The Dublin City Council voted unanimously to approve Melissa Minor as the new City Secretary following an executive session during Monday night’s regular meeting.
Minor has been working for the city in the water department for the past two months and applied for the position after long-time City Secretary Rhonda Williams retired last month.
The Council also voted to cover the costs of a water rate increase that the city was incurring from the Upper Leon Municipal Water District, rather than passing it on to city customers. Council members asked City Secretary Bobby Mendez if the city could cover the rate increase for customers in its service area and were told that it could.
Upper Leon has been the city’s water provider for many years, offering treated water from Lake Proctor to Dublin and other local communities. Rates have been increasing in recent years with Upper Leon explaining that routine maintenance and upgrades making increases likely every year.
The meeting also included discussion of Dublin Volunteer Fire Department finances. Mendez and DVFD Chief Paul Warner had been looking at how department purchases have been made after discovering that purchases were coming out of the general fund since 2014. DVFD is provided money from the city and Erath County since 30% of its firefighting operations happen within the city limits and about 70% happen in the county.
Mendez suggested an even split of city and county funds be used by the department. Council members agreed but were divided on the percentage split with suggestions including 60% county/40% city and 70%county/30% city.
Mendez and Warner were divided on the idea the department reimbursing some of its funding to cover the portion that could have been handled by county funds in recent years. The idea of reimbursement was complicated by the fact that matching grant money was taken from the department account a few years ago to purchase a fire truck and the grant reimbursement was accidentally deposited into the city’s general fund instead of being deposited back into the DVFD account.
DVFD Chief Warner and Mendez both confirmed that they’re willing to keep working on an agreement when council members asked if they’d be willing to continue the discussion until they arrived at a compromise.
Council members also canvassed the local city elections in which challenger Eric Bullard was voted to take Ben Pate’s position on the council and to approved the sale of liquor within the city limits. Mendez reported that all current city ordinances prohibit the sale so a new order is being prepared for council approval and they will be able to decide how that is managed.
Barbara Poplin signed up to speak in the citizen’s participation portion, remarking on a previous request to turn the depot into a restaurant, saying the building remained unused and windows are broken. She also commented on Dublin EMS’ previous efforts to bring funds into town by offering transport service for local counties. She asked why the city wasn’t pursuing these funds, noting that the department was downsized and down to one vehicle. Boards are prevented from discussing items that aren’t on the agenda, but Mendez offered to address the matters with her if she wanted to talk, saying there were reasons behind both of those matters.
Poplin also inquired why nobody was wearing a facemask and was told that guideline considerations had been made for board meetings.