with a second from Councilman Larson.  The vote was unanimous Motion passed

 

EXECUTIVE SESSION: Pursuant to A.R.S. Section 38-431.03 (A)(7) the Council may go into Executive Session to consult with the Town Attorney for legal advise.

Terry asked for Attorney Welker, Heath Brown, Lona Duncan and himself to remain in Executive Session.

 

Councilman Morris made motion to go into executive session and Councilman Innes seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous. Time 7:40 pm

 

 Council went back into regular session at 8:30

 

            A.        Decision on Executive Session.

 

None

 

INFORMATIONAL ITEMS:

 

A.        Town Manager’s Report:               

 

Terry sent all of you an invitation to the public meeting dated March 23rd at the EAC building for the Springbok Development will be holding a meeting that everyone is invited to they will talk about their project and how it will work. There will be a display add in the paper and it will be in the Gila/ Galiuro Room at 7:00pm.

We have gone back to the sidewalks but the weather hasn’t helped us out there. The bridge will be here in April or May we are trying to get ready so we can set that as soon as we get it.

There is a new business in coming in a Hawaiian Barbeque in the old service station that Green’s had across from the School Administration Building.  Councilman Morris asked if the land on 20th where the barbeque place is located is that commercial area the answer was yes.

Reay lane stimulus project the bid closes Friday 12th. Then it will have to go and ADOT meeting to be approved so it will be late April early May. We are also in the process of having a round two of stimulus project ready to go. The second project has to be ready to go to bid in 90 days from the signing of the bill and the only way that will happen is if it is 100% done. Seago is going to do the environmental on the remaining of Reay Ray from the highway to where we stop on this one. We are 4th on the list but we may get lucky we are going to be ready.

On Thursday there is a kick off meeting for the walking path that we will hostess it will had Adot and Seago people there that will be in the afternoon. That walking path will be a nice addition for us starting from Golf Course Rd at the Daley Stop to Church Street on the east side

Councilman Innes asked where Church Street fit into the plan of being widened. Terry said it is about 4 or 5 years out depends on how the streets are looking but the next will be Allred Lane we at least have to do the intersection at the highway. Councilman Innes said Church Street has real problems with the drainage and it is a busy street Terry said it is probably the worst. 

Councilman Merriman asked is there still a State Fire Department the one that was there retired and appointment the man that was actual his boss and they have hired back two secretary ‘s and a couple of inspectors  in Tucson and Phoenix. Councilman Merriman asked so when our guys are through with there program who will do they testing. Chief Payne said it looks like right now the Fire Marshall Office will do that.

 

B.        Fire Department Report.

 

Chief Payne the Ladder Truck is on schedule and will probably be in April because we still have to go back and do the acceptances test. We had burn of the house on Webster road. It was a good facility for us to use we had about a 1000 man hours of training. We had a negative comment in paper but a lot of good training.  We had one from Safford and Pima and Clifton and the guys from the class. Just to make everyone aware of the weed problem we may have. Terry said due to the weed issue I may have to find a way to hire some kids to spray all our weeds.

 

C.        Police Department Report.

 

Chief Stevens said had annual audit for Arizona Post two weeks ago they sent three guys to look at our training records we have to have so many hours a year we are in good shape we passed. Other than that we are doing well.

 

COMMITTEE REPORTS:

 

            A.        Safe House- Councilman Griffin said they will meet in a couple of week

 

            B.        Chamber of Commerce- Councilman Merriman in the meeting today put Marie Freestone in charge because Norman Hannah the CEO is gone. We had meetings on the Salsa Trail Festival that is coming up it will be a lot like last year with  the balloon same as last year tasting of the different salsa. The book sell will be going on at the Chambers. The web site will be changed to look a lot like Cottonwood site you might want to look at that change. On March 31st the Vietnam Wall will be coming back into the Valley leaving about April 11th they are going to leave it open 24 hrs so they are looking for volunteers for security will be at Safford Park. They are appointing a difference boa rd members to take care of things like visitor tourism, marketing, economic development so that is different. Mayor Rivera asked if the Chamber was over the Wall Councilman Merriman said just keeping things open and giving support. Terry said the American Legion has taken over this year. Councilman Innes ask if the Legion needed any help. Terry said the managers meet with them and they have it pretty will planned out. The people that are bringing it have gone down on there fee to $5000 the County and Safford are going to bring their inmates over to help set it up. As it gets closer there may be some things we all committed to do In kind things to help them.

 

            C.        SEAGO- Mayor Rivera said they met last month on the 27th most of housekeeping of policy we have a new director he is going over all the policies and procedures for SEAGO bringing up to date. The next meeting will be here in Thatcher on May 15th    they talked about moving the meeting to be on a week day instead of a Saturday.

 

            D.        Arizona Foundation – Councilman Larson said they would have a meeting this month on finalizing what we need to do to get the Arizona Chapter of Foundation here.

 

E.            Library- Councilman Morris said they did not have a meeting so there is nothing to report our next meeting will be the 25th of this month.

 

Terry said he forgot to mention that we are in the process of up dating our web site.  A quite up date on the League of Cities and Towns and the Legislators they are having a meeting tonight on some things that could greatly effort Counties, Cities and Towns. They are talking of taking our LTAF money and send it to the general fund, transferring the cost of juvenile detention from the State to County using some of our Ltaf to go to County to take care of that. There is a crazy bill out there called  Transparency what they want is a  searchable data base from each City Town and County so that someone from the Goldwater Institute can get on there computer and research what ever they want. This will cost several hundred thousands of dollars to purchase the software.  We would have to hire a full time IT person just to keep it up. The estimates from Graham County and Greenlee County were over a million dollars and they already have an IT department. The information they want on it our in your packets every month like financial, invoices all the information is there it is just not on the web site. They can search for it. I don’t know where I would get the money to do that as of right now there is a yearly fine and it might be cheaper to pay the fine. They want several on Eminent Domain that will make it almost impossible to do which we have never had to use but if we had to relocate a utility line or a road that needs to be connected and you can’t research an agreement on that process needs to be there. The Legislators seem to be very anti City and Town they are making it hard on us. This meeting tonight if they pass it they will start taking the fund right now and not wait until next years budget. Mayor Rivera said also on the State Transportation are also going in and getting money from ADOT funds so as far as any projects what ever is going on right now is it.

 

 

ADJOURNMENT

 

Councilman Innes made motion to adjourn meeting. Councilman Morris seconded the motion. Vote was unanimous. Meeting adorned at 8:32 pm

 

ATTEST:

 

APPROVED:

 

___________________________                                    _______________________

Lona Duncan, Town Clerk                                         Robert Rivera, Mayor

 

CERTIFICATION

 

I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of the regular/special meeting of the Town Council of the Town of Thatcher held on the 9th day of March 2010. I further certify that the meeting was duly called and held and that a quorum was present.

 

___________________________

Lona Duncan, Town Clerk